Hello, I'm James Wood, and this year on the LRB's Close Reading's podcast, I'm asking,

Who's Afraid of Realism? I'll be taking a range of great novels and short stories,

from Flobe's Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, up to more recent works

by Amit Chowdhury and Gwendolyn Riley. And I'll be examining what makes and makes

for the real. How does realism produce its effects? What's the difference between artifice

and artificiality? And who is and has been afraid of realism and why? The series starts with

two episodes on Madame Bovary, which you can listen to right now.

And in the third episode, I'll be talking to Adam Thurlwell about Dostoevsky.

You can find a link in the description or search close readings wherever you get your podcasts.

The Nation Divided always has the BBC on the rack, So said, one of its chairs back in the early

1970s on the issue of Northern Ireland, an issue which would rankle successive governments

and eventually precipitate a full-scale assault by the Thatcher government on the corporation.

It is a pithy saying, doubtless true in some ways, while also being an exemplary bit of BBC speak.

The corporation's problems are not really its own, but translated expressions of broader national

issues projected onto it.

Well, the nation is certainly divided and the BBC is certainly on the rack again.

This time, the central issue is apparently an

objectively minor editing error in an addition of panorama, which elided two portions of Donald

Trump's long speech prior to the January 6th riot, which has the American president now breathing

fire and threatening lawsuits, and now, in fact, the BBC censoring its wreath lecturer from his criticisms

over Trump's corruptions. But that detail emerged in a report into BBC impartiality,

which focused on a number of hot-button culture war topics, which has already prompted the departure

...