Showing titles in Literary History & Criticism

Join us as we read through all 41 of the fantastical and outrageous Discworld novels!

One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a...

This delightful anthology is a timeless collection of poems chosen by Classic FM listeners. With humorous limericks, romantic sonnets, traditional and modern classics, this book is a true refelction of the greatest and best-loved verse. Discover poems for special occasions, as well as poems to...

In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious "histories" offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’s misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.

Rhyme and Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, through Byromania and the Victorian hearth, understanding why people simply enjoyed poetry. From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.

When John Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31 October 2019, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, occupying a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history. In his no-holds-barred memoir, he...

Little Stories for Tiny People features original stories the whole family will love. Filled with endearing characters and inventive story lines, LSFTP is sure to spark your child’s imagination and to delight the entire family. Lovingly crafted to appeal to all ages, LSFTP is perfect for car rides, bedtime, or any time! Little Stories Premium offers even more stories, an ad-free listening experience, and access to Little Stories for Sleep, an exclusive bedtime podcast. Visit www.littlestoriespremium.com to learn more.

Warmups and all the Beginner's Level Grammar in Italian!Welcome, benvenuti! 😊

In this witty, fact-packed A-Z, Newman takes the listener on a whirlwind tour from caring, sharing vampire bats to intelligent slime mould; from pacifist baboons to Richard Dawkins wrestling naked with his postman; from the invisibility cloak of the Hawaiian bobtail squid to Francis "DNA" Crick's belief that life on Earth began with alien spaceships.

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2017. ‘At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan’ Mary Beard ‘Thomas’s elegant, charming book offers something for everyone – not just the super-fans’ Independent When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob...

How did the most wanted man in the country outwit the greatest manhunt in British history? In January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded in London outside his palace of Whitehall and Britain became a republic. When his eldest son, Charles, returned in 1651 to fight for his throne, he was crushed...

The definitive, revelatory biography of Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee, a writer and entrepreneur who reshaped global pop culture—at a steep personal cost HUGO AWARD FINALIST EISNER AWARD NOMINEE “True Believer is in every imaginable way the biography that Stan Lee deserves—ambitious...

You may think you know Anthony Scaramucci: a Harvard Law School graduate who cut his teeth at Goldman Sachs, went on to build two successful businesses and had an 11-day stint in the White House. What people don’t know is he’s an avid reader, endlessly curious, history buff with a restless mind. On Open Book, listeners will hear and get to know the real Anthony: the proud son of immigrant parents, a long-suffering New York Mets fan, and a father of five. Each week, he’ll invite you into an intimate and open conversation with some of the brightest minds out there, from business, politics,...

The Fiendish Comedy Podcast! Season 3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Poorly Read boys get knees deep in your favourite 90's heroine. Season 2: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe/Twilight - The first two books of these best-selling series are given the brutal Poorly Read treatment. With ice cream on top. Season 1: Harry Potter - The magical journey through Hogwarts revisited through jaded, adult eyes…

Introduction As a psychotherapist, I’ve worked with many people who came to me shortly after their lives had crashed. Everything was going great until the sudden heart attack, divorce, or death of a child. If not for that life-jarring event, they would never have thought to see a therapist, because they felt successful. After the event they can’t find the same drive or determination. Their former goals of having big houses or reputations have lost their meaning. They feel at sea and vulnerable in a way that’s unfamiliar and scary.

Little Women follows the March sisters as they grow up. Each chapter is relatively short and usually features a moral lesson without being preachy.Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868. It centers on the 4 young March sisters: Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth. Each of the sisters has a distinct personality. Meg is the oldest, Jo is the writer and tomboy, Amy is the vain one, and Beth is a saint. The sisters are guided by their mother, Marmee, and they strike up a friendship with the next-door neighbor boy, Laurie.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction, and her impact on crowds and on men was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well.

Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances—outcomes that depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter.

India, Josh, Peter, and AJ are reading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. A bad idea? Maybe, but we'll at least have fun along the way. Peter has read the series before, but it's Josh, India, and AJ's first time. Join us, as we talk through each book and enjoy the works of Steven Erikson.

The godfather of British performance poetry - Daily Telegraph The Luckiest Guy Alive, performed by the author, is the first new book of poetry from Dr John Cooper Clarke for several decades – and a brilliant, scabrous, hilarious collection from one of our most beloved and influential writers...