BONUS: Virginia Woolf, the not-so-Common Reader (with Alexandra Harris)
‘Think of a book as a very dangerous and exciting game, which it takes two to play at.’ For Virginia Woolf, reading wasn’t a passive act. It requires guts and ingenuity. At times one is locked in comb...
15 Aug 202534min
Virginia Woolf 1: Mrs Dalloway
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not the Secret Life of Books, as we joyfully immerse ourselves in four of Woolf's greatest books to celebrate what is probably the most extraordinary middle-aged flower...
12 Aug 20251h 13min
Smells Like Teen Spirit: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
Martin Amis’ Money, Thomas Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero… These books are often cited as defining works of the 1980s - serious works of literature that capture...
5 Aug 20251h 7min
The Secret River with Kate Grenville
This special episode on a great modern classic was recorded live at the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2025. Very few novels can genuinely claim to have changed a nation’s consciousness. The Secret River...
29 Juli 202554min
Keeping Up Appearances with the Pooters: The Diary of A Nobody
This episode is a cheat. It's not a real published personal diary, but a satire on published diaries. It’s a fiction, but it’s a fiction that tells us a lot about fact. Published 1892, The Diary of a ...
22 Juli 20251h 15min
The Secret Life of Summer Holidays: sunburns, family arguments and holiday cottages in classic literature
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Not if it was the summer holiday that Jonty's family went on to Menorca when a stomach bug ripped through their local village. Or the ill-fated beachside retrea...
15 Juli 202549min
BONUS: Move Over Bridgerton: James Boswell's Big Romance
A bonus episode to share the extraordinary detail and richness of the real-time, live-streamed account James Boswell gives us of his first love affair in 1760s London. This may be the closest we can e...
11 Juli 202524min
A Date With Signor Gonorrhea: James Boswell's London Journal 1762
It’s London, 1763 - we're paying a visit to the most fashionable, literary, sexy, filthy, glamorous capital in the world. The 22 year old James Boswell, born and raised on a large country estate outsi...
8 Juli 20251h 20min
