Book In

About Book In

Brothers Rupert and Charlie Fordham discuss all things English Literature. From Chaucer to the present day, covering drama, novels and poetry, they cover all the classics and much more, from the UK, Ireland, the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Informative but lighthearted, Book In is suitable for all readers, and will be helpful for students from school to degree level. Both Rupert and Charlie have been keen readers all their lives and both studied English at university. For many years Charlie taught English at GCSE and A-level.

Publisher

Rupert Fordham and Charlie Fordham

Category

arts · fiction · fiction

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Jun 2025

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

69 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026

   The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare

   When Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale, he was an older, though not old, man. It was one of what are often called his late plays, and along with The Tempest one of the two great plays he wrote at the end of his career. In these plays, he experimented with new forms of expression and genre. They seem to stretch traditional genres of tragedy or comedy, and develop a more transcendent sense of magic and mystery. At the end of The Winter’s Tale, the female courtier Paulina perhaps speaks for Sh...

2. 

   9 Oct 2026

   Autumn Poems – Keats, MacNeice, Frost – with Pip Torrens and Andrew Crean reading.

   As the exceptional summer of 2026 fades into memory, we look at three autumn poems. John Keats’ To Autumn is the finest of his Odes and one of the greatest poems written in English. At the moment of fruition, decay begins; from the high point of life, comes death; and in that moment of equipoise there is an ecstasy as well as a melancholy at the passing of life and of beauty, beautifully captured in Pip Torrens’ wonderful, understated reading. Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal is a sprawling, j...

3. 

   2 Oct 2026

   Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen

   As Georgia Oakley's film of Sense and Sensibility is released, Book In looks at Jane Austen's novel. It was the first that she published, but already her genius for satire, social comedy and the extraordinarily subtle expression of human relationships is evident from the first page. Marianne has sensibility, and throws herself at life; unimpressed with the worthy but pedestrian Colonel Brandon, she is thrilled by the arrival of Willoughby, who leaves her house during a rainstorm "to make hims...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

55 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 23 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

Contact Book In

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Shows with a similar audience

• 

  Front Row

• 

  Off Air... with Jane and Fi

• 

  Take Four Books

• 

  Desert Island Discs

• 

  Profile

• 

  Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Questions about Book In