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The Secret Life of BooksSeries 2Episodes

    Swallows and Amazons

    6/6How Arthur Ransome perfected a new, more authentic kind of children's literature.

    Cider with Rosie

    5/6How Laurie Lee blended fact and fiction in his elegy to a disappeared rural world.

    Confessions of an English Opium Eater

    4/6John Cooper Clarke explores Thomas de Quincey's addiction memoir.

    The Mill on the Floss

    3/6Fiona Shaw explores the genesis of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss.

    Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs

    2/6Nicholas Parsons explores the fine line between joy and melancholy in Lear's writing.

    The Faerie Queene

    1/6Dr Janina Ramirez unravels Edmund Spenser's Elizabethan epic The Faerie Queene.