Secret Life of Books14 Okt 2025

Montaigne pt2: A Montaigne out of a mole hill (with Rowan Tomlinson)

Jonty and Sophie were separated by an ocean while Sophie and her family went back to New York and Jonty stayed in Sydney - so they made lemonade out of life's lemons, and created two miniature episodes about the great 16th-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne.

Montaigne isn't just any old essayist — he's the man who invented the form, with three volumes of brilliant, surprising, constantly fresh and astonishingly modern sallies on every possible topic. To introduce Montaigne and unpack his brilliance and immense influence, Sophie talked to the Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt. Meanwhile, Sydney-side, Jonty had a conversation with the historian and writer Rowan Tomlinson, a specialist on Montaigne and Renaissance studies at the University of Bristol. They take the Montaigne chat in many unexpected directions, and Jonty initiates discussion of the Reformation off his own bat, with Sophie nowhere to be found.

Episoder(150)

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