Sophie Gee

speaker

11,180 appearances 40 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard yesterday

Sophie Gee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 36 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.

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Secret Life of Books · Secret Life of the River Thames · 22 Sep 2026 podcast

going a bit far. podcast-host

Completely, yeah. podcast-host

It's one of the paradoxes of Edmund Spencer. podcast-host

So Jonty, let's linger with the sweet and softly running Thames, which we've just discovered is anything but. podcast-host

Although it has to be said that it would have run more sweetly and more softly in the 16th and 17th centuries because since then the embankments have gone in and it's the embanking of the Thames that really... podcast-host

wrought havoc with the current and made it move a lot more quickly. podcast-host

And then the addition of modern bridges has also completely changed the way that the flow of the Thames works. podcast-host

So the Elizabethan Thames would have been a rather different affair, actually. podcast-host

Anyway, the great story about the Thames, I think, from the Shakespearean point of view, is the daring do of their stealing their own theatre in the dead of night, one frosty December, and taking it across the river. podcast-host

So the story is that the actor and theatre manager, James Burbage, was working with Shakespeare on the north side of the river. podcast-host

And they had their own theatre, but it was on a rented plot of ground. podcast-host

And they were kicked off the site. podcast-host

And so they decided that they were not going to kind of submit to this. podcast-host

And on the night of December the 28th, 1598, the Burbage brothers and a dozen or so other men, which may or may not have included Shakespeare... podcast-host

went to the old theatre, they tore off the roof and the exterior walls, they tore it apart board by board and they reassembled it on the other side of the river in Southwark as a brand new playhouse which is what we now know as the Globe. podcast-host

It didn't survive, the existing Globe is the third Globe actually. podcast-host

but it was very close to the site of the modern-day globe. podcast-host

And one of the things that's incredibly interesting about it is that the river was nearly frozen over, and so they probably had to sort of get across a very ice-bound river with their theatre on, you know, small and fairly unstable boats. podcast-host

So it's a thrilling story. podcast-host

Exactly. podcast-host

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