How do we use fiction in food? What does a character’s choice of food reveal about them? Do you simply have to go and make a dish when it’s described so beautifully in a book? On this very special episode, a collaboration with the wonderful Spice Bags podcast, we discuss read more…
Detective Fiction
Ep 50: Arsène Lupin
In 1905 in Paris, the publisher Pierre Laffite had an idea. His new journal Je Sais Tout (I Know Everything) had just launched and he was looking for an author who could do for his magazine, what Arthur Conan Doyle’s phenomenally popular Sherlock Holmes had done for The Strand magazine, read more…
Ep 44: Words Dunnit (Live at the Dublin Podcast Festival)
Last year Caroline Crampton (of Shedunnit) and I teamed up to create a joint live show, called Words Dunnit: a 200-year history of detective fiction in an hour. We performed the show live at the Dublin Podcast Festival in November 2019, and then again at Pod UK, in Birmingham, in read more…
Upcoming Live Shows!
In exciting news, Caroline Crampton (of the podcast Shedunnit) and I are teaming up for a joint live show at the Dublin Podcast Festival and PodUK! The title is yet to be confirmed – what do you think: Shedunnit to that Effect or Words Dunnit Either way, I’m very excited read more…
Ep32: Golden Age Detective Fiction
An English country estate. A detective pacing the room, explaining how they have solved the crime, revealing the solution to a puzzle and the clues which were there all along. It’s so easy to parody this scene because it’s so familiar. It’s Reverend Green in the drawing room with the read more…
Ep 31: Steampunk, Pt 2 (Even Greater London)
Note: Part 1 of this double episode is here One way of thinking about steampunk is to divide it into two parts: the steam and the punk. The steam is the Victorian element: the fascination and engagement with the 19th century – whether satirizing or poking fun at Victorian conventions read more…
Episode 15: The Scarlet Pimpernel & Baroness Orczy
The Scarlet Pimpernel The Scarlet Pimpernel is a character now long disconnected from his origins in a 1903 novel. The Pimpernel is a mysterious Englishman who uses elaborate disguises to heroically rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution. Naming himself after a small red flower, the enigmatic read more…
[Article] Invasion Fiction to Spy Novels: Erskine Childers and John Buchan
The Rise of the Spy Novel: The Riddle of the Sands and The Thirty-Nine Steps Episode 1 of Words To That Effect was on invasion fiction, sometimes also called invasion literature or future war fiction (you can listen to episode 1 here). If you are interested in the area then read more…