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Book In

Rupert Fordham and Charlie Fordham

Brothers Rupert and Charlie Fordham discuss all things English Literature. From Chaucer to the present day, covering drama, novels and poetry, they cover all the classics and much more, from the UK, Ireland, the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Informative but lighthearted, Book In is suitable for all readers, and will be helpful for students from school to degree level.

Both Rupert and Charlie have been keen readers all their lives and both studied English at university. For many years Charlie taught English at GCSE and A-level.

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#69
Friday · 1 hr 9 min
The Tempest - William Shakespeare
The Tempest is Shakespeare's last play, and many have seen its central character, Prospero, as representing Shakespeare himself, preparing for his departure from the stage. But the truth is more complex and nuanced; Prospero is indeed a visionary and powerful figure, manipulating the fates of the characters who have been shipwrecked on his island. But he is also tetchy, angry, petty, vindictive and cruel. He assembles all his enemies on the island and forces them to confront their treachery; they are forgiven, and Prospero gives up his magic powers to return to the real world. The character of Caliban has given rise to centuries of debate about slavery, freedom, colonialism and appropriation. And in The Tempest we find some of the very greatest of Shakespearean speeches and language. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at one of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays.
#68
October 16 · 1 hr 4 min
The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare
When Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale, he was an older, though not old, man. It was one of what are often called his late plays, and along with The Tempest one of the two great plays he wrote at the end of his career. In these plays, he experimented with new forms of expression and genre. They seem to stretch traditional genres of tragedy or comedy, and develop a more transcendent sense of magic and mystery. At the end of The Winter’s Tale, the female courtier Paulina perhaps speaks for Shakespeare when she says, ‘It is required/You do awake your faith…’. The Winter’s Tale seems to draw on and reflect back on many of his previous tragedies, and indeed comedies, as it fuses comedy and tragedy into a new genre, romance. In this podcast we will discuss the shocking suddenness of Leontes’ jealousy. We spend time on the most famous stage direction not just in Shakespeare but surely in all of world literature. We’ll discuss how Time appears on stage, and with a snap of his fingers moves the action forward 16 years. We’ll try not to get too melancholy as we discuss the young lovers, and the beauty of Florizel’s declaration of love to Perdita, which is not a staple of weddings or Valentines but deserves to be. And we’ll explore the strangest aspect of all in this strange and wonderful play, the statue, and how it comes to life. Indeed, it is required you do awake your faith.
#67
October 9 · 55 min
Autumn Poems – Keats, MacNeice, Frost – with Pip Torrens and Andrew Crean reading
As the exceptional summer of 2026 fades into memory, we look at three autumn poems. John Keats’ To Autumn is the finest of his Odes and one of the greatest poems written in English. At the moment of fruition, decay begins; from the high point of life, comes death; and in that moment of equipoise there is an ecstasy as well as a melancholy at the passing of life and of beauty, beautifully captured in Pip Torrens’ wonderful, understated reading. Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal is a sprawling, journalistic account of the autumn of 1938, and he describes the changing of the seasons and the transience of his own emotional life and relationships, against the background of London as it comes to terms with the advent of war and the rise of Nazi Germany. Andrew Crean reads with clarity and sensitivity. And Robert Frost’s short verse Nothing Gold can Stay – just eight lines of three or four words each – is an extraordinarily powerful poem whose apparent simplicity is cratered by one devasting line. Join Rupert and Charlie – and their outstanding guest readers – as they look at these three seasonal poems.
#66
October 2 · 58 min
Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen
As Georgia Oakley's film of Sense and Sensibility is released, Book In looks at Jane Austen's novel. It was the first that she published, but already her genius for satire, social comedy and the extraordinarily subtle expression of human relationships is evident from the first page. Marianne has sensibility, and throws herself at life; unimpressed with the worthy but pedestrian Colonel Brandon, she is thrilled by the arrival of Willoughby, who leaves her house during a rainstorm "to make himself more interesting". Elinor has sense; she watches her sister fly too close to the sun, and is there for her when she falls, all the while quietly waiting for the shy but suitable Edward Ferrers to become available. The relationship between the two sisters is at the heart of the novel, and mirrors Jane's own relationship with Cassandra. Rupert and Charlie look at the book through the prism both of the current film and also Ang Lee's masterful 1995 version, with Emma Thompson's Oscar winning script.
#65
September 28 · 51 min
In conversation with Iain Dale - Have I Said Too Much?
Iain Dale is one of the country's leading broadcasters. His evening radio show on LBC attracts millions of listeners, and for 30 years he has been at the centre of British politics as a publisher, radio host, author, podcaster, bookshop owner, political candidate and TV pundit. He has interviewed everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Andy Burnham, and in his brilliant and highly entertaining autobiography "Have I Said Too Much?" (to which the answer is clearly "no"), he tells the story of his life and career. He talks about his childhood on a farm, his early political adventures at the University of East Anglia, and his progression through the ups and downs of the political world. In this special edition of Book In, Rupert interviews him about his autobiography. How does he see thefuture of broadcasting in this country, and what will be the role of the BBC? What makes a great radio presenter? What books would he take to a desert island? What kind of music does he like? And is AI music really worth listening to? Join us on Book In to hear Iain talk about his fascinating life.
#64
September 25 · 54 min
Re-Release - Philip Larkin Poems
We're swotting up for our next series this week, so sadly haven't had time to record a new episode. Instead, we're re-releasing one of our classics from the archive. Philip Larkin wrote some of the greatest poetry in English in the second half of the twentieth century. Brilliant, famous and successful, he chose to live as a librarian in Hull, largely avoiding the public gaze, and watching the world from the edge of England. His simple language and easily accessible work have made him hugely popular, and his ability to use everyday scenes and events to convey profound ideas and feelings on life, love and death are deeply moving, and achieved in part through superb poetic technique. And yet, while he had multiple relationships, he never really found love; in one of his poems, he says "Life is first boredom, then fear", and both feature heavily in his work. Complicated, irascible, misogynistic, borderline racist, increasingly reactionary as he grew older, he is not on the face of it sympathetic for a modern audience. So why does he remain as popular as ever? What were his attitudes to sex and to death? How does he achieve his technical mastery? And how does Charlie ruin for ever Rupert's love of one of his most celebrated poems?Join Book In to find out.
#63
September 18 · 1 hr 6 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
In the early 1960s, a group of old barges and minor naval craft have been converted to houseboats. They are falling apart and so are their owners. The boats creak, leak and occasionally sink, and the people who live on them struggle with life, relationships, money and mental health issues. Penelope Fitzgerald’s marvellous novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1979, describes lives lived on the edge, between water and land, marriage and separation, getting by and financial ruin, and life and death. London, too, is poised between the greyness and discomfort of the post-war period, and the explosion of life and energy in the 1960s. In only 180 pages, she creates a rich and varied cast of attractive and vulnerable women, hopeless husbands, small time crooks, male prostitutes and feral children. Damp is everywhere and disaster just around the corner, yet Fitzgerald’s novel contains warmth, humour and beauty; the elegiac paintings of the Thames by Whistler provide an atmospheric backdrop, with the spirit of Dante haunting the story. Fitzgerald herself had a husband who could not provide, and spent much of her own life in abject poverty, including a spell on a houseboat which sank, taking all her worldly possessions with it. She only came to writing in her sixties, and in this late period produced several novels which are as fine as anything written in the second half of the 20th century. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss one of the best, Offshore.
#62
September 11 · 55 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Possession - A.S. Byatt
A.S.Byatt wrote Possession as a completely self-indulgent project, with no thought of commercial or critical consequence. It sold millions and won the Booker Prize in 1990, introducing her to a mass audience and turning her into a literary superstar. It tells the story of a fictional Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash, who is mostly Browning with a dash of Tennyson; Ash falls in love and eventually has a child with another fictional minor Victorian poet, Christabel LaMotte. But their affair remains unknown to posterity until a young researcher in the 1980s discovers by chance some letters they had written to each other. He teams up with another academic, Maud Bailey, to find out what really happened, and like the Victorians, they too fall in love. Part detective story, part love story, part literary tour de force, Byatt herself composes the poetry through which Ash and LaMotte express their feelings for each other, and the letters they write. It is a brilliant, wordy, baggy, exciting, moving and above all literary book, covering Victorian sensibility, London in the mid 19th century, the absurdities of competitive academics in the modern age. Join Rupert and Charlie as they delve into this wonderful and heartwarming novel.
#61
September 4 · 1 hr 7 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur is set in India in 1857 during the Indian Rebellion (or what used to be known as the Indian Mutiny). The small British community are besieged by the rebellious Indians, and as food and medicine gradually run out, and casualties rise by the day, their instinctive recourse to the social and hierarchical structures by which they have lived their lives is tested to breaking point. Their leader is the Collector, an essentially good and thoughtful man, who tries to maintain discipline, ensure the defences are manned, and keep up morale by promising that relief is near at hand. But his belief in progess and the ability of science and technology to improve the human condition is shaken to the core. Based on letters written by people involved in the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, J. G. Farrell's brilliant novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1973, is thriller, satire, love story and history all at once - funny, informative and deeply moving. Farrell died young in a tragic drowning accident; another of his novels, Troubles about the British presence in Ireland, was awarded the Booker Prize for 1970 after his death. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at this often overlooked masterpiece, and place the story in the context of the rule of the British in India.
#60
August 28 · 1 hr 3 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 2
In the second part of the Book In episode on Midnight's Children, Charlie and Rupert look at the way Salman Rushdie places the novel in the context of the extraordinary political and social changes created by the birth of the Indian nation. How will India change after independence? How is Pakistan different? How did the dreams of independence give way to the chaos of Partition, the creation of Bangladesh and the nightmare of Emergency Rule under Indira Gandhi? Why is Rushdie so brilliant at writing about women? And how is the style like Dickens on acid? Join us as we conclude our discussion of Rushdie's masterpiece.
#59
August 21 · 1 hr 3 min
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 1
On the stroke of midnight of August 15th 1947, the nation of India became independent from Great Britain. Saleem Sinai, the central character of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, is born at exactly the same moment, and in this monumental book, Rushdie tells the story of Saleem's family background, his childhood and his early years as an adult. Saleem's story is also India's story, and it plays out against the background of the birth of this vast and teeming nation. The creation of Pakistan, the subsequent emergence of Bangladesh, the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the emergency rule of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s - all profoundly affect the lives of the central characters. Yet Rushdie's story is rooted in the family and friends of Saleem in all their generosity, pettiness, scatological excess, dishonesty, bravery and humour. The nature of India, the effect of British rule, love, adultery, materialism, spirituality, success and failure are all explored in a kaleidoscopic and often chaotic panorama which reflects the nature of India itself. Has independence been a success? What does Rushdie, a Muslim, feel about partition, the dominance of Hindus and the creation of Pakistan? What is magic realism? And why is there so much snot in the novel? Join Charlie and Rupert as they take on Rushdie's masterpiece, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
#58
August 14 · 41 min
In conversation with Jesse Norman - The Winding Stair
Jesse Norman joins Book In to talk about his brilliant novel The Winding Stair, about the rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke as they battled for power in the court of King James 1st. In this special edition of Book In, Jesse talks to Rupert about the novel – what inspired him and how he wrote it. Bacon was described by Thomas Jefferson as one of the three greatest men who had ever lived, and in his belief in the potential of the human mind and spirit to create a better society and a richer life for people, he was a prophet of the enlightenment. But for much of his career he was outwitted by Coke, frustrated in his ambition to attain an office from which he could create the institutions which would provide the modern and rounded education that he believed were necessary. Meanwhile Coke was the leading lawyer of his day, immersed in precedent, and prosecuting the greatest trials of the time, including the Gunpowder Plotters. And also present in the novel is the fascinating character of James 1st – perhaps the most intellectually accomplished monarch Britain has ever had, but also self-centred, suspicious, paranoid, indulgent of his favourites, and a passionate believer in the Divine Right of Kings. Join Rupert and Jesse as they discuss this extraordinary and formative period in British history, and what parallels there might be with politics today.
#57
August 7 · 54 min
The Odyssey - Film Review
Christopher Nolan’s film of The Odyssey has been the blockbuster cultural event of the summer. Within a few weeks of release, it has already grossed nearly $1bn, putting it on course to become one of the most successful movies of all time. But is the hype justified? Does it matter that while Homer’s hero was interested in glory and honour, Matt Damon’s Odysseus is a traumatised war veteran driven by grief at the loss of his men, and the damage and pain he has inflicted? Why is there so little sex in the movie? Is it too woke? Is it too long? What has happened to the Gods? And who dresses up as Batman? Join Rupert and Charlie as they review the film of the year.
#56
July 31 · 45 min
Early C20th Poets: W.B. Yeats - An Irish Airman, Rough Beasts and Golden Birds
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” – the famous lines from W.B Yeats’ visionary and apocalyptic poem The Second Coming are as resonant today as they were when he wrote them in the aftermath of the First World War, with Europe decimated economically, spiritually and culturally. He wrote that “The best lack all conviction, and the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, and as he grew older, his poetry articulated the worries and anxieties of the age. But he remained a private as well as a public artist, and in his later poems he explored the role of the artist in society, and confronted old age, illness and mortality in some of the greatest poems he ever wrote. But why did W.H.Auden call him silly? Was it OK that within the space of a few hours he proposed not only to Maud Gonne, but also her daughter? And what was automatic writing? Join Rupert and Charlie in the second part of the Book In episode on W.B.Yeats.
#55
July 24 · 45 min
Early C20th Poets: W. B. Yeats - Innisfree to Easter 1916
In the early 20th century, as the nation of Ireland emerged from the turmoil of centuries of struggle, oppression, poverty and famine, one figure above all others was both prophet and judge of the tumultuous process. In his early years, William Butler Yeats created a mythology of Ireland, and later, with poems like Easter 1916 and The Second Coming, he wrote of the ambiguity, the "terrible beauty", that was explicit in the uprisings and civil wars which preceded the creation of the Irish Free State. But he was not just a poet; with Maud Gonne, the actress and revolutionary with whom he fell hopelessly in love and who he compared to Helen of Troy, he became involved in the creation of an Irish Theatre, and in direct political action with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the forerunner of the IRA. On its creation, he became a public figure as a Senator in the Dail, and with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 became world famous. But he was a man of contradictions, a Republican who detested violence, a Protestant who supported Irish freedom, an intellectual who believed in magic. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at W B Yeats in a 2 part series.
#54
July 17 · 1 hr 3 min
Early C20th Poets: W.H. Auden
W H Auden wrote some of the most beautiful and complex poetry of the 20th century. Best known to modern audiences as the author of “Stop all the Clocks”, read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he grew up in Yorkshire and the Midlands, and his parents were a psychiatrist and a nurse; this provincial, professional background pervades his poetry with its images of industry and science. Like many of his generation, he was on the left and went to Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But when World War Two started, he left for America, from where he observed the carnage with a combination of detachment and guilt. Like his contemporaries Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and T.S Eliot, he converted to Christianity as an adult, and his later work is an extraordinary fusion of private love, public engagement and religious exploration. There are many recordings of him on TV chat shows in his later years, and his extraordinary,Rembrandtesque appearance and gravelly voice convey a public intellectual of a kind which no longer exists in the modern world. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore the poetry of this brilliant and underestimated poet.
#53
July 10 · 53 min
Early C20th Poets: T. S. Eliot - The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Marina
In the second episode on T.S.Eliot, Book In looks at the poems he wrote after The Wasteland, as he moved towards a conversion to Christianity. In the Hollow Men, he returns again to the desolation and spiritual emptiness of the West after the First World War, weaving together Dante, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the Gunpowder Plot amongst other themes. By the time he wrote Ash Wednesday three years later he had fully embraced the High Anglican church, and the poem tells of his need to renounce the pride and arrogance which he felt had characterised his behaviour in the past. The language in these poems is incantatory, chanting, rooted in the bible and the prayerbook. Marina is a beautiful meditation on sin, death and redemption, immersed in images of the sea and the coastal New England landscape of his youth. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore this critical phase of Eliot’s life, and the exquisite religious verse he produced, perhaps the finest in the English language sine the metaphysical poets of the 17th century.
#52
July 3 · 1 hr 4 min
Early C20th Poets: T. S. Eliot – Prufrock, Preludes and La Figlia Che Piange
The first poem that T.S.Eliot published, in 1915, was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and two years later, it was included as the title poem in a collection called Prufrock and Other Observations. It was a sensation; breaking dramatically with the gentle and conventional lyrics of the late Victorian and Edwardian poets of the time, many critics found it pretentious at best and incomprehensible at worst. One speculated that Eliot had thought "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." But Prufrock and the other poems in the collection marked a revolutionary break in literature, and heralded the arrival of modernism, with its representation of the fracturing of western society and the western mind in the wake of the First World War and the work of Freud and Jung as they explained the workings of human consciousness. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss these brilliant and groundbreaking poems, and how they are both an extraordinary break with the past, but also deeply rooted in western culture from Greek and Roman times onwards.
#51
June 26 · 1 hr 6 min
Early C20th Poets: Thomas Hardy
At the age of 55, and at the height of his fame, Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels and decided to devote the rest of his life to poetry. He was disillusioned with the commercial requirements of novel writing, and had been upset by the adverse reaction of some critics to Jude the Obscure. Many people believe that his poems are his greatest achievement, and he is in exalted company in being in the first rank of both poetry and novels or plays, along with Samuel Beckett, DH Lawrence and Shakespeare. Much of his poetry was inspired by his first wife Emma; the beautiful lyric When I Set Out for Lyonnesse was written after he first met her. Their marriage was unhappy, but when she died, Hardy was consumed with grief, and remorse at how badly he had treated her. The poems he wrote at this time are among the most beautiful in the English language. Join Rupert and Charlie as they take a look at some of Hardy’s poems.
#50
June 19 · 1 hr 2 min
Great Sporting Books
Sports Books: Open - Andre Agassi, Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby, Great Cricket Matches Book In take a look at three books on sport. Open is the autobiography of Andre Agassi: one of the greatest players of all time, Agassi was driven by his domineering father to hit 2,500 balls a day from the age of 5, and at 13 was sent to the Nick Bolliteri Tennis Academy in Florida, essentially a boot camp for teenage tennis prodigies. By 18, he was in the world’s top 10 and won three Grand Slams but the wheels came off in his mid 20s as his partying life caught up with him and he descended to 141 in the world. His subsequent comeback and further success is one of the great redemption stories in sport, and he tells the story in his compelling and brilliant book, Open. Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch was the book which charted, and perhaps partly caused, the transformation of football from the muddy pitches and hooligan supporters of the 1970s and 1980s to the cool, fashionable, sophisticated product it is today. Through accounts of specific matches involving his beloved Arsenal FC, Hornby charts his own childhood and adolescence and sets them in the context of the social and economic changes occurring in Britain at the time. Funny, wide ranging and a little bit nerdy, it is a brilliant account of growing up in the UK in the transformative years of the late 20th century. Cricket has produced some great literature over the years; Great Cricket Matches is a collection of accounts written by various writers and was given to Rupert as a child. He selects three pieces from it which he has always loved and shares them with Charlie and the Book In audience.

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