Nineteenth-century Britain is often imagined as gloomy and dark, epitomised by Dickensian grime and Queen Victoria’s prolonged state of black-clad mourning. But in reality this period saw an explosion of colour, following a number of scientific discoveries, as shown in Colour Revolution, a new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. This is a sponsored episode.
Daisy Hay joins Tom to discuss how contributors and their enthusiasms shaped the Oxford English Dictionary to this day.
As the siege on Gaza intensifies, many observers are describing the current Hamas-Israel conflict as a complete overhaul of the region’s status quo. Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine, and Michael Sfard, a leading human rights lawyer, join Adam Shatz to discuss the roots and ramifications of the current crisis.
Crass, violent, misogynistic, dumb, fake – and irresistible. Tom Crewe reads his 2021 piece unpacking his youthful obsession with pro-wrestling, a sport both ‘hideous’ and ‘Homeric’.
Rosemary Hill explains how the 19th century’s obsession with Vesuvius spawned scientific disciplines, artistic innovations and nude picnics.
Laleh Khalili joins Tom to discuss the case of Arif Naqvi, who for many on the right epitomises the idea of the 'woke capitalist', and what goes wrong when private equity firms look to profit from public services.
In a world where communication is only as effective as its ‘truthiness’, numbers are vital to political success. But, as John Lanchester explains, some of the most influential stats in UK politics are ‘pants’. John joins Tom to discuss why GDP, immigration numbers and English Premier League odds are so frequently misleading, and how we can be better attuned to the misuse of data.
Adolfo Kaminsky, a first-class forger while still a teenager, saved thousands of lives as an agent of the French Resistance. ‘Forgery wasn’t just an art he perfected,’ Adam Shatz writes, ‘but a vocation and an ethics.’
As Colm Tóibín explains in a recent piece, Ulysses is pockmarked with errors, only some intentional. Colm joins Tom to discuss Joyce’s deliberate and accidental mistakes, Trieste’s essential influence on the novel, and why a queer reading of Ulysses really does hold water.
‘Octopuses,’ Amia Srinivasan writes, ‘are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.’ In our third summer reading, Srinivasan explores the paradoxical nature of octopus lives, and the difficulties humans have in understanding them.
John Lanchester dissects Agatha Christie’s compulsive readability, and considers why, despite her brazen lack of style, she was a great formalist.
In the first of our summer readings, Terry Castle reads her 2005 piece about her “on-again, off-again, semi-friendship” with Susan Sontag.
Almost eighteen months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv residents have resumed something resembling pre-war life. James Meek recently returned to the city, and joins Tom to discuss the new normal.
Irina Dumitrescu joins Tom for a Close Readings fusion episode looking at Chaucer’s classical mind, and in particular his use of Ovid’s Heroides in The Legend of Good Women, in which the poet does penance for his poor depictions of women by retelling the stories of Ariadne, Phaedra, Lucrece and others in a more sympathetic light.
As Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover exercised a dictatorial influence over the department – and, it seems, everyone else. Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss some of the most puzzling features of Hoover’s personality and approach to policing.