This episode of the London Review of Books podcast is supported by the National Portrait Gallery.

Edvard Monk Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London is the first exhibition in Britain

devoted to Monk's work as a portraitist, and it explores how portraiture was central to his art

and vision. Featuring more than 40 works, including some never displayed before in the UK, the exhibition

has portraits of Monk's family, his fellow bohemians, his patrons and his friends, from the 1880s

to the 1920s. The exhibition is open from the 13th of March until the 15th of June at the National

Portrait Gallery in London, and you can book now at np.org.uk forward slash monk. That's npg.org.

dot UK forward slash MUNC. You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas

Jones and I'm joined this week by Colin Burrow, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

His books include Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity and imitating authors from Plato to Futurity,

as well as editions of Ben Johnson, Shakespeare and the Metaphysical Poets.

And last year, with Claire Bucknell, Colin hosted the Al-Aube's Close Readings podcast series on sat satire, and Claire Colin and I spoke recently about Mansfield Park for the inaugural episode of a new close-reading series novel approaches.

Today, though, it's only Colin and me, though we'll do our best, and we're going to be talking

about the brothers Grimm and their tales, which Colin has written about in the latest issue of the LRB,

reviewing a new biography of the Brothers Grim,

or the Grim Brothers, the Grims, by Anne Schmising.

Hello, Colin, and thank you very much for joining me.

Hello, Tom. Very nice to be here.

Once upon a time, there were two brothers, and their names were Jakob and Wilhelm.

If you could take up the story from that. Well, they were very close brothers. They lived together

for most of their lives, but they were also quite distinct in their interests. They shared a common background

in that they were both born in a very quiet German province to a member really of the government

...