On the Road with Penguin Classics

William Blake’s poetry and prose. We visit Sir Philip at home to discuss the poet who has ‘inspired and intoxicated’ him for the last sixty years. In Philip’s book-lined sitting room we discuss Blake’s most loved works: his Songs of Innocence and of Experience , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Auguries of Innocence .   Pullman has written frequently about Blake and previously served as Pr...

James Baldwin in Paris. On the rain-soaked boulevards, the novelist Caryl Phillips discusses Baldwin's exquisite same-sex love story, drinking in the Cafe de Flore and exploring Saint Germain des Prés.   Phillips, who knew James Baldwin, wrote the introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Giovanni’s Room and an unfilmed screenplay of the novel for Merchant Ivory productions....

John Donne’s poetry and prose in London. The scholar and children’s author Katherine Rundell traces the life and paradoxical career of John Donne from the street where he was born, through the palaces and colleges where he worked to the cathedral where he preached and now lies buried.   In 2022 Rundell won the Baillie-Gifford Prize for her biography of Donne, Super-Infinite. Donne's...

Shirley Jackson in North Bennington, Vermont. Award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin visits the small village of North Bennington, where Jackson lived for twenty years. We stand in the square where Jackson imagined 'The Lottery' and conjure the ghost of Merricat Blackwood as she collects her sinister groceries in Jackson’s last and greatest novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle .   W...

Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault . In Dame Marina Warner's magical home in North London, the historian and mythographer discusses Perrault's  Tales of Mother Goose  and their English translation by Angela Carter, as well as Carter’s own  Bloody Chamber and Other Stories . Our wide-ranging conversation covers Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard and Little Red Riding...

Charles Dickens in London. For this festive Christmas Special, the actor and author Simon Callow joins Henry to summon the ghost of Ebeneezer Scrooge and follow him around the City of London, starting at Cornhill, taking in Leadenhall Market and meeting all three Spirits of Christmas. A Christmas Carol , Dickens’s best loved novel, was published on 19 December 1843, 180 years ago this year.  ...

Anthony Burgess in East Sussex. On the 30th anniversary of Burgess’s death, the science fiction author Jeff Noon and the biographer Andrew Biswell travel East Sussex with Henry, visiting the rented flat where Burgess began writing  A Clockwork Orange , O my brothers, and the quiet village where he finished it, taking in a pub, a prison, ultra violence, nadsat, brainwashing and...

Raymond Chandler in Santa Monica. As well as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye , we discuss Farewell, My Lovely , Chandler’s favourite of his own novels, as we walk the noir streets of ‘Bay City’ – or Santa Monica in Southern California – retracing Philip Marlowe's footsteps from City Hall to Santa Monica Pier, and chatting about Dick's hard-boiled and hilarious Chandler tribute,  Sleeping D...

Mary Shelley in Bath. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finished writing Frankenstein while lodging in Bath and attending lectures on electricity and galvanism. We visit the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the recently opened Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein with the neuroscientist Anil Seth (author of Being You ) and the poet and biographer Fiona Sampson ( In Search of Mary Shelle...

Jane Austen in Chawton. The novelist Monica Ali joins Henry to visit Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen wrote all of her novels – as well as nearby Chawton House, once owned by Austen’s brother Edward and now home to the Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing.   Penguin Classics edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55905/pri...

Shirley Jackson in Bennington, Vermont. For this spooky Halloween special, award-winning biographer Ruth Franklin joins Henry to haunt the eery corridors of the derelict Everett Mansion, the house that may well have inspired the greatest ghost story ever written, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.   Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson h...

On the Road with Penguin Classics is the literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author Henry Eliot travels to a different location to discuss a great work of literature with a different guest. In series four, Henry's guests include Monica Ali, Katherine Rundell, Simon Callow, Marina Warner, Caryl Phillips, Anil Seth and Philip Pullman. They discus...

In this bonus episode, Henry introduces Eliot's Book of Bookish Lists , the perfect stocking-filler for book-lovers. Who had birds called Death, Wigs and Spinach? How do you spell the noise of a door slamming? Whose working title was  The Chronic Argonauts ? In this eclectic gallimaufry, Henry showcases some of his favourite literary lists: we witness the tragic ends of the Ancient Greek trag...

John Bunyan in Bedfordshire. The novelist Rachel Joyce joins Henry as they follow in the footsteps of Bunyan’s pilgrim Christian, as he walks from Bedford, or the City of Destruction, to London, the Celestial City. Along the way they visit the Slough of Despond (Elstow), the Palace Beautiful (Houghton House) and Vanity Fair (Ampthill). They start at the Bunyan Meeting House, where they meet John P...

Tayeb Salih in London. The novelist Leila Aboulela meets Henry in London to discuss Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North , which was voted the most important Arab novel of the 20th century by the Arab Literary Academy in Damascus. The novel is set in both a small village in northern Sudan and various locations in London, the city that Tayeb Salih made his home. Leila and Henry visit Vict...

Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon. The translator and biographer Richard Zenith meets Henry in Lisbon to sift the fragments of Fernando Pessoa’s extraordinary ‘non-book’, The Book of Disquiet . They visit the cafes where Pessoa liked to drink, they meet Clara Riso, director of the Casa Fernando Pessoa, and they walk from the hills of Lisbon to the edge of the River Tagus.   2022 is the 40th anniversa...

E. M. Forster in Cambridge. The cultural historian Diarmuid Hester joins Henry to explore the streets and colleges of Cambridge before escaping to the greenwood to discuss Maurice by E. M. Forster, his novel of same-sex love that remained unpublished throughout his lifetime. Diarmuid and Henry visit King’s College, where Forster lived both as an undergraduate and an honorary fellow and they visit...

Leonora Carrington in the Ardèche. The journalist and biographer Joanna Moorhead joins Henry in the south of France to discuss her cousin, the surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington. They trace Carrington’s life story to Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, where she lived with the artist Max Ernst, and discuss her spectacular feminist, eco-apocalypse novel The Hearing Trumpet .   Penguin Modern...

Thomas de Quincey & William S. Burroughs in Soho. The novelist Will Self joins Henry in London to explore the opium dreams and heroin nightmares of Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater and William S. Burrough’s Junky . They walk from Oxford Street to Covent Garden, and along the way they also discuss The Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley and Will’s own 2019 drugs m...

On the Road with Penguin Classics is the literary podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in the company of remarkable readers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lewis Carroll in Oxford. The illustrator and political cartoonist Chris Riddell wanders the streams and streets of Oxford with Henry, visiting the locations that inspired  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  and  Through the Looking-Glass  by Lewis Carroll. They meet Sophie Hiscock at the Story Museum and visit Christ Church College. Penguin Classics editions of Alice’s Adventure...

Muriel Spark in Edinburgh. The journalist Alan Taylor joins the Brodie set on a walk around Edinburgh with Henry. They discuss The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, visiting the site of James Gillespie’s High School (Spark’s alma mater and the model for Marcia Blaine school in the novel), as well as her childhood home on Bruntsfield Place and tracing the route taken by Miss Brodie an...

John Keats in Hampstead. The poet and biographer Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, strolls around the village of Hampstead with Henry. They discuss the short life and luscious poetry of John Keats, walking on the Heath, visiting Leigh Hunt’s house in the Vale of Health and finishing at Wentworth Place (now Keats House), where they meet its principal curator, Rob Shakespeare. &nbsp...

Margaret Cavendish beyond the North Pole. The polar researcher Dr Michael Bravo Joins Henry in Cambridge to discuss  The Blazing World  by Margaret Cavendish, the maverick Duchess of Newcastle. Blending fantasy, philosophy and seventeenth-century science, they visit the Polar Museum, the Whipple Museum and Cambridge University Library. They meet Dr Joshua Nall, an expert on the hist...

James Joyce in Dublin. Professor Anne Fogarty joins Henry in Dublin to recreate a day in the life of Leopold Bloom. They discuss Ulysses by James Joyce and visit the Martello Tower where the novel opens, Eccles Street, Davy Byrnes and the National Library. They meet Darina Gallagher, director of the James Joyce Centre, who coordinates the annual Bloomsday celebrations.   2 February 2022 is th...