A Good Read: Chantal Joffe and Séamas O'Reilly

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

The artist Chantal Joffe picks I Capture The Castle, the English classic by Dodie Smith. Set in 1930s rural England, it relates the adventures of an eccentric family over the course of about a year. It's a book Chantal has come back to again and again, ever since she was a teenager. Séamas O'Reilly champions the Irish novel, A Goat's Song by Dermot Healy, which he argues deserves to be more widely known. And Harriett Gilbert recommends a graphic memoir by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, called The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

Chantal Joffe is an artist known for her often larger-than-life-sized paintings, of women and children in particular, which have been shown in solo exhibitions around the world. Séamas O'Reilly is a columnist for the Observer whose memoir is Did Ye Hear Mammy Die.

Comment on instagram: @agoodreadbbc Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:07.0	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.0	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:14.0	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Lucan.
0:22.1	It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.
0:26.0	I'm Alex Fontunzelman.
0:27.4	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:29.2	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:32.7	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:37.3	Hello, today we're capturing a castle, listening to a goat sing and learning the secret to superhuman strength.
0:45.1	Joining me to do all that is first the author and journalist Seamus O'Reilly,
0:49.5	colonist for the observer and the Irish examiner and features editor of The Fence.
0:54.5	Seamus' award-winning memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died, came out last year.
0:59.5	With him is the artist Chantal Jofi, who's often larger than life-sized paintings of women and children in particular,
1:06.2	have shown in solo exhibitions around the world.
1:09.0	And from now until the 7th of January,
1:11.1	a suite of her paintings depicting her family
1:13.5	can be seen in the show
1:15.1	Real Families, Stories of Change,
1:17.9	at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
1:21.4	Chantal Joffey, would you start us off?
	...

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