Episode notes
We're swotting up for our next series this week, so sadly haven't had time to record a new episode. Instead, we're re-releasing one of our classics from the archive. Philip Larkin wrote some of the greatest poetry in English in the second half of the twentieth century. Brilliant, famous and successful, he chose to live as a librarian in Hull, largely avoiding the public gaze, and watching the world from the edge of England. His simple language and easily accessible work have made him hu...
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Book In
Rupert Fordham and Charlie Fordham · Arts & Books · English
Brothers Rupert and Charlie Fordham discuss all things English Literature. From Chaucer to the present day, covering drama, novels and poetry, they cover all the classics and much more, from the UK, Ireland, the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Informative but lighthearted, Book In is suitable
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E65 · 28 Sep 2026 · 52 min
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E63 · 18 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
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E62 · 11 Sep 2026 · 56 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Possession - A.S. Byatt
A.S.Byatt wrote Possession as a completely self-indulgent project, with no thought of commercial or critical consequence. It sold millions and won the Booker Prize in 1990, introducing her to a mass audience and turning her into a literary superstar. It tells the story of a fictional Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash, who is mostly Browning with a dash of Tennyson; Ash falls in love and eventually has a child with another fictional minor Victorian poet, Christabel LaMotte. But their affair r...
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E61 · 4 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur is set in India in 1857 during the Indian Rebellion (or what used to be known as the Indian Mutiny). The small British community are besieged by the rebellious Indians, and as food and medicine gradually run out, and casualties rise by the day, their instinctive recourse to the social and hierarchical structures by which they have lived their lives is tested to breaking point. Their leader is the Collector, an essentially good and thoughtful man, who tries to maintain ...
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E60 · 28 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 2
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E59 · 21 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 1
On the stroke of midnight of August 15th 1947, the nation of India became independent from Great Britain. Saleem Sinai, the central character of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, is born at exactly the same moment, and in this monumental book, Rushdie tells the story of Saleem's family background, his childhood and his early years as an adult. Saleem's story is also India's story, and it plays out against the background of the birth of this vast and teeming nation. The creation of P...
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