The Secret Life of Books - Season 2

The Secret Life of Books - Season 2

Season 2

Network
Episodes6
DatesOct 13, 2015 - Nov 17, 2015
Previous SeasonNext Season

Episodes

The Faerie Queene
Season 2Episode 160 min

The Faerie Queene

Dr Janina Ramirez unravels Edmund Spenser's Elizabethan epic The Faerie Queene to reveal how this fantasy world of elves, nymphs and questing knights was written in the midst of the brutal Tudor occupation of Ireland, and how the writer's growing disillusionment with the conflict was coded into the poem's restless vers

Oct 13, 2015
Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs
Season 2Episode 260 min

Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs

Nicholas Parsons, a lifelong fan of Edward Lear, revisits the book that gave the world The Owl and the Pussycat to explore the fine line between joy and melancholy in Lear's writing and discover how the epileptic, bronchial, asthmatic depressive pioneered a new kind of poetry that married brilliant wordplay with astonishing artwork.

Oct 19, 2015
The Mill on the Floss
Season 2Episode 360 min

The Mill on the Floss

Multi-award-winning actor and director Fiona Shaw explores the genesis of her all-time favourite book, The Mill on the Floss, and discovers how the scandal that caused George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) to take a male pen name was also played out in the plot of her classic novel about a woman's thwarted intellectual ambitions and conflicting sexual desires.

Oct 26, 2015
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Season 2Episode 460 min

Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Performance poet and former heroin addict John Cooper Clarke explores Thomas de Quincey's autobiographical classic Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and discovers how his fellow Mancunian's addiction memoir avoids the cliches of modern 'misery-lit' in favour of something much more unsentimental and psychologically complex.

Nov 3, 2015
Cider with Rosie
Season 2Episode 560 min

Cider with Rosie

Best-selling chronicler of modern country life, Joanna Trollope traces the roots of her favourite book Cider with Rosie to uncover how Laurie Lee blended fact and fiction in his wistful elegy to a disappeared rural world - and reflect on why a book with such dark, hard-edged undercurrents continues to have such a popular appeal.

Nov 10, 2015
Swallows and Amazons
Season 2Episode 660 min

Swallows and Amazons

Former journalist and keen amateur sailor John Sergeant takes to the water in the wake of the plucky young heroes of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, and learns how a globe-trotting foreign correspondent and acquintance of Lenin and Trotsky came to perfect a new, more authentic kind of children's literature that featured real children doing real things in real places.

Nov 17, 2015

Recently Updated Shows

Recently updated shows that might be of your interest.
Tires
Running

Tires

At his father's auto shop, a hapless manager strives to improve customer service and drive profits while keeping his troublemaking cousin in line.

GenreComedy
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Running

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Set thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, this epic drama follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.

Survivor
Running

Survivor

Eighteen to twenty castaways will compete against each other on Survivor. All castaways will compete to outwit, outplay, outlast and ultimately be crowned Sole Survivor.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Running

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

On Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver presents a satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.

GenreComedy
Lioness
Running

Lioness

Lioness, inspired by an actual U.S. Military program, follows the life of Joe while she attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA's spear in the war on terror. The Lioness Program, overseen by Kaitlyn Meade and Donald Westfield, enlists an aggressive Marine Raider named Cruz to operate undercover alongside Joe among the power brokers of State terrorism in the CIA's efforts to thwart the next 9/11.