Life and Language

Charles Dickens has captured the public imagination like no other. What always fascinates me about him and his work is how fiction and reality intersect. In this episode, I talk to Pete Orford to get his take on the relationship between lived experience and literary examples in the world of Charles Dickens. Pete has recently published the book The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens, which gives us plenty of fascinating examples to talk about.

Pete Orford is the Course Director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies run by the University of Buckingham and the Charles Dickens Museum in London. He is the author of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel & Our Endless Attempts to End It, and the editor of Pictures from Italy for the Oxford Dickens.

What makes the First Folio so important and unique? 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays. In this episode, I talk to Chris Laoutaris, author of Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio. Chris gives us fascinating insights into the human story of this book that was produced seven years after Shakespeare’s death. The story of the people, places, and contexts that were all part of the creation of this work still have their effect on what Shakespeare means to us today.

Chris Laoutaris is associate professor at The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. He is a biographer, historian & a poet. Shakespeare's Book has been selected as a BBC History Magazine Book of the Year (selected by Tracy Borman). It was also a Financial Times Best Summer Book.

How do you become a successful children’s author? I invited the brilliant Hannah Gold so I could learn her secret. What I really liked was Hannah’s insights into the value of a holistic career including a range of professions as well as life experience before becoming an award-winning author of fiction for children. In Hannah’s books, friendships between children and animals play an important role. Making these friendships come alive requires descriptions of how people and animals communicate – Hannah shares some the techniques she has developed to show this kind of communication. In this episode, Hannah tells us about her research into polar bears and her passion for the natural world. She also explains how thinking about the climate crisis is a necessary part of writing a modern day story.

And guess what song Hannah likes to start events with?  Well, I do like Katy Perry, too!

Hannah Gold’s first book, The Last Bear – won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2022 and the same year also the Blue Peter Book Award. Her second book The Lost Whale was the Winner of the Edward Stanford Children's Book of the Year 2023.

What are the ingredients of science fiction? To find out, I talk to Peter Stockwell, the author of “The Poetics of Science Fiction”. Starting with an example, Peter reads from “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury and explains why this is a great text to get you into science fiction. We talk about the history of the genre, its relationship with pulp fiction, Frankenstein as early sci-fi and time travel in Dickens. Science fiction is about the here and now. It is about page-turner stories and about the opportunity to imagine futures. Science fiction puts science into stories and creates narratives that make people care. This episode is full of examples and gives you plenty of recommendations for reading. Peter also reads an extract from his current favourite sci-fi text. I won’t tell… have a listen to find out.

Peter Stockwell is Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of “Cognitive Poetics: an introduction”. His most recent book is “Digital Teaching for Linguistics” (with Rebecca Gregory, Jessica Norledge, and Paweł Szudarski ) – which is a bit sci-fi, too.

Why is human rights discourse so difficult? In this episode, I talk to Fiona de Londras about what it means to translate human rights into practical instruments and how language frames legal discourses. Fiona explains the difference between a human rights perspective and civil liberties talk that has been so frequent in the pandemic discourse. She shares her insights into why human rights don’t get much talked about in Prime Minister's Questions, we hear about her project on pandemic review, and we talk about the importance of language in the Irish abortion referendum campaign. Fiona tells us about her deep-seated dislike of inaccessible language, cooking as a way to measure time, and words as little pockets of Irishness.

Fiona de Londras is Professor of Global Legal Studies at the University of Birmingham. In 2017 she was awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in law. Her most recent book is ‘The Practice and Problems of Transnational Counter-Terrorism’, published in January 2022.

Starting from Ancestors, the latest book by Alice Roberts, we chat about storytelling and the excitement of embarking on science projects. We hear about some of the protagonists in Ancestors, including stories around gender and the role of women in stories and in science. Using her experience as an anatomist, Alice tells stories of human and bodily experience. She reminds us: “The body doesn’t make sense without the environment around it”. You will hear an extract from Ancestors that illustrates this point vividly. The stories that Alice tells show how the past is here in the present. One of the examples we discuss is the histories of diseases and what we know about viruses. In very practical terms, Alice shares some of her own experience of working with words, how teaching has affected her TV work, and what it means to write for children. She explains her specific approach to producing documentaries, and how conversation is a way of learning: stories are created through conversations. We chat about different types of evidence and how there is a place for fiction, too, as an important source of historical knowledge. I ask Alice about her views on the future of universities – and you will also get a bit of a preview of one of Alice’s next books!

Alice Roberts is an academic, writer and broadcaster. She’s written numerous popular science books. She was the first recipient of the Royal Society’s David Attenborough award for Public Engagement in 2020. She is professor of Public engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham.

Mary Ann Sieghart’s book “The Authority Gap” raises awareness of unseen bias and suggests ways to tackle systemic sexism. In this episode, we talk about how Mary Ann’s experience as a journalist enabled her to write this book, she shares plenty of examples from interviews and research studies. We talk about women finding their strengths, gender and the climate crisis, the profound effect of fiction, films and TV on how we see the world, and the accumulation of small solutions needed to change the situation for women. You will also get a glimpse of Mary Ann’s next book.

Mary Ann Sieghart is a journalist, she worked for 20 years as Assistant Editor and columnist at The Times, she is a broadcaster (you might know her from programmes on BBC Radio 4), she is a non-executive director, and a visiting professor at King’s College London.

In this episode, I want to find out about ‘water’ in stories – and especially in stories for children and young adults. Who better to chat to about this topic than the wonderful Sita Brahmachari. Sita is an award-winning author of children's books, young adult novels, and short stories. As you will find out, water plays a special part in Sita’s stories. She tells us about and reads from her books, including 'Where the River Runs Gold', and you will be treated to poetry, too! Fiction is never just fiction though. We talk about storytelling, science, politics and activism. Water is a profound reflection of what it means to be human - diving, surfacing, living rivers, water pollution & climate chaos. In the climate crisis we need creativity more than ever.

Sita Brahmachari’s first book, 'Artichoke Hearts' won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2011. 'The River Whale' was one of the best-selling World Book Day stories in 2021. 'Where The River Runs Gold' and 'When Secrets Set Sail' were Waterstones and Blackwell’s Books of the Month. 'Tender Earth' won an Honour from the International Board of Books for Young People. Her latest book 'When Shadows Fall' is out in November 2021. Sita is an Amnesty Ambassador for children's rights.

Julie talks about Shakespeare and adaptation, how he gets used by different times and cultures and what we can learn from his plays about everyday practices. She shares her experience of teaching Shakespeare in the pandemic, where the closure of theatres was not only a historical moment but had become “now”. We chat about the need for languages of the humanities to talk about the climate crisis. We discuss challenges of equality and diversity, and the need to demystify how institutions work. Julie powerfully talks about stories of grief and love, languages of hope, and how theatre is about making things new. She shares with us her own story of getting into Shakespeare, what she learned from travelling the world, and why it’s important to find the longer horizon. She encourages us to use the tools that language offers and to take the opportunity of literature as “a way of thinking it through”. Tune in and give it a try!

Julie Sanders is Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at Newcastle University, and Professor of early modern literature and drama.

Phil shares his thoughts on reading as an aid to living. He talks about the vitality of reading aloud and together in a group. We learn about his work in Liverpool and activities of the Reader. Phil is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Psychology at the University of Liverpool. His most recent books are Reading for Life (OUP, 2020) and with Fiona Magee, Arts for Health: Reading (Emerald, 2020).