Chaucer's Ovid

In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer’. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (a ...  Show more

‘The very word “America” remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun,’ James Baldwin wrote in 1959. ‘No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.’ Donald Trump’s visio ...  Show more

As Mary and Irina discussed in the previous episode of Medieval LOLs, fabliaux had an enormous influence on Chaucer, but outside of his work, only one survives in Middle English. Dame Syrith, a story of lust, deception and a mustard-eating dog, is medieval humour at its silliest ...  Show more

WITCHES! To accompany the conversation with Antonia Aluko, this week Liv dives in to Ovid's versions of the witches Circe and Medea. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and ty ...  Show more

Natalie Haynes, critic, writer and reformed stand-up comedian, brings the ancient world entertainingly up to date. In each episode, she profiles a figure from ancient Greece or Rome and creates a stand-up routine around them. She then goes in search of the links which make the an ...  Show more

Join Natalie Haynes and guests for half an hour of comedy and the Classics from the BBC Radio Theatre in London. Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. She stands up in the name of Roman poet, Ovid. Expect frottage at the races ...  Show more