Gretel le Maître Ponders Beauty, with Bede & other guests
Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 67,000 downloads. Thank you!! 🙏 Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, it’s ad-free.Gretel loves the world and history, architecture, literature and people. And so is determined to walk this path with light footsteps and with humour and warmth. Let’...
Bryon’s Pathless Woods; Mr Quiverful’s Poverty; Judith’s Arc; and Pepys’ Head
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Judith; the Peculiar case of Canada; Sprinkling of Saints; et Encore Villette
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Villette: Charlotte Brontë’s Enchanting Weaving of Words
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Good evening
As I read this chapter this evening in the quietness of my accommodation by the sea, I felt that dark, unvisited corners within my heart were being quietly crept into and opened up a crack. With her words sparingly used, Charlotte Brontë yet manages to prise open these closed, private, tender parts within us, tears surprising us as they prick our blinking eyes. A trick has been played, it feels. As when with just a few notes Mozart can do something that feels very similar. These feelings are such an im...
A Walk to the Sea, White Pebbles, and Villette
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
A Saxon Affrighted Ram at St Osmund’s; No Venture within Mrs Hardy’s; and Barchester Towers
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Strictly Villette: Chapter XXVIII. Monsieur Paul and Lucy Snowe
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Riverside Stroll, Hever Castle, and a Saxon Lament
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
A Long Chapter by Trollope and then Exeter’s Past, cut short by an inept Gretel
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To be ept! Oh to be ept! The episode I produced today failed to save and so I’ve had to use the shorter version which ends at a dramatic rather canine point.
This episode is only for you if you love Trollope, love long rambles about England, or love me so much you could listen to my voice ad infinitum!
Thank you for your kindness, support and loyalty. Email me, please do! Tell me what you ponder in your heart. What beauty moves you? What birds are in...
Hardy transports us to Egdon Heath; the Birth of Chartism; and Riverside Witterings
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Simply Villette; and Eeyore’s wistfulness at being mistaken for Tigger
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Bruton Bell; Housework Shmousework; Early Church Chronicles; and Barchester Towers
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Strictly Literature: Tennyson, Trollope and C Brontë
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#1 in the Top 100 Theatre All time chart
#1 in the Top 100 Reflection All time chart
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you t...
John Colet of St Paul’s; Pepys’ love of ‘Discourse’; and Lucy Snowe watches and sees all
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Hello and a very good Tuesday evening. The Abbey bells are ringing as I write and I feel like my mojo has returned: what a strange thing ‘moods’ are. They descend upon us like heavy cloud, hang about as long as they like, and then vanish. People ask, when one mentions feeling down, ‘what are you down about?’. Well, it’s the cloud you see, you want to say; it’s gathered about my head and has put lead in my legs and squeezed all the life out of me.
Tonight I feel...
Sir Robert Peel in Parliament; the Founding of Peterborough; Pepys is Joyful; and Lucy Snowe has a Visitresse
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Helloooo and a very happy Sunday to you. Thank you for joining me in my Dorset garden as we enjoy the swifts, the bells, and lovely literature: let them be as balm to your soul.
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!! <...
Belgian Buns, Saint Barnabas, John Clare and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Early Christianity in England; Tuesday Bells 🔔; Saints and Chronicles; et Villette
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Bonus Episode: Living with Grief and Tragedy, a Chat with a Friend
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This evening I chatted with a friend who lives with grief for the loss of children and a husband. Please be aware that this might be upsetting.
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian...
Simply Villette 🕯️ (and a little abbey-loitering)
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
A Saturday Salad 🥗: Roman Exeter, Lord Brougham, Pepys, Saint Norbert, and (merci Oxford) the Bare Necessities 🐻
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Short & Petite: We Close Charlotte Brontë’s chapter on Hope
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Good afternoon! This is shorter than I had anticipated because I’ve got too many jobs to finish. I hope you enjoy this poignant and (I think) beautifully written chapter in Villette. Have such strong passions ever been described with such tender, delicate care?
Thank you for supporting me. It means the world.
Lots of love
Gretel 🕯️
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snip...
A Literary Late: Trollope, Hardy and C Brontë
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Teenagers, Trust and Trickiness; Samuel Pepys’ Diary; and Barchester Towers
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Victoria becomes Queen; Gretel Witters; and Saxon Deor
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Sunday Couplets: Augustine and Gregory; Slope and Archbishop; Graham and Lucy
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Leaderboards
#22 in the Top 100 Nature Monthly chart #39 in the Top 100 Nature All time chart #50 in the Top 100 Books Monthly chart #98 in the Top 100 Christianity Monthly chart
#1 in the Top 100 Theatre All time chart
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and...
Literary Friday: Charlotte Brontë, Anthony Trollope and The Venerable Bede
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Matrimony in St Genny’s; Difficult Times; A Secret Brook
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Good evening and welcome to this rather forlorn episode of rather sub-standard audio quality. When I’m a published author living on a castle on a Scottish Island with a troop of staff, I will have a lovely gentleman who will attend to all technical matters. He will wear bottle green knee breeches and the castle will invite schoolchildren to visit to learn about the environment and caring for creatures like hedgehogs 🦔, frogs 🐸, bats 🦇 and birds 🦅.
How are you? I’m in Cornwall and plan to publish a literary this evening where I...
Strictly Villette: Chapters XVIII and XIX
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
‘That in the dreariest places peace will be a dweller and a joy’ John Clare
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Hello and thank you so much for joining me. Today we continue with Barchester Towers and the history of the English church, as well as ponder in our hearts the beautiful poem The Snipe by John Clare.
Possibly a Strictly Villette later today…
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locati...
Gentle Bonus Episode pour Vous: Pepys, Saints and Charlotte Brontë
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
An Episode of Two Halves: birds, hedgehogs, puppies and silences; and then exquisite Villette
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Helloooo, and please I beg of you go straight to 25 minutes if you’re not in the mood for silences, witterings, stuttering, birds, hedgehog rustles and poor (very poor) production quality.
But then, oh we get to swim in Charlotte Brontë’s beautiful mind, imagining rooms as though appreciated in a painting by a Dutch master. It’s almost a meditative experience, where items of furniture are lightly and beautifully set out before us and the fall of a curtain is given some sort of sacred importance. This fine, fine chapt...
Lucy Snowe Awakes; Puppy Eats Microphone; Saints are Remembered
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Saxon poem Andreas; Shelley’s Halcyon Morn; and Blackbird Sings 🐦⬛
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Simply Villette: Chapter XV ‘The Long Vacation’ 🌒
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A photo of my daughter and Doggo in Cornwall expressing possibly the Villette atmosphere.
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany...
Gretel absorbs William Shakespeare’s Stratford-Upon-Avon and chats with Sir Richard Eyre 🎭
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Hullo and welcome to this late episode where I wander the beautiful streets of William Shakespeare’s home town and manage to grab Director of The Tempest and all-round legendary figure Sir Richard Eyre for a quick chat in the infamous actors’ pub. I also meet delightful actors Mark Meadows, Henry Pettigrew and Guy Henry 🎭
Go to 20 minutes in to hear the chat with Sir Richard Eyre 🌝
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She...
Strictly Literature: dear John Clare; Anthony Trollope; and Charlotte Brontë
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Dr Eleanor Parker, author of Winters in the World, chats to Gretel in Brasenose College, Oxford
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In this episode I chat to outstanding author and delightful lady Dr Eleanor Parker. Thank you to her for her time and congratulations to her for the huge success she has had with all her books, but particularly with Winters in the World, A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year.
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to n...
Gretel visits Oxford: a mooch about a beautiful city.
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Strictly Books: Anthony Trollope; Samuel Pepys and Charlotte Brontë
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Saxon Saturday: The Seafarer; Saxon Churches; and Anglo-Saxon England 🗡️
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Gretel le Maître likes to look for the beauty and curiosities in life, one day at a time. She shares with you snippets from books about history, art and literature and regularly takes you on adventures to new locations, to explore churches, cathedrals and architecture. We’ve reached 66,000 downloads. Thank you!!
Historian Tom Holland is the Honorary Patron of this podcast. Thank you Tom🙏
Gretel invites you to accompany her as she navigates the world a day at a time; the podcast is unscripted, i...
Strictly Books; Villette by Charlotte Brontë 🥀
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Good evening and thank you so very much for joining me. Without you I really wouldn’t do this, and it’s a blessed existence, living, enfin, as I actually wish to live: rooted in a warm home, but wandering about learning, absorbing and reading. There is no greater pleasure for me than learning things: new nuggets of deliciousness of etymology, of history, of language, art or music. Everything, truly, can be interesting and I finally have the space in my life to wander, like a minstrel of old, from church to church, city to...
