James Wood
speaker
815 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 15 Sep
James Wood’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
He too, like Clarissa, remembers happy days at the country house, at Clarissa's country house, Borton.
And he remembers particularly because he was deeply in love with Clarissa that
He remembers flirting with her only to realize, to his great anguish, that Clarissa does not love him and to realize that she will marry one Richard Dalloway.
But what about this lovely description?
Peter Walsh remembers Borton, and then this line, Isn't that a marvellous phrase?
And then in the morning, flirting up and down.
Isn't that great?
Flirting up and down.
What's that like?
And then like a wagtail in front of the house.
It's great.
It's a little peacock, peacockery that Peter Walsh remembers in his alas, failed courting of Clarissa.
Close Readings · Who’s afraid of realism? ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy · 27 Apr 2026
podcast
Hello, and welcome to Who's Afraid of Realism, a close readings podcast from the London Review of Books.
I'm James Wood, and today I'm joined by the novelist and critic Elif Batuman.
Elif, hello.
We're going to be talking about Tolstoy's story, novella.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which was published in 1886.
This was a period of great turmoil in the novelist's life.
The big novels were behind him, War and Peace, 1869, Anna Karenina, 1878.
And he was in the midst of what we might call nowadays a midlife crisis.
Showing 661–680 of 815 · page 34 of 41
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