Helen Lewis
Appearances
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
I'm going to pick Terry Pratchett's Mort, which is the fourth book in his Discworld series, but it happened to be the one that I read first. And it is a story basically about a young guy who becomes the apprentice to death, who starts off as this very austere skeleton. But over the course of the The book essentially falls in love with humanity.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
He begins to kind of respect them and understand what they're doing, even though he's always outside them. The book started off as pretty straightforward fantasy, what used to be called the kind of swords and sandals. And they had these very cartoony covers. But over the course of, you know, there's dozens of them, they develop into this really...
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
rich humanistic philosophy which is basically that everybody is kind of flawed but you know some people try and surpass that some people try and overcome their their flaws even now when I'm trying to stop myself from doom scrolling I often permit myself to read either you know a detective novel or something like the
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
Peter Whimsey series by Dorothea Sayers, or I go back and reread Terry Pratchett's books. Because whatever you do when you read fiction is commit a small act of empathy. You think about situations that are not like your own. You think about people whose lives are not like your own. And that, I think, is an incredibly useful exercise.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
It's a useful exercise for journalists particularly, but for anybody really who wants to be a person in the world. And Terry Pratchett's books are very, very funny. And the situations in them are a comic. But the underlying themes are things like who gets treated as the other? How do you have a multicultural city? How do wars start and how do they end?
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
He deals with these incredibly big political and philosophical subjects, and because he puts in some dirty jokes and some silly ideas, that all kind of just goes down like a spoonful of sugar. I'm Helen Lewis, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
Our mission is to decipher political language.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
Finding out what they really mean.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
And our pledge is to help you spot the tricks of the verbal trade.
You're Dead to Me
Legends of King Arthur: from medieval literature to modern myth
And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.