Blackwell Podcasts
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Welcome to the Blackwell podcast page for Biography, the home of our complete Biography podcast backlist.
Rosamund Bartlett - Tolstoy: A Russian Life
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The last major life of Tolstoy in English was by A.N. Wilson and appeared over twenty years ago. Now available in paperback is Rosamund Bartlett's acclaimed life of the writer published to mark the centenary of his death in 1910. Of this new book, A.N. Wilson himelf wrote that it "conveys Tolstoy to me more vividly than any biography I have read... at every stage of Tolstoy's life we feel ourselves in a gigantic presence". In this interview, Rosamund Bartlett discusses Tolstoy's life and times.
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
Alexander Masters - The Genius in My Basement
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For his first book, Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters took as his subject a homeless man he had befriended. That book went on to win the Guardian First Book Award and was made into a successful BBC TV film. For his new book, Masters found his subject beneath his own floorboards, in the shape of Simon Norton, an eccentric Cambridge maths genius who lived downstairs. In this interview, Alexander reflects on his unorthodox approach to biography and the particular challenges that Simon presented to the writer.
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
Michael Frayn - My Father's Fortune
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We are delighted to have as a guest in this podcast one of this country's most highly acclaimed novelists and playwrights, Michael Frayn. Michael joins host George Miller to talk about his memoir, My Father's Fortune, which was shortlisted for the Costa biography award and won the 2011 PEN/Ackerley prize.
In the interview, Michael talks about his childhood during the war, his relationship with his father, and the effect on the family of the loss of his mother in 1945 when he was twelve. We also get an insight into some of his very earliest unpublished writings!
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
 Andrew McConnell Stott - The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi
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Welcome to the world of the Georgian theatre, the setting for Andrew McConnell Stott's award-winning biography of Joseph Grimaldi, The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi probably the most famous clown who has ever lived. Listen to the interview and you'll find out just how great the debt is owed by this performer by later generations of comics down to our own day.
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Daisy Hay - Young Romantics
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Daisy Hay joins us to talk about her debut book, Young Romantics, a group biography which describes the lives of a circle of second-generation Romantics including Byron, Keats and the Shelleys. In the book Hay dispels the myth of the romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, showing how the astonishingly young group drew inspiration from each other to produce their artistic triumphs.
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Ian Davidson - Voltaire
With his 2004 publication Voltaire in Exile, Ian Davidson looked specifically at the last 25 years of the French playwright, poet and philosopher's life following his exile at the hands of King Louis XV. Now, with Voltaire: A Life, Davidson presents an account of Voltaire's whole life, utilising the vast cache of written correspondence still in existence to paint a vivid portrait of the extraordinary man.
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(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Helen Rappaport - Conspirator
Helen Rappaport has specialised in nineteenth and twentieth-century history since the 1990s publishing several major reference works on figures including Stalin, Queen Victoria and Madame Rachel. Her latest book, Conspirator, focusses on Lenin, telling the story of his long and difficult years leading up to the Russian Revolution. Rappaport strips away the arid politics of Lenin's official life and reveals the real man in this fascinating biography.
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(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Claire Harman - Jane's Fame
Claire Harman is an Oxfordshire-based writer and critic. In her latest major literary biography entitled Jane's Fame, Harman not only tells the captivating story of Jane Austen's life, and he rise to popularity, but also her literary legacy and more. The book is essential for anyone interested in Austen's life and work, as is this fascinating interview.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Timothy Ryback - Hitler's Private Library
Timothy Ryback is a historian of the Holocaust. His new book Hitler's Private Library investigates Hitler's collection of books, estimated to be 16,000 volumes at the time of his death in 1945. Ryback explores this remarkable collection, as well as several other caches which he subsequently discovered in Europe and elsewhere.
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(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man
Graham Farmelo's The Strangest Man looks at the extraordinary life of the theoretical physicist, Paul Dirac. Little-known beyond the scientific community, Dirac was one of the leading pioneers in quantum mechanics, arguably the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
Yet outside of his professional work Dirac was a curious character: pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize.
With The Strangest Man shortlisted for this year's Costa Book Awards, our regular podcast host George Miller spent some time with Graham Farmelo to discuss the quantum genius.
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(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Michael Slater - Charles Dickens
Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. In his new book, titled simply Charles Dickens, Slater draws on a lifetime of research to present a masterful biography of the great Victorian novelist. The book provides a comprehensive account of Dickens' personal and emotional life with the core focus on his career as a writer and professional author, covering not only his big novels but also his phenomenal output of other writing.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Mark Hudson - Titian
Mark Hudson, journalist and prize-winning author, discusses his new book, Titian: The Last Days. The book is an exploratory journey through the life and work of the 16th-century Venetian painter, detailing the artist's struggles with his work, clients and family while celebrating his largely unfinished, final paintings.
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(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Mary Beard - It's a Don's Life
Mary Beard joins our podcasts programme for the second time, with her forthcoming title It's a Don's Life the topic of today's discussion. The book is a selection of entries from her now famous blog on the Times Literary Supplement website, covering themes such as the classics, universities and teaching - and much else besides.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Roland Chambers - The Last Englishman
Roland Chambers discusses The Last Englishman. The book is a biography of English author and journalist Arthur Ransome who is best remembered for his series of children's books Swallows and Amazons. Chambers shows however that Ransome was much more than a writer, leading an astonishing 'double life' in the early part of the century when he was a foreign correspondent based in revolutionary Russia, and possibly much else besides.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | View additional interview in video | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Rodge Glass - Alasdair Gray
Listen to Rodge Glass as he discusses his fascinating biography on the Scottish writer and artist Alasdair Gray. The book documents the journey of the Glaswegian looking at the people, events, books, paintings, plays, poems and circumstances that conspired to make the man as he is today.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain
Ziauddin Sardar is a Muslim intellectual, cultural-critic and author. In his new book Balti Britain, Sardar travels to Asian communities throughout the UK to tell the history of Asians in Britain. From the arrival of the first Indian in 1614 through to present day, Sardar also looks back at his own past and that of his family following their emigration to Britain in the 1950s.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | View additional video interview | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Mark Bostridge - Florence Nightingale
Mark Bostridge's biography of Victorian icon Florence Nightingale, published almost exactly a century after the death of "the lady with the lamp", reveals that she was neither saint nor villain, but something much more interesting than the myth.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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 Frances Wilson - The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth
Frances Wilson answers questions on her book The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, which looks at the life of the English author and poet.
DOWNLOAD SEGMENT | Buy the book
(To download a file for transferral to an audio device such as an MP3 player, right-click the download link and select 'Save Target As')
Audio recordings produced by George Miller of podularity.com
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