Secret Life of Books

Back to School 2: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

14 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back to School 1: Tom Brown's School Days

07 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) wasn’t the first school fiction novel – that honour goes to a Sarah Fielding, sister of Henry Fi...

The Secret Life of (Literary) Honeymoons

31 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From the outset, there’s only one kind of honeymoon in classic literature, and it's disastrous. Honeymoons don't become fixed stars in the literary ...

Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind

24 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"On Morrison": a conversation with Namwali Serpell

20 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

To close out our poopular series on the great American novelist Toni Morrison, SLOB brings listeners a wonderful discussion with the novelist and Harv...

Toni Morrison 3: Beloved

17 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Beloved, published in 1987, was Toni Morrison’s fifth novel and instantly seen to be an all-time landmark of American literature, winning the Pulitz...

SLoB Goes to the Oscars: Frankenstein vs Hamnet

10 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It’s Oscars week!The golden statues will get dished out on Sunday evening in Los Angeles and the world will be watching. Literary classics are big, ...

Saved from Fire: the Toni Morrison Archives

06 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

As part of our series on the writing of Toni Morrison we’re lucky enough to record a conversation with one of the world’s leading Toni Morrison sc...

Toni Morrison 2: Song of Solomon

03 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Song of Solomon (1977) propelled Toni Morrison into mainstream recognition as a major American writer, not just of her own generation but all generati...

The Other Bronte Girl: Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall

24 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

With all the fuss and fanfare around Wuthering Heights, we’re worried Emily Bronte is getting more than her fair share of attention. So today we shi...

Jane Austen's Birthday: everyone wants to go to her party

21 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A special bonus episode about the blockbuster phenom of Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday celebrations. Sophie’s guest is Professor Devoney Looser, one...

Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights": is the hype worth it?

17 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Best Valentine’s Day ever! SLOB’s “Wuthering Heights” watch-party. Sophie and Jonty take it character by character – inanimate characters in...

Wuthering Heights: Is this really the greatest love story of all time?

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The storm clouds are gathering in anticipation of the Valentine’s Day release of Emerald Fennell’s raunchy film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wut...

Frankenstein in Oxford: A Conversation with Richard Ovenden, OBE

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sophie talks to Richard Ovenden, OBE, the 25th Bodley’s Librarian at Oxford, about the manuscript of Frankenstein, one of the most extraordinary, an...

Toni Morrison 1: The Bluest Eye

03 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Published in 1970, written by an unknown new writer, The Bluest Eye is the great African American novelist Toni Morrison’s debut. It remains in many...

Queens of Crime 4: The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A serial killer on the loose in the foggy, battle-scarred streets of London after the Second World War. Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke (19...

To see or not to see: Hamnet tune-up session

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

With the release of Chloe Zhao's rapturously acclaimed film Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's much-loved 2020 novel, SLOB re-releases one of our...

Queens of Crime 3: A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A Murder is Announced (1950) was Agatha Christie’s 50th published book. So when better than the 50th anniversary of her death to celebrate one of he...

Queens of Crime 2: Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS: Grantchester's James Runcie on the Golden Age of Crime

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

James Runcie is author of the acclaimed Grantchester Mysteries - the focus of six books and a hugely successful ITV television series - following vica...

Queens of Crime 1: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, the SLoBlight lingered briefly on Agatha Christie when we celebrated the centenary of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from 1925. This book, mor...

By George (Eliot) She's Done It! The road to Middlemarch

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

George Eliot’s Middlemarch is the Mount Everest of Victorian fiction. A book so brilliant and monumental that it’s taken us a year of planning to ...

A SLoB Christmas Cracker

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It won't come as a surprise to SLOB fans that the literary classics invented Christmas. But if you've got your finger on the buzzer and are already mo...

The Women Who Made Jane Austen

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Jane Austen has a big birthday this week -- her 250th to be exact. Happy Birthday Jane!Over h...

Big Cat Theory: William Blake's The Tyger

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Are you a cat-person or a tyger-person? William Blake was both. Find out why such a big fuss about "The Tyger," which never fails to show up in google...

Henry James 3: Turn of the Screw

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen King and Shirley Jackson agree that The Turn of the Screw is the GOAT of ghost-stories. It’s a gripping, excellently creepy potboiler about ...

Henry James 2: Colm Tóibín on Henry James

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the world's favorite novelists, on his own favorite novelist. Colm Toibin has written many beloved novels, for which he has won many prestigiou...

Henry James 1: The Portrait of a Lady

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many readers consider The Portrait of a Lady to be the greatest novel in English. But for some reason, James' fellow novelists loved to dump on him. N...

Greece Lightnin': My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

SLoB is turning 1! To celebrate, Sophie and Jonty re-read one of their all time favorites, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.My Family and...

American Horror 3: Salem's Lot by Stephen King

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Salem’s Lot (1975) is Stephen King’s second published novel, and many would say it's his best. It tells the story of a plague of vampires running ...

American Horror 2: Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chocolate Mouse, anyone? Rosemary’s Baby was a smash hit on release - the best selling horror novel of the 1960s, eventually selling over 4 million ...

American Horror: The Haunting of Hill House

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who's afraid of American horror? Sophie and Jonty, for starters. To celebrate halloween, SLOB is taking a deep dive into three classics of the America...

Montaigne pt2: A Montaigne out of a mole hill (with Rowan Tomlinson)

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jonty and Sophie were separated by an ocean while Sophie and her family went back to New York and Jonty stayed in Sydney - so they made lemonade out o...

Montaigne pt1: Climb Every Montaigne (with Stephen Greenblatt)

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sophie talks to one of the world's leading literary scholars, who co-founded a whole branch of literary studies known as "The New Historicism," before...

SLoB's Four (literary) weddings and a funeral

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The label says what's in the tin: Secret Life of Books dives deep into weddings and funerals in literature, asking why they become iconic moments to h...

Wilkie Collins 2: The Moonstone

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins published yet another giant sensation, this time pioneering the detective novel and mystery/heist genre. It was pub...

BONUS: Jennifer Egan on the Woman in White

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As part of our ongoing “That’s Classic!” series, we're joined by the wonderful Jennifer Egan to chat about the sensational thriller The Woman in...

Wilkie Collins 1: The Woman in White

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Woman in White was a sensation when it was serialised in Charles Dickens’ magazine All The Year Round in 1859 and 1860. It begins with an uncann...

SLOB Reads: The Sonnet with Paul Muldoon

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For several weeks we've been recording a subscribers-only mini series on the history of the sonnet in English. Sonnets are crowd-pleasers - short, som...

The Secret Life of Trains: how rail travel changed fiction - for ever

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria. Alongside the platform at Aleppo stood the train grandly designated in railway guides as the T...

BONUS: Writing Virginia Woolf's life (with Hermione Lee)

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this final episode in SLoB's series on Virginia Woolf, Jonty talks to literary biographer Hermione Lee whose Virginia Woolf (1996) is perhaps the m...

Virginia Woolf 5: The Waves

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We thought we’d be concluding our Virginia Woolf deep-dive with "A Room of One’s Own," but we’ve enjoyed this series so much we decided to exten...

Virginia Woolf 4: A Room Of One's Own

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thank God, my long toil at the women’s lecture is this moment ended. I am back from speaking at Girton, in floods of rain. Starved but valiant young...

Virginia Woolf 3: Orlando

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, a gender-defying historical romance, in 1927, when her intimate friend and lover Vita Sackville-West left London to join...

BONUS: Reading Mrs Dalloway (with Alexandra Schwartz)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Throw that party. Go for it. It's worth it."In today’s Mrs. Dalloway special episode, Sophie talks to Alex Schwartz, writer, critic and co-host of ...

Virginia Woolf 2: To The Lighthouse

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

50 is the new 25!“To the Lighthouse” is Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece about summer holidays and the passage of time. It’s perhaps the greatest ...

BONUS: Virginia Woolf, the not-so-Common Reader (with Alexandra Harris)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

‘Think of a book as a very dangerous and exciting game, which it takes two to play at.’ For Virginia Woolf, reading wasn’t a passive act. I...

Virginia Woolf 1: Mrs Dalloway

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not the Secret Life of Books, as we joyfully immerse ourselves in four of Woolf's greatest books to celebrate what is ...

Smells Like Teen Spirit: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Martin Amis’ Money, Thomas Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero… These books are often cited as defining wor...

The Secret River with Kate Grenville

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This special episode on a great modern classic was recorded live at the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2025. Very few novels can genuinely claim to have ...

Keeping Up Appearances with the Pooters: The Diary of A Nobody

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is a cheat. It's not a real published personal diary, but a satire on published diaries. It’s a fiction, but it’s a fiction that tell...

The Secret Life of Summer Holidays: sunburns, family arguments and holiday cottages in classic literature

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Not if it was the summer holiday that Jonty's family went on to Menorca when a stomach bug ripped through thei...

BONUS: Move Over Bridgerton: James Boswell's Big Romance

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A bonus episode to share the extraordinary detail and richness of the real-time, live-streamed account James Boswell gives us of his first love affair...

A Date With Signor Gonorrhea: James Boswell's London Journal 1762

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s London, 1763 - we're paying a visit to the most fashionable, literary, sexy, filthy, glamorous capital in the world. The 22 year old James...

Plague, fire and hanky-panky in Swinging 1660s London: Samuel Pepys' Diary

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to London in the swinging sixties. One man fights off a towering inferno, navigates a zombie apocalypse, and an invading fleet of evil foreign...

Breakfast with Jane Austen

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day -- especially for Jane Austen. On and off the page, Austen paid a lot of attention to the breakfast ta...

Oscar Wilde 4: Doing rhyme: The Ballad of Reading Gaol

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode - the last in our series on Oscar Wilde - we tell the story of the melodramatic, mediagenic, mad, melancholy end of Oscar Wilde's writ...

Life and love with MND: Lisa Genova's Every Note Played with Prof Dominic Rowe

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Published in 2018, Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played follows the experiences of renowned concert pianist Richard Evans from the moment he is diagnosed...

Oscar Wilde 3: "A Handbag?!" The Importance of Being Earnest

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Importance of Being Earnest, first performed in 1895 at the sumptuous St James' Theatre in London, was Wilde’s last, and without question his gr...

Happier with Henry Wotton: Gretchen Rubin on Aphorisms and the Importance of Being Oscar Wilde

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gretchen Rubin is one of America’s best known and best-loved writers on how to be happy. She published her evergreen classic The Happiness Project i...

Oscar Wilde 2: If Looks Could Kill: The Picture of Dorian Gray

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel, and it caused a sensation. It was used as evidence in Wilde’s trial for the crime of “gr...

Classic Books vs Trump: Jill Lepore on reading her way through the first 100 days

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jill Lepore is one of America’s most renowned intellectuals. She’s Professor not only of American History, but also of Law at Harvard University; ...

Oscar Wilde 1: The Happy Prince and Other Stories

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Few writers have blurred the boundaries between life and art quite so spectacularly as Oscar Wilde. In his writing, he challenged the moral standards ...

BONUS: More 'Rivals': Actor Katherine Parkinson on the joy of Jilly Cooper and playing Lizzie Vereker in the television adaptation

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hot on the heels of our Rivals episode, Sophie and Jonty are joined by the actor and writer Katherine Parkinson - one of the stars of the recent adapt...

Bollinger, Board Battles and Bonking Galore: Jilly Cooper's Rivals

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (1988) is the ultimate bonkbuster - a story of professional rivalry in the Cotswold’s fast-set with lashings of sex thrown i...

The Epic of Gilgamesh with Robert Macfarlane

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest surviving works of literature - an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, stitched together from fragments goi...

The Tortured Poets Department: Emily Dickinson, the Transcendentalists and, yes, Taylor Swift

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Dickinson is probably the most famous female poet in the world. And yet – at least according to Dickinson mythology – her work could easily ...

BONUS: Secret Life of Democracy (Literature at the polls)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Australia heads to the polls, Sophie and Jonty slap their democracy sausages on the bbq and take a tour of the greatest elections and electoral can...

Guns and (war of the) Roses. The irresistible rise of Shakespeare's Richard III

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Richard III is one of the OG villains of English literary history, the usurper king who killed his brother, nephews (the infamous “Princes in the To...

BONUS: The Disappearance of Agatha Christie

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On 3 December 1926, only a few months after the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (in book form), Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared, l...

Hercule Poirot, a Tunisian dagger and an evening of Mah Jong: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The three best-selling authors of all time are, in order, God, Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. Exact figures are hard to know, but the gulf between C...

Who watches the Watchmen?: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, wrote the Roman poet Juvenal two thousand years ago. And just in case your Latin isn’t up to scratch, we’ll transla...

SLoB's Secret Life of Pets

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Macavity to Samuel Johnson’s Hodge, Buck to Rochester’s Pilot, what is classic literature without its pets? One of the most affecting sc...

George Orwell 6: What's in Room 101? 1984 Part 2

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Shakespeare almost wrote: Orwell That Ends Well. While our six-part series on George Orwell comes to a triumphant end, Orwell’s life - alas - did...

George Orwell 5: Sex crime, anyone? 1984 pt1

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Newspeak, Big Brother, the Thought Police, Room 101, doublethink, sex crime, the Ministry of Truth. Few books have generated quite as many outlandish ...

George Orwell 4: Come on, Eileen! Anna Funder, Mrs Orwell and Wifedom

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

George Orwell is one of the most famous names in classic literature, thanks to his novels Animal Farm and 1984, both dystopian fables of worlds gone m...

George Orwell 3: Murder in the Barnyard: Animal Farm

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Animal Farm is George Orwell’s micro masterpiece, an animal fable that offers a devastating critique of Stalinist Russia and the rise of totalitaria...

World Poetry Day Double-Bill: Can poetry change the world? The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Together, Siegfried Sassoon’s The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918) are among the greatest examples of protest...

George Orwell 2: The Revolution SHOULD NOT be televised: Homage to Catalonia

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

War is boring; revolution is boring; politics is boring. That’s the message of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. But, somehow, Homage to Catalo...

World Poetry Day Double-Bill: Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III with Rachel Cohen

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Bishop is one of those poets who’s often referred to as a writer’s writer, but this doesn’t mean her poems are hard to read. On the co...

George Orwell 1: The Best Gap Yah, great food writing and Paris hotels: Down and Out in Paris and London

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the winter of 1927, George Orwell dropped his aitches, pulled on his distressed tailored trousers, and took the first of many trips to the underbel...

International Women's Day Bonus: Was Shakespeare a Woman? Jodi Picoult says yes!

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Legendary bestseller Jodi Picoult is also a graduate of the Princeton English Department, and this week she came back to teach class! Sophie recorded ...

Magnetic chemistry, social anxiety, and the in-laws from hell: Pride & Prejudice (aka Meet The Bennets)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By many reckonings, this is the most famous novel in English. It’s also the book Jane Austen described as her own “Darling Child.” As we head to...

Self-Help, dodgy marriages and the siren call of Australia: David Copperfield Part 2

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Part 2 of David Copperfield, we pick up David where we left him, sobbing at the door of Betsey Trotwood’s house in Dover. From this low, David’...

‘Umble beginnings, childhood neglect, and did Dickens steal from Charlotte Bronte: David Copperfield

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David Copperfield is the name of an American illusionist, whose feats included levitating over the Grand Canyon, walking through the Great Wall of Chi...

BONUS: SLoB's Secret Crushes and Clandestine Encounters pt 2

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In part 2 of SLoB's Valentine's special, more heroes and heroines from the world of classic books get the brutal Tinder treatment as Sophie and Jonty ...

Free love in Paris, male wrestling and murder: Giovanni's Room

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's Black History Month and Sophie and Jonty are bringing their analytical chops once again to the giant of 20th-century literature, James Baldwin.&n...

BONUS: SLoB's Secret Crushes and Clandestine Encounters pt 1

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's Valentine's Day and love is quite literally in the air as the Secret Life of Books beams, via a complex network of satellites and data banks, to ...

Shakespeare does 'Succession': Rory Stewart on King Lear

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” King Lear is the Mount Everest of Theatre - a sprawling masterpiece of political turmoil, personal betray...

Wizards, Hobbits and WWII: Dominic Sandbrook on The Lord of the Rings

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One ring to rule them allOne ring to…Yes, SLoB finally turns its Sauron-like eye on what is thought to be the second best-selling novel of all time ...

Love and Beauty Bonus: Geraldine Brooks picks Gilead as the great modern classic

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Pulitzer Prize winner, fan-favorite Geraldine Brooks first read Gilead on a packed flight and found herself clambering over passengers f...

Soldier Preachers, late-life love and Soapy the cat in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gilead, from 2004, by the American writer Marilynne Robinson, is a smash-hit novel about Calvinism, three generations of Congregationalist minister an...

Jane Austen goes to the dark side: social turmoil and scandalous texting in Sense and Sensibility

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you think Jane Austen is light and bright and sparkling, think again. In Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, Jane goes to the dark si...

Cannes, a white mess jacket, and the pure joy of P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves"

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Right Ho, Jeeves was the 34th novel by the British writer PG Wodehouse, written when he was - struggling writers take note - 52 years old. But you wou...

The Craft of Writing, the Booker Prize from Australia: Charlotte Wood on My Name is Lucy Barton

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton is a much-loved and perennially-read novel that has caught the attention of literally millions of readers ...

Literature's great parties: launch 2025 in style with Lady Macbeth, Count Dracula and the Mad Hatter

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To round out 2024, SLoB is hosting the world’s shortest New Year’s Eve party, in which we rank literary history’s most under-the-radar ragers. C...

Did Dickens Change the Face of Christmas Forever? Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the First Ever Turkey

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the “man who invented Christmas,” this is the ultimate Christmas fable. Everyone’s heard of Scrooge, and many could quote his “Bah! Humbu...

The Albatross Curse, Bad Weddings and Lots of Opium: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the name of a classic song by Iron Maiden AND a decent-ish poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s the latter that’...

Victorian dresses, teenage passions and fiction’s scariest picnic: Picnic at Hanging Rock

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sophie and Jonty find themselves a few sandwiches short of a picnic this week when they take on their first Australian classic book, the legendary “...

Please Sir, may we have some more? Oliver Twist, sex work and criminal underclasses in Victorian London

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Let’s Twist Again! Not the dance, of course, but Charles Dickens’ incendiary second novel, which he began writing at the tender age of 24. With Ol...