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 table. In real life, Austen woke before her family, played the piano and got the breakfast ready, before retreating to write for the rest of the morning. And in the novels this meal is no less foundational: it's when we get to see the characters as they really are, sometimes up and about for hours before downing a boiled egg and a piece of toast, barely managing to consume a thin piece of bread and butter, or shoveling up pork, eggs and coffee after a morning's ride. Breakfast is the least formal meal of the day, so we see lots of interactions that can't happen at dinner, lunch or supper, when servants are present. At all times, Austen pays meticulous attention to what gets eaten, how, and why, and of course what is revealed about all of her characters when they sit down to table.

Join us for a joyful romp through Austen's meals, in a studio recording of a session Sophie and Jonty presented at the Sorrento Writers Festival in April 2025, with the world-renowned Austen scholar Clara Tuite, whose "Thirty Great Myths About Jane Austen", co-authored with Sophie's Princeton colleague Claudia Johnson, is a must-read for any Janeite.

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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 writing life and glittering career as the cleverest man in Britain, after his string of smash hit plays, culminating in "The Importance of Being Earnest." Almost as the curtain went up on his masterpiece he filed a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Alfred Douglass, Wilde's lover. It was the beginning of a series of legal, emotional and financial disasters for Oscar Wilde, and led to the last of his great works: The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 

In previous episodes we looked at Wilde's break-out collection of fairy tales (the Happy Prince), a novel (Dorian Gray) and his greatest play. With The Ballad of Reading Gaol Wilde's career culminated, and ended, with a long poem. It tells the story of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, who murdered his girlfriend and was executed at Reading Gaol, where Wilde was also incarcerated, in July 1896. With "Reading Goal," Wilde's most distinctive literary device, the paradox, stops being a force of subversive delight, and becomes a grim, philosophical reflection on the impossibility of happiness. 

The poem was published in 1898 under the name C33, which was Wilde’s prison name. It seemed to herald a new beginning for Wilde - the work of a reflective, penitent and compassionate artist - but it was actually his swan song. He was unable to write anything else before his death at the age of 46 in 1900.

Works referred to in this episode:

Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” (1898) De profundis (pub. 1905)

John Betjeman, The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel (1937)

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

Anon. Newgate Calendar, or The Malefactors' Bloody Register, (1774)

Susan Fletcher, Twelve Months in an English Prison, (1883)

Marcus Clark, For the Term of His Natural Life, (1872)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798)

William Wordsworth, the “Lucy” poems (1798-1801)

Ballads by Keats, Byron and the Border poets (18C)

John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

John Milton, De doctrina christiana (written 17C, pub 1825) and the Divorce Tracts (1643-45)

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, Sexual Inversion (1896)

Edward Carpenter, “Civilization, Its Cause and Cure” and other essays (1889)

D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (1828)

E.M. Forster Maurice, (written 1913-14, pub. 1972)

Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin, Freedom Magazine (founded 1886)

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Published in 2018, Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played follows the experiences of renowned concert pianist Richard Evans from the moment he is diagnosed with a form of Motor Neurone Disease, or MND, to his death less than two years later. It is a confronting, blow-by-blow account of the physical deterioration caused by MND, but also a testament to humanity’s capacity for empathy, love and redemption. 

In this special episode, recorded in support of MotorOn (which raises funding for MND research), Jonty talks to Professor Dominic Rowe - director of the Macquarie University Centre for MND and one of the world’s leading experts in MND. 

When Every Note Played begins, Richard is recently divorced from his wife Karina, but neither have been able to move on from their anger and endless emotional ruminating. But when Richard is diagnosed, Karina becomes his primary carer. Over the last months of his life, they learn to forgive one another and move on - one towards death, the other towards creative rebirth. 

Every Note Played is the fifth novel by Lisa Genova, who made her debut with the bestselling Still Alice in 2007. Still Alice was adapted into a film, with Julianne Moore giving an Oscar winning performance in the title role as the 50 year old Alice who develops onset dementia. Richard Glatzer directed the film while suffering from advanced MND - and he died a few months after release. Inspired by Glatzer, and their friendship, Genova wrote Every Note Played.

Content warning: this episode is a frank conversation about a subject some may find disturbing.

For more information about MND, please go to: 

Macquarie Centre for MND Research - www.mndnsw.org.au - the site has links to info lines and information packs 

If you are interested in donating to MotorOn and supporting the work of the Macqueries Centre for MND Research, please go to www.motoron.org

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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 greatest piece of dramatic writing. The handbag, the cucumber sandwiches, the Bunburying and the first class ticket to Worthing all come together to create a timeless classic that has been rarely out of performance since its debut.

It was a smash-hit from the moment it opened, but even as the lights went up, Wilde was grabbing the spotlight in the press and the courts with his libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's young gay lover Bosie.

None of this is apparent on first viewing "Earnest," which seemingly refuses to be serious. It's a farce and a romance and a fairy tale -- but it's also a radical confession of homosexual attraction and a bitter satire on Victorian morality and domestic politics. It’s also a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience which was itself a parody of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement in England.

Content warning to listeners: reading this play – and possibly just listening to this episode - will cause you to irritate your family members by attempting aphoristic remarks and epigrammatic witticisms.

Books and writers mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, Vera, or, The Nihilists; Salome; The Importance of Being Earnest; Lady Windermere's Fan; A Woman of No Importance; The Ideal Husband.

Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."; "The Decay of Lying"; "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"; "The Critic as Artist"

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream; Much Ado About Nothing

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal; The Rivals

Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Henry Arthur Jones, The Silver King; Saints and Sinners

Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray

Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Emile Zola

Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; The Doll's House

George Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Pygmalion

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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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 in 2009, and it was an instant hit. She’s followed it with many more books on the habits of happiness, and she’s also co-host of a hit podcast Happier, which she hosts with her sister, the writer Elizabeth Craft.

Today we’re talking about Gretchen’s take on Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s only novel, which is packed with sometimes brilliant and sometimes merely glib aphorisms and witticisms. We talk about why pithy sayings are so appealing, whether they are ever really true, and why Wilde was so obsessed with this kind of writing. A companion episode to episode 63 on the book itself.

Mentioned on this episode:

Gretchen Rubin: The Happiness Project, Life in Five Senses, Happier and Home and Secrets of Adulthood.

Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft: Happier the podcast.

Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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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 “gross indecency” in 1895. The conceit of the story is famous – a portrait grows old and corrupt while its human subject remains eternally youthful. But who knows what really happens in this famous modern myth?

Sophie and Jonty talk about the influence of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Jonty throws around some exciting legal phrases like the Criminal Law Amendment Act. There’s plenty of discussion of Wilde’s personal obsession with home interiors, as well as a debate about why Wilde is so indebted to Dickens when he’s always going on about his contempt for matters of morality. Find out how a novel that is quintessentially about London is also about Wilde’s Irish identity, and what kind of wallpaper Oscar Wilde had in his student digs at Oxford. As the arch-aphorist and aesthetic rogue Henry Wotton would say, this podcast episode “has all the surprise of candour,” so find out what really happens in this legendary modern myth.

Books referenced or mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” and “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889)

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838)

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870); Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

H.G. Wells The Time Machine (1895) War of the Worlds (1898)

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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; she's a staff writer at the New Yorker, and still finds time to write some of the most renowned history books of the 21st Century, including the magisterial and monumental These Truths: A History of the United States, the brilliant Secret History of Wonder Woman and Sophie’s personal favourite, a history of King Phillip’s War and the origins of American identity.

For the first 100 days of the new US presidency, Jill Lepore turned to the classics-- the Penguin Little Black Classics to be exact. In these miniature volumes of great writing, Jill found the imaginative intelligence, resilience and sense of ordinary pleasures she needed to abide with what's going on across America -- and at Harvard specifically -- as a result of Trump's turbulent regime. Listen and learn how the classics reconnect us with deep truths that we might "hold to be self-evident," but which have so often been under threat across human history.

Books mentioned in this episode and published in Penguin Little Black Classics:

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (~1350)

"As Kingfishers Catch Fire," Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)

Anon. The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue (late 13C)

Wailing Ghosts, Pu Songling (c.1640)

"A Modest Proposal," Jonathan Swift (1727)

Tang Dynasty Poets (c8C)

"On the Beach at Night Alone," Walt Whitman (1856)

A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees, Kenko (13C)

"The Eve of St Agnes," John Keats (1819)

"Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls," Marco Polo (c1300)

"Caligula," Suetonius (121 CE)

"Olalla," Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)

"Trimalchio's Feast", Petronius (c.60 CE)

Inferno, Dante (14C)

"The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," Geoffrey Chaucer (c1390)

Essais, Michel de Montaigne (1580)

"The Beautifull Cassandra," Jane Austen (1788)

Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey

"The Maldive Shark," Herman Melville (1888)

Socrates’ Defence, Plato (399 BCE)

"Goblin Market," Christina Rossetti (1862)

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Few writers have blurred the boundaries between life and art quite so spectacularly as Oscar Wilde. In his writing, he challenged the moral standards of the time, advocated for Irish Nationalism and demanded tolerance of homosexuality. He wrote about decadence and the corruption of youth before going out in a fireball of scandal of his own making, his reputation shattered in the infamous trial that followed. 

So, was Oscar Wilde the great genius of his day or just a rather talented man with a knack for publicity? Was he a martyr in the history of gay activism, or just a self-absorbed pain in the arse? These are just some of the questions Sophie and Jonty are asking in the first of a four part series on Oscar Wilde. 

In this first episode, they look at his early years and how cultural and political movements of the time shaped his first great work - the seemingly timeless fairy-tales of The Happy Prince and Other Stories. Into these stories, Wilde condensed years of scholarship, literary criticism and the development of a personal aesthetic and philosophy. It is a short book and deceptively simple because these stories - like all the best fairytales - conceal deeper truths about human experience. Most importantly, through them Wilde found his voice as a writer, unleashing the extraordinary creative outpouring of the following ten years. 

Texts referred to: 

Oscar: A Life (2018) by Matthew Sturgis

Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll 

Children’s and Household Tales (1812) by the Brothers Grimm

Doctor Faustus (c.1594) Christopher Marlowe

Patience (1881) by Gilbert and Sullivan (extract from 1961 recording with John Reed) 

Study of the Greek Poets (1873) by JA Symonds 

Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) by Walter Pater

Social Life in Greece (1874) by John Pentland Mahaffy

David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens 

Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens

Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker 

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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 adaptation for television. Katherine talks about playing Lizzie Vereker, wife of the ghastly James Vereker, and the satisfaction she finds in her characters's affair with Freddie Jones; why Jilly Cooper is the Jane Austen of the modern age; and why champagne is more than an optional extra when it comes to sex on screen.

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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 in. It follows a wide cast of characters as they jostle for power, conduct affairs with one another’s spouses, eat terrible 1980s food and listen endlessly to Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red. 

Rivals was marketed as an airport book back in the day, but beneath the brash cover is a sophisticated story that draws in surprising ways from classic literature to create what is now considered to be a modern classic. 

Sophie and Jonty why they are so drawn to Rivals, what we can learn about the 1980s from reading it today, and the ways in which it engages with a wide range of literary influences, including Austen, Trollope and Yeats, but also Valley of the Dolls and the works of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele. 

BOOKS DISCUSSED/ALLUDED TO: 

Rivals (1988) by Jilly Cooper 

Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane Austen 

Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen 

The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) by WB Yeats 

A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975) by Anthony Powell

Barchester Towers (1857) by Anthony Trollope 

Possession (1990) by AS Byatt

Oscar and Lucinda (1988) by Peter Carey

Bilgewater (1977) by Jane Gardam 

Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot

Cocktail (1988) screenplay by Heywood Gould

Lady in Red (1986) by Chris de Burgh

Valley of the dolls (1966) by Jacqueline Susann

The Bitch (1979) by Jackie Collins 

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