Oriental Tales and Their Influence

Professor Elleke Boehmer discusses why Kipling's writing, and his poetry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in particular, launched him to international fame across the British Empire. By comparing him to contemporary popular figures such as Elton John and Paul ...  Show more

Professor Elleke Boehmer notes the distinct lack of women writers on the Post/Colonial Writing page of the Great Writers website, and explores why this is the case. She draws attention to the phenomenon of double colonization and, taking Scottish/South African author Zoe Wicomb a ...  Show more

Responding to a listener email, a heartbroken Jacke takes a close look at Emily Dickinson's astonishing poem "A Bird, came down the Walk." Additional listening suggestions: 120 The Astonishing Emily Dickinson 418 "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson ...  Show more

This is the kind of conversation I dreamed about having when I began this podcast. Emily Wilson joins Close Readings to talk about Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite," a poet and poem at the root of the lyric tradition in European poetry. You'll hear Emily read the poem in the Ancient Gr ...  Show more

Emma Smith continues her Approaching Shakespeare series with a lecture on the play Love's Labour's Lost. Originally published in the Approaching Shakespeare series. 

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, some well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Historian and broadcaster Simon Schama has selected the episode on Shakespeare’s Sonnets and recorded an introduction to it. (This introduction ...  Show more