Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and schooldays – we’ve got it all in episode 37 (depending on your definition of ‘all’).
In the first half of this episode, we meander around the topic of whether or not studying a book at school ruins them for us. The topic was suggested by Karen (thanks Karen!) and it was really fun to discuss from the perspective of student and teacher. We got a bit preoccupied by Shakespeare, but that’s true of all the best of people.
Rachel and I went to see an amazing production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Harold Pinter theatre – tickets here! – and it inspired us to compare it with Arthur Miller’s play from around the same time, A View From the Bridge.
Check out our iTunes page, listen above or via your podcast app of choice, rate and review if you so wish, and send us any suggestions you have for future episodes! Thanks for those who tweeted their responses to our school question.
The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
Richard Yates
Wallace Stegner
William Maxwell
Alice Munro
Gossip From Thrush Green by Miss Read
Dorothy Whipple
Fairacres series by Miss Read
Richmal Crompton
Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols
E.F. Benson
A Case of Human Bondage by Beverley Nichols
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
Pink Sugar by O. Douglas
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong
Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Molière
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
Noel Coward
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
At The Jerusalem by Paul Bailey