Podcasts about Maugham

Dave Maugham, on Pentecost Sunday, encourages us to hear what God is saying to us through the account of Jonah and the Whale.

How far will Maugham's obsession take him to create the "perfect" robot? August Derleth, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.   Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast, where an audiobook approach delivers an immersive experience in both familiar and new-to-you classic literature. I'm your host BJ Harrison.  I'm glad you could join us.   With the audiobook library card, you gain access to the entire Classic Tales Library that I've been working on for 19 years. Hundreds of titles, and thousands of hours of classic audiobooks in tons of genres. These are the same titles found on Audible, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, etc.. They already have thousands of five-star ratings. Many have won awards. And you can download all you want. No limits.   Stop counting credits, or waiting for Libby, and get your Audiobook Library Card for only $9.99 a month. It's the best deal on the internet. You're going to love it.   Go to audiobooklibrarycard.com and choose the plan that's right for you.   Today's story is from August Derleth, who was a writer and publisher. As a founding member of Arkham House, he was the first to publish the works of H.P. Lovecraft in book form. This story was written in 1953, and it still hits close to home. You'll see what I mean.   And now, "The Maugham Obsession", by August Derleth   Follow this link to get The Audiobook Library Card for a special price of $9.99/month   Follow this link and get Multiple Licenses for The Audiobook Library Card   Follow this link and watch the new video walkthrough using PocketBook.      Follow this link to subscribe to our YouTube Channel:       Follow this link to subscribe to the Arsène Lupin Podcast:     Follow this link to follow us on Instagram:     Follow this link to follow us on Facebook:  

Quintus Maugham built a machine meant to serve him perfectly, but each improvement left him more uneasy in his own home. When a robot begins answering commands in ways its inventor never intended, one man must decide whether he created a servant—or surrendered something far more dangerous. The Maugham Obsession by August Derleth. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.August Derleth has appeared on the podcast twice before, first with “Birkett's Twelfth Corpse,” followed by “A Traveler in Time.”Today's story first appeared in the June-July issue of Fantastic Universe in 1953 on page 107, The Maugham Obsession by August Derleth…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, A desperate young executive discovers that his office safe has become a doorway to the future, and every exchange leaves him richer than before. But when impossible money starts circulating through New York banks, Peter Merton realizes the people on the other side may not care what happens to him once their experiment is finished. Peter Merton's Private Mint by Harlan Ellison.

Líkt og umsjónarmaður hafði áður lesið úr fyrstu smásögum Edgars Allans Poes og Antons Tsékovs er birtust á íslensku, þá leitar hann nú hófanna í smásagnasöfnum Williams Somersets Maughams (1874-1965) en hann var einhver vinsælasti rithöfundur heims á fyrri hluta 19. aldar og sérlega rómaður fyrir smásögur. Hér eru tvær sögur sem eru dæmigerðar fyrir Maugham, ein fislétt skemmtisaga og önnur sem getur nöturlega mynd af þjónum breska heimsveldisins.

Dave & Jess Maugham and family (Bristol, Monavale and Teddy) share their experiences while on the mission field in Mexico.

Listen to Cakes and Ale, one of W. Somerset Maugham's most beloved and subtly provocative novels. First published in 1930, this classic explores love, marriage, art, hypocrisy, and the cost of respectability in English society. Told with Maugham's trademark wit and clarity, the novel reflects on memory, morality, and the tension between social conformity and...

Daily Quote 三十年前的月亮早已沉了下去，三十年前的人也死了，然而三十年前的故事还没完——完不了。（张爱玲） Poem of the Day Pine Tree Tops Gary Snyder Beauty of Words Of Human Bondage W.S. Maugham

In this special episode (a listener-favourite from our BBN days), Josh newly presents his research on Sir Francis Walsingham. Dubbed "Spymaster to the Queen", popular history broadcasts Walsingham as a cut-throat playmaker and confidant in and around the court of Elizabeth I; this is a piece of the truth, sure, but there is so much more to the man than just a nifty label. Equally powerful in daylight as in the shadows, Walsingham weaponised political rhetoric and manipulated a staggering network of intelligence in the Tudor era. Long before Philby and Fleming, Maugham or Croft, there was Sir Francis Walsingham. Get your Magic Mind here!

Clare Carlisle's biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question, is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview Clare. We talked about George Eliot as a feminist, the imperfections of her “marriage” to George Henry Lewes, what she learned from Spinoza, having sympathy for Casaubon, contradictions in Eliot's narrative method, her use of negatives, psychoanalysis, Middlemarch, and more. We also talked about biographies of philosophers, Kierkegaard, and Somerset Maugham. I was especially pleased by Clare's answer about the reported decline in student attention spans. Overall I thought this was a great discussion. Many thanks to Clare! Full transcript below. Here is an extract from our discussion about Eliot's narrative ideas.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to Clare Carlisle, a philosopher at King's College London and a biographer. I am a big fan of George Eliot's Double Life: The Marriage Question. I've said the title backwards, but I'm sure you'll find the book either way. Clare, welcome.Clare Carlisle: Hi, Henry. Nice to be here.Henry: Is George Eliot a disappointing feminist?Clare: Obviously disappointment is relative to expectations, isn't it? It depends on what we expect of feminism, and in particular, a 19th-century woman. I personally don't find her a disappointing feminist. Other readers have done, and I can understand why that's the case for all sorts of reasons. She took on a male identity in order to be an artist, be a philosopher in a way that she thought was to her advantage, and she's sometimes been criticized for creating heroines who have quite a conventional sort of fulfillment. Not all of them, but Dorothea in Middlemarch, for example, at the end of the novel, we look back on her life as a wife and a mother with some sort of poignancy.Yes, she's been criticized for, in a way, giving her heroines and therefore offering other women a more conventional feminine ideal than the life she managed to create and carve out for herself as obviously a very remarkable thinker and artist. I also think you can read in the novels a really bracing critique of patriarchy, actually, and a very nuanced exploration of power dynamics between men and women, which isn't simplistic. Eliot is aware that women can oppress men, just as men can oppress women. Particularly in Middlemarch, actually, there's an exploration of marital violence that overcomes the more gendered portrayal of it, perhaps in Eliot's own earlier works where, in a couple of her earlier stories, she portrayed abused wives who were victims of their husband's betrayal, violence, and so on.Whereas in Middlemarch, it's interestingly, the women are as controlling, not necessarily in a nasty way, but just that that's the way human beings navigate their relations with each other. It seems to be part of what she's exploring in Middlemarch. No, I don't find her a disappointing feminist. We should be careful about the kind of expectations we, in the 21st century project onto Eliot.Henry: Was George Henry Lewes too controlling?Clare: I think one of the claims of this book is that there was more darkness in that relationship than has been acknowledged by other biographers, let's put it that way. When I set out to write the book, I'd read two or three other biographies of Eliot by this point. One thing that's really striking is this very wonderfully supportive husbands that, in the form of Lewes, George Eliot has, and a very cheerful account of that relationship and how marvelous he was. A real celebration of this relationship where the husband is, in many ways, putting his wife's career before his own, supporting her.Lewes acted as her agent, as her editor informally. He opened her mail for her. He really put himself at the service of her work in ways that are undoubtedly admirable. Actually, when I embarked on writing this book, I just accepted that narrative myself and was interested in this very positive portrayal of the relationship, found it attractive, as other writers have obviously done. Then, as I wrote the book, I was obviously reading more of the primary sources, the letters Eliot was writing and diary entries. I started to just have a bit of a feeling about this relationship, that it was light and dark, it wasn't just light.The ambiguity there was what really interested me, of, how do you draw the line between a husband or a wife who's protective, even sheltering the spouse from things that might upset them and supportive of their career and helpful in practical ways. How do you draw the line between that and someone who's being controlling? I think there were points where Lewes crossed that line. In a way, what's more interesting is, how do you draw that line. How do partners draw that line together? Not only how would we draw the line as spectators on that relationship, obviously only seeing glimpses of the inner life between the two people, but how do the partners themselves both draw those lines and then navigate them?Yes, I do suggest in the book that Lewes could be controlling and in ways that I think Eliot herself felt ambivalent about. I think she partly enjoyed that feeling of being protected. Actually, there was something about the conventional gendered roles of that, that made her feel more feminine and wifely and submissive, In a way, to some extent, I think she bought into that ideal, but also she felt its difficulties and its tensions. I also think for Lewes, this is a man who is himself conditioned by patriarchal norms with the expectation that the husband should be the successful one, the husband should be the provider, the one who's earning the money.He had to navigate a situation. That was the situation when they first got together. When they first got together, he was more successful writer. He was the man of the world who was supporting Eliot, who was more at the beginning of her career to some extent and helping her make connections. He had that role at the beginning. Then, within a few years, it had shifted and suddenly he had this celebrated best-selling novelist on his hands, which was, even though he supported her success, partly for his own financial interests, it wasn't necessarily what he'd bargained for when he got into the relationship.I think we can also see Lewes navigating the difficulties of that role, of being, to some extent, maybe even disempowered in that relationship and possibly reacting to that vulnerability with some controlling behavior. It's maybe something we also see in the Dorothea-Casaubon relationship where they get together. Not that I think that at all Casaubon was modeled on Lewes, not at all, but something of the dynamic there where they get together and the young woman is in awe of this learned man and she's quite subservient to him and looking up to him and wanting him to help her make her way in the world and teach her things.Then it turns out that his insecurity about his own work starts to come through. He reacts, and the marriage brings out his own insecurity about his work. Then he becomes quite controlling of Dorothea, perhaps again as a reaction to his own sense of vulnerability and insecurity. The point of my interpretation is not to portray Lewes as some villain, but rather to see these dynamics and as I say, ambivalences, ambiguities that play themselves out in couples, between couples.Henry: I came away from the book feeling like it was a great study of talent management in a way, and that the both of them were very lucky to find someone who was so well-matched to their particular sorts of talents. There are very few literary marriages where that is the case, or where that is successfully the case. The other one, the closest parallel I came up with was the Woolfs. Leonard is often said he's too controlling, which I find a very unsympathetic reading of a man who looked after a woman who nearly died. I think he was doing what he felt she required. In a way, I agree, Lewes clearly steps over the line several times. In a way, he was doing what she required to become George Eliot, as it were.Clare: Yes, absolutely.Henry: Which is quite remarkable in a way.Clare: Yes. I don't think Mary Ann Evans would have become George Eliot without that partnership with Lewes. I think that's quite clear. That's not because he did the work, but just that there was something about that, the partnership between them, that enabled that creativity…Henry: He knew all the people and he knew the literary society and all the editors, and therefore he knew how to take her into that world without it overwhelming her, giving her crippling headaches, sending her into a depression.Clare: Yes.Henry: In a way, I came away more impressed with them from the traditional, isn't it angelic and blah, blah, blah.Clare: Oh, that's good.Henry: What did George Eliot learn from Spinoza?Clare: I think she learned an awful lot from Spinoza. She translated Spinoza in the 1850s. She translated Spinoza's Ethics, which is Spinoza's philosophical masterpiece. That's really the last major project that Eliot did before she started to write fiction. It has, I think, quite an important place in her career. It's there at that pivotal point, just before she becomes an artist, as she puts it, as a fiction writer. Because she didn't just read The Ethics, but she translated it, she read it very, very closely, and I think was really quite deeply formed by a particular Spinozist ethical vision.Spinoza thinks that human beings are not self-sufficient. He puts that in very metaphysical terms. A more traditional philosophical view is to say that individual things are substances. I'm a substance, you're a substance. What it means to be a substance is to be self-sufficient, independent. For example, I would be a substance, but my feeling of happiness on this sunny morning would be a more accidental feature of my being.Henry: Sure.Clare: Something that depends on my substance, and then these other features come and go. They're passing, they're just modes of substance, like a passing mood or whatever, or some kind of characteristic I might have. That's the more traditional view, whereas Spinoza said that there's only one substance, and that's God or nature, which is just this infinite totality. We're all modes of that one substance. That means that we don't have ontological independence, self-sufficiency. We're more like a wave on the ocean that's passing through. One ethical consequence of that way of thinking is that we are interconnected.We're all interconnected. We're not substances that then become connected and related to other substances, rather we emerge as beings through this, our place in this wider whole. That interconnectedness of all things and the idea that individuals are really constituted by their relations is, I think, a Spinoza's insight that George Eliot drew on very deeply and dramatized in her fiction. I think it's there all through her fiction, but it becomes quite explicit in Middlemarch where she talks about, she has this master metaphor of the web.Henry: The web. Right.Clare: In Middlemarch, where everything is part of a web. You put pressure on a bit of it and something changes in another part of the web. That interconnectedness can be understood on multiple levels. Biologically, the idea that tissues are formed in this organic holistic way, rather than we're not composed of parts, like machines, but we're these organic holes. There's a biological idea of the web, which she explores. Also, the economic system of exchange that holds a community together. Then I suppose, perhaps most interestingly, the more emotional and moral features of the web, the way one person's life is bound up with and shaped by their encounters with all the other lives that it comes into contact with.In a way, it's a way of thinking that really, it questions any idea of self-sufficiency, but it also questions traditional ideas of what it is to be an individual. You could see a counterpart to this way of thinking in a prominent 19th-century view of history, which sees history as made by heroic men, basically. There's this book by Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, called The Heroic in History, or something like that.Henry: Sure. On heroes and the heroic, yes.Clare: Yes. That's a really great example of this way of thinking about history as made by heroes. Emerson wrote this book called Representative Men. These books were published, I think, in the early 1850s. Representative Men. Again, he identifies these certain men, these heroic figures, which represent history in a way. Then a final example of this is Auguste Comte's Positivist Calendar, which, he's a humanist, secularist thinker who wants to basically recreate culture and replace our calendar with this lunar calendar, which, anyway, it's a different calendar, has 13 months.Each month is named after a great man. There's Shakespeare, and there's Dante, and there's-- I don't know, I can't remember. Anyway, there's this parade of heroic men. Napoleon. Anyway, that's the view of history that Eliot grew up with. She was reading, she was really influenced by Carlisle and Emerson and Comte. In that landscape, she is creating this alternative Spinozist vision of what an exemplar can be like and who gets to be an exemplar. Dorothea was a really interesting exemplar because she's unhistoric. At the very end of Middlemarch, she describes Dorothea's unhistoric life that comes to rest in an unvisited tomb.She's obscure. She's not visible on the world stage. She's forgotten once she dies. She's obscure. She's ordinary. She's a provincial woman, upper middle-class provincial woman, who makes some bad choices. She has high ideals but ends up living a life that from the outside is not really an extraordinary life at all. Also, she is constituted by her relations with others in both directions. Her own life is really shaped by her milieu, by her relationships with the people. Also, at the end of the novel, Eliot leaves us with a vision of the way Dorothea's life has touched other lives and in ways that can't be calculated, can't really be recognized. Yet, she has these effects that are diffused.She uses this word, diffusion or diffuseness. The diffuseness of the effects of Dorothea's life, which seep into the world. Of course, she's a woman. She's not a great hero in this Carlyle or Emerson sense. In all these ways, I think this is a very different way of thinking about individuality, but also history and the way the world is made, that history and the world is made by, in this more Spinozist kind of way, rather than by these heroic representative men who stand on the world stage. That's not Spinoza's, that's Eliot's original thinking. She's taking a Spinozist ontology, a Spinozist metaphysics, but really she's creating her own vision with that, that's, of course, located in that 19th-century context.Henry: How sympathetic should we be to Mr. Casaubon?Clare: I feel very sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon because he is so vulnerable. He's a really very vulnerable person. Of course, in the novel, we are encouraged to look at it from Dorothea's point of view, and so when we look at it from Dorothea's point of view, Casaubon is a bad thing. The best way to think about it is the view of Dorothea's sister Celia, her younger sister, who is a very clear-eyed observer, who knows that Dorothea is making a terrible mistake in marrying this man. She's quite disdainful of Casaubon's, well, his unattractive looks.He's only about 40, but he's portrayed as this dried-up, pale-faced scholar, academic, who is incapable of genuine emotional connection with another person, which is quite tragic, really. The hints are that he's not able to have a sexual relationship. He's so buttoned up and repressed, in a way. When we look at it from Dorothea's perspective, we say, "No, he's terrible, he's bad for you, he's not going to be good for you," which of course is right. I think Eliot herself had a lot of sympathy for Casaubon. There's an anecdote which said that when someone asked who Casaubon was based on, she pointed to herself.I think she saw something of herself in him. On an emotional level, I think he's just a fascinating character, isn't he, in a way, from an aesthetic point of view? The point is not do we like Casaubon or do we not like him? I think we are encouraged to feel sympathy with him, even as, on the one, it's so clever because we're taken along, we're encouraged to feel as Celia feels, where we dislike him, we don't sympathize with him. Then Eliot is also showing us how that view is quite limited, I think, because we do occasionally see the world from Casaubon's point of view and see how fearful Casaubon is.Henry: She's also explicit and didactic about the need to sympathize with him, right? It's often in asides, but at one point, she gives over most of a chapter to saying, "Poor Mr. Casaubon. He didn't think he'd end up like this." Things have actually gone very badly for him as well.Clare: Yes, that's right. The didactic thing, George Eliot is sometimes criticized for this didacticism because what's most effective in the novel is not the narrator coming and telling us we should actually feel sorry for Casaubon and we should sympathize with him. We'd be better people if we sympathize with Casaubon. There's a moralizing lecture about, you should feel sympathy for this unlikable person. What is more effective is the subtle way she portrays this character and, as I say, lets us into his vulnerabilities in some obvious ways, as you say, by pointing things out, but also in some more subtle ways of drawing his character and hinting at, as I say, his vulnerabilities.Henry: Doesn't she know, though, that a lot of readers won't actually be very moved by the subtle things and that she does need to put in a lecture to say, "I should tell you that I am very personally sympathetic to Mr. Casaubon and that if you leave this novel hating him, that's not--"? Isn't that why she does it? Because she knows that a lot of readers will say, "I don't care. He's a baddie."Clare: Yes I don't know, that's a good question.Henry: I'm interested because, in The Natural History of German Life, she goes to all these efforts to say abstract arguments and philosophy and statistics and such, these things don't change the world. Stories change the world. A picture of life from a great artist. Then when she's doing her picture of life from a great artist she constantly butts in with her philosophical abstractions because it's, she can't quite trust that the reader will get it right as it were.Clare: Yes, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. You could say that or maybe does she have enough confidence in her ability to make us feel with these characters. That would be another way of looking at it. Whether her lack of confidence and lack of trust is in the reader or in her own power as an artist is probably an open question.Henry: There's a good book by Debra Gettelman about the way that novelists like Eliot knew what readers expected because they were all reading so many cheap romance novels and circulating library novels. There are a lot of negations and arguments with the reader to say, "I know what you want this story to do and I know how you want this character to turn out, but I'm not going to do that. You must go with me with what I'm doing.Clare: Yes. You mean this new book that's come out called Imagining Otherwise?Henry: That's right, yes.Clare: I've actually not read it yet, I've ordered it, but funnily enough, as you said at the beginning, I'm a philosopher so I'm not trained at all as a reader of literary texts or as a literary scholar by any means, and so I perhaps foolishly embarked on this book on George Eliot thinking, "Oh, next I'm going to write a book about George Eliot." Anyway, I ended up going to a couple of conferences on George Eliot, which was interestingly like stepping into a different world. The academic world of literary studies is really different from the world of academic philosophy, interestingly.It's run by women for a start. You go to a conference and it's very female-dominated. There's all these very eminent senior women or at least at this conference I went to there was these distinguished women who were running the show. Then there were a few men in that mix, which is the inverse of often what it can be like in a philosophy conference, which is still quite a male-dominated discipline. The etiquette is different. Philosophers like to criticize each other's arguments. That's the way we show love is to criticize and take down another philosopher's argument.Whereas the academics at this George Eliot conference were much more into acknowledging what they'd learned from other people's work and referencing. Anyway, it's really interestingly different. Debra Gettelman was at this conference.Henry: Oh, great.Clare: She had a book on Middlemarch. I think it was 2019 because it was the bicentenary of Eliot's birth, that's why there was this big conference. Debra, who I'd never met before or heard of, as I just didn't really know this world, gave this amazing talk on Middlemarch and on these negations in Middlemarch. It really influenced me, it really inspired me. The way she did these close readings of the sentences, this is what literary scholars are trained to do, but I haven't had that training and the close reading of the sentences, which didn't just yield interesting insights into the way George Eliot uses language but yielded this really interesting philosophical work where Eliot is using forms of the sentence to explore ontological questions about negation and possibility and modality.This was just so fascinating and really, it was a small paper in one of those parallel sessions. It wasn't one of the big presentations at the conference, but it was that talk that most inspired me at the conference. It's a lot of the insights that I got from Debra Gettelman I ended up drawing on in my own chapter on Middlemarch. I situated it a bit more in the history of philosophy and thinking about negation as a theme.Henry: This is where you link it to Hegel.Clare: Yes, to Hegel, exactly. I was so pleased to see that the book is out because I think I must have gone up to her after the talk and said, "Oh, it's really amazing." Was like, "Oh, thank you." I was like, "Is it published? Can I cite it?" She said, "No. I'm working on this project." It seemed like she felt like it was going to be a long time in the making. Then a few weeks ago, I saw a review of the book in the TLS. I thought, "Oh, amazing, the book is out. It just sounds brilliant." I can't wait to read that book. Yes, she talks about Eliot alongside, I think, Dickens and another.Henry: And Jane Austen.Clare: Jane Austen, amazing. Yes. I think it's to do with, as you say, writing in response to readerly expectation and forming readerly expectations. Partly thanks to Debra Gettelman, I can see how Eliot does that. It'd be really interesting to learn how she sees Jane Austen and Dickens also doing that.Henry: It's a brilliant book. You're in for a treat.Clare: Yes, I'm sure it is. That doesn't surprise me at all.Henry: Now, you say more than once in your book, that Eliot anticipates some of the insights of psychotherapy.Clare: Psychoanalysis.Henry: Yes. What do you think she would have made of Freud or of our general therapy culture? I think you're right, but she has very different aims and understandings of these things. What would she make of it now?Clare: It seems that Freud was probably influenced by Eliot. That's a historical question. He certainly read and admired Eliot. I suspect, yes, was influenced by some of her insights, which in turn, she's drawing on other stuff. What do you have in mind? Your question suggests that you think she might have disapproved of therapy culture.Henry: I think novelists in general are quite ambivalent about psychoanalysis and therapy. Yes.Clare: For what reason?Henry: If you read someone like Iris Murdoch, who's quite Eliotic in many ways, she would say, "Do these therapists ever actually help anyone?"Clare: Ah.Henry: A lot of her characters are sent on these slightly dizzying journeys. They're often given advice from therapists or priests or philosophers, and obviously, Murdoch Is a philosopher. The advice from the therapists and the philosophers always ends these characters up in appalling situations. It's art and literature. As you were saying before, a more diffusive understanding and a way of integrating yourself with other things rather than looking back into your head and dwelling on it.Clare: Of course. Yes.Henry: I see more continuity between Eliot and that kind of thinking. I wonder if you felt that the talking cure that you identified at the end of Middlemarch is quite sound common sense and no-nonsense. It's not lie on the couch and tell me how you feel, is it?Clare: I don't know. That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Another way to look at it would be to see Eliot and Freud is located in this broadly Socratic tradition of one, the idea that if you understand yourself better, then that is a route to a certain qualified kind of happiness or fulfillment or liberation. The best kind of human life there could be is one where we gain insight into our own natures. We bring to light what is hidden from us, whether those are desires that are hidden away in the shadows and they're actually motivating our behavior, but we don't realize it, and so we are therefore enslaved to them.That's a very old idea that you find in ancient philosophy. Then the question is, by what methods do we bring these things to light? Is it through Socratic questioning? Is it through art? Eliot's art is an art that I think encourages us to see ourselves in the characters. As we come to understand the characters, and in particular to go back to what I said before about Spinozism, to see their embeddedness and their interconnectedness in these wider webs, but also in a sense of that embeddedness in psychic forces that they're not fully aware of. Part of what you could argue is being exposed there, and this would be a Spinozist insight, is the delusion of free will.The idea that we act freely with these autonomous agents who have access to and control over our desires, and we pick the thing that's in our interest and we act on that. That's a view that I think Spinoza is very critical. He famously denies free will. He says we're determined, we just don't understand how we're determined. When we understand better how we're determined, then perhaps paradoxically we actually do become relatively empowered through our understanding. I think there's something of that in Eliot too, and arguably there's something of that in Freud as well. I know you weren't actually so much asking about Freud's theory and practice, and more about a therapy culture.Henry: All of it.Clare: You're also asking about that. As I say, the difference would be the method for accomplishing this process of a kind of enlightenment. Of course, Freud's techniques medicalizes that project basically. It's the patient and the doctor in dialogue, and depends a lot on the skills of the doctor, doesn't it? How successful, and who is also a human being, who is also another human being, who isn't of course outside of the web, but is themselves in it, and ideally has themselves already undergone this process of making themselves more transparent to their own understanding, but of course, is going to be liable to their own blind spots, and so on.Henry: Which of her novels do you love the most? Just on a personal level, it doesn't have to be which one you think is the most impressive or whatever.Clare: I'm trying to think how to answer that question. I was thinking if I had to reread one of them next week, which one would I choose? If I was going on holiday and I wanted a beach read for pure enjoyment, which of the novels would I pick up? Probably Middlemarch. I think it's probably the most enjoyable, the most fun to read of her novels, basically.Henry: Sure.Clare: There'd be other reasons for picking other books. I really think Daniel Deronda is amazing because of what she's trying to do in that book. Its ambition, it doesn't always succeed in giving us the reading experience that is the most enjoyable. In terms of just the staggering philosophical and artistic achievement, what she's attempting to do, and what she does to a large extent achieve in that book, I think is just incredible. As a friend of Eliot, I have a real love for Daniel Deronda because I just think that what an amazing thing she did in writing that book. Then I've got a soft spot for Silas Marner, which is short and sweet.Henry: I think I'd take The Mill on the Floss. That's my favorite.Clare: Oh, would you?Henry: I love that book.Clare: That also did pop into my mind as another contender. Yes, because it's so personal in a way, The Mill on the Floss. It's personal to her, it's also personal to me in that, it's the first book by Eliot I read because I studied it for A-Level. I remember thinking when we were at the beginning of that two-year period when I'd chosen my English literature A-Level and we got the list of texts we were going to read, I remember seeing The Mill on the Floss and thinking, "Oh God, that sounds so boring." The title, something about the title, it just sounded awful. I remember being a bit disappointed that it wasn't a Jane Austen or something more fun.I thought, "Oh, The Mill on the Floss." Then I don't have a very strong memory of the book, but I remember thinking, actually, it was better than I expected. I did think, actually, it wasn't as awful and boring as I thought it would be. It's a personal book to Eliot. I think that exploring the life of a mind of a young woman who has no access to proper education, very limited access to art and culture, she's stuck in this little village near a provincial town full of narrow-minded conservative people. That's Eliot's experience herself. It was a bit my experience, too, as, again, not that I even would have seen it this way at the time, but a girl with intellectual appetites and not finding those appetites very easily satisfied in, again, a provincial, ordinary family and the world and so on.Henry: What sort of reader were you at school?Clare: What sort of reader?Henry: Were you reading lots of Plato, lots of novels?Clare: No. I'm always really surprised when I meet people who say things like they were reading Kierkegaard and Plato when they were 15 or 16. No, not at all. No, I loved reading, so I just read lots and lots of novels. I loved Jane Eyre. That was probably one of the first proper novels, as with many people, that I remember reading that when I was about 12 and partly feeling quite proud of myself for having read this grown-up book, but also really loving the book. I reread that probably several times before I was 25. Jane Austen and just reading.Then also I used to go to the library, just completely gripped by some boredom and restlessness and finding something to read. I read a lot and scanning the shelves and picking things out. That way I read more contemporary fiction. Just things like, I don't know, Julian Barnes or, Armistead Maupin, or just finding stuff on the shelves of the library that looked interesting, or Anita Brookner or Somerset Maugham. I really love Somerset Maugham.Henry: Which ones do you like?Clare: I remember reading, I think I read The Razor's Edge first.Henry: That's a great book.Clare: Yes, and just knowing nothing about it, just picking it off the shelf and thinking, "Oh, this looks interesting." I've always liked a nice short, small paperback. That would always appeal. Then once I found a book I liked, I'd then obviously read other stuff by that writer. I then read, so The Razor's Edge and-- Oh, I can't remember.Henry: The Moon and Sixpence, maybe?Clare: Yes, The Moon and Sixpence, and-Henry: Painted Veils?Clare: -Human Bondage.Henry: Of Human Bondage, right.Clare: Human Bondage, which is, actually, he took the title from Spinoza's Ethics. That's the title. Cluelessly, as a teenager, I was like, "Ooh, this book is interesting." Actually, when I look back, I can see that those writers, like Maugham, for example, he was really interested in philosophy. He was really interested in art and philosophy, and travel, and culture, and religion, all the things I am actually interested in. I wouldn't have known that that was why I loved the book. I just liked the book and found it gripping. It spoke to me, and I wanted to just read more other stuff like that.I was the first person in my family to go to university, so we didn't have a lot of books in the house. We had one bookcase. There were a few decent things in there along with the Jeffrey Archers in there. I read everything on that bookshelf. I read the Jeffrey Archers, I read the True Crime, I read the In Cold Blood, just this somewhat random-- I think there was probably a couple of George Eliots on there. A few classics, I would, again, grip by boredom on a Sunday afternoon, just stare at this shelf and think, "Oh, is there anything?" Maybe I'll end up with a Thomas Hardy or something. It was quite limited. I didn't really know anything about philosophy. I didn't think of doing philosophy at university, for example. I actually decided to do history.I went to Cambridge to do history. Then, after a couple of weeks, just happened to meet someone who was doing philosophy. I was like, "Oh, that's what I want to do." I only recognized it when I saw it. I hadn't really seen it because I went to the local state school, it wasn't full of teachers who knew about philosophy and stuff like that.Henry: You graduated in theology and philosophy, is that right?Clare: Yes. Cambridge, the degrees are in two parts. I did Part 1, theology, and then I did Part 2, philosophy. I graduated in philosophy, but I studied theology in my first year at Cambridge.Henry: What are your favorite Victorian biographies?Clare: You mean biographies of Victorians?Henry: Of Victorians, by Victorians, whatever.Clare: I don't really read many biographies.Henry: Oh, really?Clare: [laughs] The first biography I wrote was a biography of Kierkegaard. I remember thinking, when I started to write the book, "I'd better read some biographies." I always tend to read fiction. I'm not a big reader of history, which is so ironic. I don't know what possessed me to go and study history at university. These are not books I read for pleasure. I suppose I am quite hedonistic in my choice of reading, I like to read for pleasure.Henry: Sure. Of course.Clare: I don't tend to read nonfiction. Obviously, I do sometimes read nonfiction for pleasure, but it's not the thing I'm most drawn to. Anyway. I remember asking my editor, I probably didn't mention that I didn't know very much about biography, but I did ask him to recommend some. I'd already got the book contract. I said, "What do you think is a really good biography that I should read?" He recommended, I think, who is it who wrote The Life of Gibbon? Really famous biography of Gibbon.Henry: I don't know.Clare: That one. I read it. It is really good. My mind is going blank. I read many biographies of George Eliot before I wrote mine.Henry: They're not all wonderful, are they?Clare: I really liked Catherine Hughes's book because it brought her down from her pedestal.Henry: Exactly. Yes.Clare: Talking about hedonism, I would read anything that Catherine Hughes writes just for enjoyment because she's such a good writer. She's a very intellectual woman, but she's also very entertaining. She writes to entertain, which I like and appreciate as a reader. There's a couple of big archival biographies of George Eliot by Gordon Haight and by Rosemary Ashton, for example, which are both just invaluable. One of the great things about that kind of book is that it frees you to write a different kind of biography that can be more interpretive and more selective. Once those kinds of books have been published, there's no point doing another one. You can do something more creative, potentially, or more partial.I really like Catherine Hughes's. She was good at seeing through Eliot sometimes, and making fun of her, even though it's still a very respectful book. There's also this brilliant book about Eliot by Rosemary Bodenheimer called The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans. It's a biographical book, but it's written through the letters. She sees Eliot's life through her letters. Again, it's really good at seeing through Eliot. What Eliot says is not always what she means. She can be quite defensive and boastful. These are things that really come out in her letters. Anyway, that's a brilliant book, which again, really helped me to read Eliot critically. Not unsympathetically, but critically, because I tend to fall in love with thinkers that I'm reading. I'm not instinctively critical. I want to just show how amazing they are, but of course, you also need to be critical. Those books were--Henry: Or realistic.Clare: Yes, realistic and just like, "This is a human being," and having a sense of humor about it as well. That's what's great about Catherine Hughes's book, is that she's got a really good sense of humor. That makes for a fun reading experience.Henry: Why do you think more philosophers don't write biographies? It's an unphilosophical activity, isn't it?Clare: That's a very interesting question. Just a week or so ago, I was talking to Clare Mac Cumhaill I'm not quite sure how you pronounce her name, but anyway, so there's--Henry: Oh, who did the four women in Oxford?Clare: Yes. Exactly.Henry: That was a great book.Clare: Yes. Clare MacCumhaill co-wrote this book with Rachael Wiseman. They're both philosophers. They wrote this group biography of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley. I happened to be having dinner with a group of philosophers and sitting opposite her. Had never met her before. It was just a delight to talk to another philosopher who'd written biography. We both felt that there was a real philosophical potential in biography, that thinking about a shape of a human life, what it is to know another person, the connection between a person's life and their philosophy. Even to put it that way implies that philosophy is something that isn't part of life, that you've got philosophy over here and you've got life over there. Then you think about the connection between them.That, when you think about it, is quite a questionable way of looking at philosophy as if it's somehow separate from life or detachment life. We had a really interesting conversation about this. There's Ray Monk's brilliant biography of Wittgenstein, The Duty of Genius. He's another philosopher who's written biography, and then went on to reflect, interestingly, on the relationship between philosophy and biography.I think on the one hand, I'd want to question the idea that biography and philosophy are two different things or that a person's life and their thought are two separate questions. On the other hand, we've got these two different literary forms. One of them is a narrative form of writing, and one of them- I don't know what the technical term for it would be- but a more systematic writing where with systematic writing, it's not pinned to a location or a time, and the structure of the text is conceptual rather than narrative. It's not ordered according to events and chronology, and things happening, you've just got a more analytic style of writing.Those two styles of writing are very, very different ways of writing. They're two different literary forms. Contemporary academic philosophers tend to write, almost always-- probably are pretty much forced to write in the systematic analytic style because as soon as you would write a narrative, the critique will be, "Well, that's not philosophy. That's history," or "That's biography," or, "That's anecdote." You might get little bits of narrative in some thought experiment, but by definition, the thought experiment is never pinned to a particular time, place, or context. "Let's imagine a man standing on a bridge. There's a fat man tied to the railway line [crosstalk]." Those are like little narratives, but they're not pinned. There is a sequencing, so I suppose they are narratives. Anyway, as you can tell, they're quite abstracted little narratives.That interests me. Why is it that narrative is seen as unphilosophical? Particularly when you think about the history of philosophy, and we think about Plato's dialogues, which tend to have a narrative form, and the philosophical conversation is often situated within a narrative. The Phaedo, for example, at the beginning of the book, Socrates is sitting in prison, and he's about to drink his poisoned hemlock. He's awaiting execution. His friends, students, and disciples are gathered around him. They're talking about death and how Socrates feels about dying. Then, at the end of the book, he dies, and his friends are upset about it.Think about, I know, Descartes' Meditations, where we begin in the philosopher's study, and he's describing--Henry: With the fire.Clare: He's by the fire, but he's also saying, "I've reached a point in my life where I thought, actually, it's time to question some assumptions." He's sitting by the fire, but he's also locating the scene in his own life trajectory. He's reached a certain point in life. Of course, that may be a rhetorical device. Some readers might want to say, "Well, that's mere ornamentation. We extract the arguments from that. That's where the philosophy is." I think it's interesting to think about why philosophers might choose narrative as a form.Spinoza, certainly not in the Ethics, which is about as un-narrative as you can get, but in some of his other, he experimented with an earlier version of the Ethics, which is actually like Descartes' meditation. He begins by saying, "After experience had taught me to question all the values I'd been taught to pursue, I started to wonder whether there was some other genuine good that was eternal," and so on. He then goes on to narrate his experiments with a different kind of life, giving up certain things and pursuing other things.Then you come to George Eliot. I think these are philosophical books.Henry: Yes.Clare: The challenge lies in saying, "Well, how are they philosophical?" Are they philosophical because there are certain ideas in the books that you could pick out and say, "Oh, here, she's critiquing utilitarianism. These are her claims." You can do that with Eliot's books. There are arguments embedded in the books. I wouldn't want to say that that's where their philosophical interest is exhausted by the fact that you can extract non-narrative arguments from them, but rather there's also something philosophical in her exploration of what a human life is like and how choices get made and how those choices, whether they're free or unfree, shape a life, shape other lives. What human happiness can we realistically hope for? What does a good life look like? What does a bad life look like? Why is the virtue of humility important?These are also, I think, philosophical themes that can perhaps only be treated in a long-form, i.e., in a narrative that doesn't just set a particular scene from a person's life, but that follows the trajectory of a life. That was a very long answer to your question.Henry: No, it was a good answer. I like it.Clare: Just to come back to what you said about biography. When I wrote my first biography on Kierkegaard, I really enjoyed working in this medium of narrative for the first time. I like writing. I'd enjoyed writing my earlier books which were in that more analytic conceptual style where the structure was determined by themes and by concepts rather than by any chronology. I happily worked in that way. I had to learn how to do it. I had to learn how to write. How do you write a narrative?To come back to the Metaphysical Animals, the group biography, writing a narrative about one person's life is complicated enough, but writing a narrative of four lives, it's a real-- from a technical point of view-- Even if you only have one life, lives are not linear. If you think about a particular period in your subject's life, people have lots of different things going on at once that have different timeframes. You're going through a certain period in your relationship, you're working on a book, someone close to you dies, you're reading Hegel. All that stuff is going on. The narrative is not going to be, "Well, on Tuesday this happened, and then on Wednesday--" You can't use pure chronology to structure a narrative. It's not just one thing following another.It's not like, "Well, first I'll talk about the relationship," which is an issue that was maybe stretching over a three-month period. Then in this one week, she was reading Hegel and making these notes that were really important. Then, in the background to this is Carlisle's view of history. You've got these different temporal periods that are all bearing on a single narrative. The challenge to create a narrative from all that, that's difficult, as any biographer knows. To do that with four subjects at once is-- Anyway, they did an amazing job in that book.Henry: It never gets boring, that book.Clare: No. I guess the problem with a biography is often you're stuck with this one person through the whole--Henry: I think the problem with a biography of philosophers is that it can get very boring. They kept the interest for four thinkers. I thought that was very impressive, really.Clare: Yes, absolutely. Yes. There's a really nice balance between the philosophy and the-- I like to hear about Philippa Foot's taste in cushions. Maybe some readers would say, "Oh, no, that's frivolous." It's not the view I would take. For me, it's those apparently frivolous details that really help you to connect with a person. They will deliver a sense of the person that nothing else will. There's no substitute for that.In my book about Kierkegaard, it was reviewed by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books. It was generally quite a positive review. He was a bit sneering about the fact that it had what he calls "domestic flourishes" in the book. I'd mentioned that Kierkegaard's favorite flower was the lily of the valley. He's like, "Huh." He saw these as frivolities, whereas for me, the fact that Kierkegaard had a favorite flower tells us something about the kind of man he was.Henry: Absolutely.Clare: Actually, his favorite flower had all sorts of symbolism attached to it, Kierkegaard, it had 10 different layers of meaning. It's never straightforward. There's interesting value judgments that get made. There's partly the view that anything biographical is not philosophical. It is in some way frivolous or incidental. That would be perhaps a very austere, purest philosophical on a certain conception of philosophy view.Then you might also have views about what is and isn't interesting, what is and isn't significant. Actually, that's a really interesting question. What is significant about a person's life, and what isn't? Actually, to come back to Eliot, that's a question she is, I think, absolutely preoccupied with, most of all in Middlemarch and in Daniel Deronda. This question about what is trivial and what is significant. Dorothea is frustrated because she feels that her life is trivial. She thinks that Casaubon is preoccupied with really significant questions, the key to all mythologies, and so on.Henry: [chuckles]Clare: There's really a deep irony there because that view of what's significant is really challenged in the novel. Casaubon's project comes to seem really futile, petty, and insignificant. In Daniel Deronda, you've got this amazing question where she shows her heroine, Gwendolyn, who's this selfish 20-year-old girl who's pursuing her own self-interest in a pretty narrow way, about flirting and thinking about her own romantic prospects.Henry: Her income.Clare: She's got this inner world, which is the average preoccupation of a silly 20-year-old girl.Henry: Yes. [laughs]Clare: Then Eliot's narrator asks, "Is there a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl who's preoccupied with how to make her own life pleasant?" The question she's asking is-- Well, I think she wants to tell us that slender thread of the girl's consciousness is part of the universe, basically. It's integral. It belongs to a great drama of the struggle between good and evil, which is this mythical, cosmic, religious, archetypal drama that gets played out on the scale of the universe, but also, in this silly girl's consciousness.I think she's got to a point where she was very explicitly thematizing that distinction between the significant and the insignificant and playing with that distinction. It comes back to Dorothea's unhistoric life. It's unhistoric, it's insignificant. Yet, by the end of Middlemarch, by the time we get to that description of Dorothea's unhistoric life, this life has become important to us. We care about Dorothea and how her life turned out. It has this grandeur to it that I think Eliot exposes. It's not the grandeur of historic importance, it's some other human grandeur that I think she wants to find in the silly girls as much as in the great men.Henry: I always find remarks like that quite extraordinary. One of the things I want a biography to tell me is, "How did they come to believe these things?" and, "How did they get the work done?" The flowers that he likes, that's part of that, right? It's like Bertrand Russell going off on his bicycle all the time. That's part of how it all happened. I remember Elizabeth Anscombe in the book about the four philosophers, this question of, "How does she do it all when she's got these six children?" There's this wonderful image of her standing in the doorway to her house smoking. The six children are tumbling around everywhere. The whole place is filthy. I think they don't own a Hoover or she doesn't use it. You just get this wonderful sense of, "This is how she gets it done."Clare: That's how you do it.Henry: Yes. The idea that this is some minor domestic trivial; no, this is very important to understanding Elizabeth Anscombe, right?Clare: Yes, of course.Henry: I want all of this.Clare: Yes. One of the things I really like about her is that she unashamedly brings that domesticity into her philosophical work. She'll use examples like, "I go to buy some potatoes from the grocer's." She'll use that example, whereas that's not the thing that-- Oxford dons don't need to buy any potatoes because they have these quasi-monastic lives where they get cooked for and cleaned for. I like the way she chooses those. Of course, she's not a housewife, but she chooses these housewifely examples to illustrate her philosophy.I don't know enough about Anscombe, but I can imagine that that's a deliberate choice. That's a choice she's making. There's so many different examples she could have thought of. She's choosing that example, which is an example, it shows a woman doing philosophy, basically. Of course, men can buy potatoes too, but in that culture, the buying of the potatoes would be the woman's work.Henry: Yes. She wasn't going to run into AJ Ayre at the grocer's.Clare: Probably not, no.Henry: No. Are you religious in any sense?Clare: I think I am in some sense. Yes, "religious," I think it's a really problematic concept. I've written a bit about this concept of religion and what it might mean. I wrote a book on Spinoza called Spinoza's Religion. Part of what I learned through writing the book was that in order to decide whether or not Spinoza was religious, we have to rethink the very concept of religion, or we have to see that that's what Spinoza was doing.I don't know. Some people are straightforwardly religious and I guess could answer that question, say, "Oh yes, I've always been a Christian," or whatever. My answer is a yes and no answer, where I didn't have a religious upbringing, and I don't have a strong religious affiliation. Sorry, I'm being very evasive.Henry: What do you think of the idea that we're about to live through or we are living through a religious revival? More people going to church, more young people interested in it. Do you see that, or do you think that's a blip?Clare: That's probably a question for the social scientists, isn't it? It just totally depends where you are and what community you're--Henry: Your students, you are not seeing students who are suddenly more religious?Clare: Well, no, but my students are students who've chosen to do philosophy. Some of them are religious and some of them are not. It will be too small a sample to be able to diagnose. I can say that my students are much more likely to be questioning. Many of them are questioning their gender, thinking about how to inhabit gender roles differently.That's something I perceive as a change from 20 years ago, just in the way that my students will dress and present themselves. That's a discernible difference. I can remark on that, but I can't remark on whether they're more religious.Just actually just been teaching a course on philosophy of religion at King's. Some students in the course of having discussions would mention that they were Muslim, Christian, or really into contemplative practices and meditation. Some of the students shared those interests. Others would say, "Oh, well, I'm an atheist, so this is--" There's just a range-Henry: A full range.Clare: -of different religious backgrounds and different interests. There's always been that range. I don't know whether there's an increased interest in religion among those students in particular, but I guess, yes, maybe on a national or global level, statistically-- I don't know. You tell me.Henry: What do you think about all these reports that undergraduates today-- "They have no attention span, they can't read a book, everything is TikTok," do you see this or are you just seeing like, "No, my students are fine actually. This is obviously happening somewhere else"?Clare: Again, it's difficult to say because I see them when they're in their classes, I see them in their seminars, I see them in the lectures. I don't know what their attention spans are like in their--Henry: Some of the other people I've interviewed will say things like, "I'll set reading, and they won't do it, even though it's just not very much reading,"-Clare: Oh, I see. Oh, yes.Henry: -or, "They're on the phone in the--" You know what I mean?Clare: Yes.Henry: The whole experience from 10, 20 years ago, these are just different.Clare: I'm also more distracted by my phone than I was 20 years ago. I didn't have a phone 20 years ago.Henry: Sure.Clare: Having a phone and being on the internet is constantly disrupting my reading and my writing. That's something that I think many of us battle with a bit. I'm sure most of us are addicted to our phones. I wouldn't draw a distinction between myself and my students in that respect. I've been really impressed by my students, pleasantly surprised by the fact they've done their reading because it can be difficult to do reading, I think.Henry: You're not one of these people who says, "Oh students today, it's really very different than it was 20 years ago. You can't get them to do anything. The whole thing is--" Some people are apocalyptic about-- Actually, you're saying no, your students are good?Clare: I like my students. Whether they do the reading or not, I'm not going to sit here and complain about them.Henry: No, sure, sure. I think that's good. What are you working on next?Clare: I've just written a book. It came out of a series of lectures I gave on life writing and philosophy, actually. Connected to what we were talking about earlier. Having written the biographies, I started to reflect a bit more on biography and how it may or may not be a philosophical enterprise, and questions about the shape of a life and what one life can transmit to another life. Something about the devotional labor of the biographer when you're living with this person and you're-- It's devotional, but it's also potentially exploitative because often you're using your subjects, of course, without their consent because they're dead. You're presenting their life to public view and you're selling books, so it's devotional and exploitative. I think that's an interesting pairing.Anyway, so I gave these lectures last year in St Andrews and they're going to be published in September.Henry: Great.Clare: I've finished those really.Henry: That's what's coming.Clare: That's what's coming. Then I've just been writing again about Kierkegaard, actually. I haven't really worked on Kierkegaard for quite a few years. As often happens with these things, I got invited to speak on Kierkegaard and death at a conference in New York in November. My initial thought was like, "Oh, I wish it was Spinoza, I don't want to--" I think I got to the point where I'd worked a lot on Kierkegaard and wanted to do other things. I was a bit like, "Oh, if only I was doing Spinoza, that would be more up my street." I wanted to go to the conference, so I said yes to this invitation. I was really glad I did because I went back and read what Kierkegaard has written about death, which is very interesting because Kierkegaard's this quintessentially death-fixated philosopher, that's his reputation. It's his reputation, he's really about death. His name means churchyard. He's doomy and gloomy. There's the caricature.Then, to actually look at what he says about death and how he approaches the subject, which I'd forgotten or hadn't even read closely in the first place, those particular texts. That turned out to be really interesting, so I'm writing-- It's not a book or anything, it's just an article.Henry: You're not going to do a George Eliot and produce a novel?Clare: No. I'm not a novelist or a writer of fiction. I don't think I have enough imagination to create characters. What I love about biography is that you get given the characters and you get given the plots. Then, of course, it is a creative task to then turn that into a narrative, as I said before. The kinds of biography I like to write are quite creative, they're not just purely about facts. I think facts can be quite boring. Well, they become interesting in the context of questions about meaning interpretations by themselves. Again, probably why I was right to give up on the history degree. For me, facts are not where my heart is.That amount of creativity I think suits me well, but to create a world as you do when you're a novelist and create characters and plots, and so, that doesn't come naturally to me. I guess I like thinking about philosophical questions through real-life stories. It's one way for philosophy to be connected to real life. Philosophy can also be connected to life through fiction, of course, but it's not my own thing. I like to read other people's fiction. I'm not so bothered about reading other biographies.Henry: No. No, no.[laughter]Clare: I'll write the biographies, and I'll read the fiction.Henry: That's probably the best way. Clare Carlisle, author of The Marriage Question, thank you very much.Clare: Oh, thanks, Henry. It's been very fun to talk to you.Henry: Yes. It was a real pleasure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

It's a simple idea with a long history: Woman is told her husband has perished at sea, so she remarries, then the original husband turns up alive and hijinks ensue! An old-timey excuse to show a throuple and a natural premise for comedy, this concept stayed resonant for many years and was remade a number of times – including as a classic screwball 1940 film, that was later itself in 1947 adapted into a hilarious and chaotic radio production starring Lucille Ball as the wife with Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra as the husbands. This week, we hear that radio production in full, and go on a deep dive beginning with a simple title which does not officially have an exclamation mark in it but absolutely should – Too Many Husbands! Referenced media: Black Mirror latest season (2025) Dale Beran - It Came from Something Awful (2019) Search Engine podcast episode, "What's actually on teenagers' phones?" (2025) Social Studies (TV documentary series, 2025) Erin in the Morning (Substack newsletter) A Minecraft Movie (2025) Prince - N.E.W.S. (2003) Origin of "Knock it into a cocked hat" from Wordhistories.net D.H. Lawrence - Samson and Delilah Caught in the Draft (1941) Paris Review on "Brownette" - "A Visit to the Max Factor Museum" by Sadie Stein (2014) "TOO MANY HUSBANDS" TIMELINE (incomplete... could be someone's PhD to work all this out, likely many strands missing) 1565 – Martin Guerre story published 1800s – Someone, somewhere, writes a story probably called “The Fisherman” about a fisherman who goes missing, is presumed dead, comes back and finds his wife has married. 1854 – Thomas Woolner is an English sculptor and poet visiting Australia, and while there he buys a lot of books. He then returns to England on board a ship called the Queen of the South and spends a lot of time reading. In one of those books he reads “The Fisherman”. We don't know what book it is or who wrote it. He later passes it on to his friend Lord Alfred Tennyson. 1864 – "Enoch Arden", poem by Lord Tennyson, based on “The Fisherman” 1911 – Too Many Husbands, play by Anthony E. Wills 1914 – Too Many Husbands, film based on Wills' play 1918 – Too Many Husbands, English film 1919 – Home and Beauty aka Too Many Husbands, play by Maugham 1938 – Too Many Husbands, British film 1940 – Too Many Husbands, American film based on 1919 play 1940 – My Favorite Wife, remake of 1940 film with genderflip 1947 – “Too Many Husbands” radio adaptation with Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope 1954 – “Too Many Husbands” episode of Rocky Fortune 1955 – Three for the Show, remake of 1940 film 1962 – Something's Got to Give, aborted Marilyn project, remake of My Favorite Wife 1963 – Move Over, Darling, made instead of above 2020 – “Too Many Husbands”, song by Coriky contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com website: suddenlypod.gay donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod

A shot rings out, waking the household. A man stumbles out the front door followed by a dowdy woman with a revolver who shoots him again and again. W. Somerset Maugham, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.   Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening.   If you'd like to ensure the future of The Classic Tales, please visit the website, classictalesaudiobooks.com, and either make a donation, buy an audiobook, or pick up one of our many support options.   And if you can't support us monetarily, leave us a review or share an episode with a friend. It all helps.   Today's story was originally written in 1922, appearing in a collection of stories that came from Maugham's travels in the Malay provinces. The racism in the story can be hard on the modern ear, but reflects the views of the time. Maugham uses racism as a literary device to fuel the tension in the story, to show the prejudices of the British toward the people they are exploiting. It also demonstrates how the native people in the region resent the British. So, if you're feeling a bit uncomfortable, it's by design.   This is one of Maugham's most famous short stories, and the 1940 Bette Davis film is an excellent adaptation.     And now, The Letter, by W. Somerset Maugham.       Follow this link to become a monthly supporter:     Follow this link to subscribe to our YouTube Channel:     Follow this link to subscribe to the Arsène Lupin Podcast:     Follow this link to follow us on Instagram:     Follow this link to follow us on Facebook:       Follow this link to follow us on TikTok:

A shot rings out, waking the household. A man stumbles out the front door followed by a dowdy woman with a revolver who shoots him again and again. W. Somerset Maugham, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.   Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening.   If you'd like to ensure the future of The Classic Tales, please visit the website, classictalesaudiobooks.com, and either make a donation, buy an audiobook, or pick up one of our many support options.   And if you can't support us monetarily, leave us a review or share an episode with a friend. It all helps.   Today's story was originally written in 1922, appearing in a collection of stories that came from Maugham's travels in the Malay provinces. The racism in the story can be hard on the modern ear, but reflects the views of the time. Maugham uses racism as a literary device to fuel the tension in the story, to show the prejudices of the British toward the people they are exploiting. It also demonstrates how the native people in the region resent the British. So, if you're feeling a bit uncomfortable, it's by design.   This is one of Maugham's most famous short stories, and the 1940 Bette Davis film is an excellent adaptation.     And now, The Letter, by W. Somerset Maugham.       Follow this link to become a monthly supporter:     Follow this link to subscribe to our YouTube Channel:     Follow this link to subscribe to the Arsène Lupin Podcast:     Follow this link to follow us on Instagram:     Follow this link to follow us on Facebook:       Follow this link to follow us on TikTok:

Throughout the first World War, acclaimed novelist W. Somerset Maugham worked for British Intelligence in Switzerland. Under cover as a writer, Maugham used his knowledge of travel, languages and culture to great effect, infiltrating high society and common folk alike in his job of greasing the wheels of espionage. A decade later, Maugham fictionalized his experiences in this book, a pseudo-autobiographical account of his time on the continent. Brimming with intrigue and colourful supporting characters, the linked stories of "Ashenden" are skillfully controlled narrative glimpses of war-time spycraft by a figure who's been there and done it. Fast Facts @ 2:00; Summaries @ 28:00; PIPES @ 1:35:00

Daily QuoteTo be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of Nature. (John Lubbock)Poem of the DayBeginningBy James WrightBeauty of WordsThe PhilosopherW.S. Maugham

Daily QuoteThe strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. (Rudyard Kipling)Poem of the Day关山月李白Beauty of WordsThe Philosopher (3)W.S. Maugham

The Founder and Director of the Good Law Project, Jo Maugham KC, on leveraging the law to craft the world you'd like to see. The law is a powerful means to effect positive social change but not everyone has access to it and the law isn't always used for good. In this episode we explore social impact through the lens of public interest litigation, and we cover a wide range of examples and thought-provoking arguments. The Good Law Project is a non-profit organisation but it is not a registered charity since, as Jo explains, the charity regulator can be politicised. Not being a registered charity affords the Good Law Project more freedom to leverage the law to drive social change. Likewise, the Good Law Project is crowd-funded by approximately 34,000 monthly donors and they are not beholden to any single major donor which, in turn, enables the Good Law Project to embrace whatever tone of voice they wish. This episode is thought-provoking and highly informative.   About Jo Maugham KC A tax barrister by trade, Jolyon Maugham KC founded Good Law Project in 2017 without a single big backer and no staff. It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing Boris Johnson's unlawful suspension of Parliament. Already the largest legal campaign group in the UK, Good Law Project is shining light into corners the establishment would rather keep dark - from the failures of Brexit to the still-developing PPE scandal, to the tax arrangements of business giants like Uber. With the increasingly important focus on the changing climate, Good Law Project has expanded its work into protecting the environment, both by highlighting those allowing the pollution of our river and seas, and those who are trying to prevent the government change in Net Zero policy, and being silenced as a result. From humble origins to a major legal force, Jolyon has become a key defender against government overreach.   Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 250+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. 

Daily QuoteI have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. (W.S. Maugham)Poem of the DaySeven Times Have I Despised My SoulKahlil GibranBeauty of Words泪与笑梁遇春

Cuốn tiểu thuyết kinh điển “Of Human Bondage” (bản dịch tiếng Việt là “Kiếp Người”) Đây là một tác phẩm bán tự truyện của nhà văn người Anh nổi tiếng William Somerset Maugham. Trước đó, mình đã giới thiệu cuốn sách "Mặt trăng và đồng sáu xu" của ông. Ý tưởng viết cuốn tiểu thuyết này được Maugham ấp ủ từ năm 23 tuổi và mãi đến năm 37 tuổi ông mới hoàn thành bản thảo. Ngay khi ra mắt, cuốn sách đã được ca ngợi là “tác phẩm thiên tài”, nhanh chóng trở thành một tác phẩm kinh điển và dịch ra nhiều thứ tiếng. Mời các bạn cùng lắng nghe chia sẻ ngày hôm nay! ------------------------- Nếu bạn muốn mua sách giấy để đọc, có thể ủng hộ Better Version bằng cách mua qua đường link này nhé, cám ơn các bạn! CUỐN SÁCH NÀY, BẢN DỊCH ĐÃ NGƯNG XUẤT BẢN THÌ PHẢI ❤️ Link tổng hợp các cuốn sách trong tất cả video: https://beacons.ai/betterversion.vn/books ❤️ ỦNG HỘ KÊNH TẠI: https://beacons.ai/betterversion.donate

Bombshell: FBI Authorized Deadly Force at Mar-a-Lago Raid. More exposure for the sickness of the Deep State. So utterly unacceptable. Host sounds off. DOJ attempts pathetic spin response, but conveys brittle vulnerability. They know how BAD they are, the bitter clingers never expected any of this to see the light of day. Jackboot Smith attempts another egregious Gag Order on Trump. Sampling the indispensable Julie Kelly. HRC flashback. Plus, the absurd illogic of plastic bag laws at grocery stores. Maugham's Ashenden. With Great Listener Calls.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daily QuoteCourage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment. (Napoleon Bonaparte)Beauty of WordsMr. Know-All (2)W.S. Maugham

Daily QuoteThe lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life. (Alexander Pope)Poem of the Day木兰花令•拟古决绝词纳兰性德Beauty of WordsMr. Know-All (1)W.S. Maugham

Dave & Jess Maugham and their three kids, Bristol, Monavale and Teddy explain what their mission is going to be for the next two years in Mexico, and how we can be a part of it.

fWotD Episode 2456: W. Somerset Maugham Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.The featured article for Thursday, 25 January 2024 is W. Somerset Maugham.William Somerset Maugham ( MAWM; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have been adapted for radio, cinema and television. His great popularity and prodigious sales provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to belittle him as merely competent. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage – a book with a large autobiographical element – as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard. Maugham's plain prose style became known for its lucidity, but his reliance on clichés attracted adverse critical comment.During the First World War Maugham worked for the British Secret Service, later drawing on his experiences for stories published in the 1920s. Although primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day. After a three-year affair with Syrie Wellcome which produced their daughter, Liza, they married in 1917. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. Together they made extended visits to Asia, the South Seas and other destinations; Maugham gathered material for his fiction wherever they went. They lived together in the French Riviera, where Maugham entertained lavishly. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for the rest of the author's life. Maugham gave up writing novels shortly after the Second World War, and his last years were marred by senility. He died at the age of 91.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:35 UTC on Thursday, 25 January 2024.For the full current version of the article, see W. Somerset Maugham on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Emma Standard.

Away from the snow, off to Monte Carlo: Somerset Maugham's "The Facts of Life."

Dave & Jess Maugham (and children) relate some of their experiences in Mexico and Dave speaks about different ways of decision-making.

  Jolyon Maugham has been called 'Public Enemy No. 1" by terrible right wing newspapers, attacked by Rishi Sunak and belittled with smears by the BBC.  And if that wasn't enough to make you love him, he also heads up an organisation that works for justice in our laws and legal system, challenging powerful elites and holding wealthy corporations and careless governments to account on behalf of ordinary people. Come to think of it, the smears on his name may have something to do with that. Jolyon joined us to talk about the most popular of the slurs he's faced and the story behind it, as well as his work with the Good Law Project, a not for profit campaign organisation that uses the law for a better world. Jolyon talks about the unhealthy closeness between the executive and the police, whether newspapers and government officials really care about free speech and how the law can be used to make the world a better place from gender based violence to tax law.  This interview was made possible by the lovely people at Greenbelt festival and you can hear Jolyon's talk at Greenbelt 2023 here for just three British pounds.  You can buy Jolyon Maugham's book, Bringing Down Goliath here and follow him on Twitter here.   You can find more about this episode at beerchristianity.co.uk New to Beer Christianity? Welcome! Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, post-post-post-evangelical (and apparently republican) podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining. Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Stitcher.  If you leave us a voicenote at speakpipe.com/beerchristianity we might air your question on an episode. Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters.  Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack.  There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious.  Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely.  We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

How many of us would have the courage to blow up our careers and get back onto the path we dreamed of in law school? Jolyon Maugham KC, founder and executive director of the Good Law Project, did just that.  Good Law Project (https://goodlawproject.org) is a publicly-funded not-for-profit organisation, based in the UK, that uses the law to campaign “for a better world”.  Jo speaks with host Becky Annison about his transition from successful tax lawyer to outspoken public interest advocate. They talk about the ethical obligations of lawyers in choosing their clients, Jo's motivations in writing his new book Bringing Down Goliath, and how the Good Law Project chooses its cases to achieve maximum impact. Find out more at tr.com/TheHearing

How many of us would have the courage to blow up our careers and get back onto the path we dreamed of in law school? Jolyon Maugham KC, founder and executive director of the Good Law Project, did just that.  Good Law Project (https://goodlawproject.org) is a publicly-funded not-for-profit organisation, based in the UK, that uses the law to campaign “for a better world”.  Jo speaks with host Becky Annison about his transition from successful tax lawyer to outspoken public interest advocate. They talk about the ethical obligations of lawyers in choosing their clients, Jo's motivations in writing his new book Bringing Down Goliath, and how the Good Law Project chooses its cases to achieve maximum impact. Find out more at tr.com/TheHearing

Tan Twan Eng, in some ways, has the perfect bibliography. He has written three books, all novels. All three have been on the short or long list for the Man Booker Prize. That should tell you how talented he is….and this is the first book he has published in more than a decade. The House of Doors is a lyrical and lovely read about the travels of William Somerset Maugham in Malaysia. Don't know Maugham's work? Doesn't matter. Don't know much about Malaysia? Doesn't matter. Tan Twan Eng's books transcend the familiar-getting to the humanity of every conflict, every story. This book transports readers….and its more than worth the price of the ticket. Books mentioned in this week's podcast: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng This is Happiness by Niall Williams The Letter by William Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham The Casuarina Tree by William Somerset Maugham Time for a Tiger by Anthony Burgess Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The English novelist, playwright, and short story writer Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) lived a life as eventful as his prodigious literary output. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Maugham's travels and travails, following Maugham across numerous continents as he sought material for his writing - and a safe resting place for himself and his various male companions. Then Jacke is joined by novelist Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain, The Garden of Evening Mists) to discuss his new novel The House of Doors, which is based in part on Maugham's experiences on the Malay Peninsula. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chapter 1 What's Of Human Bondage"Of Human Bondage" is a semi-autobiographical novel written by British author W. Somerset Maugham. It was published in 1915 and tells the story of Philip Carey, a young orphan with a clubfoot, who struggles to find his place in the world. The novel explores themes such as love, art, religion, and the human condition. It is considered one of Maugham's most important works and a classic of English literature.Chapter 2 Why is Of Human Bondage Worth ReadOf Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham is worth reading for several reasons:1. Profound exploration of human nature: The novel delves deep into the complexities and contradictions of human character and emotions. It provides a detailed examination of the protagonist's journey, and how he navigates through life, love, and personal growth.2. Rich character development: Maugham's vivid characterizations make the novel highly engaging. The protagonist, Philip Carey, undergoes significant growth and transformation throughout the story, compelling readers to empathize with his struggles, successes, and failures.3. Realistic portrayal of life: Of Human Bondage presents a realistic depiction of the challenges individuals face in life. It tackles themes such as unrequited love, sexual desire, existential questions, and social expectations, making it relatable and thought-provoking for readers across generations.4. Beautifully written prose: Maugham's exquisite writing style and evocative prose make the novel a pleasure to read. His descriptive language and storytelling abilities create a vivid and immersive world, bringing the characters and settings to life.5. Timeless themes: The novel explores timeless themes such as self-discovery, personal freedom, and the struggle between passion and reason. These themes continue to resonate with readers, making the book relevant and enduring.Overall, Of Human Bondage is a classic work of literature that offers profound insights into the human condition, with compelling characters and a beautifully crafted narrative. It is a book that can be enjoyed by readers of various backgrounds and interests.Chapter 3 Of Human Bondage SummaryOf Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham is a semi-autobiographical novel that follows the life of Philip Carey, a young English orphan. The novel explores themes of love, artistic pursuits, and the search for meaning and happiness in life.The story begins with young Philip being sent to live with his strict and unsympathetic uncle and aunt in Blackstable, a small town in England. Philip is born with a club foot, which becomes a source of insecurity and self-consciousness throughout his life.As he grows up, Philip becomes interested in art and desires to become a painter. However, his uncle believes that art is a frivolous pursuit and insists that Philip become a clergyman. Philip reluctantly agrees and enrolls in a theological college, though he quickly realizes that he lacks the passion and faith required for the profession.After leaving college, Philip moves to London to study art. It is here that he meets Mildred Rogers, a waitress with whom he becomes infatuated. Despite Mildred's manipulative and selfish nature, Philip becomes deeply attached to her and is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for her.Over the course of the novel, Philip's relationship with Mildred becomes increasingly toxic and destructive. He endures years of emotional abuse and humiliation as Mildred repeatedly rejects him and takes up with other men. Through this tumultuous relationship, Philip learns about the complexities of love and the limitations of his own desires.Throughout the novel, Philip also experiences a series of...

Der weitgereiste William Somerset Maugham, der auch als Drmatiker reüssierte, gehört zu den erfolgreichsten Vertretern des konservativen british empire Stils. Seine Romane, darunter "Lisa of Lambeth", "Des Menschen Hörigkeit" und der an Gauguin angelehnte "Silbermond und Kupfermünze" hinterfragen durchaus die britische Gesellschaftsordnung und mehr noch ihren Mangel an Lebenslust.

In PX103, our interview subject is Tim Jackson, a +40 year veteran of local government in Victoria and South Australia. Tim recently retired for a second time from the paid workforce after completing his four year role as the State Government appointed Administrator at the District of Council of Coober Pedy in South Australia in February. This was the first time an Administrator had been appointed to a South Australian Council in almost forty years. 

Prior to his first retirement, Tim was CEO of the City of Playford in South Australia for eighteen years. Playford was and is South Australia's fastest growing local government area. At the time of his departure, it was the eleventh fastest growing local government area in Australia. Prior to his time in South Australia, he was employed in Victoria by the City of Prahran which became the City of Stonnington after the reorganisation of local government in Victoria in the early 1990s.

Tim principal interest throughout his career has been about empowering citizens and employees. Tim has simultaneously performed many voluntary non executive roles in the for purpose sector. In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner, Tim recommends Utopia the TV series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series) and the biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, ‘Edmund Hillary – A Biography: The extraordinary life of the beekeeper who climbed Everest' by Michael Gill. Details on Hillary are found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary Jess recommends ‘Madoff - The Monster of Wall Street' on Netflix. Pete recommends the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham including ‘Far Eastern Tales' on Audible. Details of Maugham can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham. Audio production by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 24 March 2023. PlanningxChange is proud to be a member of the Urban Broadcast Collective.

In PX103, our interview subject is Tim Jackson, a +40 year veteran of local government in Victoria and South Australia. Tim recently retired for a second time from the paid workforce after completing his four year role as the State Government appointed Administrator at the District of Council of Coober Pedy in South Australia in February. This was the first time an Administrator had been appointed to a South Australian Council in almost forty years. 

Prior to his first retirement, Tim was CEO of the City of Playford in South Australia for eighteen years. Playford was and is South Australia's fastest growing local government area. At the time of his departure, it was the eleventh fastest growing local government area in Australia. Prior to his time in South Australia, he was employed in Victoria by the City of Prahran which became the City of Stonnington after the reorganisation of local government in Victoria in the early 1990s.

Tim principal interest throughout his career has been about empowering citizens and employees. Tim has simultaneously performed many voluntary non executive roles in the for purpose sector. In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner, Tim recommends Utopia the TV series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series) and the biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, ‘Edmund Hillary – A Biography: The extraordinary life of the beekeeper who climbed Everest' by Michael Gill. Details on Hillary are found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary Jess recommends ‘Madoff - The Monster of Wall Street' on Netflix. Pete recommends the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham including ‘Far Eastern Tales' on Audible. Details of Maugham can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham. Audio production by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 24 March 2023.

In PX103, our interview subject is Tim Jackson, a +40 year veteran of local government. Tim recently retired for a second time from the paid workforce after completing his four year role as the State Government appointed Administrator at the District of Council of Coober Pedy in South Australia in February. This was the first time an Administrator had been appointed to a South Australian Council in almost forty years. Prior to his first retirement, Tim was CEO of the City of Playford in South Australia for eighteen years. Playford was and is South Australia's fastest growing local government area. At the time of his departure, it was the eleventh fastest growing local government area in Australia. Prior to his time in South Australia, he was employed in Victoria by the City of Prahran which became the City of Stonnington after the reorganisation of local government in Victoria in the early 1990s. Tim principal interest throughout his career has been about empowering citizens and employees. Tim has simultaneously performed many voluntary non executive roles in the for purpose sector. In Podcast Extra / Culture Corner, Tim recommends Utopia the TV series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series) and the biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, ‘Edmund Hillary – A Biography: The extraordinary life of the beekeeper who climbed Everest' by Michael Gill. Details on Hillary are found at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary Jess recommends ‘Madoff - The Monster of Wall Street' on Netflix. Pete recommends the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham including ‘Far Eastern Tales' on Audible. Details of Maugham can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham. Audio production by Jack Bavage. Podcast released 24 March 2023. 

Daily Quote I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Poem of the Day My Song Rabindranath Tagore Beauty of Words The Social Sense W.S. Maugham

Sách ngoài mục đích giải trí, còn là phương tiện để con người trải nghiệm, nhìn ngắm một thế giới khác. Tiếp nối chủ đề “Sách dạy ta điều gì? “, anh Lê Hồng Lâm sẽ giới thiệu đến các bạn hai tác giả miền Nam trước 1975: Thu Giang Nguyễn Duy Cần và Nguyễn Hiến Lê.Nguyễn Duy Cần, còn có bút danh là Thu Giang. Độc giả mến mộ ông thường quen với cái tên rất dài Thu Giang Nguyễn Duy Cần. Ông là tác giả của những cuốn sách: Thuật xử thế của người xưa, Cái dũng của thánh nhân, Thuật yêu đương và Một nghệ thuật sống.Nguyễn Hiến Lê là một nhà văn, dịch giả, nhà nghiên cứu, nhà báo...; nhưng có lẽ chính xác nhất là học giả. Trong hơn 30 năm cầm bút chuyên nghiệp, Nguyễn Hiến Lê đã xuất bản hơn 120 đầu sách gồm: Chiến tranh và hòa bình của L. Tolstoi; Kiếp người của S. Maugham; Bộ Lịch sử Văn minh thế giới của Will Duran; Sử ký Tư Mã Thiên, Đại cương Triết học Trung Quốc; Kinh Dịch,…Mong rằng, thông qua 2 tập về chủ đề sách, thính giả sẽ có nhiều lựa chọn hơn để tìm và đọc.

Daily Quote Do you love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. (Benjamin Franklin) Poem of the Day A Minor Bird Robert Frost Beauty of Words On Reading W.S. Maugham

We talk about two short stories, one from W. Somerset Maugham and one from Scott Fitzgerald.

Vanessa Seward "Le guide de la gentlewoman" (JC Lattès 2022) Somerset Maugham « Mme la colonelle » ( Pavillons Poche. Robert Laffont  2010) Écriture, fragilité du pouvoir, tragédie de l'existence, haine des conventions sont quelques-uns des thèmes qui baignent ces nouvelles, et que Maugham décline dans un style à la fois incisif et empreint d'une grande tendresse. L'Angleterre, bien sûr, l'Europe, mais surtout les voyages et les colonies ont la part belle dans ce recueil, et sont évoqués au travers de portraits au scalpel de ceux qui ont fait le choix des îles. On découvre au fil de ces histoires la morale immoraliste de l'auteur, pour qui les mariages légitimes sont souvent boiteux, tandis que les couples socialement mal assemblés sont parfaitement heureux. Ainsi cette nouvelle "Jane" où une veuve vieillissante épouse, au grand dam de son milieu, un jeune homme de vingt-sept ans son cadet et qui se transforme grâce à son "look" lui brisera le coeur quand elle décidera de divorcer. Anticonformisme radical, insolence et légèreté. Il est question dans ce recueil de : "Mme la Colonelle", "Jane", "La force des choses", "Le savoir vivre", "l'élan créateur". Choix musicaux: Bertrand Burgalat "Paola" et Bryan Ferry  “You go to my head”  

Nothing got past the beady-eyes of the censors, who decided a book about literary celebrity was indecent. The vigilantes who policed the bookshops were equally sharp, initiating a prosecution when ‘Cakes and Ale' was on sale openly. It's subtitle was ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard' hinting that it is about a dirty shameful secret. It's a great tease isn't it – what is the skeleton and who's keeping the cupboard under lock and key?Apparently, Hugh Walpole recognised himself immediately in Alroy Kear. He sat up all night reading it, in tears, with one sock on.In August 1931, C. O'Keeffe a Cork bookseller, was summonsed for ‘exposing a prohibited book for sale'. Join me on Patreon for show notes and unexpurgated guest interviews: https://www.patreon.com/censoredpod I have stickers… https://censoredpod.bigcartel.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dave and Jess share about how God is leading them to the mission field in Mexico and challenge us to consider what is our mission field.

Also available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpeakingofShakespeare.[See SEGMENTS below] Thomas Dabbs speaks with Shoichiro Kawai of the University of Tokyo about his role as a director, playwright, translator, and scholar. Professor Kawai directs The Kawai Project, a multi-volume series that has staged productions of 'Much Ado about Nothing,'  'The Comedy of Errors,' and other Shakespearean plays and adaptations. Kawai has also adapted Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' for the Japanese stage and has produced a Beckett-esque drama drawing from Shakespeare and echoing Beckett entitled 'Waiting for Will.' LINKS:Kawai Project (in Japanese): https://www.kawaiproject.comSEGMENTS:00:00:00 - Intro00:02:08 - The Holy Trinity of being a Shakespearean00:02:40 - Kawai Project: Waiting for Will and Samuel Beckett, Jean Jean Theatre00:11:45 - Kawai Project: Translating ‘Waiting for Godot' and ‘Waiting for Will'00:14:13 - Kawai Project: Much Ado about Nothing': Immersive theatre00:15:05 - Kawai Project: Comedy of Errors' and ‘As You Like It'00:17:35 - Translating and writing plays in Japanese00:18:45 - Kawai's and translation theory: ‘To Be or Not To Be'00:35:20 - Shakespeare: ‘Master of the Theatre of Life' 00:40:30 - Cultural adaptation: Bunraku and (mostly) Kyōgen00:49:20 - Critical theory vs doing and mimicry00:52:16 - Coming work: Maugham, Poe, The Tempest, Henry IV00:56:40 - The need for more Shakespearean drama00:59:30 - Other Shakespearean activities in Japan, King Lear (again)01:01:03 - Young Kawai and turning to theatre and Shakespeare01:13:10 - Closing remarks, Hamlet is Fat

Associate Pastor Dave Maugham continues his series in Joshua with Part 4 - crossing the river.

Summary We're back with Season 4, Episode 1- The Freshmen! Cory and Laine talk about Maugham's book Of Human Bondage, our favorite Mandalorian Pedro Pascal, and take a nostalgic look back at our own high school experiences in the 90's. Thank you for listening to our discussion of Season 4, Episode 1: The Freshmen Listen … Continue reading Episode 64: The Freshmen →

W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel concerning an unfaithful wife whose husband takes her to China during a cholera epidemic was adapted into a 2006 movie starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. We contrast the surprisingly edgy and page-turner style of the book with its dreamy romantic representation in the movie. The book presents some themes about sexuality and feminism ignored by the movie while the movie is more cognizant of colonialism and the current events of the day. A fun episode if you're familiar with either the book or the movie, or both, or neither!Thoughts? Comments? Potshots? Contact the show at:https://www.discreetguide.com/Follow or like us on podomatic.com (it raises our visibility :)https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/deardiscreetguideSupport us on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/discreetguideFollow the host on Twitter:@DiscreetGuideThe host on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferkcrittenden/

Jolyon Maugham QC ... Was the prorogation of Parliament illegal? And is the Supreme Court set to find against the Boris Johnson administration? As the British executive faces off against the two other pillars of the liberal democratic system - Parliament and the Courts - hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams talk to one of the barristers at the centre of the case. Quite sensationally he says the government has failed to offer a defence in Court that its motives for prorogation were sound. He names two members of the government, which, it is said, according to a high level source, refused to sign pre-prepared affidavits from the government legal service. Maugham is confident that the Supreme Court will now find against the government. We apologise for the quality of some of the sound recording on this episode which was due to a technical fault.  

A class that spiraled outwards from a consideration of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale to Maugham's parable of the appointment in Samara to parables in general, including the strange parable of the talents in Matthew.  The ontology of things in the world and death as not a thing in the world (in Chaucer, in Maugham).  How treasure or gold is like death -- a catalyst, a vector, something not itself (a marker for a return to Aristotle tomorrow).

EPISODE #126-- This episode is a long time coming, but here we are. Caitlin Cutt/Lemaire of "White Wine, True Crime" joins James for a childhood favorite: Death Becomes Her. They talk about everything: Life, Death, Paris, and not this movie. It is also nine months old and exists in a world where Donald Trump is not the corrupt, impeachable mess that he exists as. Ugh. Anyways, follow James on Twitter @kislingwists and follow Caitlin @bossymatilda. You should also listen to her podcast White Wine, True Crime, which is available, um, everywhere. Please like, subscribe, and review. Tell a friend. War and enemy.