NB The first two or three minutes have some audio glitches but the rest of the recording is much better quality.

I was delighted to talk to A.N. Wilson, novelist, journalist, biographer, and historian, whose books on Iris Murdoch, Dante, and Prince Albert I very much admire, as well as his memoir Confessions. Wilson’s new book Goethe. His Faustian Life comes out in September (December in the USA) and is a splendid account of Goethe’s lifelong work on Faust. In this interview we talk about Goethe’s work as a scientist, his influence on psychotherapy, and his extraordinary drinking, as well as covering a range of literary topics from Professor Helen Gardner to Elizabeth Jenkins and Charles Dickens. (We agree: Dickens is the best. I’ve written about: David Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Bleak House.)

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'The Wok', Recipes, and Letting Go of “The Best” With J. Kenji López-Alt