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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.
Just for example: did you know that Macbeth was a direct response to a terrorist plot against King James I—and Shakespeare himself was connected to the plotters? That Charles Dickens almost died in a railway accident in 1865, but climbed out through a window, rescued his mistress, tended to the sick and dying—then went back to retrieve the manuscript for Our Mutual Friend? That Jane Austen observed the parties and balls of Regency England from above: she towered a full eight inches taller than the average woman of her time?
The Secret Life of Books draws on two lifetimes of readerly expertise, but it’s also deeply user-friendly: you’ll feel like a guest at the best dinner party of the year.
These are brilliant people who’ll make you feel brilliant, too.
With the help of some high-profile guests, Sophie and Jonty won’t just transform the classics, they’ll bring to life the great events and movements in world history wars and revolutions, breakthroughs and triumphs and disasters—seen in the new light of great art rediscovered. This is a podcast for readers and book groups, students and teachers of literature, but it’s also for fans of history and biography, and anyone who’s excited by dazzling, deeply knowledgeable minds working hard and having the time of their lives.
Secret Life of Books
Dracula
Twenty-first century vampires are the brooding, sparkly anti-heroes of Twilight and Ann Rice— all pointy teeth and hair-product. But they used to be much weirder, scarier and sexier than that. Bram Stoker’s world-changing 1897 novel Dracula is one of the most erotic and thrilling novels in English literature—despite having the most boring opening pages—and it’s crammed with secrets, including the fact that Dracula had a long white mustache, and he made the beds and did the cooking at his at his ultra-scary castle in Transylvania. Stoker himself was a brilliant dancer, a champion fast-walker and a theatrical impresario who was married to—wait for it—Oscar Wilde’s ex-girlfriend.
So whatever you’re imagining, we promise you, you’re not ready for this. Join Jonty and Sophie as they dig up the story behind the story of Dracula, which includes Jack the Ripper, Wilde’s trials for homosexuality, Kodak cameras, immigration, industrialization, decapitation, Macbeth, gobs of sex, King James’s Demonologie and a serious case of Victorian-era trainspotting.
Oh, and vampires caused World War I. You’ve been warned!
Content warning: some references to emotional and physical abuse, mental illness and suicide.
Further Reading:
- Bram Stoker, Dracula, Penguin Classics, (2011)
- David J. Skal, Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (Liveright, 2016)
- Elizabeth Miller & Dacre Stoker, The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years (Hellbound Books 2024)
- Philip Ball, The Modern Myths, Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination (Chicago UP 2021).
- Luckhurst R, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dracula. Cambridge University Press; 2017.
