We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Ruth Franklin

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.

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.

Charles Dickens in London. For this festive Christmas Special, the actor and author Simon Callow joins Henry to summon the ghost of Ebeneezer Scrooge and follow him around the City of London, starting at Cornhill, taking in Leadenhall Market and meeting all three Spirits of Christmas. A Christmas Carol, Dickens’s best loved novel, was published on 19 December 1843, 180 years ago this year.