What Don Quixote Knew
The LRB Podcast
London Review of Books
4.4 ⢠579 Ratings
đď¸ 31 December 2025
âąď¸ 63 minutes
đď¸ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the first episode of The Man Behind the Curtain, a new close reading series for |
| 0:05.8 | 26 from the London Review of Books. I'm Thomas Jones, a senior editor at the paper and the main |
| 0:11.4 | presenter of the LRB podcast, which is where you may be hearing this episode. And as you may |
| 0:17.1 | already be aware, close readings is another of our podcasts, which you can find by searching for those two words, close readings, wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 0:24.9 | For 499 a month, you can hear longstanding contributors to the LRB such as Emily Wilson, Judith |
| 0:29.8 | Butler, James Wood, Marina Warner discuss everything from ancient Greek and Roman literature |
| 0:34.7 | to revolutionary writing of the 20th century, English literature's |
| 0:37.8 | medieval beginnings to conversations in philosophy, satire and the fantastic. In 2026, close readings |
| 0:44.9 | will be looking at writing about nature in crisis with me and Christ and Peter Goddrey Smith, |
| 0:50.6 | realism and a novel with James Wood and guests, narrative poetry with Mark Ford and |
| 0:55.1 | Seamus Perry, and a cultural history of London with Rosemary Hill and guests. But for this |
| 1:00.8 | series, I'm delighted to be joined by the writer, artist, twice booker shortlisted novelist and |
| 1:05.9 | contributor to the LRB since 2007, Tom McCarthy. Hello Tom. Hello, nice to be here. |
| 1:11.6 | I am sorry we're both called Tom, but shouldn't be too confusing, I hope. |
| 1:16.4 | So the Man Behind the Curtain is an extra series, which will be running in parallel as a kind of meta-series, |
| 1:22.6 | I guess you could say, to the usual weekly episodes of the Close Reading's podcast. |
| 1:26.4 | And we'll be popping up or dropping in |
| 1:29.2 | every couple of months, sometimes as a bonus podcast, sometimes as a live event, and we hope |
| 1:34.0 | you'll join us and join in when we do. Future episodes will be on Frankenstein, Middle |
| 1:39.0 | March, Ulysses, The Invisible Man, Gravity's Rainbow. This first episode is about Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. |
| 1:47.0 | But before we turn to the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, the night of the sad countenance, |
| 1:52.6 | Tom, why the man behind the curtain? Well, I was thinking of the scene in the Wizard of Oz, |
... |
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