On the Road with Penguin Classics

By Penguin Random House UK

What's On the Road with Penguin Classics about?

On the Road with Penguin Classics is a podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author and editor Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in the company of a remarkable reader. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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On the Road with Penguin Classics episodes:

02.01.2024
William Blake's poetry with Philip Pullman
William Blake’s poetry and prose. We visit Sir Philip at home to discuss the poet who has ‘inspired and intoxicated’ him for the last sixty years. In Philip’s book-lined sitting room we discuss Blake’s most loved works: his Songs of...
01.25.2024
Giovanni’s Room with Caryl Phillips
James Baldwin in Paris. On the rain-soaked boulevards, the novelist Caryl Phillips discusses Baldwin's exquisite same-sex love story, drinking in the Cafe de Flore and exploring Saint Germain des Prés. Phillips, who knew James Baldwin, wrote the introduction to the...
01.18.2024
John Donne's poetry with Katherine Rundell
John Donne’s poetry and prose in London. The scholar and children’s author Katherine Rundell traces the life and paradoxical career of John Donne from the street where he was born, through the palaces and colleges where he worked to the cathedral where...
01.11.2024
We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Ruth Franklin
Shirley Jackson in North Bennington, Vermont. Award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin visits the small village of North Bennington, where Jackson lived for twenty years. We stand in the square where Jackson imagined 'The Lottery' and conjure the ghost of Merricat Blackwood as...
01.04.2024
Angela Carter's Fairy Tales with Marina Warner
Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. In Dame Marina Warner's magical home in North London, the historian and mythographer discusses Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose and their English translation by Angela Carter, as well as Carter’s own Bloody Chamber and Other Stories....
12.21.2023
A Christmas Carol with Simon Callow – Christmas Special 2023
Charles Dickens in London. For this festive Christmas Special, the actor and author Simon Callow joins Henry to summon the ghost of Ebeneezer Scrooge and follow him around the City of London, starting at Cornhill, taking in Leadenhall Market and...
12.14.2023
A Clockwork Orange with Jeff Noon and Andrew Biswell
Anthony Burgess in East Sussex. On the 30th anniversary of Burgess’s death, the science fiction author Jeff Noon and the biographer Andrew Biswell travel East Sussex with Henry, visiting the rented flat where Burgess began writing A Clockwork Orange, O my brothers, and the...
12.07.2023
Farewell, My Lovely with Dick Lochte
Raymond Chandler in Santa Monica. As well as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, we discuss Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler’s favourite of his own novels, as we walk the noir streets of ‘Bay City’ – or Santa Monica in...
11.30.2023
Frankenstein with Anil Seth and Fiona Sampson
Mary Shelley in Bath. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finished writing Frankenstein while lodging in Bath and attending lectures on electricity and galvanism. We visit the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the recently opened Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein with...
11.23.2023
Pride and Prejudice with Monica Ali
Jane Austen in Chawton. The novelist Monica Ali joins Henry to visit Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen wrote all of her novels – as well as nearby Chawton House, once owned by Austen’s brother Edward and now...
10.31.2023
The Haunting of Hill House with Ruth Franklin – Halloween Special 2023
Shirley Jackson in Bennington, Vermont. For this spooky Halloween special, award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin joins Henry to haunt the eery corridors of the derelict Everett Mansion, the house that may well have inspired the greatest ghost story ever written, The...
10.26.2023
Season 4 Trailer
On the Road with Penguin Classics is the literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author Henry Eliot travels to a different location to discuss a great work of literature with a different...
12.01.2022
Eliot's Book of Bookish Lists – Christmas Special 2022
In this bonus episode, Henry introduces Eliot's Book of Bookish Lists, the perfect stocking-filler for book-lovers. Who had birds called Death, Wigs and Spinach? How do you spell the noise of a door slamming? Whose working title was The Chronic Argonauts? In this...
11.03.2022
The Pilgrim’s Progress with Rachel Joyce
John Bunyan in Bedfordshire. The novelist Rachel Joyce joins Henry as they follow in the footsteps of Bunyan’s pilgrim Christian, as he walks from Bedford, or the City of Destruction, to London, the Celestial City. Along the way they visit...
10.27.2022
Season of Migration to the North with Leila Aboulela
Tayeb Salih in London. The novelist Leila Aboulela meets Henry in London to discuss Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, which was voted the most important Arab novel of the 20th century by the Arab Literary Academy in...
10.20.2022
The Book of Disquiet with Richard Zenith
Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon. The translator and biographer Richard Zenith meets Henry in Lisbon to sift the fragments of Fernando Pessoa’s extraordinary ‘non-book’, The Book of Disquiet. They visit the cafes where Pessoa liked to drink, they meet Clara Riso,...
10.13.2022
Maurice with Diarmuid Hester
E. M. Forster in Cambridge. The cultural historian Diarmuid Hester joins Henry to explore the streets and colleges of Cambridge before escaping to the greenwood to discuss Maurice by E. M. Forster, his novel of same-sex love that remained unpublished...
10.06.2022
The Hearing Trumpet with Joanna Moorhead
Leonora Carrington in the Ardèche. The journalist and biographer Joanna Moorhead joins Henry in the south of France to discuss her cousin, the surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington. They trace Carrington’s life story to Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, where she lived with...
09.29.2022
Confessions of an English Opium Eater with Will Self
Thomas de Quincey & William S. Burroughs in Soho. The novelist Will Self joins Henry in London to explore the opium dreams and heroin nightmares of Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater and William S. Burrough’s Junky....
09.15.2022
Season 3 Trailer
On the Road with Penguin Classics is the literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in the company of...
03.03.2022
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Chris Riddell
Lewis Carroll in Oxford. The illustrator and political cartoonist Chris Riddell wanders the streams and streets of Oxford with Henry, visiting the locations that inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. They meet Sophie Hiscock at the Story Museum...
02.24.2022
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Alan Taylor
Muriel Spark in Edinburgh. The journalist Alan Taylor joins the Brodie set on a walk around Edinburgh with Henry. They discuss The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, visiting the site of James Gillespie’s High School (Spark’s alma mater...
02.17.2022
Keats's poetry with Andrew Motion
John Keats in Hampstead. The poet and biographer Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, strolls around the village of Hampstead with Henry. They discuss the short life and luscious poetry of John Keats, walking on the Heath, visiting Leigh Hunt’s house in...
02.09.2022
The Blazing World with Michael Bravo
Margaret Cavendish beyond the North Pole. The polar researcher Dr Michael Bravo Joins Henry in Cambridge to discuss The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, the maverick Duchess of Newcastle. Blending fantasy, philosophy and seventeenth-century science, they visit the Polar Museum, the Whipple Museum...
02.02.2022
Ulysses with Anne Fogarty
James Joyce in Dublin. Professor Anne Fogarty joins Henry in Dublin to recreate a day in the life of Leopold Bloom. They discuss Ulysses by James Joyce and visit the Martello Tower where the novel opens, Eccles Street, Davy Byrnes...
01.27.2022
Nineteen Eighty-Four with Robert Icke
George Orwell in Airstrip One. The writer and director Robert Icke joins Henry to explore the real-world locations in London that inspired George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Together they tour the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Love and Room 101. Robert...
01.13.2022
Season 2 Trailer
On the Road with Penguin Classics is a literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in the company of...
03.04.2021
The Mill on the Floss with Louis de Bernières
George Eliot in Nuneaton. The novelist Louis de Bernières explores the landscape around Nuneaton in Warwickshire, the birthplace of Mary Ann Evans, or George Eliot. They discuss The Mill on the Floss, visiting the Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery and...
02.25.2021
The Lonely Londoners with Susheila Nasta
Sam Selvon in Bayswater. The author and editor Susheila Nasta, Selvon’s literary executor, coasts a lime around the Water with Henry. They discuss The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, visiting Bayswater, Hyde Park and Piccadilly Circus, and discussing the experience...
02.18.2021
Tristram Shandy with Frank Cottrell Boyce
Laurence Sterne in Coxwold. The screenwriter and children’s author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who wrote the screenplay for A Cock and Bull Story (the 2005 film adaptation of Tristram Shandy), digresses around the little village of Coxwold in North Yorkshire with...
02.11.2021
Mrs Dalloway with Alexandra Harris
Virginia Woolf in Westminster. The biographer Alexandra Harris, author of Romantic Moderns (2010), haunts the streets of Westminster with Henry. They discuss Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, tracing the course of the novel as it unfolds over a single day,...
02.04.2021
The Canterbury Tales with Patience Agbabi
Geoffrey Chaucer in Kent. The poet and performer Patience Agbabi, author of Telling Tales (2014), makes a pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury with Henry. They discuss The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer as they travel by train, stopping off at...
01.28.2021
The Woman in White with Olivia Vinall
Wilkie Collins in Cumbria. The actress Olivia Vinall, star of the 2018 BBC adaptation of The Woman in White, explores the Cumbrian coastline with Henry. They discuss Wilkie Collins’s novel and visit the Ship Hotel in Allonby, where Collins stayed...
01.14.2021
Trailer
On the Road with Penguin Classics is a new literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author and editor Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in...

What's On the Road with Penguin Classics about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

On the Road with Penguin Classics episodes:

William Blake's poetry with Philip Pullman

Giovanni’s Room with Caryl Phillips

John Donne's poetry with Katherine Rundell

We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Ruth Franklin

Angela Carter's Fairy Tales with Marina Warner

A Christmas Carol with Simon Callow – Christmas Special 2023

A Clockwork Orange with Jeff Noon and Andrew Biswell

Farewell, My Lovely with Dick Lochte

Frankenstein with Anil Seth and Fiona Sampson

Pride and Prejudice with Monica Ali

The Haunting of Hill House with Ruth Franklin – Halloween Special 2023

Season 4 Trailer

Eliot's Book of Bookish Lists – Christmas Special 2022

The Pilgrim’s Progress with Rachel Joyce

Season of Migration to the North with Leila Aboulela

The Book of Disquiet with Richard Zenith

Maurice with Diarmuid Hester

The Hearing Trumpet with Joanna Moorhead

Confessions of an English Opium Eater with Will Self

Season 3 Trailer

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Chris Riddell

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Alan Taylor

Keats's poetry with Andrew Motion

The Blazing World with Michael Bravo

Ulysses with Anne Fogarty

Nineteen Eighty-Four with Robert Icke

Season 2 Trailer

The Mill on the Floss with Louis de Bernières

The Lonely Londoners with Susheila Nasta

Tristram Shandy with Frank Cottrell Boyce

Mrs Dalloway with Alexandra Harris

The Canterbury Tales with Patience Agbabi

The Woman in White with Olivia Vinall

Trailer