Hosted by Henry Oliver · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 42 episodes
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Literary discussion www.commonreader.co.uk
Henry Oliver hosts The Common Reader, a arts show with 42 episodes published.
What a lot of fun I had talking to Zena Hitz about Gulliver’s Travels. As well as discussing Swift, slavery, genocide, rationality, Christianity, and science, Zena told me that good philosophy is like a box of cake mix a
My colleague Oliver Traldi recently published an essay called ‘Jane Austen’s Virtuous Liberalism’. It’s a very nice discussion of the ways in which Austen understand the challenges of character formation. Virtue, as Aust
What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love
What a pleasure it was to talk to Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, about the great man himself, who was born four hundred years ago this month. Aubrey is best know for his splendid Brief Lives but he prese
Ahead of her new book What’s So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexande
Hermione Lee is the renowned biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and, most recently, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard died at the end of last year, so Hermione and I talked about the influence of Shaw
This episode of The Common Reader podcast is a little different. I spoke to both Jeffrey Lawrence and Julianne Werlin about literature, politics, and the future of the academic humanities. Questions included: what do we
Tuesday is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, so today I spoke to John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL, author of What Matters in Jane Austen. John and I talked about how Austen’s fiction would
I was delighted to talk to Rebecca Lowe, who is, like me, a great admirer of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series. We discussed Calculation as a philosophical novel: how it’s narrative voice is like that of
I made a video of my recent essay ‘What I Learned Reading Peter Pan to my Children’. I made this video because it is one of the things I am most pleased with having written. You can watch it on YouTube or if you want aud
Shannon Chamberlain is a former tutor at St. Johns College, an expert in the influence of fiction upon Adam Smith, a mystery writer, Substacker, and amateur pilot. She is no longer an academic, and now works as a writer
I was delighted to talk to Rhodri Lewis, author of Shakespeare’s Tragic Art. We discussed Shakespeare’s most under appreciated plays, the best films, how to teach Shakespeare, humanism, personae, Frank Kermode, the futur
My thanks to Catherine Lacey for a great discussion! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk
Frances Wilson has written biographies of Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, D.H. Lawrence, and, most recently, Muriel Spark. I thought Electric Spark was excellent. In my review, I wrote: “Wilson has done far more t
Victoria Moul has been reading and memorising poetry since she was nine. She recites it at the dentist (‘Aubade’, rather alarmingly) and she recited poems all through her labours when she gave birth. We talked about all
In this interview, Lamorna Ash, author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, and one of my favourite modern writers, talked about working at the Times Literary Supplement, netball, M
I was delighted to talk to the historian Helen Castor (who writes The H Files by Helen Castor) about her new book The Eagle and the Hart. I found that book compulsive, and this is one of my favourite interviews so far. W
Clare Carlisle’s biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question, is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview Clare. We talked about George Eliot as a feminist, the imperfections of h
Interview with Matt Yglesias about reading classic novels, like Middlemarch, and some discussion of his favourite movies. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access t
The Shakespeare Book Club meets tonight to talk about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Zoom link here for paid subscribers. Paid subscribers can also join this chat thread and ask me (or other subscribers) whatever they want.
Zena Hitz
PhD
1 appearance on this show
Oliver Traldi
1 appearance on this show
Laura Thompson
Three Ships Beauty
1 appearance on this show
John Mullan
Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at University College London
1 appearance on this show
Rebecca Lowe
Mercatus Center
1 appearance on this show
Helen Castor
author of The Eagle & The Hart : The Tragedy Of Richard II and Henry IV
1 appearance on this show
Matt Yglesias
1 appearance on this show
Katherine Dee
Default_Friend
1 appearance on this show
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The Common Reader is hosted by Henry Oliver. The show is categorised under arts (books) and has published 42 episodes.
The Common Reader has published 42 episodes.
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