Byron’s early poems – his so-called ’dark tales’ – have been dismissed by critics as the tawdry, slapdash products of an uninteresting mind, and readers ever since have found it difficult not to see them in light of the poet’s dramatic and public later life. In a recent piece for the LRB, Clare Bucknell looked past the famous biography to observe the youthful Byron’s mind at work in poems such as The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814), where early versions of the Byronic hero were often characterised by passivity, rumination and choicelessness.

Clare discusses the piece with Tom, and talks about her new Close Readings series, On Satire, with Colin Burrow, which features Don Juan alongside works by Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, John Donne, Muriel Spark and others.

Read Clare's piece on Byron: https://lrb.me/byronpod

Join Clare and Colin Burrow for their series on satire next year, and receive all the books under discussion, access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, with Close Readings Plus: https://lrb.me/plusyt

To subscribe to the audio only, and access all our other Close Readings series:

Sign up directly in Apple here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

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In Renaissance Venice, Aldus Manutius turned his mid-life crisis into a publishing revolution, printing books that permanently changed the way we read. In a recent review, Erin Maglaque celebrates Aldus as the progenitor of the paperback and a model for late bloomers. She tells Tom about Aldus’s achievements, his monumental ego and his part in the creation of one of the most bizarre books in publishing history.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/manutiuspod

Subscribe to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus

Or just sign up to the Close Readings podcast subscription:

In Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/camusapple

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Feverish, homesick, bored, awed and on rollerskates: Albert Camus’s travel diaries are a fascinating window into an easily mythologised life. Camus visited the New World twice, and a new translation of his journals reveals his struggle to make sense of his experiences. Adam Shatz joins Tom to explain the ways Camus’s ambivalence towards the Americas sheds light on his tumultuous personal life, his conflicted stance on colonialism and where his humanism deviates from his existentialist peers.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/camuspod

If you want to join Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards on revolutionary thinkers next year, and receive all the books under discussion, access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, you can sign up to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus

Or just sign up to the Close Readings podcast subscription:

In Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/camusapple

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In June, the pope invited dozens of artists to Rome for the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Museum’s contemporary art collection. Patricia Lockwood, the author of Priestdaddy and a contributing editor at the LRB, was one of them. She tells Tom more about the surreal experience and why irony, in the words of Pope Francis, is ‘a marvellous virtue’.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/popepod

Read John Lanchester’s pick from the archive: lrb.me/lanchesterpick

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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George Orwell wasn’t afraid to speak against totalitarianism – but what was he for? Colin Burrow joins Tom to unpick the cultural conservatism and crackling violence underpinning Orwell’s writing, to reassess his vision of socialism and to figure out why teenagers love him so much.

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/orwellpod

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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For the final introduction to next year’s full Close Readings programme, Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, returns for a second season of Among the Ancients, to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with the LRB’s Thomas Jones, loosely themed around ‘truth and lies’ – from Aesop’s Fables to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

Authors covered: Hesiod, Aesop, Herodotus, Pindar, Plato, Lucian, Plautus, Terence, Lucan, Tacitus, Juvenal, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius.

First episode released on 24 January 2024, then on the 24th of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

Close Readings subscription

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Close Readings Plus

In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Emily, Tom and special guests including Amia Srinivasan; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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In the second of three introductions to our full Close Readings programme for 2024, Adam Shatz presents his series, Human Conditions, in which he’ll be talking separately to three guests – Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards – about some of the most revolutionary thought of the 20th century.

Judith, Pankaj and Brent will each discuss four texts over four episodes, as they uncover the inner life of the 20th century through works that have sought to find freedom in different ways and remake the world around them. They explore, among other things, the development of arguments against racism and colonialism, the experience of artistic expression in oppressive conditions and how language has been used in politically substantive ways.

Authors covered: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, V. S. Naipaul, Ashis Nandy, Doris Lessing, Nadezhda Mandelstam, W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, Amiri Baraka and Audre Lorde.

First episode released on 14 January 2024, then on the fourteenth of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

Close Readings subscription

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Close Readings Plus

In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Adam and his guests; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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

In the first of three introductions to our full 2024 Close Readings programme, starting in January, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell present their series, On Satire. Over twelve episodes, Colin and Clare will attempt to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in English literature, as they ask what satire is, what it’s for and why we seem to like it so much.

Authors covered: Erasmus, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Earl of Rochester, John Gay, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark.

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the LRB.

First episode released on 4 January 2024, then on the fourth of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

Close Readings subscription

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Close Readings Plus

In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Colin, Clare and special guests including Lucy Prebble and Katherine Rundell; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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

In the 1970s and '80s, thousands of haemophiliacs in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through blood products known to be contaminated. In a recent piece, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithewaite outlines the magnitude of the scandal, exacerbated by carelessness, corporate greed and, in one instance, deliberate human experimentation. She joins Malin to discuss the findings and what they mean for survivors. They are joined by Tom Crewe, who reckoned with the Aids crisis in his 2018 article ‘Here was a plague’.

Find Florence and Tom’s articles on the episode page: lrb.me/bloodinquirypod

Read Colm Tóibín's pick from the LRB archive: lrb.me/colmpod

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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When Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud last week, the only surprise was how quickly the jury reached their verdict. John Lanchester joins Tom to discuss how the former crypto billionaire ended up facing a life sentence, from his early career in finance and embrace of Effective Altruism to the simple but audacious nature of his crime, and why he found himself in a US court, even though US citizens were banned from using his trading company, FTX.

Read John Lanchester on Sam Bankman-Fried: lrb.me/sbfpod

Read Rosemary Hill's pick from the LRB archive: lrb.me/rosemarypod

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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