Chalke Talk

The podcast from the Chalke Valley History Festival
Released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings

Chalke Talks for THEME: Literature


  • 40. THIS IS SHAKESPEARE
    ( )

    Shakespeare, a genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no others. A writer whose vision, originality and literary mastery were second to none. Professor Emma Smith debunks these common perceptions of the Bard and instead introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who treated topics such as individual agency, privacy, […]

    > PLAY
  • 89. JANE AUSTEN
    ( )

    Here the celebrated and best-selling biographer Claire Tomalin marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen. Her Life of Jane Austen is unlikely to ever be surpassed. She presents this inimitable writer of some of the best-loved novels of all time as intensely intelligent, sensitive, tough and observant. Unmissable. 

    > PLAY
  • 127. COPENHAGEN AND AFTER
    ( )

    Michael Frayn is one of our most successful and revered playwrights and Copenhagen one of his highly acclaimed and award-winning plays. In this very special talk he discusses the play’s subject: the visit of German atomic scientist Werner Heisenberg to Copenhagen in 1941 to visit fellow scientists Margrethe and Niels Bohr and their subsequent discussions […]

    > PLAY
  • 140. HOW RUSKIN SHAPES OUR WORLD
    ( )

    John Ruskin was the best-known and most controversial intellectual of the Victorian Age. He was an art critic, a social activist, an early environmentalist; he was also a painter, writer, and a determined tastemaker in the fields of architecture and design. In the bicentenary of his birth, Andrew Hill shows how Ruskin’s radical ideas are […]

    > PLAY
  • 153. EPIC CONTINENT: ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT STORIES OF EUROPE
    ( )

    Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeyed across Europe exploring it’s epic poems, from the Odyssey to Beowulf, the Song of Roland to the Nibelungenlied. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber reveals how fantasy realms of gods and emperors, dragons and water-maidens, knights and princesses shaped our world: their deep impact on […]

    > PLAY
  • 164. ROBERT GRAVES: FROM GREAT WAR POET TO GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT
    ( )

    Robert Graves as war poet, and the poems he suppressed in an effort to put the war behind him, have been largely neglected – until now. Jean Moorcroft Wilson traces not only Graves’s compelling life, but also the development of his poetry during the First World War, his thinking about the conflict and his talents […]

    > PLAY
  • 176. WHY THE ANGLO-SAXONS MATTER
    ( )

    Acclaimed historian and broadcaster Michael Wood tells fascinating tales from our early history: Augustine of Canterbury and the coming of Christianity, Theodore of Tarsus, the golden age of Northumbria, the Lady of the Mercians, Alfred, Athelstan, and the Norman Conquest; stories of men and women, kings and peasants, of the beginning of English literature and […]

    > PLAY
  • 179. The Write Fantastic: Terry Pratchett
    ( )

    Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors to have ever lived. His Discworld novels have sold tens of millions all over the world. In this talk his right-hand man and collaborator, Rob Wilkins, discusses his life, his work, his inspiration and his profound love of the Chalke Valley.

    > PLAY
  • 181. THE POETRY PHARMACY: TRIED-AND-TRUE PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE MIND, HEART AND SOUL
    ( )

    In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart, founder of National Poetry Day, has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain. Here he speaks about the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which have repeatedly shown […]

    > PLAY

More podcasts - latest releases