89 Primo Levi

Jacke gets ready for the release of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, the rare instance of a summer blockbuster based on a literary classic, with some help from classics scholars Daniel Mendelsohn (The Odyssey, An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic) and Mary Beard (Talking Classics ...  Show more

As a literary classic turns 300, Jacke talks to the University of Oxford's David Womersley about Jonathan Swift, the nature of satire, and The Cambridge Anniversary Edition of Gulliver's Travels, which Womersley edited. PLUS Daniel Mendelsohn, classics scholar and translator ofTh ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life bet ...  Show more

In this week’s episode we pay tribute to the periodic table. We talk to Sam Kean, author of the best-selling book The Disappearing Spoon and hear an excerpt from Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table.

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00:00 Opening Credits

This isn't an episode of Overdue, it's a Feed Drop! We wanted to share with you an episode of The History of Literature, a podcast about great stories and why we love them.To use host Jacke Wilson's words, the show "takes a fresh look at some of the most compelling examples of cr ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Portuguese poet Pessoa (1888-1935) who was largely unknown in his lifetime but who, in 1994, Harold Bloom included in his list of the 26 most significant western writers since the Middle Ages. Pessoa wrote in his own name but mainly in the name ...  Show more