The LRB Podcast

Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control. In this long extract from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠ AUDIO GIFTS Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts

Emily Brontë died on 19 December 1848. As Patricia Lockwood said in an episode of Close Readings, there is evidence that Brontë was writing a second novel to follow ‘Wuthering Heights’, but if she was, it has been lost, and it has been suggested, though never proved, that her sister Charlotte might have destroyed it. But what could possibly be in that lost novel, Lockwood wondered, that was worse, more unacceptable, than what we find in ‘Wuthering Heights’? To mark the anniversary, we’re releasing the full version of this episode from the Close Readings series ‘Novel Approaches’. David Trotter and Patricia Lockwood join Thomas Jones to discuss Brontë’s only surviving novel, one Trotter describes as ‘completely amoral’. Readings by Alex Colley Give a gift subscription to Close Readings for Christmas: https://lrb.me/audiogifts From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]

For a century, Judy Garland’s joyous and vulnerable singing voice has captivated audiences at the theatre, over the airwaves and in the cinema. Camille Paglia wrote of her that she ‘became an emblematic personality of her time, into whom the mass audience projected its hopes and disappointments’. Bee Wilson joins Malin Hay to discuss Garland’s years at MGM Studios, where she was mistreated and overworked by her employers but also made some of her best pictures, growing from a contract player into a star. They discuss whether Garland’s work at MGM was worth the pain it caused her, who her greatest collaborators were, and who now owns her story. Listen to Bee read her pieces in the audiobook Complicated Women, which includes an introductory conversation between Bee and Malin: https://lrb.me/audiobookspod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]

The politics of migration have driven some of the most consequential changes in Britain’s recent history and look set to dominate the next general election. Since the end of Rishi Sunak’s government, the crossings of ‘small boats’ over the English Channel and the use of ‘asylum hotels’ have become a focal point for protest, violence and escalating rhetoric, leading most recently to significant changes in the migration system proposed by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. To assess these changes and explain how Britain’s asylum system works, James is joined by Colin Yeo, a barrister and author of Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System, and Nicola Kelly, a former Home Office civil servant and author of Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠ From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]

Fatma Hassona was a Palestinian photographer from Gaza City who was killed with her family by an Israeli airstrike in April 2025. A year earlier, the Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi began recording video conversations with Hassona about her life and work under Israeli bombardment, which became the film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. In this episode, Adam Shatz talks to Farsi about the process of making the film, the connection she formed with Hassona, and the practical and ethical challenges of documenting Israel’s devastation of Gaza and its people. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]