The Curiously Specific Book Club

Lloyd and Tim take on the 'holy scripture' of spy novels, John Le Carré's classic tale of 1970s Cold War intrigue and betrayal; the book that established George Smiley as one of the all-time great fictional characters - 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author. For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Lamb's been banished. Where've they sent him? Somewhere awful? Bad as it gets. God, not Slough? Might as well be.' In the middle of the third Covid-19 lockdown, Lloyd and Tim get together virtually for a Zoom around London's Aldersgate Street and key points north and west of Slough House, the headquarters for Mick Herron's titular Slow Horses. They spy on Slough House itself, uncovering countless off-the-shelf companies which might be fronts for unseen agents, but probably aren't, not to mention watchful owls which might be hints of a conspiracy or might just be there to scare off the pigeons. Mick Herron's somewhat spooky prescience about the course of British politics over the last decade is put to the test, and hats are doffed. Finally, the inevitable argument about dating ensues, with a vicious disagreement over which particular England qualifying game the book is referring to, and an unwelcome reminder of the fleeting electoral successes of the British National Party. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author. For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘A plan to brain-wash the entire framework of the nation,' said Jean, over the coffee and croissants. ‘It's hardly credible.' After a long hiatus, Tim and Lloyd are back with the (unlucky-for-some) 13th Curiously Specific Book Club podcast. They start with something that comes easy to them both – a leisurely stroll around Soho. Who knew Len Deighton's classic 1962 spy novel The Ipcress File was the perfect excuse for a long lunch and a general loaf? Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author. For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

“It began that summer, a hot and sticky summer that made the air shimmer and the walls melt.”We're back in Brighton, for the third in our trilogy of books set in Southern England's biggest seaside resort. The book we're taking for a walk this time is a tale of bloody revenge set against a 1980s backdrop of shifting sexual politics and wrenching political change. Our guide is Bella, who woke up one morning and realised she'd had enough. She's the heroine of Helen Zahavi's controversial bestseller and literary tour de force Dirty Weekend - and its film adaptation, a curious affair brought to you by Michael Winner.Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

"To those whom God has forsaken, is given a gas-fire in Earl's Court” We're joined in this, the 11th Curiously Specific Book Club podcast, by Andy (@DulwichRaider) from Deserter, who is our natural go-to mate for summoning up the spirit of alcoholic drift and under-employment that permeates ‘Hangover Square' by Patrick Hamilton. We are forced to drink in all the pubs on or just off the Earl's Court Road, until we find the one that is mostly likely to be ‘The Black Hart', the drinking den around which much of the book's events revolve. We go to the exact point off the Cromwell Road where the author, Patrick Hamilton, was run over  - and also where Netta (the book's anti-heroine) resides. After one too many Gin & Frenches and much talk of fascism, Lloyd and Tim take off to Brighton in search of a theatre and golf course. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.” For the tenth instalment of the Curiously Specific Book Club podcast, we travel to the southern coast of England for Graham Greene's ‘Brighton Rock'. We discover the Brighton of the 1930s, a place of seedy glamour shoved up against repulsive poverty, a town of razor boys, prostitutes, gangsters and dodgy lawyers. We find the tunnel where Fred Hale is done in by Pinkie, Dallow and Cubitt, and take tea in the same cafe where the killers eat fish and chips and ponder their next move. We hunt for Snow's tea rooms, and ponder the meaning of good and evil in a Brighton shelter. Up on the hill above the Old Steyne we find the slums in which Pinkie and Rose spent their childhoods, and then we sit in the empty grandstand of Brighton racecourse, before following Pinkie's desperate tracks as he scrambles down into the outskirts of Brighton, pursued by Collini's razor boys. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Antiques and Women are my only interests. It sounds simple, but you just try putting them in the right order.” The third instalment of our East Anglian trilogy takes us to Essex. We immerse ourselves in the unreconstructed 1970s world of the UK's favourite antiques dealer-cum-private eye - Lovejoy. We use Books 1 and 3 in the series - ‘The Judas Pair' and ‘The Grail Tree' - to explore Colchester and its environs and track down key locations, such the main antiques arcade where Lovejoy spends a lot of his time, the White Hart pub where all his deals get done, and his cottage where a dramatic showdown takes place with a villain with a crossbow. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

“In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.” For the 8th 'CuSpec' Book Club podcast, and the second in our East Anglian trilogy, we're in Suffolk, following in the footsteps of German writer W.G. ‘Max' Sebald as he walked from the little town of Somerleyton to the bleak prospect of Orford Ness, taking in a spectacular sweep of European history (most of it awful) on the way. At the little railway station of Somerleyton, we start to suspect that all is not what it seems with Sebald's journey, as we uncover an egregious case of not being able to tell one's left from one's right. We also ponder whether Sebaldians have actually read this book in quite as close a way as we intend to. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

“At precisely one o'clock on the morning of Saturday 6 November 1943, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and Chief of State Police, received a simple message… The Eagle Has Landed.” We're in North Norfolk looking for the tiny village of Studley Constable, as described in Jack Higgins's classic WW2 thriller about the attempted kidnap of Winston Churchill by a small band of German paratroopers. On the marshes of Stiffkey, amongst the remains of gun emplacements, pillboxes, tank traps and POW camp huts, we find a perfect place for Germans to sneak in and sneak out of the country. We visit a lot of villages - with mills, churches, bridges and pubs - none of which quite match Studley Constable. But at Weybourne Camp we do find enough evidence of a visit by Churchill in 1943 to believe that Higgins was not entirely making this whole story up. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

We take you on a merry tour of the magical land of Peckham in South London, courtesy of Muriel Spark and her superb (and remarkably short) novel 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye'. We start at the address in Camberwell where Muriel Spark lived and wrote the book. We then follow a number of lost - or perhaps completely mythical - pathways down the old Surrey Canal, past a number of long-gone pubs in Peckham & Nunhead, before emerging on to the ancient Rye - where Boadicea may or may not have popped her clogs. Tim gets very excited about the number of pubs you get to visit by following this book - some of them still there and serving pints! Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lloyd and Tim sink into the murky and topographically challenging world of Joseph Conrad's imagined London, as described in the classic 1907 novel ‘The Secret Agent'. It's a world of foreign agents, mysterious assassinations, international tensions and (alleged) Russian intrigue - so nothing like the world today, right? Our route through London takes in foreign embassies in Knightsbridge, dodgy book shops in Soho, underground beer halls on the Strand, plus the wide green spaces of Greenwich Park. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lloyd and Tim discover the hidden landscapes at the heart of Susan Cooper's magnificent fantasy, The Dark Is Rising. We travel to deepest Buckinghamshire to find Cooper's fictional village of Huntercombe, and the home of her hero Will Stanton, seventh son of a seventh son. Lloyd gets obsessed with the dates of Britain's first motorway for reasons which will only become obvious if you listen, while Tim brings stories of the emerging counter-culture of the late 1960s. We look for Herne's Oak in Windsor Great Park, and go digging around in churchyards for Celtic crosses. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lloyd and Tim take to the open road - or rather the somewhat congested A20. We're following the route taken by James Bond in Ian Fleming's 'Moonraker', travelling (at about half Bond's speed) between central London and Kingsdown, the supposed location of the Moonraker rocket base. We speed our way to the precise locations of two major car crashes in the book, puzzle over Fleming's (and Bond's) obsession with the Ashford Bypass, and end up at Fleming's not-so-glamourous 1950s beach-side residence where Katherine Hepburn - among others - was known to enjoy a swim. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whenever we can, we're going to chat to someone who actually knows what they're talking about when it comes to the books we cover in the main podcast. This time, distinguished childrens book expert Julia Eccleshare agreed to talk to us about 'Stig of the Dump'. She covers a load of interesting topics including kids roaming free in the countryside, Stig's lack of a voice, the absence of parents and the general culture of kids literature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lloyd and Tim go in search of the famous dump. We're using Clive King's classic childrens book 'Stig of the Dump' to navigate our way around rural Kent, with its heady mix of travellers, standing stones and luxury golf courses. Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lloyd and Tim travel from Wapping to Rochester via Cobham Park using 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' by Charles Dickens as our guide (with some help from 'All The Devils Are Here' by David Seabrook). Our mission at the 'CuSpec' Book Club is to road test works of fiction that appear to be curiously specific about dates and locations. We go to the places mentioned and see if descriptions are accurate, journey times credible, dates and days all in order. Along the way, we learn things about the book and its author.For early access to ad-free episodes - and exclusive access to all our show notes, maps, photos and videos - please support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/curiouslyspecific. Get early access to new episodes and bonus content Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.