Narrative Poems: βEnoch Ardenβ by Alfred Tennyson
Season 19 Β· Episode 11
Thursday, October 29, 2026 β’ Duration 19:51
In the early 1860s, Tennyson was at the height of his celebrity. His great elegy, In Memoriam (1850), seemed to have captured the spiritual unease of the age, and the first instalment of Idylls of the King came in 1859. But in 1861 he took a break from Arthurian romance to try something different, a narrative poem based on an old yarn about a man who goes missing at sea for more than ten years. Enoch Arden, sold 17,000 copies on its first day of publication. Well into the 20th century it attracted stage and silent film adaptations as well as a musical setting by Strauss, and provided a template for countless stories of long-lost characters returning home.
The decision Enoch makes at the end of the poem, when he finds his wife and children living happily with another man, was widely debated at the time, but Tennyson is careful not to pass judgment on his characters. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at the ways in which Tennyson maintains this moral ambivalence through realist touches and a mastery of half-formed emotion, and discuss the effects of the poemβs intricate patterning and biblical resonances.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
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Read more on Tennyson in the LRB by:
Seamus Perry: https://lrb.me/npep1101
Frank Kermode: https://lrb.me/npep1102
Danny Karlin: https://lrb.me/npep1103
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The Man Behind the Curtain: βUlyssesβ by James Joyce
Season 16 Β· Episode 4
Saturday, October 24, 2026 β’ Duration 52:04
Tom McCarthy, writing in the LRB, described James Joyce's Ulysses as a βheavy book, a book full of weight, a fallen bookβ; a βproperly obscene bookβ; βa book in which the central stake is the coming into being of the book itselfβ; a book for which βpeople should desist, once and for all, from using the term βinterior monologueβ to describe the novelβs outbreaks of unassigned first-person narrative. This is not interior monologue: itβs exterior consciousness, embodied (or encorpsed) consciousness that has ruptured the membrane of conventional syntax.β In this episode, Toms McCarthy and Jones discuss all that and more, including why Ulysses is both a βbook to be read with relishβ and a βmonumental event in the development of human consciousnessβ.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts:Β https://lrb.me/closereadingsmbtc
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Read more in the LRB:
Tom McCarthy: Ulysses and its Wake: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce01
Colm TΓ³ibΓn on Joyceβs errors: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce02
Anne Enright: At Sandymount Strand: https://lrb.me/mbtcjoyce03
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Nature in Crisis: βExtraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalismβ by Thea Riofrancos
Season 18 Β· Episode 11
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 β’ Duration 23:52
Lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of the transition away from fossil fuels. But lithium, like the copper, cobalt and rare earths that renewable technologies also require, has to be mined. βEverywhere that mines are dug up to provide raw materials for the energy transition,β Thea Riofrancos writes in Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, βglobal climate action comes into conflict with local environmental protection.β Or as Meehan puts it at the start of the episode, thereβs a fundamental contradiction between two desirable things.
Meehan and Peter discuss Latin Americaβs long history of resource nationalism and compare the process of lithium extraction through brine evaporation with the far more destructive practices of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The paradoxes inherent in βgreen capitalismβ are brought into sharper focus by Riofrancosβs exploration of these extractive frontiers, but are her solutions β smaller batteries, more recycling, denser cities and fewer cars β a serious proposal or pie in the sky?
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: β β β β β β β β β β β β β https://lrb.me/applecrnaβ β β β β β β β β β tureβ β β
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Further reading in the LRB:
Laleh Khalili: Who owns the arctic? https://lrb.me/nicep1101
Adam Tooze: What energy transition? https://lrb.me/nicep1102
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Whoβs afraid of realism? βShyness and Dignityβ by Dag Solstad
Season 17 Β· Episode 11
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 β’ Duration 24:18
What happens when the techniques of realist literature become absorbed into our understanding of real life? And what would it mean to try to depict that experience in fiction? In Dag Solstadβs Shyness and Dignity (1994), a middle-aged teacher, Elias Rukla, is teaching Ibsenβs The Wild Duck for perhaps the hundredth time when he has a revelation about an apparently insignificant detail in the play relating to a minor character, Dr Relling. The detail is classically realist in that it appears to have no importance in the plot, yet it acquires a major significance in Ruklaβs life, who shortly after the lesson has a breakdown in the school playground and is convinced his career is finished.
In this episode, James Wood is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss a novel that avoids the expectations of realism to explore the psychological and cultural impact of the realist tradition.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
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Read more in the LRB:
Adam Mars-Jones on Solstad: https://lrb.me/realism1101
David Edgar on Ibsen: https://lrb.me/realism1103
Michael Hofmann on Thomas Bernhard: https://lrb.me/realism1102
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London Revisited: The Monster
Season 20 Β· Episode 10
Thursday, October 8, 2026 β’ Duration 26:10
In 1737, Samuel Johnson and his student David Garrick decided to walk to London from Lichfield in search of opportunity. It worked out well for both of them, but for many of the large number who made their hopeful journey to the capital from all over the country in the 18th century, life was more likely to end up like a scene from a Hogarth print, ruined by gin and despair.
London had become a βgreat and monstrous thingβ according to Daniel Defoe. However, if you were lucky enough to survive childhood, and gin, and have a bit of money, it was an increasingly pleasant monster, offering strolls through grand squares and pleasure gardens, and shops displaying a dizzying variety of goods from all over the world alongside cheap copies of a new literary form: the novel. To discuss Londonβs emergence as a brutal city of consumption and cultural innovation, Rosemary is joined again by Markman Ellis, a professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Apple Podcasts:Β β β β https://lrb.me/applesignuplrβ β β
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Read more in the LRB:
Clare Bucknell on Samuel Richardson: https://lrb.me/lrep1001
John Mullan on Pamela: https://lrb.me/lrep1002
Rosemary Hill on Hogarth: https://lrb.me/lrep1003
Tom Paulin on Daniel Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep1004
Claude Rawson on Henry Fieldings: https://lrb.me/lrep1005
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Narrative Poems: βAmours de Voyageβ by Arthur Hugh Clough
Season 19 Β· Episode 10
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 β’ Duration 13:55
In 1848, Arthur Hugh Clough resigned his fellowship at Oxford after realising that he could no longer in good conscience teach the doctrines of the Anglican Church, as the job required. He immediately embarked on some European travel and the following year found himself in Rome during the short-lived republican uprising against the Pope, led by Giuseppe Mazzini. Out of these experiences came Amours de Voyage, an epistolary verse novel written in hexameters, in which a young scholar visits Italy during the uprising and falls in love with a fellow English tourist.
In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at Cloughβs poem as an expression of its authorβs rootlessness and the crisis of faith that characterised the age, and the ways in which it undercuts the grand Byronic promise of its title and meter to unfold an Austenian story of subtle social snobbery and young romantic failure.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
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Read more in the LRB:
Fergus McGhee: Mr Mid-Victorian Doubt https://lrb.me/npep1001
Christopher Clark: God Bless Italy https://lrb.me/npep1002
Stefan Collini: Matthew Arnold https://lrb.me/npep101003
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Nature in Crisis: βThe Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Rightβ by Alex Roberts and Sam Moore
Season 18 Β· Episode 10
Sunday, September 20, 2026 β’ Duration 15:38
βThe Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Rightβ is a different kind of book from the others Meehan and Peter have discussed so far in their series, even as their focus has shifted from biology to society. Its authors, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, are both anti-fascist researchers writing explicitly from the activist left. Unlike commentators such as Mark Lilla, who worry about βvilification inflationβ, Moore and Roberts make the case for the continuing salience of the word fascism.
They argue that a direct line can be traced between early fascist ideology in Italy and Germany and the βreharmonisingβ green nationalism of Marine Le Penβs Rassemblement National in France and Georgia Meloniβs Fratelli dβItalia. Mystical and dangerous ideas claiming to be environmentalist, once the preserve of fringe online groups, have entered the political mainstream through these successful disrupter parties, and understanding the connection between past and present is the only way to speculate meaningfully about the future of far-right ecological thought and action. Meehan and Peter consider the plausibility of the three future scenarios sketched in the book: βFossilised Reactionβ, βBatteries, Bombs and Bordersβ and βClimate Collapse Cultistsβ.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: β β β β β β β β β β β β β https://lrb.me/applecrnaβ β β β β β β β β β tureβ β β
In other podcast apps: β β β β β β β β β β β β β https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaβ β β tureβ
Read more in the LRB:
Daniel Trilling: Is this fascism? β β https://lrb.me/nicep1001β β
Alan Ryan: Fascism in the Plural β β https://lrb.me/nicep404β β
Edward Luttwak: Why fascism is the wave of the future: β β https://lrb.me/c6350c β
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Whoβs afraid of realism?: βThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodieβ by Muriel Spark
Season 17 Β· Episode 10
Tuesday, September 15, 2026 β’ Duration 21:54
When Muriel Spark describes the art teacher, Mr Lloyd, inΒ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she writes that βmost wonderful of all, he had only one arm, the right, with which he paintedβ. The loss of an arm was hardly wonderful for Mr Lloyd, but for the girls at the centre of the novel it is a rich source of fascination, and Sparkβs description exemplifies her use of one of the classic realist tools, free indirect style, to fill her short book with the life and character of adolescent girlhood at an Edinburgh school in the 1930s.
In this episode, James Wood considers the ways in which Spark, like Nabokov, gave the grammar of realism a post-modernist treatment to interrogate what it means to tell the story of a life. He considers the influence of Miss Brodieβs tyrannical, charismatic personality on the structure of the book itself, with its use of flash-forwards to suggest a Calvinistic, omniscient narrator, and the effect of Sparkβs Dickensian leitmotif that sets the novelistic desire for knowability against the relentless change of youth.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Apple Podcasts:Β https://lrb.me/applecrwaor
Other podcast apps:Β https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor
Read more in theΒ LRB:
Frank Kermode on Spark's life:Β https://lrb.me/realismep1001
Colin Burrow on Spark's letters:Β https://lrb.me/realismep1002
Susan Eilenberg on Spark's poems:Β https://lrb.me/realismep1003
More Spark inΒ Close Readings:
Listen to Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow on Spark's novelΒ A Far Cry from KensingtonΒ in their Close Readings seriesΒ On Satire.
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London Revisited: Coffee, Satire and Bubbles
Season 20 Β· Episode 9
Monday, September 7, 2026 β’ Duration 24:20
The coffee served in London in the 1690s was notoriously unappetising, likened at the time to βburnt shoes and charcoalβ. Nonetheless it was extremely popular, not least for the energy and locations it provided for two great booms in London life: financial speculation and a genuinely public print culture. For this episode, Rosemary is joined by Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London, to look at the architecture, literature and culture of βpolitenessβ that emerged after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the stories spun out of it by Daniel Defoe and John Gay. They discuss the coffee houses where Londonβs stock exchange and marine insurance market were created, the front rooms where women enjoyed the new βvisiting systemβ and the increasingly hazardous streets where Moll Flanders and others sought their fortune.
Reading by Fiona Sheehan
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
Apple Podcasts:Β β β https://lrb.me/applesignuplrβ β
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Read more in the LRB:
Steven Shapin on coffee: https://lrb.me/lrep901
Tom Paulin on Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep902
Michael Ledger-Lomas on the South Sea Company: https://lrb.me/lrep903
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Narrative Poems: βChilde Rolandβ and βThe Pied Piperβ by Robert Browning
Season 19 Β· Episode 9
Monday, August 31, 2026 β’ Duration 18:01
βChilde Roland to the Dark Tower Cameβ has baffled readers and critics ever since it was published inΒ Men and WomenΒ in 1855. It baffled its author, too. It βcame upon me as a kind of dreamβ, Browning recalled. βI had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day.β The result, inspired by a line spoken by Edgar (as Poor Tom) in Act III ofΒ King Lear, is a grim, hallucinatory quest poem that exemplifies Browningβs talent for what G.K. Chesterton called βthe poetry of mean landscapesβ.
In this episode, Seamus and Mark read Browningβs mysterious poem as a rejection of the resources and consolations established by the Romantics. They then turn to an earlier narrative poem, βThe Pied Piper of Hamelinβ (1843), in which Browning uses a comical, Byronic tone to tell the story of another prophetic figure.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:
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Read more in theΒ LRB:
Barbara Everett:Β https://lrb.me/npep901
Matthew Reynolds:Β https://lrb.me/npep902
Donald Davie:Β https://lrb.me/npep903
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