Helen Chambers

speaker

180 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 4 Jun

Helen Chambers’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

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

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In Our Time · Joseph Roth · 4 Jun 2026 podcast

He couldn't work without the people around him.

Yes.

And he did say as much.

I mean, one's reluctant to look at biographical sort of reasons for text, but he said this.

And I mean, it's the story of a tramp in Paris who was originally a coal miner in Silesia and came to Paris for work.

And that's quite typical in economic

traveler, migrant, if you like.

And the tramp ends up sleeping under the bridges in Paris.

But one day, a well-dressed gentleman, and some people say that might have been modeled on Stefan Zweig, arrives and gives him 200 francs.

and says it's in gratitude at his finding conversion to the church.

And the tramp takes it and says, thank you very much, I'll pay it back to you.

And there are several attempts in the course of this short narrative.

Well, he drinks the money, he loses the money, people make him part with the money and he always gets it back again.

And he's always saying, I'm going to, and how he's going to pay it back is to give it to the church in Batignolles where St Therese is there.

And she was a very modest saint with a humble life, an unshowy sort of person, but in a Catholic church.

And at the very end, I don't know that I want to spoil the end, but at the very end,

The drunkard, who again, well, he's in a very bad state physically, but he dies and he thinks that the little saint has taken the money and he's paid it back and it's all grace has descended upon him.

And he says, God give all of us drinkers such a good and easy death.

And so in the story, the man finds Grace, the drinker.

But of course, Joseph Frode, in his own life, had a terrible death, did not have what he wished for himself, but he collapsed face down on the table in the cafe.

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