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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud, where each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask that writers to read them aloud.

I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's podcast, Arabella Byrne takes us through the social

minefield of private swimming pools. Sean Thomas declares that not knowing where you are

is one of the joys of travel. Reviewing Helen Carr's Scepted Isle, a new history of the 14th century,

Matthew Lyon says that Carr is an eloquent guide that takes us through the reality of a vivid

century.

And reviewing Tim Gregory's going nuclear, how the atom will save the world,

Brian Appleyard looks at humanity's only hope.

And finally, Chas Newkey Burden looks back to the 1984 BBC drama Threads

and says the remake should be as grim as the original.

Up first, Arabala Burn.

I've always loved Englishman pools. I can't help it. I am a pool fancier. The lumpy feel of the blue lining beneath pale feet, the peculiar chlorinated smell of the pool hut where you do the knicker

trick, the scratchy pool towel, near collapsing

deck chair by its side, the greying sky overhead. There's the swimming too, but that's not

what gets me. No, the English pool is a particular social idea, a knowing nod to vulgarity,

a parody artificial and our rainy climbs. Chipps Chanon, an earlier doctor knew it when he insisted on putting in a pool at Calvden in 1937,

as did Viscount Astor when he went against his mother Nancy's wishes and did the same at Clifden.

Rishi Sunak, presumably misty-eyed about California, put one in his house in Yorkshire,

...