Max Porter

One of the interesting things about Homer is that it's the dawn you get.

the dawn is the thing that has the power we struggle to describe it and I suppose that's profoundly relevant to us now where we have to start dismantling the systems whereby we are the superior thing in control and think about now giving the power back to nature in sustainable terms and rewilding and so forth so even that I reckon Homer's interesting on yeah

of the ones I already told you I was going to offer up.

I was just thinking, I reread Wuthering Heights.

I'm more like, he's such a cool dude.

But I'll stick to the ones I said beforehand I would.

I wanted to put asterisks on our shelf, if that's okay.

Please.

Any time.

For so many reasons.

One of which is that Anthea Bell, the translator of Asterix into English, recently passed away, and she was a kind of godmother of the translated literature scene.

Anthea Bell OBE, I think she was.

Maybe she was even Dame Anthea Bell.

Anyway, she was just...

an extraordinary translator of Walter Kempowski and various other greats of literature, but she made a name translating Asterix.

And it is, as you'll all know, one of the most astonishing masterworks of literary translation to take Asterix into English in the way she did.

Who are they?

What are their names?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come to the bookshop, I'll buy you an Asterix.