Shows / Close Readings
Close Readings
Close Readings is a multi-series podcast from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here: https://lrb.me/closereadings RUNNING IN 2026…
Episodes
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Ted Hughes's 'Gaudete'
Originally conceived as a film script, 'Gaudete' is Ted Hughes’s apocalyptic vision of an English village in the throes of pagan forces. While it may be ‘the…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Virgil
In the ninth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom arrive at Virgil, focusing on his 12-book epic the Aeneid, which describes the wanderings of the…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Chaucer’s 14th century tale of ‘double sorrow’, Troilus and Criseyde, set during the siege of Troy, is the subject of Irina and Mary’s ninth episode of…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: James Joyce's Dubliners
James Joyce wrote most of the short stories in his landmark collection, Dubliners, when he was still in his 20s, but a tortuous publishing history, during…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Lucretius
In their eighth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom look at a contemporary of Catullus, Lucretius, and the only poem we have from him, De rerum natura…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
In this episode of Medieval Beginnings, Irina and Mary jump to the 14th century for an introspective Arthurian romance about a knight trying to live up to his…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’
Seamus and Mark step into the counterculture with two long poems, ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’, by Allen Ginsberg, a Beat poet-celebrity with a utopian vision for an…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Catullus
For the second half of their Among the Ancients series, Emily and Tom move to Ancient Rome, starting with the late Republican poet Catullus. Described by…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Havelok the Dane
In their seventh episode of Medieval Beginnings, Irina and Mary continue their run of Romances with the Middle English Havelok the Dane, a double Cinderella…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: D.H. Lawrence's short stories
Controversial, compulsive, and overwhelmingly charismatic, D.H. Lawrence continues to exert an undeniable magnetism through his novels and poetry. But, as Mark…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Aristophanes
In their sixth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom discuss the comedies of Aristophanes, in particular Clouds and Lysistrata. How did an Aristophanes…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Le Roman de Silence
For the sixth episode in their Medieval Beginnings series, Mary and Irina go full Romance with one of the most elaborate and surprising narrative poems in…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Hart Crane's 'The Bridge'
In their fifth episode, Mark and Seamus reach their first 20th century poet of the series, the Ohio-born, New York-loving ad man Hart Crane, and his epic 1930…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Euripides
Euripides was the youngest of the fifth-century Athenian tragedians, and is often described as the most radical. But how daring was he? How far did he push the…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: The Lais of Marie de France
If a Middle Ages full of castles, jousts, hawking, illicit love affairs and playful singing in the meadows is what you’re looking for, then look no further…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Katherine Mansfield's short stories
In episode four of The Long and Short, Mark and Seamus turn to the squarely modernist Katherine Mansfield, whose writing famously attracted the envy of…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Sophocles
In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468 BC? And how far do modern ideas about…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: The Ancrene Wisse
In the fourth episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina climb inside a tiny cell to explore the Ancrene Wisse, a guidebook written in the early 13th…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Henry James's short stories
The third episode of The Long and Short turns to the short stories of Henry James. Mark and Seamus look in particular at ‘The Aspern Papers’, which, like…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: Sappho
In the third episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom move from epic to lyric, with the poems of Sappho, or what remains of them. They consider what we…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Bede's Life of Cuthbert
In the third episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina explore the much-chronicled life of St Cuthbert, as told by the most famous writer of the early…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'
In the second episode of The Long and Short, Mark and Seamus turn to Walt Whitman's ‘Song of Myself’, from Leaves of Grass (1855), for Mark ‘one of the most…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: The 'Odyssey'
In episode two of Among the Ancients, Tom and Emily turn to Homer’s Odyssey. They discuss the twisting, turning nature of both the narrative and its hero, the…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Letters and Laments
In episode two of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina turn the pages of the Exeter Book, a remarkable 10th century manuscript containing numerous poems and…
Close ReadingsThe Long and Short: Tennyson's 'Maud'
Mark Ford and Seamus Perry start their series, The Long and Short, with Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, a weird and disturbing poem about obsession that Tennyson himself…
Close ReadingsAmong the Ancients: The 'Iliad'
In their first episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom begin with a beginning, Homer's Iliad: its depictions of anger and grief, of capricious gods and…
Close ReadingsMedieval Beginnings: Beowulf
Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu start their Medieval Beginnings series with Beowulf, a tale of monsters and heroes that is also a complex collection of…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Live! T. S. Eliot
On the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ in book form, Mark and Seamus finish the second series of Modern-ish Poets by considering how…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the lives and works of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, close friends and leading lights of the New York School, who sought to…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Charlotte Mew
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Charlotte Mew, who brought the Victorian art of dramatic monologue into the 20th century, and whose…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: W. B. Yeats
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford continue their series with a look at the life and work of W.B. Yeats, from his early quest for a mythological Irish culture, to his…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Emily Dickinson
Seamus Perry, Mark Ford and Joanne O’Leary discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson—her dashes, death instinct and obliquity. To listen to series one of…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Derek Walcott
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of the Saint Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the island poet and playwright surrounded by an oceanic…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Louis MacNeice
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of Louis MacNeice, the Irish poet of psychic divisions and authoritative fretfulness, in the fourth…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Adrienne Rich
In the third episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford turn to the life and work of Adrienne Rich, in whose poems the…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Robert Frost
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Robert Frost, the great American poet of fences and dark woods. They discuss Frost’s difficult early…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 2: Gerard Manley Hopkins
In the first episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford take on Gerard Manley Hopkins: Victorian literature’s only…
Close ReadingsEncounters with Medieval Women: Margery Kempe
In the fourth and final episode in their miniseries, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the life and work of pilgrim, entrepreneur and visionary…
Close ReadingsEncounters with Medieval Women: The Wife of Bath
In the third episode in their series, Irina and Mary discuss Chaucer’s sexually voracious professional widow, stealth preacher, vivid storyteller and teacher…
Close ReadingsEncounters with Medieval Women: Julian of Norwich
In the second episode in their series, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the work of mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich, who wrote the first book…
Close ReadingsEncounters with Medieval Women: Mary of Egypt
In the first episode of their miniseries looking at the lives and voices of medieval women, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley encounter Saint Mary of Egypt…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Robert Lowell
In the final episode of series one of Modern-ish Poets, Mark and Seamus confront Robert Lowell: the Boston Brahmin for whom poetry trumped every other…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Seamus Heaney
For the ninth episode of their series, Seamus and Mark discuss the life and work of Seamus Heaney, whose first collection, Death of Naturalist, established him…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Sylvia Plath
Mark and Seamus are joined by Joanna Biggs, an editor at the LRB, to look at Sylvia Plath's life and poetry, for the eighth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Wallace Stevens
In episode seven of their first series of Modern-ish Poets Mark and Seamus look to that great poet of winter and snow, Wallace Stevens, considering his…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: A.E. Housman
In the sixth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Worcestershire lad A. E. Housman, whose imaginative poetic…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Stevie Smith
In the fifth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1 Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Stevie Smith, ‘an eccentric poet with a tenacious reputation,’…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Thomas Hardy
In the fourth episode of Modern-ish Poets, Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Thomas Hardy, with its blend of bitterness of tenderness, its intense…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Elizabeth Bishop
For episode three of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark and Seamus look at the life and work of Elizabeth Bishop, the east-coast American poet who enjoyed a…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: W.H. Auden
In the second episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark and Seamus discuss life and work of W. H. Auden, from the influence of his parents and his political…
Close ReadingsModern-ish Poets Series 1: Philip Larkin
For their first episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark Ford and Seamus Perry look at the life and work of Philip Larkin, a poet written about extensively…