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Secret Life of Books
Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.
The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC.
Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.
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Secret Life of Books
Gulliver's Travels Part 1
Gulliver’s Travels is one of the most popular books of all time, but it’s no mere child’s tale. It’s the GOAT of political satires – mad, dirty and brilliantly cutting, written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish clergyman and perhaps the most notorious writer of his age. Join us to learn more about the fictional adventures of Swift’s creation Lemuel Gulliver, who finds himself in strange, imaginary lands with tiny people and giant people, mad scientists and talking horses.
In the first episode we explain why Swift published Gulliver’s Travels anonymously to avoid being arrested and why this was not the first time Swift had the Prime Minister’s bounty on his head for inflammatory and scandalous writing.
Come for the politics, stay for the sex comedy. Swift has one of the dirtiest minds in English literature. How do Swift’s fantasies play out when the giant women of Brobdignag play with the tiny man-doll Gulliver in their private chamber… And what happens when the giant Gulliver needs to use a toilet in a city full of minute people?
Suggested reading: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, (Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. David Wommersley, 2012); Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift: A Portrait (Henry Holt, 1999); John Stubbs, Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel (Penguin, 2016); Daniel Cook and Nicholas Seager, eds., Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels, (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
