On the Road with Penguin Classics

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Latest episodes

• William Blake's poetry with Philip Pullman

  February 1, 2024 · 56 min

  William Blake’s poetry and prose. We visit Sir Philip at home to discuss the poet who has ‘inspired and intoxicated’ him for the last sixty years. In Philip’s book-lined sitting room we discuss Blake’s most loved works: his Songs of…

• Giovanni’s Room with Caryl Phillips

  January 25, 2024 · 1 hr 11 min

  James Baldwin in Paris. On the rain-soaked boulevards, the novelist Caryl Phillips discusses Baldwin's exquisite same-sex love story, drinking in the Cafe de Flore and exploring Saint Germain des Prés.   Phillips, who knew James Baldwin…

• John Donne's poetry with Katherine Rundell

  January 18, 2024 · 1 hr 20 min

  John Donne’s poetry and prose in London. The scholar and children’s author Katherine Rundell traces the life and paradoxical career of John Donne from the street where he was born, through the palaces and colleges where he worked to the…

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Ruth Franklin

  January 11, 2024 · 1 hr 16 min

  Shirley Jackson in North Bennington, Vermont. Award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin visits the small village of North Bennington, where Jackson lived for twenty years. We stand in the square where Jackson imagined 'The Lottery' and…

• Angela Carter's Fairy Tales with Marina Warner

  January 4, 2024 · 1 hr 13 min

  Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. In Dame Marina Warner's magical home in North London, the historian and mythographer discusses Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose and their English translation by Angela Carter, as well as…

• A Christmas Carol with Simon Callow – Christmas Special 2023

  December 21, 2023 · 1 hr 13 min

  Charles Dickens in London. For this festive Christmas Special, the actor and author Simon Callow joins Henry to summon the ghost of Ebeneezer Scrooge and follow him around the City of London, starting at Cornhill, taking in Leadenhall…

• A Clockwork Orange with Jeff Noon and Andrew Biswell

  December 14, 2023 · 1 hr 17 min

  Anthony Burgess in East Sussex. On the 30th anniversary of Burgess’s death, the science fiction author Jeff Noon and the biographer Andrew Biswell travel East Sussex with Henry, visiting the rented flat where Burgess began writing A…

• Farewell, My Lovely with Dick Lochte

  December 7, 2023 · 1 hr 4 min

  Raymond Chandler in Santa Monica. As well as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, we discuss Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler’s favourite of his own novels, as we walk the noir streets of ‘Bay City’ – or Santa Monica in Southern California…