Secret Life of Books

Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides. The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew. -- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org -- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/ youtube: https://www.youtube

Secret Life of Books is a arts podcast hosted by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, with 189 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole hosts Secret Life of Books, a arts show with 189 episodes published.

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  Secret Life of Books

  Secret Life of Reading (with Maggie O'Farrell and Ben Alderson-Day)

  Sep 8, 202654 min

  This episode was recorded at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, with literary superstar Maggie O'Farrell and one of Britain's leading psychologists, Ben Alderson-Day. On the Secret Life of Books, we talk about classic books and the life and times of the people who wrote them. In this conversation we talk about you - the readers. What happens when we read a book? What is going on our minds? Why can the experience of staring at words on a page be so intense, life-changing even? Is it just a case of impressions and ideas transferring from an author’s words into our imagination, or is there something more mystical, nay uncanny, at work too?  Maggie and Ben reflect on the experience of being readers, and how that can transform being a writer. Maggie is the author of 10 novels, including the acclaimed and recently adapted Hamnet , and her newest book, Land . Ben is a Professor of Psychology at Durham University, author of Presence: The Strange Science of the Unseen Other, and Director of the Readerbank project - a collaborative research project with the Edinburgh Book Festival into how we read, imagine and understand stories.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Episode #169

  Secret Life of Edinburgh

  Sep 1, 202659 min

  SLOB is in Edinburgh for the International Book Festival. Join us on a walking tour of literary Edinburgh. From Mary Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland, obsessed with witch hunts and an early anti-tobacco campaigner, to Muriel Spark and slum tourism in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie . We walk from the gentrified streets of Marchmont and Bruntsfield, across the Meadows, and into the rough and tumble of the Old Town, a maze of cobbled streets and old buildings crowded on the hillside below the Edinburgh Castle. Cameos from Ian Rankin and Kate Atkinson, William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, and of course, Sir Walter Scott. Come through Edinburgh with SLOB and relish its very pungent history in a world before modern sanitation. Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High-street, to my house in James’s court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. … As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, ‘I smell you in the dark!’ But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made a noble appearance. With thanks to the Ponder & See Foundation for their support. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Episode #168

  Secret Life of Trains 2 (Choo choo!)

  Aug 31, 202637 min

  This week SLOB went full steam ahead from London to Edinburgh, to appear live at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. We love classic books, and we love trains, so what better way to while away the 6 hour slow-train to Edinburgh than to record our second episode about literary railway journeys. Join Sophie and Jonty as they choose sandwiches at Euston Station, board the 12:40 to Scotland via Wigan and Penrith, and talk about their favorite train lit. Savor the authenticity of the train-talk, while wedged in the gangway between the toilets and the trash bin, periodically interrupted by skeptical passengers en route to the snacks carriage. Choo choo!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Episode #166

  Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

  Aug 25, 20261h 24m

  We’re aware that Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde written in the 1380s might be a tough sell to even the most devoted SLoB listener, but bear with us. Troilus and Criseyde is not a novel, but it bears a lot of features that we associate with novels and reading this novel-length poem takes you into the world and minds of medieval England - albeit transposed to Ancient Troy - by someone who was living there. It has action, betrayal and a racy sex scene. It gives us a new kind of access to characters' inner lives, and it reveals that inwardly people are wildly different from the way they appear. This is a love story that doesn't conform to any of our expectations about medieval love, and a war story that doesn't comply with our expectations of war. There are so many firsts here. We see the invention of the famous British sense of humour captured in real-time by Chaucer, the very guy who invented it. It features the first reconstructed male concerned with consent in literary history and the first dumping by text message - although obviously there’s no phone involved.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Episode #165

  Charlotte Higgins on Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War

  Aug 21, 202651 min

  Charlotte Higgins talks to Jonty about her new book, Ukrainian Lessons, which recounts her experiences the last four years reporting on the cultural life of a nation at war. Culture is never far from the front-line in time of conflict, but rarely more so than in Ukraine. Part of Putin’s attempts to legitimise the war lies in an age-old argument that Ukraine is simply an extension, or part of, Russia itself. He has personally written essays explaining his view that Ukrainian language and culture is simply part of a Greater Russia story. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians are proving him wrong with the current flourishing of poetry, writing and art that speaks to the uniqueness and separateness of their culture. Charlotte talks about how she went to Ukraine, what she found and why her belief in the power of poetry and art has never been greater. Charlotte is Chief Culture Writer for The Guardian, a classicist and host of Instant Classics podcast. Content warning: as you might expect from an episode about a contemporary war, some of the stories and experiences that Charlotte recounts are confronting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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