The Curiously Specific Book Club

By Lloyd Shepherd & Tim Wright

Forget Downton Abbey or The Crown, we use classic novels to guide you through the Britain of today and yesterday.

Every podcast, Lloyd & Tim – two funny boo

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4.2

55 ratings

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How many episodes does The Curiously Specific Book Club have?

The podcast currently has 78 episodes available.

The Curiously Specific Book Club episodes:

March 13, 2023 Dorothy L Sayers’s THE NINE TAILORS Part 2: inspecting drains and viewing sluices in the soggy Fens
In Part Two of our adventure in the Fens, we’re using a classic Lord Peter Wimsey novel to navigate our way around the fiendishly complex network of drains and sluices that prevent this part of the UK from being permanently underwater.

We visit the town of Ramsey – once an island – and take in the ancient Forty Foot Drain. We admire the great wonder of engineering that is the Denver Sluice, but fail to understand how it works. Instead, we repair to March for one final church visit.

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49min
March 06, 2023 Dorothy L Sayers’s THE NINE TAILORS Part 1: motoring across the Fens in search of bellringers
We’re taking a classic Lord Peter Wimsey murder mystery novel for a drive out onto the Great Level. We’re looking for the fictional village of Fenchurch St Paul, with its enormous church tower and gang of dedicated bell-ringers.

You’ll find us at Bluntisham, Upwell and Christchurch in Cambridgeshire, seeking out a suitable church, preferably with a host of wooden angels in the ceiling (as in the book). All this plus a potted history of bell-ringing - and a car crash too. Hell’s bells!
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44min
February 27, 2023 Agatha Christie’s THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD Part Two – a young writer’s imagination
For part two of our adventure with Agatha Christie’s sixth novel THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD we hunt out her sister’s home in Cheadle, the rather grand Abney Hall. Was it the model for Roger Ackroyd’s Fernly Park? Is there a pond and can you hear people talking from the path above it? And where might a doctor hide a murder suspect? We’ve got answers to all these questions, and if you’re a Christie fan you might be surprised at what we found – not least by our discovery of a book which claims that the biggest mystery of all is not revealed in the book. Whodunnit? Perhaps not who you think!
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47min
February 20, 2023 Agatha Christie’s THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD Part One – Poirot’s house and Poirot’s marrows
We’re taking the bestselling novelist in the world EVER out for a walk. In Agatha Christie’s sixth novel THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD her Belgian hero has retired (what?) to the town of King’s Abbot, near the fictional town of Cranchester. What can Christie have had in mind as the model for Poirot’s bolthole? We think we know, and we make the case that Hercule Poirot was growing marrows in the town of Cheadle in Cheshire. We even think we’ve found his house! But how can he have retired so early in Christie’s career?
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51min
February 13, 2023 Ben Aaronovitch‘s RIVERS OF LONDON Part 2: from Mister Punch at Covent Garden to Old Mother Thames at Wapping
In Part Two of our riverine excursion guided by the first book in Ben Aaronovitch’s cult series, we start away from the river at Covent Garden, where the hero of the novel – Peter Grant – meets his first ghost and performs a necromantic ritual. We hang out at the ‘Actor’s Church’ then go in search of a gastropub. We’re also on a quest to find the home of English magic – the Folly – in Russell Square – and also Mama Thames’s house in Wapping.
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50min
February 06, 2023 Ben Aaronovitch‘s RIVERS OF LONDON Part 1: following the Thames from source to outer London
We’re using the first novel in this cult series to navigate a route along the Thames tracking down various locations where detective Peter Grant encounters river nymphs, trolls and Old Father Thames. We start at the alleged source of the Thames, take in an ancient and important site at Runnymede, fail to swim in the Oxley River and end up at the Hammerton Ferry – an unusual place for fictional river spirits to decide to have a massive fight.
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50min
January 30, 2023 Peter Ackroyd’s HAWKSMOOR Part Two
In part two of our adventure with Peter Ackroyd’s HAWKSMOOR, we finish our circuit of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s churches, completing a sigil on the face of London which, according to Tim’s design, will force Lloyd to reveal his real Satanic nature. We also discover the likely location for the fictional church of St Hugh’s, which now holds the dark evils of high international finance. We discuss Iain Sinclair and psychogeography, and the history of Satanism. We finish at St Alfege’s in Greenwich, where a black cat crosses our path and demons, disappointingly, fail to be summoned!
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57min
January 23, 2023 Peter Ackroyd’s HAWKSMOOR Part One
After NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman, we’re back with another book that manifests London in mysterious and unsettling ways. Peter Ackroyd’s HAWKSMOOR tells the tale of Nicholas Dyer, a fictional architect of the early 18th century who has been charged with building seven new churches but has his own sinister, not to say Satanic purposes. In Part One we begin at Scotland Yard in Whitehall, scene of Nicholas Dyer’s studio and the original home of the Metropolitan Police. From there we take in three of the real Nicholas Hawksmoor’s churches, while discussing the lives of Peter Ackroyd and Hawksmoor, as well as the quite extraordinarily bleak year of the book’s publication, 1985.
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49min
January 16, 2023 Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere Part Two: discovering an ancient wall in the Barbican, plus many other London underground secrets
In Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’, a key character – the Marquis de Carabas – lies dead atop London Wall. But where is London Wall? We not only find it, but we find a second bit of it, unknown to most people, in an underground car park. We have a grim talk about suicide and masonic murder at Blackfriars tube station, and then head back to Soho in search of the last portal mentioned in the book – a blank brick wall off Great Windmill Street.
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48min
January 09, 2023 Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere Part One: wandering across London – from Albert Bridge to Soho – in search of portals to the underworld
Neil Gaiman’s famous London fantasy novel provides us with an unusual route across London. We start at Albert Bridge, the supposed entrance to the mythical ‘Knight’s Bridge’. We grab a coffee at Harrods, home of a Neverwhere market. Tim surprises Lloyd with the Down Street underground station – and Tim surprises himself by discovering that his 1990s workplace was actually a portal to Neverwhere.
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50min

FAQs about The Curiously Specific Book Club:

How many episodes does The Curiously Specific Book Club have?

The podcast currently has 78 episodes available.

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The Curiously Specific Book Club

FAQs about The Curiously Specific Book Club:

How many episodes does The Curiously Specific Book Club have?

The Curiously Specific Book Club episodes:

FAQs about The Curiously Specific Book Club:

How many episodes does The Curiously Specific Book Club have?

More shows like The Curiously Specific Book Club

The Rest Is Politics