Oh What A Time... - #199 Amazing Libraries and Huge Readers (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

This week on the show we’re looking at the greatest book collections history has to offer as well as the historical figures who themselves loved to read. We have for you this week; Maximilien Robespierre and what he had on his shelf, William Gladstone’s library in North Wales and finally, one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, Richard Burton and his literary obsessions.Elsewhere, before the internet the source of all knowledge in the James’ household was Elis’ dad. If you’ve got anything to offer on how knowledge has changed or lizard-dinosaurs, do get in touch: [e-mail] if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to All What a Time, the History Podcast that asks the question, has access to the internet ruined parent-child relationships? Because when I was a little kid, we used to watch the news, used to have our tea and watch the news. And I was very curious about current affairs. And my dad, I must have handed to him, was very good at giving potted explanations of sort of current events that were powerful for a child. And the way I remember them And the way I remember them

Him explaining them They were fairly neutral and unbiased My mother's personal politics Did come slightly more to the fore when she did it Don't get her started on Margaret Thatcher Yeah So I used to ask Dad about, I don't know The Cold War

Which I remember being on the news Or the Trubbers in Northern Ireland And he always had an answer Betty asked me something about current affairs the other day And I was a bit tired And I said Just Google it in your own time I thought

What you need is more screen time away from me Just Google it in your own time the answer I'm going to give you is not satisfactory and I'll see you later How is school? I tell you what's quite an embarrassing situation

You must have had this is when your kid asks you what is essentially quite a simple question you should know the answer to in public so it might be on a bus It'll be something like Where does wind come from?

Yes I know I think to myself Everyone has heard him say that and ask me. And now I don't actually, I'm not 100% sure what the answer is to that. That's such a good observation, yeah. Or it's like, oh, the other day we were on the bus and Stefan said, if it's daytime, why can I still see the moon? Yes.

And I was like, fucking, hell, come on. But that's the perfect question, Elle. That's exactly it. That's the perfect example. I would not know the answer to that. So if I'm on the bus on the way to school and it's packed and he asked me, why can I see the moon during the day? I do not know because there's no crowds.

I don't know. I'm not quite sure. It's always orbiting the Earth grade. The one I got done over the summer when we were flying to Spain, my four-year-old son he said, what are clouds? I was like, well, they are, they are, they are, they are. They are, they are. Angels.

The groups of angels. It feels obvious. but I don't know. Yeah, with the moon. In the end, I said, I don't know, but do get used to it. Because it's not going to change. Just get used to that. You know, like, I think to a degree being a good parent is, well, being a modern parent,

I think he's being honest about the fact you don't know everything. And you are faulted as all humans are. There's no point trying to package yourself as perfect as maybe parents used to in the past. And actually, it's fine to go, I don't know son. I have absolutely no idea. I think a lot about this, but I think I did find it quite reassuring that somebody knew. Okay, yes. Whereas Izzy pointed to the moon and said, well, what you're seeing there isn't the moon.

That's something else. And I said, no, I think it is. I think it is the moon. But doesn't this speak to the fact that in the pre-internet age, like, if you didn't know something, you had to ask someone, or you had to find the information in a book? Or go to a, yeah, which is why some families did have, you know, you know, potted, abridged versions of encyclopedias. And you would have door-to-door salesmen for encyclopedias.

Yeah. From precisely this reason. My grandmother had a set of, like, an abridged, they were called the Books of Knowledge. Yeah. And it was just... I think we had those as well. So a man would just come and sit in your house for an hour with your parents and talk about these books. Exactly that.

And if he was lucky, they'd buy 15 books the weight of a tax. Yeah, so my grandmother was in and he knocked on the door. He said, we've got kids. she said, yeah, I've got a daughter. And you went, does she know stuff? And she went, well, yeah, she's at school. Does she want to know more stuff? I think so.

That's where she's at school. Does she ever ask you questions you don't know about? Yeah, occasionally. I've never had a kiwi fruit. Well, you need these. And it was a whole collection of the book of knowledge. And then we're in our house for decades. Nowadays, kids can ask AI,

and AI will give them an answer which might be right. Yeah. But cannot be entirely relied upon. It'll give you an answer which is 60%, 70% chance is right. Well, what's happened, you must have had this, is reading your children books on stuff that you knew about when you were a kid and the science has changed. Go on.

Terradactyl is no longer a dinosaur. Isn't it? No. What is it now? I don't know, just a lizard, lizard bird. Lizard bird. And Pluto, obviously, Pluto no longer a planet. What's Pluto now?

lizard dinosaur. Yeah, yeah. They're all lizard dinosaurs. Everything's been reclassified as a lizard dinosaur. No, but when I had the Asborn book of the planets or something when I was a kid. And Pluto was the last one. And Pluto was reclassified quite a long time ago. Clinging on in there.

I have a very clear favorite in terms of my childhood books. And they were the eyewitness guides. Did you have the eyewitness guides? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were brilliant. Yeah, yeah. It would be like the eyewitness guides on the Romans or the eyewitness guide on medieval Britain. And it would be photographs and little images.

And you see like the inside of a Roman's house and different sections. It just loved it. It was so exciting. That's what we had before Google. And that's the level that this history podcast works on actually with the eye is the eyewitness guide audio book. Absolutely. Well, they were massively popular. If we can capture a market like that, then I'll be absolutely delighted.

I actually had a different question I wanted to pose at the beginning of this show, which was, Hello and welcome to our time. The history podcast asked the question, was life better when people tilled the fields for hours on end and got to bed and was so exhausted, they just slept through? Now, the reason I asked that, okay, when they had hard work in medieval Britain, etc., you hit the hay, literally, and you would sleep through. Last night, went to bed. I'd done podcasting in the evening. That's not particularly hard work. And then my son woke up at half 11 for a wee.

I took him, waking me up half an hour. And then I didn't get to sleep until half five in the morning. I lay there from half 11 to half five. And I was thinking, if I did a more medieval with my hands heavy lifting type a job where I'm having to, you know, sew the soil or whatever it happens to be, make enough money to pay the year. What are people doing, Lady Bull Britain? What's that?

Soing the soil is when you put seeds down, isn't it? Isn't that what that is? You sow the soil. Is that right, El? The point is, heavy work in the fields, planting turn it. When you come home, you hit the hay, you're knack at your sleep. Would I have had that problem? Do you ever do that?

So I think it's a modern issue lying there, not being able to get to sleep, troubled by your little worries. Surely that isn't the thing that happened in the past. People were knackering. Yeah, and also the thing is you can quite routinely not see any sunlight if you just had the computer all day and that's bad for you. I put my kids to bed and then I'd been with them all day because Izzy was working and we'd been in central London and we were passing my favourite coffee shop way hours after I should have my last coffee and I could not resist. And when it came to going to bed at about midnight, it was honestly like I'd take an ecstasy and I was just lying there.

And that happened to, I just decided to read a book. thinking this is this is bad and then the cats went mad at about five o'clock I reckon I definitely had more kip than you but it was also unlike you it was all my own fault if I'd not had that coffee I reckon I'd have been all right I listened to an audiobook about the Tour de France at 4 in the morning which I didn't send me to sleep just just I found entertaining it sounds absolutely fantastic which which one was that it is brilliant it is called

it is called the secret race by Tyler Hamilton and it's about Lance Armstrong and all the doping and basically how he became the full guy for it. It's fascinating. But I just listened to that between four and five and didn't go to sleep. Just more not sleeping. You needed to be doped. Sleep doping. There you go.

Well, welcome to Oh, what a time. Don't worry. I'm pulling myself together and I'll be full of energy today despite my lack of sleep. Today's episode should be a fun one. It's a bit of a weird subject, isn't it really? Well, just to link it back to the introduction, much in the same way that in the past, to get information you need to extract it from people or books. This episode is exclusively about books, libraries.

Some of the greatest libraries Earth has ever seen. Are you a fan of a library? My five-year-old loves a library. Absolutely loves it. Yeah, there's a library near where we live, and the kids like going there. And also, it's great for kids' parties. And it is the genuine kind of community hub

that when you're in your 20s, you just don't use. Yes You walk past it every day in ignoring You walk past it all the time There's nothing to do with me I work and I go to the pub And that is it Unless as a girl you fancy

Who you know Goes to that library and likes to read Yeah And you want to be seen reading The old sexy librarian Who you've got to flirt with very quietly The things I do to you That's a nice

That's a nice top you're wearing Fancy a smooch I've been thinking about you all day, actually. I was saying I've been thinking. Sorry, sorry. You were people behind you as well looking to return their books. They're whispering, sneak last week, nothing. Libraries as a business model in 2026, you wouldn't think it would survive, would you? You'd think it might have gone the same way as the videotape shop. Well, no, it hasn't. The Tories have tried to kill them off. Yeah, well, yeah, they're not surviving. Are they not? No, lots of them are closing down, yeah.

Every library that's ever been in my life is still there. Like the one near my primary school, the one on the high street, they're all there. Okay, no, a lot of them are closing around the country. Yeah, a lot of them in austerity of, it's you keeping them up and, yeah. It's me. A lot of them have closed over the last sort of 15 years or so. I'll tell you what has died of death, though, from my childhood was the, but this may because I lived on the edge of the countryside, the bus library.

They may be an official turn for, phrase for it, but it was basically a bus that would turn up on my cul-de-sac and it would be a library. Go on, you take books out and the bus would drive off. I remember that at school. and my kids would think I was mad if I said a bus full of books used to do it. We would have to take what we wanted. It does seem a bit odd that your library would need an MOT. Yes.

I don't know whether this was an official operation or just a guy who had loads of books and a bus. A yellow bus. The yellow library bus. It would turn up outside my house and we'd go on and take a book and it would return a fortnight later and you give the book back. Very bizarre. Oh, when he would turn up in the school playground. I don't think he was coming down the street. I don't think he was anyway.

But yeah, I remember that. Do you have near you, I've got a few neighbours who have the kind of like library box outside the front to exchange books? It's my favourite thing. Yeah, it's a lovely thing. Do you use them? Do you use them? My kids use it all the time. I think it's a lovely community thing that, yeah.

Yeah, I'm always a bit scared. I'm always a bit nervous that someone's going to come running out going, stop! You're thieving the books. They're not for you. I'm like you. That's 18 quid, please, mate. I'm always a bit like, what's the scam? Yeah, I'm like you.

It doesn't feel quite right. My local train station, there's, you know, you can just pick up books and you're encouraged to donate books you've been, you've finished with. Yeah, that's nice. And a similar note in North Norfolk, where my mother-in-law lives, outside people's houses, people often have things where they just sell their produce they've made. So they make jam and they have a little wooden shelf and you're supposed to leave money. That's farms, isn't it?

No, it's not always. It's like a community thing. So it might be people bake their own cakes. Oh, really? And there's an honesty box. Yeah, absolutely really is. And you leave your money and then... The problem with that is I always think, how clean your hands, maybe.

Yeah, yeah. I want to see the person. So I always knock on the door and I say, can I see your hands? Yeah. What's gone in there? And once I've seen their cuticle. This is a spot check of your hands. Like the honesty,

we don't really have the honesty box system in the UK very much. They have it quite a lot in America. Like newspapers used to be sold in an honest box. Oh yeah, pop a quarter in and open up the box and take one. Yeah. I really like it because I think it's like

it's the individuals in a community having some kind of effect on that community. Yeah, but I haven't seen their hands. Is there an argument? self-service till at the supermarket is now essentially an honesty box. Yeah. No. Is it?

Well, yeah, but supermarkets lose millions every year because people are just walking out with toilet people. Just walking out with stuff. Yeah. See, I'm too innocent for all this. Right. So today, yes, it is about libraries. It's not about the ones that drove around and came to my cul-de-sac.

It's about the more stationary type. And more specifically, actually, I shouldn't assume, are you? also do with libraries, with famous people. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And more specifically, libraries belonging to the great and the good and otherwise from history.

I will be talking to you about William Gladstone's library. Oh, lovely, in North Wales. Exactly, and the books that he read and what they say about him as a person. What will you be talking about? I've got for you, Richard Burton's actual library. Oh, you lucky bastard. I'd love to have done that one.

What an incredible reader Richard Burton was. Yeah. It's insane actually. It's amazing he got anything done in his life. Well, he died in the pre-mobile phone age. He never dromed scrolled. Or if he did dream-scroll, it was Shakespeare. Yeah.

He was doom-scrolling Othello. And I'll be talking about Robespier's library. Before that, shall we do a little bit of correspondence? Yes, please. Now, I love our listeners, and I love the emails they send in, and certain email headers really tickle my fancy. And this is one such example. The email header is, can monkeys eat quavers, question mark. Here goes, this is the sort of listener we have, a long way that continue.

And this email is from Ailey, and it says this, hi, lovely boys, long-time listener and full-timer. Thank you very much, Ailey. first-time emailer, but having just listened to Jamie's email about their question of the monkey and the quavers, I felt I must email in with my own monkey crisp tail. Now, I'm pretty sure if my memory serves you correctly, this is another monkey-based email we got from one of our listeners where I think a monkey, he'd fed a quaver to a monkey in a zoo, is that right? There was some kind of swap situation. Oh, that was it. The monkey held his hand through the bars while this listener was walking past with a bag of quavers and basically asked for a quaver. I think that's right.

He gave the quaver to the monkey, the monkey's carpet off, and he isn't sure to this day whether the monkey ate the quaver. Well, Ailey has an answer for this. 17 years ago, I was living in South Africa, and I went camping on a site that could only be described, this is a great turn of phrase, as being riddled with monkeys. Wow, okay. As my friends and I were putting up our tent,

we witnessed a pack of monkeys streaming, some lovely language here, Ailey, streaming out of the window of the next door caravan that they'd broken into, each carrying an egg or an avocado. According to the caravan owners, they got away with five avos and 15 eggs. They got away with. I wonder if a monkey likes fried, poached, boiled or scrambled eggs.

Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. Well, I think they don't have the ability to cook, so it's going to have to be sort of like raw. Raw. Yeah, Sylvester's to ruin it down the hatch. Yeah, Rocky Star. Avocado and raw eggs, exactly.

The next day, says Ailey, whilst returning to the campsite from shopping, I briefly turned my back on the car whilst unpacking groceries. I heard a rustling from the front passenger seat and turned back to the open door to see a monkey hop out and run off into the trees with a large sharing bag of chutney-flavored crisps.

All this to say, if this monkey coped with a full bag of chutney-flavored crisps, I reckon the one Jamie met will have managed to digest a singular quaver. Thanks for all the laughs, Ailey. What a superb email. Some lovely writing in there. Yeah, so I think that's a fair point.

If a monkey is scarped with a full bag of chutney-flavored crisp, I think one quaver is edible from a monkey point of view. I think that's doable. But you know how when someone had eaten maybe very plain food all their lives? Yes. All their life. And then you try a curry, it's like a complete taste sensation. Yes.

If you're a monkey in it just seems to eat bananas, a quaver is going to be like, oh, my. God, what is this? And they might love it or they might hate it. There's also so many particular points about that type of food which are going to be weird to it. First of all, the crunch. It's not going to use to that. Yeah, and the text, general texture.

And it has a sort of slightly fizzing quality on the tongue as well at Quabre. And it sort of like melts. A bit like a skip, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. The flavour. What is that flavour? The ultimate test, give a monkey a bag of discos. That will blow its socks off.

Yeah, a monster munch. What's the most outrageous bag of Chris you could give a monkey? Yeah, Flame Grill McCoys. To give this a history, Ben, Elle, and to take your question you pose there, before we go on to the actual history, if you could take any type of modern food back in the one-day time machine to blow the minds of people in medieval Britain, what do you reckon would confuse them most? What do you reckon is the thing? I call in the caterpillar cake.

That's good, yeah. It doesn't look like a caterpillar. There'll be an initial reaction where they're worried it's alive. They don't know what it is. Yeah, but just the fondant and the chocolate and... Yeah. You know, because we've always traded in spice and herbs and things. Mm-hmm.

And, you know, spicy food, certainly maybe not in Britain as much, but certainly in other countries has been a big thing for a long time. But that kind of mega-sweet processed, like Haribo. Yeah. Imagine giving Haribo to Elizabeth I first. She'd be like, what the fuck is that? Famously, I think nomadic tribes and people cut off from civilization, like those civilizations, when they taste something really sweet,

it blows their minds. I've read a few things like that. Yeah, okay. Because we're kind of designed to like it, but nature hasn't given us harrow. No. And the closest you come is a big old lump of honey in a wasp nest or a bees nest. Yeah.

And even then, it's unpenetrable. I'd like to introduce a chocolate bar that we've talked about before, which was very high on the clag rating, which is the Cabri's boost. I think giving a boost to a medieval king as they tried to deal with the fact that it doesn't give in your mouth in any way. Yeah.

And it's unbelievably sweet. Well, you'd think you were droning. Yeah. I can't survive this. Surely, surely the ultimate is like, you go back to Henry VIII with like a big old case of hooch. Something sweet and boozy. Absolutely, it'll lose his mark.

A pinocalada or a mojito. This is a good question for our listeners. You can take any food back in time to any historical people. What food? Who are you taking to? What's their reaction? Get in contact on hello at oh, what a time. What should we call this?

Oh my God. Scotch and Coke. Can you imagine that? Yeah. They all rock and roll mouthwash. A blue wicked for Am Berlin. Jack Daniels. the full fuck co he'd be like oh Jesus Christ there you go do get in contact let us know

what you take back we would love to hear from you as I say hello at ohotatime.com hopefully hear from me on that subject soon all right you horrible look here's how you can stay in touch with the show you can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and you can follow on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, What a Time, Pod. Now, clear off. All right, so this week we are talking about some of the great book collections and libraries, humanity and history has to offer.

A little bit later in the show, I'll be telling you all about Richard Burton's infamous book habit. I'm aware as we recording this episode, I'm still recording in front of some bookshelves that aren't completely full. There's a large gap there. You're the opposite of Richard Burton. There are quite a lot of books behind me.

Which when the camera is angle appropriately, it looks like it's full, but here... Yeah, I mean, it looks like, well, there's a toy there. Is that Homer Simpson? This is... Do you remember where I got that? Yeah, it's a stagdo, wasn't it? Josh Wittickham Stagdo, though. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, look it. I love it because it doesn't look like homicides at all. So you've got a Homer Simpson. You've got a lamp. Yes. I've got a tiny arson venger. A tiny arson venger, like all the great readers. And also a tiny Terry Venables as well Who did actually write a book, didn't he, Chris?

Who? Was it Terry Venables? Steve Bruce, close enough. Yeah. No, I think Terry Venables also wrote a book, I'm sure. I think he wrote a kid's book, actually. He did, that was it. It was a kid's book, isn't it?

And one of those black books down the bottom? These are my diaries and one I did stand up. He's a full of ideas I will never use again. So your library, all the ideas in your library are largely your own. You're your own greatest influence. Yeah. But none of this is mine. The one comedy book that went missing that kind of fascinated me.

Do you remember Bob Monkhouse had something similar, didn't he? He had every joke ever. Like it's similar to Tom in like diaries or whatever. And someone stole them. And he was trying to track them down. Yeah, he was offering quite a handsome reward. I don't know if he ever got the book back. But yeah, he was absolutely devastated to lose that.

Yeah. But was that the source of all his own? ideas. I can't imagine it would be that critical for his existence as an entertainment. I have absolutely no plans to do stand-up again, so if someone's stolen all these, I literally wouldn't care less. It'd be absolutely fine.

If the Monkhouse thieves are listening, there's a booty here for you. Two leatherbone volumes containing over 20 years of meticulous joke sketches and one-liners were stolen from a steel case at BBC television centre while Monkos was recording.

Monkos regarded the books as his babies and offered a 10,000-pound for their return describing the loss as a creative amputation and the books reappeared 80 months later when they were anonymously

mailed back to his agent and arrests was made but the thief was never charged. They were kept in a steel cage at TV centre has he brought his own steel cage? No, yeah, but you'd be getting,

you've just finished recording and you'd go back to your dress room or whatever and it's been pinched by someone. What? Oh my God, it'd be awful. Can I posit a subject? It might be libelous because he's dead. But early 90s, who was very good at breaking into saves and getting things like, Paul Daniels would have been knocking around.

He was quite funny as well. He had some good gags, didn't he? He might want to damage a rival. I think we've just solved it. There you go. Right. As you say, libraries are the subject. Should we do this?

Let's dive in some actual history. I think Ellis James, is that right? You're up first. Yes, I am. Teach me some history. So I'm going to be talking about Robespierre. Now, until he was thrust right into the middle, slap-bang into the middle of the French Revolution, Maximilian Robespierre was a provincial lawyer.

Yeah, which I didn't know. So applying his trade in Arras, which is a northern French town. But it was here that Robespier made his way in the world, and he was here that he developed as a reader, building his library. I don't even know much about Robespier. I am obsessed with him. I'm obsessed with him. He's a nutter.

Oh, give us the headlines, Chris. Nutter. So, he kind of emerges from the French Revolution. He's got a touch the Jeremy Corbyn's about him. He's very... What's the word? Did well at Glastonbury. Oh, Rob's...

He's extremely principled, like to a fault. And he comes through the French Revolution and presents himself as kind of infalliable as almost like, He is the cleanest of the clean, and he champions this age of enlightenment, but wrapped up in all this, is a kind of, he's a bit hoity, and he's responsible for so many deaths at the guillotine, because no one can be pure than him and his disciples. So, and in the end, the, this kind of the revolution that he's helping to kind of accelerate turns on him and he himself has his head chopped off. But I would, if you imagine, I would say, yeah, the characteristics of a Corbyn. Just, he thinks, he thinks. I don't remember the Corbyn sort of guillotine phase, though. Was that about passing me by when he was.

Is that why he lost the backing of the Labour support? Yeah, yeah. Corbyn's a nicer guy. I would say, let everyone make that clear. Corby is a nicer guy. Yeah, I mean, no one in the PLP got gilletied. I mean, quite few of them left the party. Well, their heads didn't leave their body. Okay.

Thank you for that, Grace. What was on Robespier's shelf, and how do we know? So he wrote a great deal. Loat of heads, I'm guessing. Contained within his essays and speeches, say much about what he was reading and his intellectual influences. So he had legal texts and philosophy. That was important to him.

Montesquere on the spirit of laws. Beccaria on crimes and practices. punishments, and he was reading lots of contemporary political pamphlets and magazines. He studied classical thinkers, like Tacitus and Plutarch and Cicero. He was gaining a keen insight into Roman and Greek history and oratory and rhetoric and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Now, his classical education began at school, studying at the L'I.

Louis de la Gronde in Paris, and he took an especially interest in two Greek figures, like Ergus of Sparta and Solon of Athens. I had very different interests at school. Right. I was more into like Ian Rush. The French Revolution wouldn't have happened if Robespierre was aware of Ian Rush. No, no, no, no, absolutely not. If Match and Shoot had been around, the history of Europe would be very different.

Yeah. God, if only I could go back to him and I say, listen, it's great you're into all these Greek figures and Roman thinkers. But, you know, he won the Golden Boot. he was the top scoring European football in in 83, 84. I think he scored 47 goals. He didn't take penalties. That's the amazing thing. He was an incredible finisher.

I'm actually a very modern player. Ian Rush had played an... Imagine if he played a huge part in the French Revolution. So he was researching their lives and he saw these people as an ideal examples of the virtuous legislator. So it's a bit like what Chris was saying about, you know, he was very interesting ideas.

So the virtuous. legislator was someone who designed a society on the collected good or, you know, rather than private interest. So as a scholar, he didn't have particularly diverse interest, right? So we read narrowly rather than widely. And he kept going back to his favourite text rather than move on to something new. So he didn't really collect books like many of his contemporaries did. An observation about Rob Spier and books is that he would be the kind of guy. You know when sometimes you see people on TV experts getting interviewed, they're being interviewed in front of a bookcase? and they have so clearly thought about the books that are on display.

Yeah. You know the people. That's Rob Speer. He's like, oh, look, look at all these, look all these clever stuff on reading. He's a creative idea of who he is. Okay, yes. That's him. Yeah, and that's Goal Rush, the first official biography of Ian Rush.

That's Goal Machine, which was an unofficial biography, which actually doesn't cover his Will's career at all. I'm a stash and me. That's about this. that's one I wrote. So he didn't really collect books. And the most important volumes for him were those by Rousseau, the Enlightenment thinker and the author of Discourse on Inequality

and the Social Contract and a volume of memoirs, all of which Rubber Speer read. And a huge influence Rubber Spire. So he actually visited Rousseau in his house. And he was like, you're the man, right? Now compare this to Napoleon, who's another revolutionary figure. Napoleon, I didn't realize this. He had a huge personal library

ran into like thousands, even tens of thousands of volumes. Weirdly, I didn't know that, yeah. And it covered everything from history to military strategy to philosophy and science. So big, right, was his library that Napoleon Bonaparte

employed his own librarian. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because he needed to catalogue all of this material into a bespoke system of classification. which is like, honestly, I've just got too many books. Now, there are 5,000 books in Napoleon's private study

and thousands more in travelling cases specially designed to be carried on campaign. Now, he was so dedicated to literature that Napoleon had designed special micro-editions of his favourites and in several languages, including Catalan and English. Like highlights. That's amazing. Summarisations.

Yeah, I suppose, a bridged versions of his favourite books for when he was going on campaign. Now, the Commission for the Campaign Library. I could have done that with my GCSE in A level, how great that would be. Yeah, yeah. The Napoleon version. Can I get to the Napoleon version, which is four pages long, rather than ring up a whole of great expectations? Yeah, a view from the bridge.

And a view from the bridge is not that long. So this was the Commission for the Campaign Library issued by Barbier read as follows. There are to be 40 works on religion, 40 dramatic works, 40 volumes of epic poetry, 60 of poetry, 100 novels and 60 volumes of history. the remainder are to be historical memoirs of each period. Now, among the religious works, he had copies of the Bible and the Quran, novels included works by Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Lawrence Stern, all sorts,

and his favourite novelist of all was Wolfgang von Goethe. So Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Wether, first published in 1744 and advised in 1787. That was Napoleon's favourite novel, and he claimed to have read it at least seven times. I just, I always thought he had too much on. his plate to be rereading books seven times. Yeah.

Although I suppose travel to and from a battle was quite slow then, wasn't it? Because you're setting out to sea. Maybe it took a while to get there. You've got a few months to kill or whatever, not months, but weeks at least. Yeah, you're selling it to me. Think of all the reading you could do on the way. Maybe that's what you're doing. Now, you read James Cook's account of his voyages in the Pacific,

which makes seven sense to me, actually. Yeah. You're like, all right, then, we might end up there one day. I might try to conquer Australia for France. He read Shakespeare, Milton's Paradise, Lost, the Arabian Knights. When he was marching across Russia in 1812, even fun time to ask for amusing books. Some bright reads. Well, famously, that march to Russia, Moscow and back is absolutely terrible.

So I imagined, you know, a nice little, I don't know, what could it be? Frank Skinner's autobiography would lighten the mood. That's hilarious, yeah. Is it because he's always leading them in the wrong direction because he's reading as he's walking? I love that stuff. What are you reading there, Napoleon? John Bishop, sort of boy, which is very interesting.

As they all go left and they should be going right. So he said, if there are any new novels which are good or older ones which he doesn't know or memoirs of light reading, send them to him because we've got leisure moments in which are difficult to fill up. Now, Napoleon enjoyed classical literature and was known, as was Robespierreierre to read Plutarch and Homer. So basically, he had been first in the queue to watch The Odyssey. I mean, he loved all that stuff.

He read biographies of Alexander the Great. He took an interesting writing of Rousseau and Voltaire and Montesquieu, Molié and Racine. And he was a huge fan of Rousseau, almost as much as Robespierre was, almost. Now, if there was one contemporary writer's work stood out as a contrast between the reading habits of Robespier and those of Napoleon, that it was Pierre Chaudelos, Delacloss, who wrote Les Le Leisont-Dangerer, Dangerous Liaisons. Now I laughed when I read this because I thought, what, the late 80s film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. And I hadn't realised that the late 80s film starring Michelle Pfeiffer is based on that book. I had no idea either. I didn't know. Yeah, so it was published in 1782 and it was like an immediate scandalous hit because it's got very racy scenes in it.

I don't know if Napoleon was imagining Michelle Pfeiffer as he was reading it. but Mary Antoinette famously got hold of a copy for her own library. Robespierre couldn't be bothered. He was like, no, too light for me. I don't read by any shagging. So now what's interesting is it matters or they're reading habits because the different directions the revolution took and the intellectual forces which shaped two of its most important figures

were obviously influenced by the books they were reading. Right. So Robespierreier was the man who overthrew. through the church. And he installed the cult of the supreme being and he unleashed the terror. Now, the terror between 300 and 500,000 people, died in the terror.

Wow. So he may have been a very talented classical scholar, but his narrow interests, he led him down an extremely singular path. So he became devoted to virtue and Republican values, failed to see the need for pragmatism because he'd studied the tenets of these values and on virtues over and over and over.

When you read about the terror, you know, 300 to 500,000 people dead, thousands died in prison without trial, you know, it was, it's horrific. But he was convinced he was right. Now, Napoleon, on the other hand, because he had this devotion to literature of all kinds, he was basically more enlightened and more pragmatic and more broad-minded. Because when he was captured by the British, he was at home debating me. Milton and Shakespeare with his captors. He was like, yeah, I love Shakespeare.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. Do you want to talk about Milton? Has anyone read any Milton? Yeah. And it was Napoleon, the general, not Robespier, the lawyer, who tried his hand at being a novelist. So the emperor's unfinished novel

of 7095, Cresson and Eugenie, told the same autobiographical story of a soldier and his love. And the soldier was obviously Napoleon Bonaparte. His love was Eugé, But I don't know, if I was marching to Russia and I saw the general with his feet up reading a Grisham,

I'd be like, not sure about this, actually. Do you think he's not reading it in public, wouldn't he? Would he, like, close the doors and his... Surely not. Carriage and... As everyone's carrying his stuff, you'd be thinking to say, yeah, he's going to be debating the finer points of miniature tactics in there. He can't be reading the Mickey Flanagan's autobiography.

In terms of people reading lots and lots then, though, what were your basic options for enjoyment then? You could go for a walk. You could listen to some chamber music, I guess. Getting pissed. Get pissed. Hunt. Getting pissed and eating and hunting.

But really, if you're in the house, that's your option, isn't it, reading? So that's why, I mean, there's far less distraction. No telling, no film. Yeah, no cinema, all this sort of stuff. Far less entertainment in a sort of general sense as well, I imagine. Yeah, no going to. Yeah. No karaoke at the Christmas party.

Yeah, I could have a zip world. There was little zip lines. Yeah. So I'd have a library like Napoleon had I been born a few hundred years earlier. But alas, my shelves are empty. All right, that's the end of part one of libraries. And book collections more generally, if you want part two right now.

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