Christopher Marlowe (with Will Tosh)

Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli t ...  Show more

The final episode of our saga: Mandelson's fall from grace in the aftermath of Keir Starmer's election first as leader of the Labour Party and then as one of Britain's most rapidly unpopular Prime Ministers. Can't get enough Mandelson? Subscribe now to Extra Bad Gays to hear our ...  Show more

Come with us back to Renaissance England, when writers were playing with ideas of sexuality in interesting ways.How much of a filth bag was Shakespeare? How did he play with the ideas of power dynamics for pleasure in his plays? And what were other writers doing to explore non-tr ...  Show more

The Bard’s work featured many references to sex and sexuality - some more obvious than others. But what does the work reveal about the sexuality of Shakespeare himself? Despite being married with three kids to Anne Hathaway in the sleepy suburbs of Stratford-upon-Avon, there’s mu ...  Show more

Shakespeare's plays and poetry are some of the most towering achievements in the history of humankind. What was Shakespeare the person like? How did he work? What made him laugh? In this episode, Jacke talks to Sir Stanley Wells about his new book What Was Shakespeare Really Like ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino nor Viola, Olivia nor Sebastian know much of each other’s tru ...  Show more