Garlic & Pearls

Suzanne explores dystopia, one of the most significant sub-genres of the British novel, where trouble often starts with the breakdown of the monarchy and aristocracy (which sounds a bit like France). It begins with Jonathan's Swift's Gulliver's Travels, then Mary Shelley comes along, then HG Wells's War of the Worlds – where most of Woking is destroyed even before the M25 is built. But our main focus is Aldous Huxley's astonishing 1932 novel Brave New World and its world of skyscrapers, aeroplanes and willing enslavement through entertainment and the scariest thing of all – sex! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Muriel and Suzanne discuss a new French film set during the years 1940-41, a pivotal time in the history of France and Britain, as General de Gaulle, powered by 'a certain idea of France' and refusing to accept Pétain's new collaborationist regime, relocated to London to seek support from the British, devise the Free French response to the defeat and plan the recapturing of France. How good is the film? How persuasive is its portrayal of our respective national heroes De Gaulle and Churchill? How much accuracy do we expect from historical dramas? How much suspension of disbelief are we prepared to grant? The film has been a tremendous box office hit in France: what does this tell us about our need for an inspiring national narrative? Has the time come for France to reassess a complicated period of its history? And will this film change British perceptions of De Gaulle? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne enlightens Muriel about the Beaufort Scale and explores the remarkable story of its creator, hydrographer Francis Beaufort, who went to sea as a boy, was shipwrecked in the Far East, took part in Napoleonic sea battles against the French and in 1805 devised a brilliant empirical scale full of poetic language to evoke the changeable quality of the wind and its effect on the sails of a ship and the surface of the sea. How should one assess a breeze, a gale, a hurricane and learn to survive at sea without Beaufort's system, which even the French adopted? Daniel Defoe guest stars. Beaufort's unorthodox private life, recorded in his ciphered journal – using the Beaufort cipher – adds a layer of intrigue.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Camus’s terse 1942 novel about an enigmatic killing won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1957. It is entrenched as a French literary classic and as a gateway to Philosophy in French schools. But what, asks Muriel, do the book and its recent film adaptation by François Ozon tell us about morality, justice and the complicated history of the French in Algeria?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lashings of ginger beer all around and nostalgia galore as Suzanne explains the refreshing drink's quasi-parodic Famous Fives connection and unpicks the origins and history of ginger beer, taking in the trading of the exotic ginger root, its feeding into the British obsession with beer, fermenting and experimentation, some Victorian tales of temperance leagues, brown bottles, scoby and vinaigrières, the investigations of distinguished botanist Henry Marshall Ward into the alien entity of the ginger plant, the great split between ginger beer and ginger ale, Henry Crabbe's brewing dynasty and its connection to whisky, and finally, above and beyond nostalgia, the irrepressible resurgence of the craft and savoir-faire of ginger-beer brewing today. Anyone for a Moscow Mule? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.