On Edith Piaf

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

This week, Lisa Hilton on the truth behind life as a 'grand horizontale'; and Juliette Bretan explores why Virginia Woolf served up boeuf en daube in To the Lighthouse.'Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power', by Sonia Purnell'Eur ...  Show more

Rose Reid and her mother Gail of the podcast The Women share the stories and legacies of singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie and Director of UN Women Phumzile Ngcuka Mlambo. Recorded in the before times!

From To The Lighthouse to Mrs Dalloway, the writing of Virginia Woolf shook up literary norms and challenged societal ideas about what it meant to be a woman. In this 'life of the week' episode, Francesca Wade discusses the impact of Woolf's work, and the key moments of her life ...  Show more

This week, Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the women who fought their way into horticulture; and Mary Beard leads us down a Homeric rabbit hole.'An almost impossible thing: the radical lives of Britain's pioneering women gardeners', by Fiona Davison'Homer and his Iliad', by Robin Lane F ...  Show more