Rebecca Rideal
speaker
1,038 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 21 Sep
Rebecca Rideal’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 — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And there are letters that are going back and forth between him and his friend, Henry Seville, that speak to this experience.
It's a hard one to discuss because it does revolve around alcoholism, but Rochester has a real deep love of alcohol.
It's something that he really likes to do.
He loves to drink.
There's one quote, if you don't mind me sharing it, actually.
It's where he's writing a letter to...
Henry Seville, and he says, do a charity becoming of one of your pious principles in preserving your humble servant Rochester from the imminent peril of sobriety, which for want of good wine more than company is very likely to befall me.
He also says of the three businesses of the age, women, politics and drinking, the last is the only at which you and I have not proved ourselves errant fumblers.
So there's a lot of drinking, a lot of writing and a lot of, I think, womanising as well.
not a literary scholar.
I stopped doing English literature at A-level, partly because I wanted to study the history of the Restoration Court.
But what I do know is that there have been debates and they've been ongoing debates throughout the centuries about whether his work has literary or political merit or whether it's just dirty and it's just smut.
I think it's all of those things.
It's really, really dirty.
I've got, I actually found this book that I was about to say I had as an undergraduate.
It was one of my friends and I stole it from her as an undergraduate.
It has obviously all his poems in it.
It's the best edition by David M. Vieth.
If you wanted, I can read a little bit.
Well, either a ramble in St.
Showing 241–260 of 1,038 · page 13 of 52
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