Submission and cross-dressing: Tennyson’s The Princess

We're in the 19th century for the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, in the Victorian era, when the British Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published an epic poem called The Princess, on the subject of what to do about bizarre ideas about women's education, independence, and silly things like that. The submission of Victorian women … Continue reading Submission and cross-dressing: Tennyson’s The Princess →

Choosing to remain autistic: Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark

I am kicking myself for not having got around to reading this Elizabeth Moon novel before. In this house we have a long shelf full of her excellent space opera (I posted a happy note about the first one, here), but Speed of Dark arrived unnoticed, and stayed on our shelves for years unremembered. But oh what a treat … Continue reading Choosing to remain autistic: Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark →

Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 4: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

Bring out yer wigs! This week in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up we're in the 18th century, enjoying the world of English fops in wigs and frivolous young ladies with nothing to do all day except play cards and drink tea. If you like Georgette Heyer and her pre-Regency romances, this poem is the … Continue reading Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 4: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock →

Oh how we laughed: Cyril Connolly’s The Condemned Playground

Cyril Connolly is the hairy-eyebrowed big man who dominated the 1930s and 1940s in English literary criticism. Like George Orwell, he had attended Eton College and had a large and varied acquaintance with the aristocracy, Establishment figures and literati of his day. (Their politics and social lives were quite different.) Like Orwell, Connolly is one of … Continue reading Oh how we laughed: Cyril Connolly’s The Condemned Playground →

Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 3: John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Hail Lucifer! The Really Like This Book podcast script catch-up tackles Milton’s Paradise Lost, that monster epic of the Restoration in which God is the villain, and Lucifer is the first anti-hero. Let’s pause to consider the history. We’re in the seventeenth century, when Britain was split in two by the Civil War, which ended when … Continue reading Epic Poems You’ve Never Read 3: John Milton’s Paradise Lost →

The 1947 Club: Mistress Masham’s Repose by T H White

I reread this less-known novel by T H White for the #1947Club because I had a Folio Club edition that I’d never read. My paperback copy of Mistress Masham’s Repose fell apart through overuse many years ago, so I was very happy to find this large, illustrated, embossed edition in a fancy cardboard slipcase, lurking under … Continue reading The 1947 Club: Mistress Masham’s Repose by T H White →

The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser

In this week's Really Like This book podcast scripts catch-up, I’m in the English Renaissance, pricking across the plain with the Red-Crosse Knight, in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. This is the biggest and most elaborate courtly flattery ever written, and it’s not even complete. Edmund Spenser was a subject of Queen Elizabeth, the first of that … Continue reading The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser →

The Early Life of James McBey: An Autobiography

When I had a paper-round in Aberdeen at the age of 13, I regularly delivered the local free sheet to an ordinary Victorian terraced house in the west end that was then called James McBey House. I had no idea why the house had been called that, and I still don’t, since McBey, the First World … Continue reading The Early Life of James McBey: An Autobiography →

Epic Poems You’ve Never Read: Beowulf’s Anglo-Saxon heroics

It's the start of university teaching again in the UK, so this miniseries of Really Like This Book podcast script catch-ups indulges my passion for teaching epic poetry. If English literature is a forest, epic poems are the big knobbly roots that stick up out of the ground and get in the way. They’ve been there for … Continue reading Epic Poems You’ve Never Read: Beowulf’s Anglo-Saxon heroics →