Close Readings

When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began settling across England in the wake of the Roman retreat in the early fifth century, the city they found on the north bank of the Thames was hardly a city at all. Within its walls were the great abandoned ruins of antiquity, ‘the works of giants’ as one Anglo-Saxon poet put it, and little else. For hundreds of years the site was patchily inhabited, but two features indicated its future importance. In 604, the first Bishop of London was appointed, leading to the continuous presence of Christianity and the founding of St Paul’s Cathedral; and down the river, the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Lundenwic near where Covent Garden is today confirmed the area’s prime position as a trading centre.

By the time Alfred repelled the Danes in the ninth century, London’s value had been realised, and the symbolic movement of the royal court from Winchester to Westminster under Edward the Confessor set London’s trajectory. In this episode, Rosemary is joined by Matthew Davies, professor of urban history at Birkbeck, to trace this story of London through the multiple invasions, grand projects and power struggles that took it from a field of ruins to a flourishing medieval capital.

Reading by Duncan Wilkins

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Further reading in the LRB:

Eamon Duffy on Westminster: https://lrb.me/lrep301

Ferdinand Mount on Henry III: https://lrb.me/lrep304

Tom Shippey on Alfred: https://lrb.me/lrep302

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the Strand: https://lrb.me/lrep303

Get in touch: [email protected]

When Milton came to describe Eve’s tasting of the forbidden fruit, he knew he couldn’t rely on suspense to grip the reader. Instead, he used multiple genres and perspectives to interrogate the moral and emotional significance of ‘man’s first disobedience’, self-consciously drawing on the resources of Renaissance tragedy, pastoral and love poetry to achieve his great innovation, the Christian epic. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at the ways in which Milton’s study of temptation and free will became an unparalleled expression of poetic brilliance, from its thrillingly ambiguous and seductive depiction of Satan to its vivid dramatisation of the reproachful lovers confronting the consequences of their misdeeds, and ultimately its claim to being the finest love poem in English.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp

Read more in the LRB:

Colin Burrow: Loving Milton https://lrb.me/npmilton01

Tom Paulin: Milton and the Regicides: https://lrb.me/mpmilton02

Tobias Gregory: Milton’s Theology: https://lrb.me/npmilton03

Get in touch: [email protected]

In Blue Machine (2024), Helen Czerski refigures the ocean as an enormous planetary engine, converting light and heat into motion. Her book invites us to see the ocean not as an ‘absence’ but an intricate series of operations that makes life as we know it possible.

In this episode, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith reflect on the ways Czerski’s book has altered their thinking about the ocean, and whether new perspectives can ever be enough to change public policy.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Get the book: https://lrb.me/czerskicr

More from the LRB:

Richard Hamblyn on deep-sea exploration:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/richard-hamblyn/hurrah-for-the-dredge

Katherine Rundell on the greenland shark:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/katherine-rundell/consider-the-greenland-shark

Liam Shaw on coral:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n22/liam-shaw/in-the-photic-zone

Amia Srinivasan reviews Peter’s book on octopus minds:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker

Film: Forecasting D-Day

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/lrb-films-interviews/forecasting-d-day

Next episode: ‘The Burning Earth’ by Sunil Amrith

https://lrb.me/amrithcr

Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella doesn’t contain the descriptive detail, impersonal narration or many other features of 19th-century realism established by Flaubert. The book’s two-part structure, which starts with a 40-year-old’s furious rant against rationalism and moves on to present three humiliating episodes from his earlier life, offers no kind of conclusion. Instead, it is the unbearable moments of psychological truth that make ‘Notes from Underground’ a revolutionary development in the history of realism.

In this episode, James Wood is joined by the novelist and critic Adam Thirlwell to consider Dostoevsky’s mastery of the inner life and the experiences that shaped his hostility to rational egoism, from being subjected to a mock execution and four years in a Siberian prison camp to his reading of Hegel and a visit to London’s Crystal Palace.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor

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Read more in the LRB on Dostoevsky:

John Bayley: https://lrb.me/realismep301

Daniel Soar: https://lrb.me/realismep302

Michael Wood: https://lrb.me/realismep303

After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophistication which saw the emergence of elaborate townhouses for its mercantile and administrative elite, richly embellished with mosaics and wall paintings. But the city had stopped growing, and when a devastating plague arrived in about 165 AD, which may well have been Europe’s first encounter with smallpox, it was probably already on a long slow decline caused by its diminishing importance as a trading hub.

To continue Roman London’s story to its eventual fate as an abandoned walled garden, Rosemary Hill is joined again by Dominic Perring, author of 'London in the Roman World', to consider what objects such as a Greek spell found on the Thames foreshore, and a small bronze archer found in Cheapside, can tell us about the fortunes of the city, and why the construction of the London Wall in the early third century marked a terminal transformation of its role in the Roman Empire.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignuplr

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignuplr