Ordinary Abuse

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

‘I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the prince,’ Virginia Giuffre said, ‘but I felt I had to.’ Reviewing Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, in the LRB, Andrew O’Hagan writes: ‘All the pomp, tradition, ceremony and “loyalty” in the world can’t wash away the simple facts. Ghislaine Maxwell took this young girl to Jeffrey Epstein, who abused her a number of times, then they flew her around the world to be abused by their powerful friends.’ In the same issue, Susan Pedersen observes that ‘the scandal lays bare the entitlement felt and impunity enjoyed by the powerful and crass,’ while pointing out that ‘a girl doesn’t have to fall into Epstein’s clutches to see sexual abuse up close.’ On this episode of the podcast, Susan and Andrew join Thomas Jones to discuss whether the Epstein scandal has anything new to tell us about sexual abuse. Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ordinaryabuse From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm James Wood, and this year on the LRB's Close Readings podcast, I'm asking,
0:07.3	Who's Afraid of Realism? I'll be taking a range of great novels and short stories,
0:12.3	from Flobert's Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, up to more recent works
0:17.1	by Amit Chowdhury and Gwendolyn Riley. And I'll be examining what makes and makes
0:22.5	for the real. How does realism produce its effects? What's the difference between artifice
0:28.2	and artificiality? And who is and has been afraid of realism and why? The series starts with
0:35.4	two episodes on Madame Bovary, which you can listen to right now.
0:39.1	And in the third episode, I'll be talking to Adam Thurlwell about Dostoevsky.
0:43.1	You can find a link in the description, Andrew O'Hagan and Susan Peterson. to the London Review of Books podcast, I'm Thomas Jones, and I'm joined today by two contributors
1:11.0	to the latest issue of the paper, Andrew O'Hagan and Susan Peterson. Andrew O'Hagan is the
1:17.0	LRB's editor at large. He's the author of seven novels, most recently Caledonian Road. His latest
1:23.0	book is a set of essays on friendship. His piece in the latest LLP is a review of entitled
1:28.7	The Rise and Fall at the House of York by Andrew Launy and Nobody's Girl, a memoir of surviving
1:34.8	abuse and fighting for justice by Virginia Roberts Dufre. It could be said that Andrew Mountbatten
1:41.2	Windsor is beneath contempt and Andrew O'Hagan buries him under it.
1:46.2	Susan Peterson is a professor of history at Columbia University in New York.
1:50.1	Her books include The Guardians, the League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire,
1:54.2	and Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience.
1:57.4	Burn this letter about two women who married into the Balfour family is due in May.
2:02.4	She's written the diary in the latest issue of the LRP as a response to some of the many
2:06.4	responses to the Geoffrey Epstein files.
2:09.4	Hello both and thank you so much for talking with me today.
	...

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