In the third episode in their series, Irina and Mary discuss Chaucer's sexually voracious professional widow, the Wife of Bath.
Rosemary Hill talks to Thomas Jones about the painter John Craxton: why he wasn’t a romantic, why he wasn’t interested in being famous, and his relationship with Lucian Freud, who very much was.
In the second episode in their series on medieval women, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the work of the mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich, who wrote the first work in English that we can be sure was authored by a woman.
Tom talks to Colin Burrow about a new book by Christopher Ricks, regarded by some as the greatest living literary critic. They also look back at his previous studies of, among others, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot and Bob Dylan, and consider the rewards and limitations of the Ricks critical method, characterised by close verbal analysis and a tendency to treat all texts equally.
In the first episode of their new podcast miniseries looking at the lives and voices of medieval women, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley encounter Saint Mary of Egypt, who (if she existed) lived sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries, and led a wild and licentious youth before serving penitence in the desert, and going on to teach the value of living an imperfect life.
David Runciman talks to Thomas Jones about Silicon Valley’s best known investor-provocateur, his prescience, his mistakes, and why, despite his ultra-libertarian ideology, he owes so much to the state.
Dominic West reads Patrick Leigh Fermor's piece about the olive harvest on the Mani peninsula.
Daniel Soar talks to Thomas Jones about the sixth taste, variously translated as ‘mouthfulness’, ‘thickness’ and ‘lingeringness’, apparently discovered by the Japanese company Ajinomoto, and its origins in the twisty and opaque story of MSG in North America.
David Trotter talks to Joanne O’Leary about the novels and stories of Elizabeth Bowen, from her weird families and idiosyncrasies of style, to her mastery of atmospherics and prescient use of technology to shape her characters.
Stephen Frears talks to Andrew O’Hagan about making movies in America, to mark the publication of a new collection of LRB essays on Hollywood. He describes being protected by Scorsese, learning from Billy Wilder, and why films often had budgets of $39 million.
John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about ‘visible’ cheating in sport, that is, the kind which is against the rules but within the ethos of the game, from diving in football to bodyline bowling in cricket.
Pooja Bhatia talks to Thomas Jones about the assassination of President Moïse in Haiti, the recent history of US involvement in the country, and the difference between elections and democracy.
James Meek talks to Thomas Jones about the connected fates of two wind tower factories, one in Scotland, the other in Vietnam, and asks why the determination to achieve a green future isn’t matched by a determination to ensure fair wages and good conditions for the workers who will make it possible.
Toril Moi talks to Joanna Biggs about the French philosopher Simone Weil, whose short and uncompromising life became a workshop for her revolutionary ideas about labour, human suffering and the power of paying attention.
Deborah Friedell talks to Thomas Jones about the Rosenbergs, from their early years on the Lower East Side of New York to their execution for conspiracy to commit espionage in 1953, and the significance of their trial in American public life, not least as a platform for Donald Trump’s future lawyer, Roy Cohn.