Show Notes
John Bunyan in Bedfordshire. The novelist Rachel Joyce joins Henry as they follow in the footsteps of Bunyan’s pilgrim Christian, as he walks from Bedford, or the City of Destruction, to London, the Celestial City. Along the way they visit the Slough of Despond (Elstow), the Palace Beautiful (Houghton House) and Vanity Fair (Ampthill). They start at the Bunyan Meeting House, where they meet John Pestell, and finish at Bunyan’s resting place, Bunhill Fields.
2022 marks the 350th anniversary of the Bunyan Meeting House on its current site.
The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (Penguin Classics) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/60345/the-pilgrims-progress-by-john-bunyan-ed-dr-roger-pooley/9780141439716 https://apple.co/3rtwupL
The Pilgrim’s Progress, read by David Shaw-Parker (Naxos Audiobook) https://naxosaudiobooks.com/pilgrim-s-progress-the-unabridged/ https://apple.co/3dJ7Lu6
Rachel Joyce https://www.rachel-joyce.co.uk/
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/413693/the-unlikely-pilgrimage-of-harold-fry-by-joyce-rachel/9780552778091 https://apple.co/3BPScJe
The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/420794/the-love-song-of-miss-queenie-hennessy-by-joyce-rachel/9781784160302 https://apple.co/3BKnW2p
Maureen and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/448497/maureen-fry-and-the-angel-of-the-north-by-joyce-rachel/9780857529008 https://apple.co/3CcaGF2
Travel with John Bunyan by John Pestell https://www.dayone.co.uk/products/travel-with-john-bunyan
John Bunyan Meeting House and Museum https://www.bunyanmeeting.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from On the Road with Penguin Classics
William Blake’s poetry and prose. We visit Sir Philip at home to discuss the poet who has ‘inspired and intoxicated’ him for the last sixty years. In Philip’s book-lined sitting room we discuss Blake’s most loved works: his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Auguries of Innocence.
James Baldwin in Paris. On the rain-soaked boulevards, the novelist Caryl Phillips discusses Baldwin's exquisite same-sex love story, drinking in the Cafe de Flore and exploring Saint Germain des Prés.
John Donne’s poetry and prose in London. The scholar and children’s author Katherine Rundell traces the life and paradoxical career of John Donne from the street where he was born, through the palaces and colleges where he worked to the cathedral where he preached and now lies buried.
Shirley Jackson in North Bennington, Vermont. Award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin visits the small village of North Bennington, where Jackson lived for twenty years. We stand in the square where Jackson imagined 'The Lottery' and conjure the ghost of Merricat Blackwood as she collects her sinister groceries in Jackson’s last and greatest novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. In Dame Marina Warner's magical home in North London, the historian and mythographer discusses Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose and their English translation by Angela Carter, as well as Carter’s own Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Our wide-ranging conversation covers Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as many other fairy tales.