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The Scholar's Armchair

by Dr. John Burton

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About the show

Great minds on the greatest ideas: Conversations with scholars on their area of expertise for a general audience. Less like a lecture, more a conversation with an expert. Check us out on YouTube!

Latest episodes

  • The Exile Who Changed English Culture | Dr Annalisa Nicholson

    October 11, 2026 · 51 min

    What happens when exiles create a cultural world of their own?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Dr Annalisa Nicholson of King’s College London about her fascinating book, A Salon-in-Exile: Hortense Mancini…

  • A History of England in 25 Poems

    October 4, 2026 · 47 min

    Can poetry act as a time machine into the past? What can a poem reveal about history that archaeology, chronicles and official records cannot?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Professor Catherine Clarke…

  • Eight Women Who Rewrote Their Lives | Prof Anne Fernald

    September 27, 2026 · 52 min

    How much freedom do we really have to write the story of our own lives?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Anne E. Fernald about her new book, Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.With Virginia Woolf and…

  • Charles DICKENS and Victorian Psychology

    September 20, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

    Was Charles Dickens not only one of the great novelists, but also one of the great psychologists of the Victorian age? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John talks to Tyson Stolte, Associate Professor of English at New Mexico…

  • The Curious Relationship Between Modernism and Religion | Prof Annarose Steinke

    September 13, 2026 · 56 min

    What happens to religion in poetry when belief itself becomes uncertain? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Professor Annarose Steinke about her book Religious Culture in Modernist Verse: Form, Belief, and…

  • When healthcare became a profession | Dr Karen Bloom Gevirtz

    September 6, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

    How did medicine become something we buy? And what happened to the women who had provided much of our everyday healthcare for centuries? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Karen Bloom Gevirtz about her fascinating…

  • How American was Renaissance England? | Dr Lauren Working

    August 30, 2026 · 43 min

    How American was Shakespeare’s England? We tend to imagine the English Renaissance as the world of Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh and the great voyages of discovery. But what happens when we reverse the direction of travel and…

  • When WW2 writing becomes treason | Prof Marius Hentea

    August 23, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

    Can words be treason? Can a writer be held responsible not simply for what they do, but for what they write? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Marius Hentea, Professor of Modern Anglophone Literature at the…