John Yorke explores a work that every Italian will know – I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, known in English as The Betrothed. In this the second of two episodes, John looks at the context for the story told by Manzoni in The Betrothed. Written in the early 19th century, and set in the 17th century, at a time before Italy became a unified country, Manzoni deliberately used a historical period to comment on the political situation of his time. When he was writing, the Italian peninsula was ...
Nov 05, 2023•14 min
John Yorke explores a work that every Italian will know – I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, known in English as The Betrothed. A classic of Italian literature, The Betrothed follows the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, who plan to marry, only to be thwarted by a Spanish noble, Don Rodrigo, who has his eye on Lucia. Told against a backdrop of 17th century Lombardy, before Italy became a unified country, The Betrothed is a call for national unity as well as a compelling love story...
Nov 05, 2023•15 min
John Yorke looks at the 1952 psychological suspense novel from French crime-writing team Boileau-Narcejac. The plot centres around travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel who conspires a plot with his mistress Lucienne to murder his wife. After the icily dark bathtub murder, Ravinel’s wife Lucienne’s body strangely disappears- and so begins Ravinel’s psychological unravelling. Noted for the ingenuity of their plots and narrative twists, this was the first novella from duo Boileau-Narcejac. The pai...
Oct 29, 2023•14 min
Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way. In the second of two episodes about the Mahabharata, John asks why and how this 2000 ...
Oct 15, 2023•15 min
Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way. In the first of two episodes about the this epic poem, John looks at how the central ...
Oct 15, 2023•14 min
John Yorke continues his exploration of Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life. Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it is also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned. It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working...
Oct 01, 2023•14 min
John Yorke explores Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life. Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it's also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned. It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working in a post office, an...
Oct 01, 2023•15 min
John Yorke takes a look at If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, a novel by one of the most translated Italian writers of the 20th century, Italo Calvino. Published in 1979, this dizzying work of metafiction takes you on a journey into the very nature of reading. The novel begins with you, the Reader, going into a bookshop to buy a copy of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You start reading, and you're just getting gripped by the story when there seems to be a printer's error. Y...
Sep 24, 2023•14 min
John Yorke takes a look at Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal work, Democracy in America. First published in 1835, it is arguably one of the most influential books ever to pervade American public discourse, quoted by almost every political leader - both from the red side and the blue. It’s a two-volume work (the second volume was published in 1840) that explores American society through the eyes of a young aristocrat from revolutionary France. He was convinced that democratic rule was as inevitable...
Sep 17, 2023•14 min
The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke considers Alexander Dumas' great swashbuckler, The Three Musketeers, and his creation of a classic hero in D'Artagnan and an unforgettable villain in Milady de Winter. In the second of two episodes about the book, John examines how Dumas created this enduring page-turner. He also looks at aspects of the novel that are sometimes overlooked - its wit and humour as well as some very dark passages. John Yorke has ...
Sep 03, 2023•14 min
The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Alexander Dumas’ classic, The Three Musketeers. It's one of Dumas' most famous works and contains one of literature's greatest heroes in D'Artagnan and one its most dastardly villains in Milady De Winter. In the first of two episodes about the book, John shows us how Dumas was able to create such enduring characters that have lived in the public imagination for almost 200 years. The names of the Muske...
Sep 03, 2023•14 min
In December 1974, Bruce Chatwin headed south from Buenos Aires to write an account of his journey through Patagonia. On the surface it was based on a series of encounters with the dispossessed - exiles, refugees and outlaws and those who had made their home on the southernmost tip of South America - but Chatwin’s real interest lay in the internal journey behind their stories and the nature of human restlessness. John Yorke looks at why his vivid prose and highly original style both startled and ...
Aug 06, 2023•15 min
Hailed as the best non-fiction account of the city, Venice was published in 1960 and became an international best seller. It was the first in a series of city ‘portraits’ by Jan Morris that included Oxford, Hong Kong and Trieste. She went on to publish over 40 books including her monumental account of the British Empire, Pax Brittanica. John Yorke delves into how Jan Morris defied boundaries in Venice and explores why Morris’ first impressions of the city in 1945 were so powerful to her. He also...
Jul 30, 2023•14 min
John Yorke takes a look at Mother Courage and her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s play written in 1939 on the eve of World War Two. Set in an earlier time when the Thirty Years War was raging across Europe, Mother Courage and her Children deals with some of the great themes of conflict and capitalism, looking at the way that one mother tries to survive with her family intact. Brecht grew up in Germany in the years after the First World War when the country was struggling with inflation running out of...
Jul 16, 2023•14 min
John Yorke takes a look at Mother Courage and her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s play written in 1939 on the eve of World War Two. Set in an earlier time when the Thirty Years War was raging across Europe, Mother Courage and her Children deals with some of the great themes of conflict and capitalism, looking at the way that one mother tries to survive with her family intact. Brecht grew up in Germany in the years after the First World War when the country was struggling with inflation running out of...
Jul 16, 2023•14 min
John Yorke delves into Tim Winton’s beloved novel, Cloudstreet, published in 1991. Set in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, the novel spans the period from the end of the Second World War until the mid 1960s and made the young Winton, who wrote the book in his 20s, both a literary and popular phenomenon in his own country. It tells the story of two large white working class families – the Pickles and the Lambs - who experience separate catastrophes, and end up moving to the city to share a...
Jun 11, 2023•15 min
John Yorke delves into Tim Winton’s beloved novel, Cloudstreet, published in 1991. Set in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, the novel spans the period from the end of the second world war until the mid 1960s and made the young Winton, who wrote the book in his 20s, both a literary and popular phenomenon in his own country. It tells the story of two large white working class families – the Pickles and the Lambs - who experience separate catastrophes, and end up moving to the city to share a...
Jun 11, 2023•14 min
John Yorke takes a look at Caradog Prichard's ground-breaking novel, One Moonlit Night. First published in Welsh in 1961, it broke new ground for its portrayal of taboo subjects such as sexuality, suicide and mental illness. Thirty four years later it was translated into English by Philip Mitchell who described his first encounter with the material in the original Welsh as 'a mind-blowing, life-changing, world-shaking experience akin to being allowed for several hours to stare into the face of G...
Jun 04, 2023•16 min
John Yorke continues his examination of E M Forster’s best-loved novel A Room with a View, first published in 1908. Set in Florence and Surrey, A Room with a View is both a coming-of-age story and an intoxicating love story, as teenage Lucy Honeychurch has to choose between two very different men, and between following convention or following her heart. It is a book full of muddle and misunderstanding, as well as comedy and joy, as Lucy tries to make sense of her feelings and to work out how to ...
May 21, 2023•15 min
John Yorke examines E M Forster’s best-loved novel A Room with a View, first published in 1908. Set in Florence and Surrey, A Room with a View is both a coming-of-age story and an intoxicating love story, as teenage Lucy Honeychurch has to choose between two very different men, and between following convention or following her heart. It's a book full of muddle and misunderstanding, as well as comedy and joy, as Lucy tries to make sense of her feelings and to work out how to be true to herself. T...
May 21, 2023•14 min
The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke explores Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, one of the world’s greatest novels. In this third and final part on Anna Karenina, John focuses on Tolstoy and his world, in order to come to an understanding of the true sense of his achievement in writing a novel that has been at the forefront of world literature since its publication nearly 150 years ago. The 1870s were a time of seismic social change in Russia and, in...
Apr 30, 2023•15 min
The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke explores the themes at the heart of Leo Tolstoy’s great nineteenth century novel, Anna Karenina. In the second of three episodes, John looks at the secondary great love story in the novel, that of Kitty and Levin, and how it is built into and reflects the structure of the story. As Anna and Vronksy’s affair plays out under the disapproving gaze of St Petersburg society, Levin and Kitty take a different path to...
Apr 30, 2023•14 min
The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines what lies at the heart of Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina. ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ It’s one of the most famous opening lines in world literature, and the book has been called the greatest novel ever written. First published in 1878, and translated into English in 1901, it’s been credited with perfecting the art of 19th century realism while fo...
Apr 30, 2023•15 min
John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the second of two episodes, he explores the setting of the play and how the whole plot turns on the ambiguities thrown up by a woman dressed as a man. We’re introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of misplaced desire. Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and has lost her twin brother Sebastian. She disguises herself as a man before she meets the Duke of Illyria, who is himself in lo...
Apr 22, 2023•14 min
John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the first of two episodes, he untangles a complex plot and shows how we can still find it funny. But is it really a comedy? John finds sadness behind the laughter in a play that ends with a melancholic song as the rain begins to fall. We're introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of misplaced desire. Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and has lost her twin brother Sebastian. She d...
Apr 22, 2023•15 min
Somewhere between autobiography, memoir and novel, the Irish writer and poet Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was published in 1958. It’s the story of the teenaged Behan’s three years in an English Borstal – the youth detention centres of their day. As an Irish Republican, Behan’s views of the English are challenged, relationships are formed, and his journey to becoming one of the most celebrated writers of his generation begins. Hearing from the bestselling Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, John Yorke exp...
Apr 16, 2023•15 min
John Yorke takes a look at Ian McEwan’s 1997 complex thriller Enduring Love. It's a bold novel, set in the aftermath of a tragic accident, but the substance of the story is formed from a beautifully simple yet complex premise – everyone sees that accident in a totally different way. The central character, Joe Rose, is stalked by a stranger, Jed Parry, whom he meets purely by chance at the scene of the accident. As Joe continues to reject Jed, their confrontation spirals from fear into violence. ...
Apr 09, 2023•15 min
John Yorke examines Victor Nekrasov’s novel Kira Georgievna, a bestseller in 1960s Russia. Set in Moscow, Kyiv and rural Ukraine, the eponymous Kira Georgievna is a successful middle-aged sculptor, originally from Kyiv, who must choose between three different lovers. She’s married to a much older painter while also enjoying a casual affair with a young man who’s working for her as a model. But Kira’s comfortable life is about to be turned upside down when her first love - Vadim - returns from tw...
Apr 02, 2023•15 min
John Yorke takes a look at Aldous Huxley’s 1923 satirical novel, Antic Hay. It's a comic novel, set in post-war London and a wicked satire on the glittering hedonism of the 1920s. It tells the story of a collection of upper middle-class characters desperately trying to find meaning in their lives after the catastrophe of the First World War. Aldous Huxley is most famous for his classic dystopian story Brave New World. To some he’s the inspiration for the cult of hallucinogenics, through his book...
Mar 26, 2023•15 min
John Yorke delves into James Hogg’s masterpiece of Gothic horror, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Presented as a ‘found document’, the confessions give a chilling insight into the mind of a murderer. This novel is a horror story, a mystery thriller, a psychological study of religious extremism, and at its heart lurks a serial killer. Despite being first published in 1824 it still has all the contemporary resonance, in the view of renowned crime writer Ian Rankin, to ma...
Mar 19, 2023•14 min
