Jonty Claypole

And what we're going to find out over the course of this novel is that this book is full of many, many characters who...

who do not quite understand the ways in which they're connected.

You know, two of the main characters are wards of chancery.

They don't even really know what that means.

Other characters sort of know they might be related in some way to other characters, but nobody can put their finger on human connection.

And the brilliance of the fog as a metaphor is that fog connects everything and yet it obscures everything at the same time.

So we have this sort of fog as a negative connector running through this opening passage.

And we're going to bring it in for a break by just reading how this fog section ends.

And so what happens at the end of these first few paragraphs is that Dickens, or the narrator, follows this fog to the very heart of London and ends up in the Court of Chancery.

And he says, Wait, wait, wait, we need your special voice.

Oh, yes.

The raw afternoon is rawest and the dense fog is densest and the muddy streets are muddiest.

Near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for a threshold of leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar.

And hard by Temple Bar and Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Sophie, let's take our break.

And when we come back, Brett Walker's joining us to explain exactly who the Lord High Chancellor is, what the high course of chancellery is, and why any of this matters.

So we're back.

And just to give listeners a insight into the under the bonnet operations of Slob, in that short break, a lot has happened.

Three days have passed.

I've moved house.