Jonty Claypole
speaker
10,992 appearances
33 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 2d ago
Jonty Claypole’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 — 33 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 6.
Appearances
So they are Semitic.
That doesn't mean they're Jewish, although some of them may have been, but they're Semitic.
So the Phoenicians are from that part, that coastline of the Mediterranean.
Now Joyce got incredibly excited by this because in his story that he's telling, in which Stephen Deedlas, who was the Joyce Avatar, is rescued as Joyce was by the Jewish friend of his father, the idea that the Odyssey itself had this kind of Semitic origin was completely captivating to Joyce.
He he couldn't believe it.
And I I think a
Another thing to put in Joyce's favour, we've talked about the humour and wit is one of the great redeeming qualities of this.
But thank God, when you're reading this book written in the nineteen tens and published in nineteen twenty two, it is a book which has a hero who is Jewish, but it is not an anti Semitic book.
And when we talked a few weeks ago about T.
S.
Eliot and the Wasteland and many a
Attempts that have been made by scholars and biographers to contextualize Eliot's anti-Semitism as just how everyone thought at the time.
Well, yes, to an extent, anti-Semitism was extremely prevalent at the time, but not everyone was, and Joyce wasn't.
And it's such a relief to be reading a book where you have anti-Semitic characters, but they are always framed as the rather
Rather idiotic aggressors.
And just to pick up the story of Stephen Dedler, Sophie, where you left it, and this is rather nice because we're sort of tracking the book.
in linear fashion as we're telling the story behind it.
But after this morning at the tower, Stephen Deedlas goes in to teach history at the school where he teaches, and afterwards he falls into conversation with the school headmaster, a man called Garrett Deasy.
And Deasy is a rabid anti Semite and he goes into a big rant with Stephen Deedlas.
Mark my words, he said, England is in the hands of the Jews.
Showing 2741–2760 of 10,992 · page 138 of 550
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