Claire-Louise Bennett

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283 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 4 Jul

Claire-Louise Bennett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · Claire-Louise Bennett & Ben Pester: Magic & Mechanics · 4 Jul 2026 podcast

And I soon felt like one of those ladies I'd see from the car window on the way to my grandparents' house with their ample backsides and baggy gardening gloves.

When I was much smaller, this is mindless, I thought.

Very unflattering.

Stop it at once.

But I didn't stop because I was so curious to find out what changed if I carried on.

I had an uneasy relationship with my task, that is for sure, and I had to go on telling myself things like, everything will grow back, it helps the little plants come forth, all the big stuff is almost dead anyway, you don't ever have to do this again, was the final assurance I offered myself, but if you don't do something today, now, how will you find anything out about how you feel?

I couldn't continue with the tools, so put them down and carried on with my hands, which were ungloved, and very soon they were stinging, which was fair.

Come on, then, I thought, and watched as my hands tore around indiscriminately.

is this kind of frenzied pulling and wrenching what happens once you begin.

Perhaps I really hate all this stuff.

And it is a very normal and human thing to wish to crush it.

But no, not that.

I wasn't pitting myself against nature or anything as hammy as that.

I was suddenly desperate to get rid of all this dishevelled foliage, it's true.

But the reason, I soon realised, was because I wanted to get to bare soil.

I missed it.

It was all covered over, and I wanted so much to push everything aside and see the earth.

I'd had quite enough of leaves and flowers, all that rustling and blooming and liquid light.

It was time for that to pack itself off, really.

Except, of course, it doesn't go anywhere, it just lies around like a lot of burstlings and shrivels and withers and becomes very soggy and swamp-like.

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