Close Readings
LRB Audio
Podcasts and audiobooks from the London Review of Books.
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Our six-part series hosted by Andrew O'Hagan: listen to the full series with bonus material, including extended and additional interviews and clips.
Description
In North and South (1855), Margaret Hale is uprooted from her sleepy New Forest town and must adapt to life in the industrial north. Through her relationships with mill workers and a slow-burn romance with the self-made capitalist John Thornton, she is forced to reassess her assumptions about justice and propriety. At the heart of the novel are a series of righteous rebels: striking workers, mutinous naval officers and religious dissenters.
Dinah Birch joins Clare Bucknell to discuss Gaskell’s rich study of obedience and authority. They explore the Unitarian undercurrent in her work, her eye for domestic and industrial detail, and how her subtle handling of perspective serves her great theme: mutual understanding.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
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Read more in the LRB:
Dinah Birch: The Unwritten Fiction of Dead Brothers
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v19/n19/dinah-birch/the-unwritten-fiction-of-dead-brothers
Rosemarie Bodenheimer: Secret-keeping
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n16/rosemarie-bodenheimer/secret-keeping
John Bayley: Mrs G
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/john-bayley/mrs-g
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