Show Notes
In the second part of Book In’s episode on Thomas Hardy’s great novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, Rupert and Charlie look at the character of Michael Henchard - the qualities which enabled him to rise, and the faults that led to his fall. But is he the victim of his own downfall, or is it the case that in Hardy’s world the universe is random and cruel, and tragedy and misery are the inevitable conditions to which human beings are bound? Why dies the young Scotsman Donald Farfrae succeed where ...
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The Tempest is Shakespeare's last play, and many have seen its central character, Prospero, as representing Shakespeare himself, preparing for his departure from the stage. But the truth is more complex and nuanced; Prospero is indeed a visionary and powerful figure, manipulating the fates of the characters who have been shipwrecked on his island. But he is also tetchy, angry, petty, vindictive and cruel. He assembles all his enemies on the island and forces them to confront their treachery; ...
When Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale, he was an older, though not old, man. It was one of what are often called his late plays, and along with The Tempest one of the two great plays he wrote at the end of his career. In these plays, he experimented with new forms of expression and genre. They seem to stretch traditional genres of tragedy or comedy, and develop a more transcendent sense of magic and mystery. At the end of The Winter’s Tale, the female courtier Paulina perhaps speaks for Sh...
As the exceptional summer of 2026 fades into memory, we look at three autumn poems. John Keats’ To Autumn is the finest of his Odes and one of the greatest poems written in English. At the moment of fruition, decay begins; from the high point of life, comes death; and in that moment of equipoise there is an ecstasy as well as a melancholy at the passing of life and of beauty, beautifully captured in Pip Torrens’ wonderful, understated reading. Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal is a sprawling, j...
As Georgia Oakley's film of Sense and Sensibility is released, Book In looks at Jane Austen's novel. It was the first that she published, but already her genius for satire, social comedy and the extraordinarily subtle expression of human relationships is evident from the first page. Marianne has sensibility, and throws herself at life; unimpressed with the worthy but pedestrian Colonel Brandon, she is thrilled by the arrival of Willoughby, who leaves her house during a rainstorm "to make hims...
Iain Dale is one of the country's leading broadcasters. His evening radio show on LBC attracts millions of listeners, and for 30 years he has been at the centre of British politics as a publisher, radio host, author, podcaster, bookshop owner, political candidate and TV pundit. He has interviewed everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Andy Burnham, and in his brilliant and highly entertaining autobiography "Have I Said Too Much?" (to which the answer is clearly "no"), he tells the story of his li...