Best Jonty Claypole Podcasts (2025)

1
Free love in Paris, male wrestling and murder: Giovanni's Room 1:19:48

4h ago1:19:48

1:19:48

It's Black History Month and Sophie and Jonty are bringing their analytical chops once again to the giant of 20th-century literature, James Baldwin. In his debut novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Baldwin had captured the experience of growing up in 1930s Harlem. In his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, published in 1956, he focused instead on his exp…

1
BONUS: SLoB's Secret Crushes and Clandestine Encounters pt 1 49:20

4d ago49:20

49:20

It's Valentine's Day and love is quite literally in the air as the Secret Life of Books beams, via a complex network of satellites and data banks, to your ears. In this Bonus Episode, Sophie and Jonty reflect on what they've learnt about love from the classics, and rank the leading men and ladies of the books covered so far as lovers. St Valentine …

1
Shakespeare does 'Succession': Rory Stewart on King Lear 58:58

7d ago58:58

58:58

“Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” King Lear is the Mount Everest of Theatre - a sprawling masterpiece of political turmoil, personal betrayal, horrifying gore and great poetry. It makes ‘Succession’ look like The Midsomer Murders. Lear is the pagan king who decides to divides his kingdom between two daughters (and banishing a third), only to find…

1
Wizards, Hobbits and WWII: Dominic Sandbrook on The Lord of the Rings 1:18:47

14d ago1:18:47

1:18:47

One ring to rule them all One ring to… Yes, SLoB finally turns its Sauron-like eye on what is thought to be the second best-selling novel of all time (after Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities): Lord of the Rings. And who better to share this experience than Dominic Sandbrook, historian of the 20th Century, co-host of the Rest is History podcast, and Tolki…

1
Love and Beauty Bonus: Geraldine Brooks picks Gilead as the great modern classic 23:40

18d ago23:40

23:40

The Pulitzer Prize winner, fan-favorite Geraldine Brooks first read Gilead on a packed flight and found herself clambering over passengers for a Kleenex. Find out why Robinson’s quiet, meditative, multi-generational story remains a model and touchstone for one of the most admired and loved novelists writing today. Or, to echo Jonty’s effort to soun…

1
Soldier Preachers, late-life love and Soapy the cat in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead 1:04:55

21d ago1:04:55

1:04:55

Gilead, from 2004, by the American writer Marilynne Robinson, is a smash-hit novel about Calvinism, three generations of Congregationalist minister and a cat called Soapy. Unlikely trifecta through this is, Gilead is a gorgeous, life-affirming tale that has the distinction of being one of Barack Obama’s favorite books. The Gilead tetralogy - the fo…

1
Jane Austen goes to the dark side: social turmoil and scandalous texting in Sense and Sensibility 1:15:42

28d ago1:15:42

1:15:42

If you think Jane Austen is light and bright and sparkling, think again. In Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, Jane goes to the dark side. Listeners remembering Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet laughing prettily in pale dresses might be expecting a tale of sisterly affection and romantic walks, while Hugh Grant stammers and charms his …

1
Cannes, a white mess jacket, and the pure joy of P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves" 1:16:20

1M ago1:16:20

1:16:20

Right Ho, Jeeves was the 34th novel by the British writer PG Wodehouse, written when he was - struggling writers take note - 52 years old. But you would never guess this. It is fresh, energetic, joyful, structurally perfect and one of a handful of books that might be considered Wodehouse’s masterpiece. The story follows the escapades of hopeless to…

1
The Craft of Writing, the Booker Prize from Australia: Charlotte Wood on My Name is Lucy Barton 50:16

1M ago50:16

50:16

Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton is a much-loved and perennially-read novel that has caught the attention of literally millions of readers worldwide. But it’s quiet, low-key book, about family dynamics and difficult feelings, with a modest plot and characters who wouldn’t seem heroic if you met them in real life. Find out why Charlotte Woo…

1
Literature's great parties: launch 2025 in style with Lady Macbeth, Count Dracula and the Mad Hatter 58:17

2M ago58:17

58:17

To round out 2024, SLoB is hosting the world’s shortest New Year’s Eve party, in which we rank literary history’s most under-the-radar ragers. Crank up your sonos and get ready for classic fun this New Year. In under an hour, and with lashings of improvisational revelry, Sophie and Jonty review and rank party scenes from the books they covered in 2…

1
Did Dickens Change the Face of Christmas Forever? Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the First Ever Turkey 59:14

2M ago59:14

59:14

From the “man who invented Christmas,” this is the ultimate Christmas fable. Everyone’s heard of Scrooge, and many could quote his “Bah! Humbug!” And maybe even Tiny Tim’s “God Bless us, every one.” But who knows which Christmas season mega-industry Dickens started, with Scrooge’s parting gift to the Cratchit family? And what was going on in Dicken…

1
The Albatross Curse, Bad Weddings and Lots of Opium: Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1:12:31

2M ago1:12:31

1:12:31

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the name of a classic song by Iron Maiden AND a decent-ish poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s the latter that’s under the microscope in this episode. Written in 1798, in a haze of opium smoke and revolutionary fervor, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long ballad poem describing the supernatural curse against…

1
Victorian dresses, teenage passions and fiction’s scariest picnic: Picnic at Hanging Rock 57:47

2M ago57:47

57:47

Sophie and Jonty find themselves a few sandwiches short of a picnic this week when they take on their first Australian classic book, the legendary “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” This 1960s masterpiece achieved global fame with Peter Weir’s hit film in 1975. And it has lost none of its edge with the passage of time. The intrepid hosts of SLoB discover th…

1
Please Sir, may we have some more? Oliver Twist, sex work and criminal underclasses in Victorian London 1:06:08

3M ago1:06:08

1:06:08

Let’s Twist Again! Not the dance, of course, but Charles Dickens’ incendiary second novel, which he began writing at the tender age of 24. With Oliver Twist, Dickens found his voice - a style simultaneously intimate and epic, funny but terrifying, exaggerated but true to life. Millions fell in love with his characters, shared their misfortunes and …

1
The world's most famous classicist on the world's most famous classic: Mary Beard and The Odyssey 57:00

3M ago57:00

57:00

The Odyssey - where stories began. Probably written down around 7th century BC - give or take a few centuries either way - by somebody or somebodies who may or may not have been called Homer. Leaving aside these mysteries, what is the Odyssey really about, why is it so violent and why is Odysseus himself - the lord of the lies - such an unlikeable …

1
Bonus Live Ep: hosts' secrets revealed and the classics stripped bare! 30:07

3M ago30:07

30:07

Co-hosts Sophie and Jonty bare all in a bonus SLoB live ep! After months of rummaging through the dirty laundry of the great writers, it is only fair that we turn a critical eye back upon ourselves - and reveal the secret life of the Secret Life of Books. In this bonus episode, recorded to mark our official launch before a live audience in Sydney’s…

1
Jane Austen does gothic horror with insta-ready clothes and great interiors: Northanger Abbey 1:02:48

3M ago1:02:48

1:02:48

Henry Tilney: is he yet another of Jane Austen’s Bad Men, or the stealth MVP with his interest in dress fabrics and interior decorating? Northanger Abbey is Austen’s funniest, most unabashedly joyful and silly novel. It’s also where Jane gets meta – with lots of speeches about what novels are and why we love reading them. Sophie makes the case that…

1
James: National Book Award global hit; a Huck Finn rewrite the world needed; plot twists you'll never guess 48:37

3M ago48:37

48:37

It took 140 years for someone to write back to Mark Twain’s brilliant but troubling masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now the celebrated American novelist Percival Everett has done it with James, a daring, provocative, retelling of Huck Finn through the eyes, mind and heart of Huck’s friend Jim, a runaway slave. What are the untold se…

1
Huckleberry Finn: but wait, maybe THIS is the great American novel? 58:48

4M ago58:48

58:48

What makes a trip down the Mississippi river so famous - and so notorious? Why did it need to be rewritten in the 2024 novel James by Percival Everett? Is Huck Finn the most famous character in world literature? We’ve gone on record saying that The Great Gatsby is #1 Great American Novel - but this week we may have to eat our words. Is it actually …

1
Hamnet: sexy witches replace skulls and soliloquies 50:07

4M ago50:07

50:07

Ever wonder what Shakespeare got up to in the bedroom? Well, whether you do or not, you’ll find out - along with many other things - in this episode devoted to Maggie O’Farrell’s superb novel Hamnet (spoiler alert: it involves a shed, a kestrel and shelves of bouncing apples, rather than an actual bedroom). Hamnet was published to critical acclaim …

1
Hamlet: Shakespeare's secret double or pain in neck? 1:11:00

4M ago1:11:00

1:11:00

Hamlet is jammed with famous quotes like “to be or not to be,” “something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” “time is out of joint,” “the play’s the thing,” “get thee to a nunnery,” and “the rest is silence.” But who really knows what happens in the world’s most famous play? And why is it so damn long? Jonty confides the intense boredom induced by…

1
Midsummer Nights Dream: are true love and sexual attraction magic tricks? 54:13

4M ago54:13

54:13

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” It certainly did not in Shakespeare’s psychedelic fantasy about cross-dressing, polyamory, speaking truth to power and tik-tok – centuries before the internet. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is endlessly adapted and readapted. At its heart, it’s a play about the madness and thrill of attraction and love; a…

1
Go Tell It On The Mountain: growing up Black, poor and gay in 1930s New York 52:34

4M ago52:34

52:34

Go Tell It On The Mountain is one of the great incendiary debuts of the 20th Century. Published in 1953, James Baldwin’s autobiographical novel follows a fictionalised avatar of his younger self as he navigates his way through an ordinary day in 1930s Harlem. Baldwin showed readers life as he knew it as a black, working-class gay teenager in a raci…

1
The Great Gatsby: is this THE great American novel? 1:10:11

5M ago1:10:11

1:10:11

Few novels capture a moment and place in time as The Great Gatsby. F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece captures a generation determined to live and party hard in the aftermath of the First World War. There are love affairs, exotic cocktails (a ‘gin rickey’ anyone?), no less than three car crashes and, of course, the famous party scenes. It has be…

1
To Kill a Mockingbird: racism, gun violence and coming of age in the 1930s South 52:07

5M ago52:07

52:07

Within a year of its publication in 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird sold 2.5 million copies and has remained a much-loved classic by adults and children alike. What was it about this book that captured the public imagination at the time - and to this day? Harper Lee mined her own childhood in Alabama for this coming-of-age story of persona…

1
Wolf Hall: is this the best historical novel ever written? 48:49

5M ago48:49

48:49

Hello Thomas Cromwell. And Hello Lev Grossman, best-selling author of The Magicians trilogy, the Silver Arrow children’s books, and now The Bright Sword, who joins Sophie and Jonty as THEIR FIRST EVER GUEST to talk about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Published in 2009 to immediate acclaim, Wolf Hall reinvented historical fiction and changed the way we…

1
Dracula: vampires even weirder than you think. And they may have started WWI 53:00

5M ago53:00

53:00

Twenty-first century vampires are the brooding, sparkly anti-heroes of Twilight and Ann Rice— all pointy teeth and hair-product. But they used to be much weirder, scarier and sexier than that. Bram Stoker’s world-changing 1897 novel Dracula is one of the most erotic and thrilling novels in English literature—despite having the most boring opening p…

1
Frankenstein: the ultimate monster; the first A.I story; Mary Shelly's multi-generational grief 50:55

6M ago50:55

50:55

Frankenstein is English literature’s great myth about Artificial Intelligence, 200 years before A.I. existed. But the world’s most famous monster is nothing like you imagine. Who knew that he chops wood and reads Milton’s Paradise Lost? And who remembers if Frankenstein is the name of the monster, or the mad inventor who made him? Sophie and Jonty …

1
Wuthering Heights: passionate love affairs and dysfunctional families go together 54:43

6M ago54:43

54:43

A ghostly face in the dark, a child’s hand through the window, a doleful cry: “I’d lost my way on the moor! - I’ve been a waif for twenty years!” Are we talking about Kate Bush’s 1978 hit single “Wuthering Heights”? No! It’s Emily’s Bronte’s 1847 novel of the same name, back as never before. Heathcliff and Catherine are the doomed lovers in a novel…

1
Wide Sargasso Sea 1: tropical gothic in the West Indies and Jane Eyre disrupted 53:29

8M ago53:29

53:29

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966, is a bold riposte to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, humanising the mad woman in Mr Rochester’s attic. It is less than 150 pages, but took Rhys 30 years to write - one of the most agonising literary births in history. Jean Rhys was born on the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1890 and identified as ‘whi…

1
Wide Sargasso Sea 2: bohemianism, madess and celebrity back in England 45:18

8M ago45:18

45:18

It should have taken a year. It took thirty. In writing Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys endured several mental breakdowns, was arrested numerous times for verbal and physical violence, served time in prison, lost two husbands and suffered a heart attack. All the time, she came to increasingly identify with her heroine, making the inevitable tragedy of…

1
Jane Eyre 2: the Brontes' real lives are even wilder than their fiction 40:36

8M ago40:36

40:36

When Charlotte Bronte arrived in Brussels at the age of 26 to attend finishing school, she had no idea she would fall desperately in love with the director: Constantine Heger. Heger - a strange, mercurial character - would prove the model for Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre. On returning to Haworth Parsonage, she wrote obsessively to and about him, while…

1
Jane Eyre 1: passion, madness, gaslighting and bad hair days 54:38

8M ago54:38

54:38

What on earth was going on in the parlour of Haworth Parsonage in the Yorkshire Moors that caused three sisters to write three of the greatest novels in history within a year of one another? This is the question running through this four-part series of the Brontes. In this first episode, Sophie and Jonty look at the impact of Charlotte Bronte’s Jan…

1
Gulliver's Travels Part 2 43:48

9M ago43:48

43:48

As we learned in episode one, Gulliver’s Travels is the gloriously unhinged invention of the dirty-minded genius Jonathan Swift, who was also the greatest defender of Ireland under English rule. Swift was a man of contradictions - to put it mildly - a clergyman and patriot who wrote some of the most explicit and shocking poems and essays of all tim…

1
Gulliver's Travels Part 1 57:43

9M ago57:43

57:43

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the most popular books of all time, but it’s no mere child’s tale. It’s the GOAT of political satires – mad, dirty and brilliantly cutting, written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish clergyman and perhaps the most notorious writer of his age. Join us to learn more about the fictional adventures of Swift’s creatio…

1
Macbeth: terrorism, gunpowder and treason in James I's London 1:05:33

9M ago1:05:33

1:05:33

Macbeth, which actors superstitiously call the Scottish Play, is one of Shakespeare’s shortest and most exciting dramas. It’s also the most horrifying. Join Sophie and Jonty to find out why a play set in 11th-Century Scotland is really about the biggest issues of the day in King James I’s new court in 1606 London. Learn how Shakespeare is taking a …

1
Alice in Wonderland: rabbit-holes, mad mathematics and the elephant in the room 59:00

9M ago59:00

59:00

Alice in Wonderland is one of the most widely translated and quoted books in the world, and yet it is - quite literally - nonsense. How was it ushered into the world and why did it travel quite so far? Lewis Carroll, or Charles Dodgson to his mum and dad, was born in the north of England in 1832. Somehow, the unique circumstances of his life - a wi…

1
Secret Life of Books Trailer 0:53

9M ago0:53

0:53

The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, professor of English at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story:…

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