Jacke (Jack) Wilson

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1,063 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 3 Aug

Jacke (Jack) Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The History of Literature · 821 A History of the Kiss (with Katie Barclay) | Wonderland Books! (with Amy Joyce and Gayle Weiswasser) · 3 Aug 2026 podcast

Okay, joining me now is Katie Barclay, a professor of history at Macquarie University in Sydney.

She's the author of seven books, including Loneliness in World History, and she's here today to discuss her new book, published by our friends at Reaction Books, called The Kiss, A History of Passion and Power.

Katie Barclay, welcome to the History of Literature.

So your book on loneliness came out last year.

I was wondering if your research on loneliness pointed you in this direction.

I had never thought of the connection between loneliness and kissing, but your prologue is what pointed me there when you say that usually when we look at kisses, it comes down to what you call the real kiss with real in quotes and the kiss of romantic passion.

And you describe that in the prologue as the kisses written about by poets and pursued by the lonely.

Yeah.

Did you find that when you were looking at loneliness that lonely people could define themselves as people who didn't have anyone to kiss?

Yeah.

And a kiss might take one second, but loneliness can be a 24-hour-a-day proposition.

Right, right.

It reminds me of when they say, you know, don't ever ride first class on an airplane or you'll never be able to ride in coach again without thinking what it was like to ride in first class.

Exactly.

Okay.

Well, I have to say, when I started reading your book, my mind, you know, the kiss, what's this going to be about?

My mind went first to the examples of extreme passion and like the example on your cover or the famous photographs like the kiss by the Hotel de Ville by Robert Doisneau and the Eisenstadt photo of the sailor in Times Square passionately kissing a stranger to celebrate victory in World War II.

And

And that kind of thing.

But then as quickly you pointed out, there are kisses like parents kissing their children or kisses on the cheek for greetings in some cultures, but not others.

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