Book In

W H Auden wrote some of the most beautiful and complex poetry of the 20th century. Best known to modern audiences as the author of “Stop all the Clocks”, read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he grew up in Yorkshire and the Midlands, and his parents were a psychiatrist and a nurse; this provincial, professional background pervades his poetry with its images of industry and science. Like many of his generation, he was on the left and went to Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But when World War Two started, he left for America, from where he observed the carnage with a combination of detachment and guilt. Like his contemporaries Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and T.S Eliot, he converted to Christianity as an adult, and his later work is an extraordinary fusion of private love, public engagement and religious exploration. There are many recordings of him on TV chat shows in his later years, and his extraordinary,Rembrandtesque appearance and gravelly voice convey a public intellectual of a kind which no longer exists in the modern world. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore the poetry of this brilliant and underestimated poet. 

In the second episode on T.S.Eliot, Book In looks at the poems he wrote after The Wasteland, as he moved towards a conversion to Christianity. In the Hollow Men, he returns again to the desolation and spiritual emptiness of the West after the First World War, weaving together Dante, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the Gunpowder Plot amongst other themes. By the time he wrote Ash Wednesday three years later he had fully embraced the High Anglican church, and the poem tells of his need to renounce the pride and arrogance which he felt had characterised his behaviour in the past. The language in these poems is incantatory, chanting, rooted in the bible and the prayerbook. Marina is a beautiful meditation on sin, death and redemption, immersed in images of the sea and the coastal New England landscape of his youth. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore this critical phase of Eliot’s life, and the exquisite religious verse he produced, perhaps the finest in the English language sine the metaphysical poets of the 17th century.   

The first poem that T.S.Eliot published, in 1915, was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and two years later, it was included as the title poem in a collection called Prufrock and Other Observations. It was a sensation; breaking dramatically with the gentle and conventional lyrics of the late Victorian and Edwardian poets of the time, many critics found it pretentious at best and incomprehensible at worst. One speculated that Eliot had thought "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." But Prufrock and the other poems in the collection marked a revolutionary break in literature, and heralded the arrival of modernism, with its representation of the fracturing of western society and the western mind in the wake of the First World War and the work of Freud and Jung as they explained the workings of human consciousness. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss these brilliant and groundbreaking poems, and how they are both an extraordinary break with the past, but also deeply rooted in western culture from Greek and Roman times onwards.  

At the age of 55, and at the height of his fame, Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels and decided to devote the rest of his life to poetry. He was disillusioned with the commercial requirements of novel writing, and had been upset by the adverse reaction of some critics to Jude the Obscure. Many people believe that his poems are his greatest achievement, and he is in exalted company in being in the first rank of both poetry and novels or plays, along with Samuel Beckett, DH Lawrence and Shakespeare. Much of his poetry was inspired by his first wife Emma; the beautiful lyric When I Set Out for Lyonnesse was written after he first met her. Their marriage was unhappy, but when she died, Hardy was consumed with grief, and remorse at how badly he had treated her. The poems he wrote at this time are among the most beautiful in the English language. Join Rupert and Charlie as they take a look at some of Hardy’s poems.  

Sports Books: Open - Andre Agassi, Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby, Great Cricket MatchesBook In take a look at three books on sport. Open is the autobiography of Andre Agassi: one of the greatest players of all time, Agassi was driven by his domineering father to hit 2,500 balls a day from the age of 5, and at 13 was sent to the Nick Bolliteri Tennis Academy in Florida, essentially a boot camp for teenage tennis prodigies. By 18, he was in the world’s top 10 and won three Grand Slams but the wheels came off in his mid 20s as his partying life caught up with him and he descended to 141 in the world. His subsequent comeback and further success is one of the great redemption stories in sport, and he tells the story in his compelling and brilliant book, Open. Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch was the book which charted, and perhaps partly caused, the transformation of football from the muddy pitches and hooligan supporters of the 1970s and 1980s to the cool, fashionable, sophisticated product it is today. Through accounts of specific matches involving his beloved Arsenal FC, Hornby charts his own childhood and adolescence and sets them in the context of the social and economic changes occurring in Britain at the time. Funny, wide ranging and a little bit nerdy, it is a brilliant account of growing up in the UK in the transformative years of the late 20th century. Cricket has produced some great literature over the years; Great Cricket Matches is a collection of accounts written by various writers and was given to Rupert as a child. He selects three pieces from it which he has always loved and shares them with Charlie and the Book In audience. 

It’s World Cup time again! As hope springs eternal for Harry Kane and Co, and as the nation becomes obsessed by whether England should play Rashford or Gordon, and how to fit in Jude Bellingham, Rupert and Charlie choose their own teams from the pages of (mainly) English literature. Recalling the style of the England teams of his youth, Charlie opts for a 4-4-2 formation, and selects players from clubs as diverse as Chaucer, Tolkein and Dickens. Rupert goes for the more sophisticated, continental 4-3-3, and relies fairly heavily on Milton, while also making use of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald Fraser. Both, obviously, can’t ignore Shakespeare and Dickens. So which of the teams would give the French and Argentinians a run for their money, and is either good enough to go all the way and lift the Jules Rimet trophy?  Join Book In to get in the mood for this quadrennial footballfest, and decide for yourself. 

Around the 8th century BC, the inhabitants of Greece began to write things down. Amongst these were some of the poems telling of ancient times which bards had passed from generation to generation, and the greatest of these poems were the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Odyssey tells of the adventures of one of the Greek heroes, Odysseus, as he returned to his home in Ithaca from the Trojan War. His journey took 10 years, and included adventures which are famous to this day, including his encounter with the one-eyed Cyclops, and negotiating the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis. When he finally reaches Ithaca, he has to deal with the suitors who are occupying his palace and trying to persuade his wife Penelope that he is dead and that she should marry one of them. Attributed to a man called Homer, the true authorship of the work is unknown. But it asks questions which resonate with us now. What is home? What is a hero, and how should men behave? Why is the journey itself so important? What makes a great leader? How does a son find his own identity when he has a powerful father? Is adultery justifiable? How should you behave towards strangers? Told in beautiful poetry, the descriptions of Odysseus and his men sailing across the wine dark sea haunt our imaginations today as they would have done for the Greeks who heard these stories so many centuries ago. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at this extraordinary and magnificent work of literature, which has influenced almost every great writer since, and which is the first expression of the western consciousness that we have. 

By the mid 1980s, Kingsley Amis was generally considered to be finished as a novelist. Devastated by the collapse of his marriage to Elizabeth Jane Howard, he was hugely overweight, drinking far too much and renting a basement flat from his first wife and her third husband. But in 1986, he published what his son Martin regarded as his masterpiece, The Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize. Set in the south Wales in which he had spent the first 15 years of his professional life, it follows the lives of several couples who have known each other since childhood and are now in their 60s. Their world is thrown into turmoil by the return from London of Alan Weaver and his beautiful wife Rhiannon.  Alan is a minor TV celebrity who has built a career on being a professional Welshman; on his return, old relationships are rekindled and long dormant affairs restarted. In a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, Amis portrays the reality of physical decline, the pathos of remembering past and lost love, and the sense of imminent death with humour and sensitivity.  His satire of Welsh nationalism and the excesses of Welsh cultural figures like Dylan Thomas is merciless, and yet there is a warmth and tenderness in his descriptions of characters with whom he shared so many physical and emotional qualities. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this fine novel, which was the start of a late renaissance for Amis’ career.   

What really happened in the Marabar Caves? This is the central mystery of A Passage to India, EM Forster’s most celebrated novel, set in colonial India in the early 20th century. An Indian doctor, Aziz, wants to show some English visitors the real India, and takes them on an expedition to the strange caves which are a short trainride from the city of Chandrapore. He goes into one of the caves with Adela Quested, a young woman recently arrived from England. But Adela suddenly flees from the cave and accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. The incident creates a crisis between the communities, and forces the central characters to confront existential issues about themselves and their lives. Forster explores the relationship between the career soldiers and administrators who nominally run India, and the various classes of Indians, and through this prism asks some fundamental questions: what is the nature of friendship? Can it transcend racial divides? What is the real India? And how do characters like Mrs Moore cope when everything they have believed in sems suddenly worthless? Forster never wrote another novel after this one, although he lived for nearly 50 more years. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this most subtle and sensitive of writers. 

Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American is set in Vietnam in the 1950s – the French are trying to hold on to colonial power and are supporting the south in its struggle against a communist insurgency in the north. America is not yet involved militarily but is taking an interest. The novel tells the story of an American agent called Pyle who is supplying advice and explosives to a shadowy group who he believes can provide a “Third Way” for the country. Pyle meets a British journalist, Fowler, and it is through Fowler’s eyes that the story unfolds. His voice is to a large extent Greene’s voice – jaded, cynical and weary, but he retains the capacity for love and hope. He has a beautiful Vietnamese girlfriend called Phoung, who the idealistic Pyle falls in love with. How does this triangle play out? Who is Pyle really and what is he trying to achieve? Why doesn’t Fowler want to go home? And how does Greene’s Catholicism play out in the entangled lives of these three characters? Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss this most subtle and nuanced of novels by one of the masters of 20th century British fiction. 

At Book In, we continue our discussion of Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel Brideshead Revisited. We look at the characters of the Marchmain family - the children Sebastian, Julia, Bridey and Cordelia, and the parents, Lord and Lady Marchmain, and at how Charles Ryder interacts with them, and we also talk about the extraordinary creation of Anthony Blanche who is so important both as a friend of Sebastian and as a commentator on the Flyte family. And we look at the humour in the book - as always, Waugh is a brilliantly writer and the scenes with Charles and his father are amongst the funniest he wrote. Why do the Flytes all fall in love with the slightly dull and passive figure of Charles? Why does Julia fall in love with the brash, heartless Rex Mottram? Why does Lord Marchmain come back to Brideshead to die? And does the 1981 TV series of the book stand up today? Join Rupert and Charlie on Book In to find out. 

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. Magnificent but flawed, he wrote it while recovering from an injury during the Second World War, and the lush, sumptuous world of Oxford in the 1920s which he portrays is in stark contrast to the drab reality of life in the army. He later said that he regretted the richness of the language he had used, and declared that the novel was about the “operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters”. The Catholicism is of course central to the novel, as it was to Waugh’s own life, but despite his somewhat disingenuous revisions, the power of the book continues to come from the vividly described memory of happy times that had passed, and love that had died. In the first episode of a two part podcast, Rupert and Charlie look at Waugh's own life and conversion to Catholicism, and discuss how the Catholic faith affects the Marchmain family. Why can’t Julia be with Charles? Do we blame Lord Marchmain for leaving his wife? And why is Waugh so rude about Hooper? Join us on Book In to find out. 

Another from the archives while Rupert is away scaling mountains. We'll be back soon!Emma is one of only six novels that Jane Austen completed, and yet she is among the very greatest of all English writers. How did an obscure spinster living in a modest house in Hampshire come to create these extraordinary books, and what is it that is so special about them? Rupert and Charlie look at arguably the greatest of them all, the story of Emma Woodhouse. Set in the modest provincial town of Highbury, and charting the day to day lives and concerns of ordinary people, she explores the very depths of human nature, and how we relate to each other. But is Emma a sympathetic heroine or a manipulative schemer? Why can’t she see that the man for her isn’t the smooth chancer who dazzles her for a while, but the solid and kind friend who has always had her interests at heart? And why is she so rude to poor old ladies on picnics? Charlie will explain it all. 

Our first ever episode re-released: Rupert and Charlie discuss The Great Gatsby, Scott FitzGerald’s wonderful novel of love, loss and broken dreams. Published 100 years ago, the book is extraordinarily modern and speaks to a contemporary audience as powerfully as it did to the jazz generation of the 1920s. Charlie talks about the multi-layered nature of the book with its time shifts and multiple viewpoints. Was Gatsby really a good guy who lost his way? Is Daisy a murderess? Did FitzGerald himself really believe in the American dream? Are the film versions accurate? And is The Great Gatsby the elusive Great American Novel? Join Charlie and Rupert to find out. 

Two brothers live in a squalid bedsit in west London. The room is crammed with junk. They befriend Davies, who is homeless and a tramp. He moves in with them, and they offer him a job as a caretaker for the property. But the job falls through, because Davies can’t get his papers, which are in Sidcup. Harold Pinter’s brilliant play tells the story of these three lost men, and how power shifts between them over time. They are hopeless and damaged, but they variously have dreams of getting a job, refurbishing and letting out the property and engaging with life in a normal manner. Pinter explores issues of homelessness, mental health, dealing with trauma and male relationships in a way which was groundbreaking for its time and resonates strongly today. He was a remarkable man - he came from a humble Jewish background to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and his marriage to Lady Antonia Fraser propelled him into the highest echelons of British society. He loved cricket and parties, and mixed freely with the establishment of the time, but nonetheless remained resolutely attached to left wing causes and campaigned against what he saw as American imperialism throughout his life. Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss this fascinating man and his early masterpiece, The Caretaker. 

Tom Stoppard was glamorous, charismatic and brilliant, and his plays are among the finest written in English since the Second World War. Perhaps his most accomplished work is Arcadia, first performed in 1993, with a stellar cast including Rufus Sewell, Felicity Kendal, Harriet Walter and Bill Nighy. The play contains two separate groups of people, one from the early 1800s, and the other from the present day, but performing in the same room in a country house in England. Stoppard explores a multitude of themes including mathematics and chaos theory, landscape gardening, entropy, the nature of knowledge, and literary criticism. It is dazzling, funny, witty and deeply moving, and the connections between the two groups are revealed as the play unfolds. But is it too clever by half? Can Stoppard's unashamedly intellectual exploration of ideas come across as all artifice and no heart? What role does Byron play in all this? And has there ever been a better name for a tortoise than Plautus? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss Stoppard's great play and celebrate his long and distinguished life.

Tune in for Book In’s review of Emerald Fennell’s film Wuthering Heights. The advance publicity promised a modern and original take on Emily Bronte’s classic novel - does the film deliver this? Fennell is well known for her fondness for portraying themes of repressed sexuality and sado-masochism - does this work in Wuthering Heights? Do Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi capture the extraordinary combination of innocence and passion that Cathy and Heathcliff have in the novel? Is Elordi a convincing villain? And could this be the start of a major career revival for Martin Clunes? Join Rupert and Charlie to get their take on Fennell’s blockbuster movie. 

The Great Tradition - which are the greatest novels we have done in the podcast? What are the greatest novels in the English language? On Book In, we’ve covered quite a few over the last few months, and now we take a step back, and try to assess their quality. The critic F R Leavis, who we have referenced frequently in the podcasts, had his views, trenchantly expressed in his famous work The Great Tradition. We look at his criteria and discuss whether or not they are relevant or useful today. And we come up with our own rankings and ratings for the major novels we have done. Is Heart of Darkness a better book than Jane Eyre? Is it possible to say? Does it matter? Join Rupert and Charlie to find out, and see if you agree. 

Charlie and Rupert continue their discussion of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. What effect had the First World War had on the rarefied circles in which Clarissa Dalloway moved, and were those experiences different to the rest of society? The novel ostensibly takes place within the confines of a single day in June 1923, but within this framework, Woolf tells the stories of her characters over many decades. How does she do it, and how does it reflect the way in which we all experience time and memory in our everyday lives? What is the influence of the modernist giants James Joyce and T.S.Eliot, whose seminal works Ulysses and The Wasteland had been published only two years before? And what is the best film made of this book, which on the face of it would appear to be unfilmable? Join Book In to find out. 

At the age of 40 Virginia Woolf was a prominent figure in post first world war London. She had published several novels, and was a well known commentator and critic. She came from literary aristocracy - her father was Leslie Stephen, who had married William Thackeray’s daughter, and with her husband Leonard Woolf, she was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, which included her sister Vanessa Bell, Vanessa’s artist husband Clive, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant.  But then in 1925 everything changed; she published Mrs Dalloway, in which she told the story of the experience of one woman’s life for one day in June 1923 in London. The New Yorker described it as “one of the few great innovations in the history of the novel”. The text uses modernist techniques of multiple viewpoints and cinematic sweeps and takes us in and out of the minds and feelings of a group of individuals whose lives intersect during the day. Beautiful, haunting and superbly executed, it explores issues of memory, regret, the appalling mental suffering experienced by WW1 survivors and the brittle nature of British society in the 1920s. In another two part episode, Rupert and Charlie look at this seminal work of twentieth century English fiction. 

In the second part of Book In’s episode on Thomas Hardy’s great novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, Rupert and Charlie look at the character of Michael Henchard - the qualities which enabled him to rise, and the faults that led to his fall. But is he the victim of his own downfall, or is it the case that in Hardy’s world the universe is random and cruel, and tragedy and misery are the inevitable conditions to which human beings are bound? Why dies the young Scotsman Donald Farfrae succeed where Henchard does not? What was going on in agriculture in England in the early 1840s, before the Corn Laws were repealed? Why are clothes so important to Hardy? What happens when Henchard starts drinking again? And why did friend of the show Henry James describe Hardy as “second rate”? Join Rupert and Charlie to find out. 

Thomas Hardy lived an extraordinary life. He was born into poverty and obscurity in rural Dorset in 1840, yet when he died in 1928, he was rich and world famous. His funeral at Westminster Abbey was a quasi-state occasion, with all the leading politicians and writers of the day attending, and thousands of people lining the streets of London in tribute. As a child, he remembered his grandmother recalling the French Revolution, yet he lived through the first world war into a world of motor cars, radio and television, and mass democracy. He was unhappily married to his first wife, Emma, yet when she died, he was consumed with grief and remorse, and the poetry he produced in the two years after her death is some of the finest love poetry ever written. In a two part episode of Book In, Charlie and Rupert look at one of his greatest novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge, the tragic story of Michael Henchard, who rose from rural obscurity to being the richest and most powerful man in the area. But his past catches up with him; the terrible thing he did when he was young comes back to haunt him, and his fall is public and complete. As in so many of his books, Hardy takes us back to the rural world of his youth, and shows us the lives that the people he knew as a young man were living. But even when he was writing the novel, it was a world that had passed; we see the emergence of new men, new ideas and new technologies, and the destructive effect these have on the old way of life. What is the role of the town of Casterbridge in the story? How is Henchard like Hardy? To what extent is Henchard brought down by his own actions, and to what extent is he a victim of the remorseless fate in which Hardy believed? And what on earth is a skimmity ride? Join Rupert and Charlie to find out. 

Rupert and Charlie continue their discussion of Great Expectations. They take a look at what was always one of Dickens' great preoccupations, the operation of the law in the book, and the brilliant character of Jaggers the lawyer and his sidekick, Wemmick.  The prison hulks on the Thames from which Magwitch escapes were well known to Dickens as a child, and the descriptions of the court, where 32 people are sentenced to death, are unforgettable. As so often in Dickens, the cast of minor characters are rich and varied, and we look at many of them including Trabb's Boy who torments Pip once he has become a gentleman; Wopsle, the fruity and absurd actor; Pumblechook, who insists on giving Pip rolling mental arithmetic tests to humiliate him, and Bentley Drummle, the lugubrious rich man's son who manages to marry Estella. But is the melodrama overdone? Are the plot twists and coincidences too convoluted to be credible? And is this Charles Dickens' finest novel? Join Rupert and Charlie to find out. 

Published at the height of his powers in 1860, Great Expectations is Charles Dickens’ penultimate novel, and one of his very greatest. Its characters are unforgettable - Miss Havisham, self-imprisoned in her wedding dress and with her wedding feast laid on the table in the forbidding Satis House; her ward Estella, haughty, ice-cold and unreachable, the agent of Miss Havisham’s intended revenge on men and on the world; Magwitch, the desperate and terrifying convict who confronts the young boy Pip in a graveyard on the Kent marshes; and the intimidating, brilliant and untouchable lawyer Jaggers, who seems to act as a puppet master to many of the characters throughout the story. In the first of two episodes, Rupert and Charlie explore Dickens’ childhood, and how the experience of being forced to work in a factory at the age of 12, and seeing his father being imprisoned for debt, affected him for the rest of his life. Charlie talks about the brilliance of so many of the openings of Dickens novels, especially this one, and looks at Dickens' rich and vivid portrayal of London and the Kent marshes. But what are the great expectations that Pip has, and who else has them too? When they aren’t realised, what hard truths does Pip learn? And why did Dickens write several different endings to the novel? Join Rupert and Charlie to find out.

In the second of the episodes on Jane Eyre, Rupert and Charlie take a look at some of the main characters in the book. The behaviour of Mr Rochester is basically weird - he locks up his wife in the attic, dresses up as a female gypsy fortune teller, and flirts with Blanche Ingram when he's really in love with Jane. Why does he do this? Why did he marry Bertha in the first place? And why does he risk his life to save her? When Jane leaves Rochester, she finds shelter with a family who turn out to be her cousins. One of them is the terrifying St John Rivers, an evangelical soldier of Christ who wants Jane to join him in his journey. Why does she refuse? What is Charlotte Bronte's attitude to religion in this book? How does Jane suddenly find herself rich, and what does she do with the money? And is Jane Eyre as good as Wuthering Heights? Join Book In as we conclude our discussion of this wonderful and hugely influential novel. 

Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte's most famous book and one of the most celebrated, controversial and loved novels ever written. Millions who have never read it know about the mysterious Mr Rochester, the mad wife he kept locked up in his attic, and the image of her throwing herself from the battlements of Thornfield as she burned it to the ground, Mr Rochester blinding and maiming himself as he tries to save her. The novel is the story of an orphaned and plain girl, Jane Eyre, who despite the disadvantages of her start in life, is determined to find independence and fulfillment. Bronte explores issues of female equality and what kind of power balance is needed to have a successful marriage. The book was an instant success, and, once her identity had been revealed, Charlotte became famous and comfortably off; but she was never very comfortable in the fashionable literary salons of London, preferring to live most of her life in the Parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire where her father was the curate. What does the book say about the professional and emotional prospects for a strong minded, intelligent woman in Victorian England? Why does Jane refuse Rochester's offer of living with him as her mistress in the south of France? Are the coincidences in the story clumsy plot devices or indications of the divine work of God's providence? Is the book racist in its treatment of Rochester's first wife? Why does Jane learn Hindustanee? And do Jane and Rochester really end up with the perfect marriage? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this most wonderful of C19th novels. 

In 1816, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was staying on the shores of Lake Geneva with his young wife Mary, and his friends Lord Byron and John Polidori. It was the year without a summer, and, confined to the house by the terrible weather, they each agreed to write a ghost story. Over the next few weeks, the 19 year old Mary produced Frankenstein, one of the most consequential and influential books ever written. Fusing the Gothic and Romantic, it tells the story of the brilliant young scientist Victor Frankenstein, who discovers how to make a living creature out of old body parts. His creation is the Monster; endlessly recreated in film, TV and painting, the story has haunted the western imagination ever since. Is Frankenstein’’s creation a tragic figure or an inhuman force for evil? What responsibility do we have for what we create? Why are we terrified of new technologies? And whatever happened to Mary Shelley? Join Rupert and Charlie as they explore this most iconic of novels. 

Small Things Like These is a short novel by the Irish writer Claire Keegan. It tells the story of Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in a small provincial town in the mid 1980s. As Christmas approaches, he delivers some coal to the local convent, and by chance discovers a girl there who is being kept in a coalshed. It is clear she is in distress and Bill is faced with a choice - should he do nothing, or act? Through Bill's story, we learn of the hold of the Catholic Church on the community, and the existence of the Magdalene laundries, in which unmarried mothers were kept, normally against their will. Does Keegan's light and deft style fully convey the horror of the laundries, which were common throughout the Church until the 1990s? Are there echoes of A Christmas Carol? And does the book ever topple over into overt sentimentality? Surely not from an Irish writer! Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss this fine novella, short listed for the 2022 Booker Prize. 

Charlie and Rupert look at three great poems associated with Christmas - In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti, a section from In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and The Magi by W.B.Yeats. Rossetti's is a much loved and beautiful Christmas Carol, Tennyson's is a highly crafted meditation on some of the great themes of the mid C19th, and Yeats' a more primal reflection on faith and the connections between folklore and religion. But they all refer to Christmas either directly or indirectly; Charlie explores their derivations and intentions and reflects on how successful each one is. 

The tale of the miserable Ebeneezer Scrooge, and how he came to find humanity, generosity and love, is probably the most famous Christmas story ever written outside the Bible. It is a ghost story and a classic morality tale; the book firmly established Christmas as a time for family, for joy, for generosity, presents and huge lunches, as well as a time of forgiveness and a chance to mend ones ways and set a path for a better life. But in the background are the familiar Dickensian themes of misery, grinding poverty and the appalling living conditions which existed in London at the time. Did Dickens invent the modern version of Christmas with this book? How important is Christianity? Does it matter that it is sentimental? And where have we seen the Ghost of Christmas Past before on Book In? Join Rupert and Charlie as they get in the mood for Christmas past, present and future. 

Philip Larkin wrote some of the greatest poetry in English in the second half of the twentieth century. Brilliant, famous and successful, he chose to live as a librarian in Hull, largely avoiding the public gaze, and watching the world from the edge of England. His simple language and easily accessible work have made him hugely popular, and his ability to use everyday scenes and events to convey profound ideas and feelings on life, love and death are deeply moving, and achieved in part through superb poetic technique. And yet, while he had multiple relationships, he never really found love; in one of his poems, he says "Life is first boredom, then fear", and both feature heavily in his work. Complicated, irascible, misogynistic, borderline racist, increasingly reactionary as he grew older, he is not on the face of it sympathetic for a modern audience. So why does he remain as popular as ever? What were his attitudes to sex and to death? How does he achieve his technical mastery? And how does Charlie ruin for ever Rupert's love of one of his most celebrated poems?Join Book In to find out. 

Sylvia Plath was an American from a prosperous middle class background whose life was changed for ever when she met Ted Hughes at a party in London. He kissed her on the spot, and they were married four months later, on June 16th, deliberately selected as it was Bloomsday in Joyce's Ulysses. Their relationship was tumultous; Hughes had multiple affairs and Plath suffered from severe depression, but during this period she wrote some of the finest poetry of the twentieth century. Her greatest work came towards the end of her life and was published posthumously in "Ariel". Charlie and Rupert look at her background, her marriage, her tragic death through suicide at the age of 30, and her legacy. Was she a greater poet than her husband? Did she find any joy in her brief life? Book In explores all these issues and much more. 

Book In introduces the Books in Greatness Scale - or BIGS. Charlie has developed a method of ranking books according to their greatness, with each being awarded a score out of 10. He explains the system, and he and Rupert award marks out of 10 to all the books they've covered so far. Who is the more generous? Who took it upon themselves to declare that Hamlet may not be a 10? Is The Great Gatsby really a great book? And is this a useful exercise or just a couple of balding middle aged blokes making up lists? Join Rupert and Charlie to decide. 

In 1862, with the Civil War nearly a year old, Abraham Lincoln's son Willie died of TB aged 11. He was buried in West Oak Cemetery in Washington DC, and a grieving and devastated Lincoln went at night to visit his son's coffin, and physically hold his dead body for one last time. Out of this single event, George Saunders creates a unique novel where Lincoln's visit is observed and commented on by the ghosts of the bodies buried in the cemetery. They each have their own story, and through them, we see Lincoln holding his dead son and experience his grief, at a pivotal moment in American history where he was consumed by the struggle for the abolition of slavery and the survival of the Union. Saunders' portrayal of his humanity, dignity and strength is profoundly moving, but the book is also a meditation on the end of life, death, and what comes next, and uses a unique, experimental and at times bizarre structure to explore these themes and relate the story. Does it work or is it just self-indulgent and pretentious? Can Willie's ghost connect with his grieving father? Is there life after death? And what exactly is a Bardo? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this remarkable book, which won the Booker Prize in 2017. 

As Celebrity Traitors reaches its climax on BBC1 this week, Rupert and Charlie count down the Top 10 greatest traitors in literature. Who are the literary equivalents of the TV show's camp and hysterical Alan Carr, the all or nothing, over the top Jonathan Ross, and the ice cold killer Cat? Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens all feature, but who would have thought that Jane Austen would as well? And which revered Faithful does Rupert think should really be classified as a Traitor? Join this special edition of Book In to find out. 

Milkman tells the story of an 18 year old girl living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The novel is set in the late 1970s, at a time when large parts of the Catholic community were in effect run by the IRA, and most families would have had young men involved in the struggle in one way or another, with many of them being captured, injured or killed. The story is told entirely in the first person, through the eyes of an 18 year old girl, who is being stalked by a mysterious older man called Milkman; he is a high level IRA officer, or renouncer as they are called in the book. Neither the girl, nor any other character, nor any place including the city where the action takes place, is given a proper name, creating a atmosphere which combines claustrophobia and confusion with a strange kind of innocence and childishness. But why does the girl read 19th century English novels while she walks through the city? Is the Milkman really a milkman, and if not, who is the real milkman? What is the effect of no one having a proper name? And why are the wee sisters so clever? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss Anna Burns' brilliant novel, which won the Booker Prize in 2018. 

In part 2 of Wolf Hall, Rupert and Charlie look at the way Hilary Mantel writes about the seismic changes occurring in England in the early 1530s. Her London is filled with Europeans - traders, artists and diplomats - and economic, financial and cultural connections with France, Germany, Holland and Italy are exploding, at the very point Thomas Cromwell is engineering a break with Rome and the turbo-charging of English sovereignty. Is this the first Brexit? Why were the monasteries dissolved? How long had Cromwell known Thomas More? Is this book fiction or history? And who lived at Wolf Hall in any case? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss the status of Wolf Hall, and whether it really is one of the most important books written in the last 30 years. 

Wolf Hall is Hilary Mantel's radical and profoundly original reimagining of the story of Thomas Cromwell. Born the son of a blacksmith, Cromwell rose to become Henry VIII's chief lieutenant and enforcer, and was the man who engineered Britain's break with Rome and the Catholic Church, paving the way for Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. History has always seen Cromwell as a ruthless, manipulative, scheming and deeply unpleasant man who would stop at nothing to achieve his aims. But in Mantel's version, he becomes a brilliant operator, a loving father and husband, a caring employer and an irresistible force for good. We see the tectonic events in which he is a central player through his eyes, and through the filter of his very modern consciousness. Does this work? Can any man be this effective, this wise and this emotionally intelligent? Does Mantel's immersive technique draw us into 16th century England or is it just annoying? And why are so many people called Thomas? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss Mantel's hugely successful novel, which won the Booker Prize in 2009. 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the Booker Prize in 2022, the first and only time it has been won by a Sri Lankan author. Set in the late 1980s, in the chaos and brutality of the Sri Lankan civil war, it tells the story of Maali Almeida, who announces himself thus: "If you had a business card, this is what it would say: Maali Almeida - photographer, gambler, slut."  Maali has died, and on the first page says that he now knows the answer to the question "Is there life after death?" The novel follows his story as he attempts to find out how he died and why, and whether his life had any meaning. Hilarious, moving, fascinating, fantastically energetic and teeming with extraordinary characters both alive and dead, Sri Lanka is portrayed in all its tragedy and glory. Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss Shehan Karunatilaka's brilliant novel. 

In this episode, Rupert and Charlie each choose 3 books they've read recently and enjoyed. Charlie discusses whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays, with "Shakespeare is a Woman and Other Heresies" by Elizabeth Winkler, and looks at two books about the Civil War and its aftermath - "The Restless Republic - Britain without a Crown" by Anna Keay, and "An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Ian Pears. Rupert goes a little more middlebrow, with "The Spy and the Traitor" by Ben MacIntyre ,and "Precipice" by Robert Harris. His third choice is Louis MacNeice's poem, "Autumn Journal". Join them as they talk about these books and why they enjoyed them. 

The critic F. R. Leavis said that the four great English novelists were Jane Austen, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. In the final episode of the Book In series featuring these writers, Rupert and Charlie look at The Wings of the Dove, one of the three novels that James wrote towards the end of his life which one critic called "the final splendid flowering of his genius." James was an American, and in this novel, as in many of his others, he looks at what happens when American youth, beauty and money collide with European culture and cynicism. But why can his books be so hard to read? Why does no one say what they think? Are the English just after the money? And why was Henry James incapable of using one word when he might use a dozen? Join Rupert and Charlie as they talk about this brilliant and singular man, and explore the story of the doomed American heiress Milly Theale as she is caught in the machinations of the scheming English characters she meets in London and Venice. 

In the second episode of Middlemarch, Rupert and Charlie look at the timeless story of Bulstrode the banker and his downfall, and at the various groups of people - amongst them doctors, farmers, politicians, gossips and vicars, who make up Middlemarch society. How does Eliot merge the civic with the individual? How does she create a web of connection, and why do so many things happen twice? Does it matter if you're just an ordinary person trying to do your best? What would Eliot's reputation have been if she'd never written Middlemarch?  And is it the greatest novel ever written in English?Join Rupert and Charlie to find out. 

Written in 1871, George Eliot's masterpiece Middlemarch looks back 40 years to an England in the period just before the Great Reform Act. The characters whose stories it tells are unforgettable - the lives of the ardent and empathetic Dorothea Brooke, the idealistic young doctor Tertius Lydgate and the evangelical and flawed banker Bulstrode are set against a backdrop of seismic change in society, politics, economics and science. But how does Eliot achieve such a panoramic sweep? How can ordinary people live a good life? How do we cope with disappointment and failure? What was provincial life like in the early 1830s? And why is pawnbroking not a good way to start a career in finance? Join Charlie and Rupert in the first of two episodes on Middlemarch, as they explore these issues and talk about the life of the brilliant Mary Anne Evans, who became known as George Eliot. Part 2 to follow very shortly. 

Published in 1899, Heart of Darkness tells the story of Marlow, a sailor, who is sent on a mission up the Congo River to find out what has happened to the brilliant agent, Kurtz. The story is closely based on Joseph Conrad's own time in the Congo nine years earlier, an experience which scarred him both mentally and physically for the rest of his life. Barely 100 pages long, the novel has cast a giant shadow over western literature ever since, and haunts our consciousness of colonial guilt and racism. Dense and hypnotic, half narrative and half dream, it is one of Conrad's very greatest achievements. But how did he manage to create such a work when English was his third language? What had really happened to Kurtz? How does Marlow deal with the horror? Why are professional qualifications so important? And how do we feel today about the issues around race which the novel inevitably raises? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this seminal book and the extraordinary man who wrote it. 

The slow burn love affair between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy is one of the best known and best loved stories in the English language, fuelled by multiple films, TV series and spin offs in recent years. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's rendering of the changeability of human feelings and the delicacy of social situations is at its most acute. But who was proud, and who was prejudiced? How important are first impressions? How rich was Mr Darcy? Why can some people understand their shortcomings, while others can't? And why do we take such delight in the disasters of our neighbours? Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss what is probably Jane Austen's most celebrated novel. 

A short episode to update everyone - we started Book In a couple of months ago, with a plan to do 8 episodes and see how we got on. The response has been terrific, and so now we're planning what to do next. Tune in to find out, and also to learn about a man you've never heard of called F.R.Leavis, and for a very brief intro from Charlie on Literary Criticism. 

In 1606, James 1st had been King of England for three years. Most of his Stewart ancestors had met bloody and violent deaths, so for Shakespeare to write a play about the murder of a Scottish King was a bold move. The play was MacBeth; dramatic, fast moving and brutal, it contains some of the greatest speeches in the English language. But was MacBeth always going to be a murderer, or did the witches make him do it? Why did his marriage go wrong? What was an equivocator? And was it all OK in the end? Join Rupert and Charlie as they give you an insight into the strange and terrifying world of the supernatural, and the titanic struggle between good and evil which is the background to this gripping drama. 

Hamlet is one of the most famous, most performed and most analysed pieces of literature ever written. Every generation sees something of themselves in the anguished and tortured figure of the Prince of Denmark, as he grapples with his conscience and agonises over the right thing to do. But why does the play continue to resonate? What are the fundamental questions it asks? Why do so many people seem to go mad? What was the theatre like in Shakespeare's day, and who went to it? And why do some of the greatest actors find the part of Hamlet impossible to perform? Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss these and many other questions.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was the first poem in Lyrical Ballads, the groundbreaking volume of poetry published by Coleridge and Wordsworth in 1798, and composed and written during the year the two young men spent together in the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Hauntingly beautiful, its mesmeric rhythms and rhymes create a unique atmosphere of mysticism and strangeness. But how did the poem come to be written? What was Wordsworth's contribution? Is there a Christian message, or is it really about Coleridge's drug addiction? And why did Coleridge and Wordsworth fall out in the end? Join Rupert and Charlie as they talk about Coleridge's life, and why he never wrote anything quite this good ever again. 

Published in 1922, T.S.Eliot's poem The Waste Land is a definitive text of modernism, and one of the towering cultural achievements of the twentieth century. Revolutionary, obscure and beautiful, it took the literary world by storm, and was enthusiastically received by legions of academics and students across the world. But why was it so important, and is it still so today? How did Eliot get away with borrowing so much material? How much of the poem is really his? Did he understand it himself? And why on earth did this brilliant man work for a bank? Join Charlie and Rupert as they try to answer some of these questions.