In this special episode, the Bloomcasters take on their trickiest task yet : criticizing one of their own.  Adam Biles’ “Beasts of England”, a canny and hilarious sequel to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, has received rave reviews and is already heading into translation in France and India -- but is it really any good? Bloomcasters Alice and Lex take the reins, pushing Adam into the darkest corners of his fascination with farmyards and political arcana. How does one pen a sequel to a classic?...

Our Bloomcasters reconvene on January 6th, “Joycension Day”, to discuss The Dead : the final piece in Joyce’s Dubliners, described by T. S. Eliot as "one of the greatest short stories ever written".  Leaning heavily as always on the wisdom of honorary Bloomcasters Declan Kiberd and Colm Toibin, they cover orchestrated dinner parties, ego death, the circularity of human life, the music of words, and much more. Carrying forth a Bloomcast tradition, they also play a festive game, populating...

A few weeks back we had our dear friend, Bloomsday MC, and eminent Bloomcaster Prof. Lex Paulson as a guest in the library to give a talk on Cicero, drawing on his book Cicero and the People’s Will: Philosophy and Power at the End of the Roman Republic, recently published by Cambridge University Press. Anyone who has listened to Bloomcast will know that Lex is not just a great speaker, but also a great thinker, and this talk is both an exquisite example of his work, and an insight into some...

This December—six months after saying goodbye—Bloomcast is back for a Holiday Special! Join Alice, Lex and Adam as they answer your questions, play games, tease each other, drink (tea, whiskey, Gimber) and leap off Forty Foot and into Ulysses one more (one last?) time… * Bloomcast is a ten-part plunge into James Joyce's Ulysses presented by Adam Biles, Alice McCrum, and Lex Paulson, live from Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Join them as they muddle through this radical, sublime,...