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 Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Auguries of Innocence.   Pullman has written frequently about Blake and previously served as President of the William Blake Society.   Blake’s Selected Poems (Penguin Classics edition) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/33866/selected-poems-blake-by-william-blake-ed-professor-g-e-bentley-series ..read more

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, wrote the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Giovanni’s Room and an unfilmed screenplay of the novel for Merchant Ivory productions. 2024 marks 100 years since Baldwin was born   Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (Penguin Modern Classics edition) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57368/giovannis-room-by-james-baldwin-introducti ..read more

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 cathedral where he preached and now lies buried.   In 2022 Rundell won the Baillie-Gifford Prize for her biography of Donne, Super-Infinite. Donne's prose masterpiece Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions was published 400 years ago in January 1624.   Donne’s Selected Poems (Penguin Classics edition) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/33860/select ..read more

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 conjure the ghost of Merricat Blackwood as she collects her sinister groceries in Jackson’s last and greatest novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.   We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (Penguin Modern Classics edition) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133431/we-have-always-lived-in-the-castle-by-jackson-shirley/9780141191454 Blackst ..read more

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 Carter’s own Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Her wide-ranging conversation with Henry covers Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as many other fairy tales.   The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault by Angela Carter (Penguin Modern Classics edition) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57621/the-fairy-tales-of-c ..read more

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 Market and meeting all three Spirits of Christmas. A Christmas Carol, Dickens’s best loved novel, was published on 19 December 1843, 180 years ago this year.   Penguin Classics edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/34585/a-christmas-carol-and-other-christmas-writings-by-charles-dickens-intro-michael-slater/9780140439 ..read more

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 Clockwork Orange, O my brothers, and the quiet village where he finished it, taking in a pub, a prison, ultra violence, nadsat, brainwashing and Beethoven. Penguin Classics ‘Restored Edition’ of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, edited by Andrew Biswell https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/182137/a-clockwork-orange-by-burgess-anthony/9780141197 ..read more

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 – retracing Philip Marlowe's footsteps from City Hall to Santa Monica Pier, and chatting about Dick's hard-boiled and hilarious Chandler tribute, Sleeping Dog.   Penguin Classics omnibus edition of The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57024/the-big-sleep-and-other-novels-by-raymond ..read more

Mary Shelley in Bath. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finished writing Frankenstein while lodging in Bath and attending lectures on electricity and galvanism. We visit the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the recently opened Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein with the neuroscientist Anil Seth (author of Being You) and the poet and biographer Fiona Sampson (In Search of Mary Shelley), discussing Romantic literature, early nineteenth-century science and the mystery of consciousness.   Penguin Classics edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/555 ..read more

Jane Austen in Chawton. The novelist Monica Ali joins Henry to visit Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen wrote all of her novels – as well as nearby Chawton House, once owned by Austen’s brother Edward and now home to the Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing.   Penguin Classics edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55905/pride-and-prejudice-by-austen-jane/9780141439518 https://apple.co/3MNDOaq   Penguin Audio edition of Pride and Prejudice, read by Indira Varma https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55905/pride-and-prejudi ..read more