You're Dead to Me - The Bloomsbury Group

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

For the 100th episode, Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Jane Goldman and comedian Suzi Ruffell as he travels back a century to1920s London to learn all about the members of the Bloomsbury Group. A collection of intellectuals and artists active in London in the early twentieth century, the Bloomsbury Group included such luminaries as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes. From their origins at the University of Cambridge to their bohemian lifestyle in London in the 1910s and 20s, and taking in their political work, artistic output, and boundary-pushing relationships, this episode explores the lives, loves and cultural impact of Bloomsbury Group members. Research by: Madeleine Bracey, Andrew Himmelberg, and Josh Rice Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And for our 100th episode, hooray, party poppers in the air, we are firing up the You're Dead to Me time machine and travelling back a hundred years to learn all about some extraordinary

intellectuals and creatives, the Bloomsbury Group. And joining us for our very own You're Dead to Me centenary are two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a poet and academic at the University of Glasgow, where she's a reader in English literature. She's an expert on the life and literature of Virginia Woolf and is general editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Woolf's works. It's Dr Jane Goldman. Welcome, Jane. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Lovely to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, podcaster and writer.

You'll have seen her loads on the telly on Mock the Week, The Last Leg, Live at the Apollo and heard her loads on Radio 4 and various comedy shows or on her podcasts Out, Like-Minded Friends and Big Kick Energy. And you'll definitely remember her from our episode about LGBTQ history. It's the sensational Susie Ruffell. Welcome back, Susie. Hello, thank you for having me. Oh, we're delighted to have you back. You were a guest all the way on Series 1 in the mists of time

and we loved having you on and then we got a bit stuck in trying to get you back in because of, like, dates and things. Yes. But you're here. We're here and I'm very excited. And also our 100th episode. It feels special. It feels very special.

It does indeed. You've worn a fedora. Yeah, as always. I'm dressed as Virginia Woolf. I hope you appreciate that. No, I'm being silly, but no, it's lovely to have you here. And we found out last time that you didn't love history at school, but actually you like history.

Yes. What do you know of the Bloomsbury group? Is that a history you've got in your head? I found school very hard. And I probably mentioned this before. I'm quite severely dyslexic. And I think that just makes all of school difficult if you don't have great teachers.

And sadly, I don't think all of my teachers were great. But I do have a general interest in history. And what do I know about the Bloomsbury Group? I know that it was in the first half of the 1900s. And they were a group of sort of academics and artists and people that knew a lot about stuff i know that lots of them went to cambridge and the women were at kings is that a thing and then i know that virginia wolf had a sister who was an artist i think they were both in it there were lots of people that were having lots of different relationships.

I mean, this is a pretty good summary of the podcast, to be honest. Is that fair? That's sort of all I know. I've never read Virginia Woolf, to my shame. And I watched a play called Inheritance that had something to do with E.M. Forster. And that's it. That's everything. I think that qualifies you. It's good that you know about King's College because

not a lot of people know that Virginia Woolf actually went to university. Because she used to not mention it herself very much. She liked to play up that she hadn't had a formal education. So the truth's out. There we go. For me, watch out, Virginia.

I've got your number. So, what do you know? So let's start the podcast with the first segment. This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I reckon you've heard of the Bloomsbury Group, much like Susie. You might know as much as Susie.

They're also sometimes known as the Bloomsbury Set. And you may have heard of a couple of the members, superstar novelist Virginia Woolf, author of various books, including A Room of One's Own, Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps the most famous. In pop culture, Woolf was played by Nicole Kidman and a famous fake nose in the movie The Hours. She was also the focus of the recent movie Vita and Victoria, all about her love affair with Vita Sackville-West. Susie's doing a memory face. And perhaps you know the novels of E.M. Forster or have seen one of his big or small screen adaptations, Passage to India, Howard's End, A Room with a View. And if you're a fan of progressive economics and government investment, hey, who isn't? Then you'll know about John Maynard

Keynes and Keynesian economics. But what about the other members of the Bloomsbury group? And what do we know about this gregarious group who, according to the American writer Dorothy Parker, lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles? Let's find out. Right. This is a hundredth episode of You're Dead to Me. We're all very chuffed. We thought it'd be fun to jump back to 1924 to go back a hundred years. Then we realised that's actually not going to work because their life sprawls over three decades and we'd end up spending the whole episode just going, oh, we really want to do this bit, but we can't because it's not 1924. So we've abandoned that plan. We're just doing the Bloomsbury Group.

Sorry. But Susie, we're going to take you to 1915 to a cool London party. Yeah. Do I wear like a suit? Oh, I imagine you've been to plenty of cool London parties in the 21st century. Hey, listen, Greg, it's true. I'm kind of cool. So what are you imagining as a 1915 cool London party? What is the vibe, do you think? So I'm thinking, have you seen that Stephen Fry film, Bright Young Things?

Is that kind of the vibe? Okay. I don't know if that's the right period at all, but I feel like, would it be flappers? No, is that the wrong period? Tiny bit early. 1915 is during the First World War. So a little bit before the flappers. Okay, so we're keeping the home fires burning. We're crying. The Titanic's just sunk. People are wearing those sorts of things. People are talking about the unsinkable Molly Brown.

Rose is still alive. Jack's very much dead. Oh. Is that good? Good guesses. Yeah, great guesses, right? Jane, I'd say it's a bit more raucous than that. Opium?

Oh, I mean, possibly. I mean, there's probably some... Oh, they took cocaine, but it was legal then, so... Yeah, great guesses, right? Jane, I'd say it's a bit more raucous than that. Opium? Oh, I mean, possibly. I mean, there's probably some... Oh, they took cocaine, but it was legal then, so... Yeah, she was getting in pharmacy. They're kind of still. Yeah, I mean, pretty much we'd just been in pharmacies at the time. Jane, this party was thrown by the brilliantly named Lady Ottoline Morell. It sounds like a sort of Hunger Games character.

So this is the 25th of March, 1915. Lady Ottoline Morell's house. What is it about this party that sums up the Bloomsbury group? Well, partying for peace was what Bloomsbury were into during World War I. Ottoline Morell hosted weekly revels in her Bloomsbury home against the war, supporting conscientious objectors and pacifists. war, supporting conscientious objectors and pacifists. Writer Arnold Bennett's diary entry for the 25th of March 1915 talks about the festivities that began with a radical art exhibition before moving to the Morels, I quote, gathering of an immense reunion of art students,

gathering of an immense reunion of art students, painters and queer people, girls in fancy male costume, queer dancing, etc. Fine pictures, glorious drawings by Picasso, excellent impression of host and hostess. That's what he says in his diary. Wow. I mean, that sounds like quite the shindig. Yeah, it really does. Now, Bloomsbury at that period, obviously we think of Bloomsbury now, it's what he says in his diary. Wow. I mean, that sounds like quite the shindig. Yeah, it really does. Now, Bloomsbury at that period,

obviously we think of Bloomsbury now, it's sort of quite, it's very upmarket, it's quite zhi zhi. Then, would it have been? No, it was a dump and it wasn't. Was it? Okay. It wasn't the place for young ladies to really live. Even though they were all wealthy, right? They were all wealthy to a degree.

Yeah. Yeah. None of them were like, oh, i've got to get up early because i'm cleaning someone's gas you know there wasn't no no they didn't marry off buy a house of their own and and then reproduce the british empire when uh virginia wolf and her siblings father died and they they got rid of they left hyde park gate house posh house in Kensington,

and they moved to Bloomsbury and set up flat shares with their mates. Right. Yeah. So that was radical. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But Susie, there was a very important lexicographical landmark in that diary entry. Do you want to guess what it was?

We're going to have to start with what lexicographical is. In terms of linguistic heritage and history, there was a word used in that diary entry by Arnold Bennett that's really important to dictionary writers. Do you know what the word was? Was it queer? Yeah, it was. It was the first ever use of that in published writing.

Right. To mean unusual? No. To mean a sexual orientation. But it had been used as unusual before then. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

But now it has a particular sexual orientation which can't be ignored. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Arnold Bennett's term queer in this diary entry as the earliest published modern usage of the word queer. published modern usage of the word queer. And Vanessa Bell, likewise, writes of the queer effect of these parties in a letter to one of her pals. So imagine Bertie Russell, that's Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, dancing a hornpipe, Augustus John and Arnold Bennett, all the celebrities of the day, looking as beautiful as they could in clothes seized from Otterline's drawers. And Otterline herself at the head of the troop of short haired young ladies from the Slade prancing about. So you're not wrong about the flapper vibe because they all had the bobbed hair. But also what's clear from Vanessa's letter and Bennett's diary entry is that Bloomsbury was already synonymous with queer and Bloomsbury and sex were synonymous. There's an amazing moment Virginia Woolf recalls later in her memoir when she's in Fitzroy Square living with various pals and Lytton Strachey is lingering at the doorway and he points his finger at a stain on

Vanessa Bell's dress and he inquired semen and Woolf says with that one word, all the barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us. Sex permeated our conversation. And the word bugger was never far from our lips. Wow. So Bloomsbury's become a hotbed of experimental ways of living, embracing openness on everything, sexuality, queer existence, polyamory, class consciousness, and they championed at the same time avant-garde European art and their own Bloomsbury style of art. So we know why they call the Bloomsbury set, because that's where they hang out. But later on, they move out into other homes of theirs. Charleston's perhaps the most famous one, Jane, what else is there? Yeah, I mean, they always had a foothold in Bloomsbury.

But the other places, apart from Charleston Farmhouse, which you can go and visit today, the Wolves lived at Monk's House in Sussex. Lytton Strait, she had a menage at Tidmarsh and then Ham Spray House. The Morells had Garsington Manor as well as a Bloomsbury Gaff. And Roger Fry lived at Durbin's. And then there's the outliers, Vita Sackville West at Long Barn and Sissinghurst. Which has got a famous garden, very beautiful garden, Sissinghurst. Which has got a famous garden, a very beautiful garden, Sissinghurst. She lived in a tower.

Oh, did she? Yeah. You can visit it. It's lovely. I grew up near there. It's very pretty. How dramatic. Very dramatic.

What a dramatic person to go, I should live in a tower. Yeah, why not? It was a compensation, really, because she wasn't allowed to inherit no house because of primogeniture. What's primogeniture? It's the law by which only the male first born can inherit and she was unfortunately of the wrong

gender so living in this tower was little compensation for a house that had 365 rooms one for each day of the year Arguably too many Yeah, I mean, God, so many curtains to draw. Nightmare.

All right. So Susie, during this episode, we are going to be bombarding you with very complicated personal relationships between people. Good. So we thought we'd actually help you navigate that by printing off a kind of relationship map that hopefully is in front of you. Our fantastic PhD student, Madeline, has put this together. It is a sort of L word style. I was going to say

this is, I mean if we were doing an episode on the L word I'd feel like I knew a lot more. I'd be able to talk about the dynamics between Carmen and Shane until the cows come home. Yeah. So you've got quite a lot of names on there and how they're related to each other. You can see that it's going to get quite messy as we go. So this is your life raft.

Just look down at this and you'll know where we are. This can't be my life raft. It's far too confusing. Well, as I, you know, look at where Duncan Grant is and think Shane. Okay, great. He definitely had an awful lot of action from all sorts of directions. I think so did John Maynard Keynes. I'm sure the seaman in question was his on Vanessa's dress. I could be wrong about that. Now, although we've said the Bloomsbury group is based around Bloomsbury,

which I think is entirely fair, well, actually, Susie, you've already alluded to this, Cambridge. How does Cambridge sort of predate Bloomsbury? Partly, it began at the turn of the 20th century when Toby Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell's brother, went to Cambridge University. Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell's brother, went to Cambridge University. At Cambridge, Toby hung out with a secret all-male elite intellectual conversation group, the Cambridge Apostles.

God, I couldn't think of anything worse. Go on. Oh, no, you might be pleasantly surprised. Fans of philosopher G.E. Moore, and he recommended the pleasures of human intercourse and the admiration of beautiful objects. And I think some of the Bloomsbury group took that intercourse quite literally. Yes. The members were Clive Bell, Leonard Wolfe, Lytton Strachey, Toby Stephen, Adrian Stephen, E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. But they also pulled in Lytton Strachey's handsome Scottish cousin, Duncan Grant, who was at art college at the time. So these are our fancy nerds. Sure.

And they're all having a good time. They are a member of this secret organisation called the Cambridge Apostles. It's quite obscure. And on the 5th of May, 1901, they wrestled with the eternal question, Susie, the big one we've all asked. Yeah.

Are crocodiles the best of animals? No. I'm pleased you've had this chat and I'm pleased you've invited me in for it. Now, can I ask a quick question? Would all of these men have been, I'm not suggesting they were elitists, but they would all have been from wealth to a degree to go to Cambridge at that time? Short answer, yes. They would all expect sort of positions of administration in the empire

and lots of them went to Eton and Cambridge. But some of them were also anti-imperialists, right? Of course. It's referred to as the Bloomsbury Fraction by Raymond Williams, the idea that some of the elite turns against itself. So a lot of Virginia Woolf's work is about looking at how people are inducted into a system that they know is wrong. I'm surprised that you picked out Are Crocodiles the Best of Animals? Because the Apost's paper that sticks in my mind is the one by Lytton Strachey who tried to define civilization and he said the

height of civilization would be when we could F and bugger publicly in the street and that's the height of civilization the height he makes a point of it. The top echelon of civilisation would be the bawdy class. Well, he would absolutely love a leather weekend in Berlin, wouldn't he? My gosh. He would. There are two great questions then. Are crocodiles great

and should we be bonking in the streets? I mean, the crocodile question is the kind of thing I would debate with my four-year-old daughter. Sure. The other one, less so. Quite right, actually. Quite right. OK, so we've introduced Toby Stephen. I'll be honest, Jane, I've never heard of him, but the older brother of Virginia and Vanessa, who are the Stephens, right?

They're the Stephens sisters because they're not yet Wolf. Yeah, well, poor Toby died tragically young. He died in 1906 after going on a Greek holiday and he caught typhoid. But he's responsible for moving himself and his siblings out to Bloomsbury from the posh house that they'd lived in. It's there that Toby began hosting Thursday evenings to keep up conversation or intercourse with his Cambridge friends. keep up conversation or intercourse with his Cambridge friends. And this was radical because now it included women with a radical openness and no taboos to the conversation. So then his sister Vanessa began the Friday Club in 1905,

focusing on visual art, but covering all the same loose topics as well. These two groups do form Bloomsbury's roots. focusing on visual art, but covering all the same loose topics as well. These two groups do form Bloomsbury's roots. But, Greg, you have to pay attention to the date 1910. Virginia Woolf said on or about December 1910, human character changed. And in 1910, I would say it's the formative Bloomsbury moment when the artist critic, who also went to Cambridge, but not at the same time, Roger Fry, met some Bloomsburys randomly on a train and involved them in his shocking post-impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London. Yeah. When we say Bloomsbury, they call themselves the Bloomsberries, as in a fruit, which is rather cute. We'll refer to them, I guess, as Bloomsberries, if that's all right. So the Thursday Club and the Friday Club.

It's not the most original. I mean, these are brilliant intellectuals. Not the best names. No, but there is sort of an honesty and simplicity, I think. Now, I'm interested in Roger Fry, though. What was he doing that was so sort of outrageous? Was it sort of rude pictures? What was he doing that was so sort of outrageous?

Was it sort of rude pictures? Basically, he brought to Britain for the first time Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, all of them dead, Manet, but truly shocking to the British audience. And he put on this big show and everybody was outraged. I mean, things that we now think of as quite chocolate boxy paintings, you know, think of Gauguin, think of Van Gogh. People were horrified. Why? Because it wasn't straightforward a picture.

The shock of the new, isn't it? The shock of the new. But we'll get to that in my nuance window. Oh, stay tuned for the nuance window. I guess we should start with the writers, because that's the Thursday gang. Have you heard of E.M. Forster? I have Yeah? Because that play The Inheritance

that play is set during the AIDS epidemic so I knew that he was a writer and I know that he was gay Yeah Did he write about India? Did he travel a lot to India? Yeah, passage to India, yeah Yeah, that's it

That's a good summary Jane, do you want to give us a bit more detail? Well, he was born in London in 1879 and he was baptised Edward Morgan Forster, avoiding being baptised Henry because his dad accidentally gave his own name to the vicar. I love that. At Cambridge, Forster was massively influenced by the openly gay and feminist Edward Carpenter, who is the author of many things, including a book called The Intermediate Sex. Forster, too, was gay.

Stationed in Egypt with the British Red Cross in World War I, he had his first sexual encounter. I mean, how do researchers know this? His long, passionate affair with Mohamed El Adel, an Egyptian tram conductor, made him feel, I quote, a grown up man. Mohamed died of consumption in 1922. But the greatest love of E.M. Forster's life was Bob Buckingham, a burly young policeman, whom he met in 1930. And despite Buckingham's marriage, at which Forster was a witness, their relationship flourished for years.

Yeah. He also wrote quite an impressive line. I should have been a more famous writer if I had written or rather published more, but sex prevented the latter. Sounds like he was just too busy getting his end away. And, you know, fair enough. Well, you're writing a book. Well, yeah, sure, sure. I mean, I've got loads of time to write it, to be honest.

Was he writing about queer stuff or was it like coded? No, so this is a great question, Susie. This is coded. But there is a very famous, important book of his called, is it Maurice or Maurice? Maurice. Yeah. So basically, he published between 1905 and 1910, four novels. And Muhammad, he inspired the later book, A Passage to India of 1924. This is his Egyptian pal and lover. But he finished this book, Maurice, in 1914. However, it was only published posthumously a year after he died in 1971, because it's about a gay relationship with what he called an imperative happy ending. So Forster wrote about this, I was determined that in fiction anyway,

two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. So he wrote it in 1914 and he had to wait until homosexuality became legalised before it was published and he died by then. We get such a trope of the bury your gays trope where LGBTQ stories often end with tragedy. Yeah.

And he was sort of saying it's imperative that this one is happy ever after. And that's something that still happens now. There's the cliche of killing off lesbians. It's so common. So let's move on to my favourite, purely because he's a historian, Lytton Strachey. He's very waspish and witty. Jane, can you tell us more about Lytton Strachey, he's very waspish and witty Jane, can you tell us more about Lytton Strachey please? Giles Lytton Strachey, born London 1880

to Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey and Jane Maria, a prominent suffragist So kind of military but also liberal feminist Yeah, it's interesting because dad's in the army and mum's like, you know, vote for women. It's like a Mary Poppins movie. Anyway, his most famous book, which caused a scandal, was Eminent Victorians. And it's still viewed today as groundbreaking work because of its modernist approach to biography. And in this collection of satirical, irreverent portraits of four

prominent Victorians, Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon, Strachey, with great flair and wit, challenged traditional hagiographic depictions of historical figures. So it wasn't all praising fat generals on horses. It was actually humanising them. And a critical look. Very critical and satirical because, you know, this is what this generation's inherited, these Victorian values which have sent them very shortly into war.

So likewise, he also did a biography of Queen Victoria, which certainly demystifies and humanises her. It's worth reading, actually. Is it quite shocking? It's, for the time, subversive. I mean, now you'd be like, ooh. But at the time, it was the Queen. Yes, shade.

He was gay, right? How unusual. How unusual. Yes, she is. He was gay, right? How unusual. Another person we have to talk about is John Maynard Keynes. And your relationship map, Susie, you will probably see there's quite a lot going on between John Maynard Keynes, Lydon Strachey and Duncan Grant.

Yeah, he's quite busy. Yeah. And let's not forget, this is the man that went on to found the British Arts Council. You know, he's a very eminent person as well as a great economist. I thought you were going to say Great Shagger then. Well, I wouldn't know personally. But manifestly he was. Anyway, that was not Lytton Strachey's only love triangle. At Cambridge, Lytton Strachey had a scene with John Maynard Keynes and others before falling for your Shane, Duncan Grant.

Writing to Keynes, Strachey called Grant the full moon of heaven. Keynes replied, anyone could fall in love with Duncan if he wanted to and by 1907 this had actually happened. Keynes and Grant began a secretive affair and Strachey was heartbroken by Grant's choosing Keynes over him. Later Strachey was in another love triangle involving this is maybe some daddy issues here involving a young military officer called Ralph Partridge and the artist Dora Carrington, who was Strachey's lifelong close platonic friend. Now, Ralph Partridge and Dora Carrington fell in love and they got married in 1921. Lytton Strachey paid for the wedding. and they got married in 1921.

Lytton Strachey paid for the wedding. And despite Carrington's unrequited desire for Lytton Strachey and Strachey's unrequited desire for Partridge, all three of them honeymooned together. And then they lived together for many years in a ham spray house, all of them taking more lovers outside their menage. And Lytton Strachey, get this, he and his last lover, Roger Senhouse, experimented with crucifixion sex. Yeah, I mean, not that I've experienced anything like this, but those sort of like, certainly when you're a young queer person, it's ever so reassuring when you read stuff about people

where you know that you've been here before, people like you have been here before. And, you know, you would look at this and go, oh, how modern, but it's like a century ago. It's 100 years ago. Yeah, 100 years ago. It's wild, but it's also there's something sort of so unapologetically honest about it that you go,

God, good for you. It is like there's a dark shadow in history, which is the Victorian era, which was hypocritically a very sexualised culture but pretended not to be. Why was Queen Victoria such a prude? She wasn't. I mean, this is the thing.

Queen Victoria loved sex. Is this documented? She fancied the pants off her husband and nine kids. He gave her erotic art. They were deeply erotic people. But this idea that Victorians as prudes, it's more of an Edwardian idea that's sort of retroactively applied.

But the Victorians invented modern pornography. They were randy. So the Bloomsbury are rebelling against some of the hypocrisy. It's not that sex isn't happening. It's just that they're being honest about it. Yeah. I feel like they might be having a bit more than other people. I think they sound like they're having a bit more.

But like... With a lot more people, maybe. Yeah, yeah. But we've mentioned John Maynard Keynes. So he is this sort of great genius economist. Jane, do you want to give us sort of the brief press of him? Okay. Born in 1883, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge,

an economics and maths genius, whom his school banned from maths competitions because it was unfair on the other kids. Ah! They did that to my mum at school. Really? No, because she was such a fast runner. Oh, that's crazy.

She wasn't allowed to be in the running races with the girls because she beat them all too easily. She used to have to race the boys. Really? And she still beat them. Wow. Do you know how Margaret Thatcher hated John Keynes because he stood for a certain kind of economics? Well, he was very rebellious early on in his career. In 1915, he began work at the Treasury,

but he resigned in disgust from his position after the post-war Versailles Treaty when the Allies got together to carve up the spoils and try and get reparations from Germany. And he was so shocked by how greedy and stupid they all were that he resigned and he predicted that their settlement would cause another catastrophic world war. Well, he wasn't wrong. In 1925, he married the famous Ballet Russe ballerina, Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopakova.

His major work, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Absolute banger, yeah. Brilliant, challenged classical economic theories arguing for government intervention as necessary to stabilise economies during recessions. It had a profound impact on economic thought and policy until about 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came in and supposedly burned a copy of Keynes on Downing Street steps. That's probably not true, but people say it's a good story. Let me just get this right. He would have been all for sort of nationalised stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. He's not a capitalist, but he thinks that there's more to life, you know, going back to those Cambridge conversations. Pleasure, beautiful things. Everybody deserves that. Art, yeah. And that economics is a fiction and you can intervene and restructure. He basically believes government is there for a purpose to serve the people.

Well, I mean, it seems like a wild idea given our current politics. Yeah, OK. Yeah, Keens, he was incredibly clever. But he's also got this sort of artsy, polyamorous life where he's sort of hanging out with artists and thinkers and writers and Russian ballet dancers. He's a sexy nerd. He's a sexy nerd, his body is. That's it. We've found the words.

Sexy nerd. So there we go. All the nerds listening, trying their arms in the air. All nerds are sexy, no? Yeah, sure. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's.

It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Let's now move on to the visual artists. Can we have a punnet of Bloomsbury's who do art, please, Jane? Okay, well, let's start with Vanessa Stevens, sister of Virginia, born 1879, studied at Arthur Cope School of Art from 1896, also attended King's College London, like her sister for a while, and the Royal Academy School from 1901. Three years after moving to Bloomsbury with her siblings, she married her brother's friend, the art critic Clive Bell, who doesn't seem to have been bisexual, unusually.

And they got married in 1907. Clive was a huge Francophile and he went on to have a lifelong friendship with Picasso. So they were very well connected with all the major European artists. And would those artists have been massive at that point? Yes. They weren't artists that been massive at that point? Yes. They weren't artists that got more successful post-death. They were superstars by then.

And Clive Bell's book, Art, of 1913, became, and it's still in print, the classic defence of modern art. And he coined this term significant form. It's this sort of democratic concept of art where everything from a high Renaissance painting to a vase made by a Chinese peasant is art because it partakes of significant form, i.e. it's gorgeous to look at in some way. a radical defence. He also published a pamphlet in 1915 called Peace at Once. And this was seized, prosecuted and burnt by the authorities. Vanessa, initially inspired by New English art, had her head turned by the 1910 Post-Impressionistition, which was showing continental works by Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, all by then dead, but absolutely shocking to the British public and the critics. And they were shown alongside living modern French artists. Her own avant-garde paintings

and collages were then shown in the second Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1912. Vanessa Bell showed work alongside other Bloomsbury's like Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Wyndham Lewis, who was originally in Bloomsbury, but fell out with them over the Ideal Home exhibition and then wrote really nasty things about them. Yeah. The Ideal Home exhibition nowadays is where you go to buy, like,

tin openers and sort of... And, like, you know, get a discount on a sofa. Yeah, but back then it was, like, the cutting edge of thinking about, like, domestic aesthetics. Right. Yeah. Vanessa Bell's artwork became increasingly bold and experimental and she's actually credited after Frantisek Kupka

with one of the earliest totally abstract paintings in Europe. Honestly, you can see her abstracts, collages, they're just bold, bright colour, geometric design. Amazing. And people would have been kind of stunned by them in a way. Yes, stunned or very angry. Right, because they would have thought, this is an art because I can't see a picture in it.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And would it be more about what it made you feel? Exactly. Exactly. Rather than, oh, that's a house. Oh, I feel angry. Vanessa Bell is obviously an unconventional person in terms of her art.

She's also going to have an unconventional marriage because that's what they do. Yeah. And the marriage with Clive, you said he's not bisexual. Yeah, well, both of them were very randy, obviously. They had two sons, Julian and Quentin. Meanwhile, I think when Vanessa was very heavily into early motherhood, Clive had a very serious flirtation with her sister, Virginia.

Oh no. He was soon off with other women. The Bells remained married, but both had significant relationships with other people. Clive travelled between Britain and France all the time, often with his lover, Mary Hutchinson. In 1913, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant founded the Omega Workshops based in Fitzroy Square. Artists could exhibit and sell their works in this space, which was designed to explore new forms and media, including tarting up old furniture. Vanessa and Duncan experimented there with textiles, pottery, furniture and kinetic art. So Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell have a relationship, break up and then found a workshop together.

A classic. Yeah. Can you imagine setting up with an ex? It's got to be pretty chill. I don't think we'll be selling much. I think we'll be arguing a lot. It's got to be pretty chill. I don't think we'll be selling much. I think we'll be arguing a lot. So Vanessa Bell, not only having a relationship with Fry, not only setting up the Omega workshops,

she also was involved with Duncan Grant, who was also involved with Keynes and Lytton Strachey. But what was Duncan Grant's story? You said he's the cousin of Lytton Strachey. Yeah, and he's Scottish. He was born in Rothy Mercus up in the northeast of Scotland. He was born in 1885. He spent his childhood in India and Myanmar because of his general father.

And in 1899, he was sent to St. Paul's School and he stayed with his cousins, the Strachys. school and he stayed with his cousins, the Strachys. Lady Strachy, his aunt, convinced Grant's parents to let him transfer to Westminster School of Art. After his brief affair with Lytton Strachy and more serious relationship with Maynard Keynes, he had a scene with Vanessa's brother, Adrian, who incidentally became a major expert on psychoanalysis. His sister, Virginia, then published the first translations of Freud into English with her press. So, you know, they were... Quite a family, isn't it? It's quite a family.

So Toby, Adrian, Vanessa and Virginia. Yeah, so anyway... Jane, when you say a scene, they're not acting together. What's a scene? Jane, when you say a scene, they're not acting together. What's a scene? Well, this is just my shorthand for people who are having sexual liaisons of more than a one-night stand. Okay, a fling. Yeah, a fling maybe.

Lovely. I mean, Vanessa Bell has a daughter with Duncan Grant and she's called Angelica Bell. Yeah. Not the BBC, CBBC children's presenter. She's lovely. Yeah. Angelica Bell, who's Not the BBC, CBBC children's presenter. She's lovely. Yeah. Angelica Bell, who's raised as Clive's daughter,

even though it's Duncan's daughter. That's right. And she didn't know until she was, I think, 18, who her real father was. But meanwhile, Vanessa and Duncan are decorating the house with all their amazing artworks and textiles and ceramic designs. And now it's this major centre of artistic expression and experimentation. But also, we've since discovered this big stash of Grant's more queer erotic art,

and he's now known as a queer artist of some import, and he left a substantial body of work exploring queer sexuality, i.e. loads of male nudes. Sure. All stashed under the bed. Wow! OK, so we've mentioned the Stephen siblings, Toby, Vanessa, Adrian, who, of course, are sister to Virginia.

So I think Virginia Woolf is probably the most famous Bloomsbury, I think. You're a Virginia Woolf scholar. I think you'd probably agree with me. I've dedicated my life to her. Why? Her sentences, they're absolutely gorgeous. Okay. They're just wonderful.

The most important word that Virginia Woolf put into print was but. That's how she starts A Room of One's Own. Yeah. But. So you're entering a conversation it's going to be contradicted we're all grown-ups in the room we can live with honesty and contradiction she writes in this thing not stream of consciousness but free and direct discourse which is so slippery that when you start reading the sentence, there are so many different ways you could read it that actually they read you.

Like, for example, Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Who's saying that? Well, depending on who you think's saying it, you know, it shows your politics. Can't get into that now, but that's... I phone up my friends sometimes in New York and go, my God, I've just discovered she said this. So tell us about her then. She's one of the Stephen family, of course.

Yeah, her dad, Leslie Stephen, founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. And he came from a long line of important social reformers and abolitionists. long line of important social reformers and abolitionists. Woolf herself called them the quacking Quakers. But one of them, her aunt, actually left her a small legacy, which enabled her to have an independent life, a few hundred pounds a year. And that's the argument of A Room of One's Own, which is, if women are going to be writers, if we're going to get somebody to rival Shakespeare, then we need money. You know, it's a materialist argument about the production of culture. So both her father and mother, Julia, was a famous beauty and she posed for pre-Raphaelite drawings and things. Now they

both had children from previous marriages and then they had these other kids. Virginia Woolf was homeschooled as a child and then she attended, as you rightly said, King's College London, the ladies department, 1897 to 1901. She was deeply traumatised by her mother's shockingly early death in 1895 and then just as she's getting over that, the woman who took over as the maternal figure, her half-sister Stella, she died in 1897. Then her father died in 1904, but that doesn't seem to have upset her quite the same. However, she had two half-brothers, the Duckworth brothers, However, she had two half-brothers, the Duckworth brothers, and they bullied and sexually harassed her. Following Toby's death, so death after death after death, you know, she's having these sort of hammer blows when she's just emerging as a young person.

After Toby's death and Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian moved to 29 Fitzroy Square. And it was there that Virginia began her first novel, and they entertained Bloomsbury friends. Quite a traumatic childhood for her. And I think Wolf is kind of known for being someone who had mental health issues. Yeah. I mean, is it safe to say that had she been alive now, she'd be someone that might be considered to have something like bipolar? I don't like to put dead people on the couch and diagnose, but all we know is that she had four mental health episodes in her life that were major and she needed to go into a nursing home. Right.

She tried to kill herself twice and And then in 1941, she did kill herself. Virginia married Leonard Wolfe. And he was from a Jewish family. His father was a lawyer. He became a civil servant, you know, sort of classic empire man. Yeah. Leonard first met Virginia in 1903. But then he was off in Ceylon, Sri Lanka.

And he's quite, he's an interesting guy because he's sort of a socialist. He's quite radical, getting involved in other literature and printing and the wasteland. I think he helps out, doesn't he, Jane? Yeah, well, they got married in 1912, but not before Little Strachey had proposed to Virginia Woolf and then overnight withdrew the proposal because they absolutely adored each other. But, you know, it's never going to fly. So then he persuaded Leonard to propose to Virginia. So he did.

So Lytton proposed and then the next morning went, sorry, sorry, actually, you should propose. Yeah, it's something like that. Leonard and Virginia in 1917 founded their own press called the Hogarth Press. They did hand-printed books, as you've said, Leonard and Virginia in 1917 founded their own press called the Hogarth Press. They did hand-printed books, as you've said, including Virginia Woolf set the type for T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland when it was published as a book. Oh, wow. She was the typesetter.

Yeah, she personally was the typesetter. As importantly, she helped Leonard with his most important anti-imperialist work, which is called Empire and Commerce in Africa, published in 1920. Now, she confessed to received, ingrained and continuing anti-Semitism and snobbery. And she said later, how I hated marrying a Jew, what a snob I was. But by 1935, considering a trip to Germany, which they actually took in 1938, the two of them went to Hitler's Germany. Anyway, in 1935, she notes, our Jewishness is said to be a danger for us. And people say we might be unpopular as we are Jews. So see the difference. So yes, she was born an anti-Semite, but maybe she changes her views. There's a lot of anti-Semitic utterances in her diaries and letters, however. Yeah, and they had a happy marriage. A very long and happy marriage. However, newlywed Virginia complained to her sister about the quality of her orgasm with a man.

And Leonard kept meticulous records of her menstrual cycle. He kept records of everything. And they were advised against children because of Virginia Woolf's mental health episodes. And she once confessed feeling no physical attraction to him. However, she also defined herself as a kind of attracted to men and women, including one she said about a later girlfriend that she felt desire for Ethel Smythe, a suffragist composer, and Leonard and her own sister.

Wow. Oh. She said all that. Yeah, because I think Virginia Woolf is often publicly described by people as sort of neurotic and sexless, which actually really is not true of her youth. Do you want to guess what the nickname that Virginia was given by her sister? It was an animalistic nickname.

She had a bit of a dog, like a dirty dog. The nickname was Goat. Greatest of all time? Goat as in Billy Goat, as in Horny, Roundy. Oh! Yeah. She would chat people up on the train. Women on the train. I mean, good for her. I think, listen, I love a journey on a train.

Right. And, you know, I'm a notorious lesbian. So, you know, I support all those things. That is your hip-hop name. Yeah, notorious lesbian. The notorious lesbian, yeah. Do look those things. That is your hip hop name. Yeah, Notorious Lesbian. Do look out for my new LP that I'm dropping. Her sister said young women weren't safe on trains with Billy Goat. I mean, safe makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. The unsafe makes me feel...

I don't love the unsafe, but I do. All of a sudden it gets a bit more uncomfortable. I don't mind her chatting women up, but let's make sure that everyone's safe. So she's openly saying I'm attracted to women. And her earliest love was this woman, Violet Dickinson, who she had this intense relationship with. And in her letters to Violet, one thing that she says is, get this, the astonishing depths, the hot volcano depths, your finger has stirred in sparrow.

I mean, what else can that... No, I mean, I think that we all know. We all know what that is. Well, I don't know what sparrow is, actually. Sparrow is, well, it means sparrow, but I think she must be citing Catullus because Catullus called lesbians pet sparrow wasn't really a bird.

If you get my point. Right, Susie. I've got it. Anyway, her best, most well-known love affair began in 1925 with the aristocrat and author Vita Sackville-West. What do you know of Susie? Just that she was part of this gang. They were together for years and years and years, maybe until one of their deaths, that they had this sort of marriage of gang, but they were together for years and years and years, maybe until one of their deaths,

that they had this sort of marriage of sorts, but not, because obviously women couldn't do that then. Well, she was married to Harold Nicholson. So they had husbands. Well, Harold Nicholson was bisexual and he had affairs with men as well. So both of them were having affairs with other people. Yeah. So it was a notorious open marriage.

And Virginia Woolf didn't rate her poetry, but loved her long legs. So let me quote you this. This is brilliant. Virginia Woolf said, I like her and being with her and the splendor. She shines in the grocer's shop in Sevenoaks with a candlelit radiance stalking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung. The politically reactionary Vita and Harold, however, cannot be seen therefore as core Bloomsbury's, but they're certainly really important. Yeah. And, you know, Virginia Woolf counted next to Leonard and Vanessa, Vita was her closest person. Yeah. Yeah.

And we've also got this amazing novel dedicated to Vita called Orlando. Right. Have you heard of Orlando? I've heard of Orlando. What do you know? That it's a bit lessee. Is that fair? Yeah, it is. Broadly lessee. Is that fair? Yeah, it is.

Broadly lessee. OK. Full title, Orlando, a biography, 1928. It's Woolf's brilliant queer love letter to Vita Sackville-West. Remember I told you Vita couldn't inherit Noel? Yes. So this is rewriting as if she inherits Noel. OK.

And Vita poses for some of the illustrations in it. So Vita Sackville-West is revisited as Orlando. And it's the life of this cross-dressing, polyamorous, Elizabethan noble man. And he doesn't age or die, but he wakes up one day as a woman in Constantinople in the 18th century. And then she continues a life of cross-dressing polyamory as a woman into the 20th century. And on the last page, it says October 1928, the day the book is published. My favourite sentence in this book, the day the book is published. My favourite sentence in this book, it's only four words, the Queen had come. Now, how did she get that into print when the same year, 1928, D.H. Lawrence's racy Lady Chatterley's Lover and Radcliffe Hall's coy lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness

were both banned for obscenity. I mean, you've read The Well of Loneliness. You'll know it says something like, and that night they were not parted. Yes. And that's as hot as it gets. That was banned for obscenity. But somehow, although it fell on the census table,

Orlando was not banned for obscenity. Virginia Woolf was also called to the trial, the obscenities trial, to speak on behalf of Radcliffe Hall. So, you know, she tried to defend this queer novel, which is a very brave thing to do, you know. Did they publish their own works? They have like a publishing house? Yeah, that's right. The Hogarth Press. So once Virginia Woolf was able to take hold of the means of production, then she had the freedom.

So with Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Between the Acts, they were all published by the Hogarth Press. And that way she had control. A publishing house of one's own. Yeah, exactly. Very good. But then they published all their good. But then they published all their mates but then they also published

I mean, the major works of Freud for the first time in English. Gertrude Stein, you name it. They published extreme right-wing people. They published extreme left-wing people. They wanted this culture of let's get it all out there and talk about it, read about it.

She also published two major feminist manifestos, which should be on your reading list, A Room of One's Own in 1929 and Three Guineas 1938. Several volumes worth of essays and short stories and her posthumously published masses of volumes of letters and diaries. They're riveting reading, riveting. So and as well as, you know, their radical love lives, as well as their radical art, they're also radical thinkers, Susie. They supported Roland Penrose's showing of Guernica, the Picasso painting in London. They opposed fascism and Nazism. The son of Clive and Vanessa was killed serving as an ambulance driver in Spain

during the Spanish Civil War. They were in support of the general strike in 1926. They are progressive on the left. But there is a bit but coming up. Have you ever heard the story of the dreadnought hoax? Have you ever heard of the dreadnought hoax? It's quite a complex story, but I think we would call it problematic in modern parlance, Jane. We certainly would. This also happened in 1910, key year for so many people. And it's the most famous example of Bloomsbury's unthinking racism. So this was a hoax perpetrated on the British Navy in 1910 by millionaire prankster Horace Cole. You can Google it, you'll see the photographs.

by millionaire prankster Horace Cole. You can Google it, you'll see the photographs. So what he did was he enlisted Bloomsbury's Adrian Stephen, Virginia Stephen, Duncan Grant and Anthony Buxton and he got them to masquerade as the Emperor of Abyssinia, which is modern-day Ethiopia. So they convinced the Admiralty to give them a formal tour of the Navy's most secret warship, the HMS Dreadnought. And then next day sent photos to the press exposing this scandalous breach of security.

Now, in some ways, it's a politically subversive hoax, but it's energetically debated today as to what the hell they meant by it. And we can't ignore the fact that Virginia Woolf blacked up and cross-dressed as an Abyssinian prince is not her finest hour. Susie, what's your take on that one? Well, it's not great. No. I don't know what the take's going to be other than that. No.

Whole books have been written about it. You could argue, oh, it's radically political. You know, they're exposing the racism of the Navy by themselves doing this masquerade. But I think that's a bit of a stretch to say that. Young people messing about. Yeah. They were, yeah. Anyway, I'm not going to apologise for it

or pretend it didn't happen. It did happen. Look at the pictures. Not great. Yeah, not really defending that. All right, so we've met the Bloomsberries, as they call themselves. What are your sort of overarching feelings, having bombarded you with all this information

before we get to the nuance window? Well, just that they were sort of massive changemakers. That they, you know, a lot of what they did influenced where we are today. Certainly a lot of their sort of free thinking and unapologetic queerness is certainly something that needs to be sort of celebrated and feels enormously hopeful. But, you know, when you look at people throughout history, you also have to accept things about them that you don't like as well. I mean, they did support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, you know, and they were Fabian and Labour Party socialists, liberals and feminists.

And incredibly bright. And yeah, I'm sure, you know, a huge part of the feminist movement as well. And, you know, women's writing to be taken so seriously. And we've done all sorts of lives. And Susieie you've been staring at your relationship chart all the way through yes i have i've been trying to work it out i'm still i'm still haven't made head nor tail of it but you want to window but it's time we get to our nuance window this is where part of the show where susie and i relax in lady Morell's salon with our pianola while Dr Jane tells us something we need to know about the Bloomsbury group.

So my stopwatch is ready, Jane. You have two minutes. Take it away, please. But, you may say, what happened in December 1910 to make Virginia Woolf say, on or about December 1910, human character changed. New King, government crisis over Irish home rule. Bonfire Night was Bloomsbury's in 1910.

Post-impressionism's explosion of colour got rid of Kira Skuro, art's old binary casting of dark and shade. Now it's fireworks, this new prismatic chiaroscuro, this violent rapture of colour. Bloomsbury stops us seeing in binary, light, dark, white, black, male, female, master, slave. Bloomsbury's vibrating prismatics is a new queer way of seeing. In 1910, outraged critics feared this art would goganise the European landscape, goganise the Aryan race.

These are quotes. This unpatriotic campaign of anarchism, evil plague, sickening aberrations, mania for painting flesh with mud, making Eve's fair daughters look unwashed. Friday, November 1910, thousands of suffragettes, purple, white, green, peaceful women demonstrators met with police brutality and mass arrest. Virginia Woolf attended their Albert Hall rally, November 1910. Woolf's 1940 essay, Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid, says it all. Thank you. Thank you so much, Joanne. Fantastic. So peace is perhaps the watchword.

We think of the art, we think of the writing, but perhaps it's the politics that was the animating principle. Quite a series of lives. Yeah, fascinating people. So there we go, the Bloomsbury Group. Almost a sort of Venn diagram of groups. So what do you know now? It's time now for our quiz. This is the So What Do You Know Now?

This is our quickfire quiz for Susie to see how much she has learned. We have, honestly, so much information has come your way. Last time out, you got nine out of ten. Oh, I won't do that well this time. Let's be very fair. Have some confidence. I've got ten questions for you. Good.

Are you ready? No. But let's go. You're staring straight ahead like... Yeah, I'm concentrating. This is how I concentrate. Okay, all right, great. Here we go.

Question one. American writer Dorothy Parker famously said the Bloomsbury group lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in which shape? Triangles. Very good. Question two. Brother to Vanessa and Virginia, which founder of the Bloomsbury Group died tragically young? Toby.

It was Toby. Very good. Question three. Why did economist John Maynard Keynes and historian Lytton Strachey fall out? Because did he love him? Yeah, they were in love with another man. No, one of. Because did he love him? Yeah, they were in love with another man. No, one of them was in love with Duncan?

Yeah, they were both in love with Duncan. Yeah, absolutely. Well done. That's right. Question four. Which Bloomsbury member wrote the novels Passage to India and the important gay novel Maurice? E.M. Forster. Very good.

Question five, Susie. What was the name of the publishing press founded by Virginia and Leonard Wolfe? Hogarth. Very good. Question six. Who was Angelica Bell? She was the daughter of Clive and Vanessa. And Duncan too.

And Duncan as well. That's right. Of course, the secret dad, yes. That's it. Yeah, very well done. And question seven. What was the animalistic nickname given to Virginia Wolfe by her sister? The goat.

The goat, absolutely. Question eight. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which word was first used in print in modern English to describe a Bloomsbury party in 1915? Queer. Yeah, it was. Question nine.

Can you name two written works by Virginia Woolf? Yes, A Room of One's Own in Orlando. OK, question ten. This for a perfect score. Oh, it's exciting. Go on. What was the Dreadnought hoax? The dreadnought hoax was when your friend and mine, Virginia Woolf,

blacked up, which none of us are happy about, but that's what happened, and she got onto a warship because of a millionaire's prank. Very good. 10 out of 10, Susie Ruffell. 10 out of 10. That's it. There you go. You're an expert.

That's it. Get me on as a series regular. Turns out I'm a historianie Ruffell. That's it. There you go. You're an expert. That's it. Get me on as a series regular. Turns out I'm a historian. Doctorate in the post. Yes, my doctorate's in the post. I should get a degree first, but yeah. Amazing. Well done, Susie.

Thank you, Jane. There we go. A perfect score. And listen, after today's episode, you want more from Susie? Check out our episode on LGBTQ history from series one. You will have to scroll down in the app all the way back about 95 episodes probably, but it is there. If you want to find out more about the arts and culture in the early 20th century, we've got an episode on the Harlem Renaissance, which is really fun as well.

Remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the fantastic Dr Jane Goldman from the University of Glasgow. Thank you, Jane. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure and an education. And in Comedy Corner, we had the superb Susie Ruffle. Thank you, Susie.

Thank you for having me. I've learnt a lot and now I've got a very big reading list. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we drop in on another historical group of go-getters. But for now, I'm off to go and debate crocodiles with my four-year-old. Bye! This episode of You're Dead to Me was researched by Madeleine Bracey, Andrew Himmelberg and Josh Rice.

It was written by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Neguse and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Caitlin Hobbs. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Neguse and our executive editor was Chris Ledger. Hello, I'm Dr Michael Mosley, and in my BBC Radio 4 podcast, Just One Long Thing,

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