Dark Histories from the Secret University.

As you may know, these four great poems of the twentieth century are in part meditations on time. This second of the set is introduced with stories of World War Two, from my family and that of my remarkable old friend, Elisabeth Hudson. These touch on the story of the extraordinary spy, Christine Granville, showcased recently on Twitter. Holding Elisabeth's original copy of East Coker set me thinking of her holding it in 1940, when it was new, and when her brother was due to become a great wartime spy himself. In 1944, Christine saved his life.

One of the great poems of the twentieth century, and one which we might call a kind of Anglo-American epic. Starting with Burnt Norton here, from the copy given to me by my great old friend Elisabeth, bought in 1941, and with her til her death in 2008. The great novelist John Fowles offers a nice way into this poem: 'The word is the most imprecise of signs. Only a science-obsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect.'

Join me for extremes of terror, wonder and hope. This is a colourful glimpse into the world of The Real Vampires, and my personal journeys: through Europe to Greece in 1988; and on into the world of vampires and poltergeists since 2013. I'll be covering these extensively in a new book, We Need to Talk About Ghosts. The photo shows the author in 1988 in Venice, not long returned from Athens and nearby Greek islands. Little did I know at this time that I had been just 50 miles from Vampire Country.

Everyone knows that animals bring people together. But how ON EARTH do dogs get back together with lost owners? Join me for a journey of unforgettable wonder, adventure, mystery and love, with seven great dogs - beginning with my mother and Pat, seen here in 1956, on her 21st birthday. You can read many more amazing dog stories in my book, A Singing Mouse at Buckingham Palace. My novel, Kali the Wonder Dog, is a great historic romp through 1930s Britain - highly recommended for anyone who loves dogs, and hates racists.

What would you get if you spliced together Byron, Polidori, and the celebrity actor T.P. Cooke, the Harrison Ford of Regency theatre, for a musical vampire romp on stage? The answer is: The Vampire, or the Bride of the Isles. Be afraid. For all the wrong reasons.

The challenge is simple: for Muir to carry you away, body and soul, into the wilds, dangers and tumultuous songs of nature in less than half an hour. And this one has a doggie. If the ending of this doesn't make you cry, I won't be your friend anymore.

In the run-up to the long awaited paperback edition of my book, The Real Vampires, six crimson drops here thrust under the microscope - bringing up many wild surprises. What did vampires really eat? What should you do if you woke up in your coffin? How did you make a vampire? How could you stop a vampire? Can you really die of terror? And just what was the unexpected link between Polidori's The Vampyre and Fifty Shades of Grey? No need to tie yourself in knots puzzling that one out: just sit back, pour a drink and... enjoy yourself; it's stranger than you think.

Was there ever any more ravishing poem in all the nineteenth century? Step in with me from the frost and sleet, and behold fair Madeline, like a mermaid in seaweed. This poem could change your life.

Once upon a time there was a strange, wild force of nature. His name was John Muir. Let him carry you away now, into the summer mountains of the Sierra. You'll really believe you are there. Walking boots optional.

If anyone can make you happy in less than twenty minutes, it is the utterly magical and irrepressible John Muir: hardier than a wolf, nimbler than a mountain goat, happier than a child. Take the John Muir challenge and see for yourself. You'll really believe you are right there in the Sierra Nevada, summer 1869.

T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

A Lake District childhood, as recalled by Wordsworth. Hear the ice chiming like a bell, 250 years later.

From 25 June to 1 July 1967 there occurred perhaps the most explosive and significant seven days in the whole of the 1960s: one week when the Old Guard of the British Establishment tried to take a long overdue revenge on all the forces of youth and change which it could not control. The real story of the Redlands Trial offers a darkly comical glimpse into the fears, repressions and twisted imaginings of the British elite and the respectable middle classes. Join me for a journey back into the Summer of Love, here on Keith Richards' 79th birthday.

The Cottingley Fairy Photographs were the hoax of the twentieth century. Just how did two young girls in Yorkshire convince Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? And what did the whole long running saga mean to Britain in particular in the decades that followed? We unravel this densely complex story 100 years after Doyle published his strangest book, The Coming of the Fairies. You'll be surprised.

In 1920 two Yorkshire cousins pulled off the hoax of the century. And two years later Arthur Conan Doyle published one of the strangest books of the twentieth century.

Have you ever seen this on period drama? In Austria, Germany and Denmark, people routinely drank hot blood for medicine at beheadings. And in Sweden, things could get worse. One thing we are not taught at school is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. 

From my best-selling book, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: the History of Corpse Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Falun Gong.

With the exception of poems by my father, the poetry of Rupert Brooke was the first I read avidly, after stumbling on a copy of his works in our school library aged 14 or 15. He is perhaps best known now for war poems and Grantchester, but these three I think are probably his best poems - and give a tantalising flavour of what he might have done, if not cut off by war at just 27.

In this Christmas season Dark Histories will be telling some classic ghost stories, in keeping with tradition; and arguing that some of the very best of this genre are always better heard, than seen. One of my favourites here, which produced some memorable classes back at Durham University, when I ran the MA module, Literature of the Supernatural. Can you guess the point at which several students jumped and squealed?

In this Christmas season Dark Histories will be telling some classic ghost stories, in keeping with tradition; and arguing that some of the very best of this genre are always better heard, than seen.

In this Christmas season Dark Histories will be telling some classic ghost stories, in keeping with tradition; and arguing that some of the very best of this genre are always better heard, than seen.

My ongoing History of Disgust spans filthy kings, queens, saints and dukes; bathing, toilets, lunacy, eccentrics, hermits, smoking, fat, gender, exercise, ecology and the internet. One of the most fascinating chapters for me was the visceral class war of the 19th century, in Britain and America. Every time the working classes demanded reform or the vote, the right wing press shot at them the phrase 'the Great Unwashed'. To see how this was patented in England as a powerful form of political snobbery, we begin with one of the great forgotten characters of the nineteenth century. In his day, Edward Bulwer-Lytton was everything and everywhere: writer, thinker, dandy, politician and spiritualist. This episode introduces Lytton, and shows how a seemingly throwaway remark he made became one of the most enduring three word memes in recent history. A later episode will look at some unforgettable bathing habits and problems of the era. Be warned: this will get mucky.

After yesterday's Furry Feature on Singing Mice, a space here for their old enemy, the cat. Seven great cats from history, from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Stories of great love and maternal devotion jostle here with some very dark mysteries of cat travel. How do they find their way home perhaps hundreds of miles? And still more mysterious, how do they find their owners in new homes, in places the cats have never seen?

Yes: mice really do sing. Scientists have recently argued that males in particular sing to attract females. But singing mice were popular stars long before science took them seriously. In 1843 one was summoned to Buckingham Palace to sing for Queen Victoria's children. Around 1871 a New England minister actually got two mouse songs scored on paper. And come 1937 radio listeners could hear an English and a Welsh mouse singing a duet, competing against America and Canada in the first ever Transatlantic Singing Mouse Competition. And yes, there is a recording. If you can get the American Library of Congress to release it, we could have another listen. Meanwhile, you can hear an unforgettable human version of the 1871 Wheel Song from my friend Tori Longdon, professional singer and conductor, over on youtube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVccO6LiXN8

This episode discusses the great and strange adventure of researching and writing Fairies: A Dangerous History. It then looks in detail at the seemingly incredible but widespread belief that babies and children really were 'stolen by the fairies.' Be advised: this discussion necessarily contains distressing material. This really did happen. We should, however, recognise that those seemingly deluded and superstitious people would probably be astonished to learn that, right now, right here in Britain, children routinely go hungry in towns and cities overflowing with food and with untaxed billions. 

An introduction to one of the most amazing but least talked about events in British history: the invention of theatre. This reinvented reality and human character; and sparked one of the greatest moral panics of all time, as Puritans raged against the new permanent playhouses in London. And right at the start here, one of the most terrifying dramas ever staged exploded upon a traumatised public. Marlowe's Dr Faustus was The Exorcist of its day, and worse. What role did the soul and the biology of the soul play in this?

From my book, The Smoke of the Soul: Science, Religion and the Invention of the Self.

Thanks for listening.

An introduction to one of the most amazing but least talked about events in British history: the invention of theatre. This reinvented reality and human character; and sparked one of the greatest moral panics of all time, as Puritans raged against the new permanent playhouses in London. And right at the start here, one of the most terrifying dramas ever staged exploded upon a traumatised public. Marlowe's Dr Faustus was The Exorcist of its day, and worse. What role did the soul and the biology of the soul play in this?

From my book, The Smoke of the Soul: Science, Religion and the Invention of the Self.

Thanks for listening.

Can you help liberate the author from his prison in the Book Tower? He needs your assistance to return these and many more volumes to the Secret Library: a rare labyrinth of shadowed stories, of twisting tales, and pungent pages, stretching deep beneath the Secret University.

The Secret Library will take you into a space so strange, so dark, so whimsical and haunted that the author sometimes wishes even he could escape it. But it is his own head, and his own Secret History of past books, past libraries - and of books unpublished, unwritten, half glimpsed in dreams or the threshold between waking and sleep.

There will be novels and poetry, love and adventure, non-fiction wilder than any fiction; and the first whispered episodes of my own novels.

Be brave; be curious - and above all, be QUIET.

Welcome to the Secret University. This podcast will be offering you echoing libraries and shady cloisters of forbidden histories: from my books, published and unpublished, and from across this world and the next. Today we begin with my most notorious book, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires, on the secret history of white Christian cannibalism. Join me on the frozen Thames in London, 1684, for a journey you will never forget.

I'm Richard Sugg, author of 13 books and former Lecturer at Durham University. I'm currently writing a new book, We Need to Talk About Ghosts. This is inspired by two things. One is my own extraordinary journey from the death of my father in 1989, to that of my mother in 2021. When my father died very suddenly at age 62 I was just 19. Nothing could convince me that he had not simply gone, forever. But in 2013, purely by chance, I stumbled on poltergeists whilst researching vampire folklore. Now, when I began to talk to people about poltergeists, they began telling me their personal poltergeist stories. I soon became very keen on talking about poltergeists. The more I talked, the more I learned. So the second thing is that ghosts and poltergeists are everywhere. Ask, and you will be told. One of your friends probably has a story which they are afraid to tell you.

It took me quite a lot longer to realise that we need to talk about ghosts: that most poltergeists are ghosts. Nowadays I collect new ghost stories from complete strangers every week. By 2021 I had heard countless ghost stories from every type of witness. And a week after she died that January, my mother came back to say goodbye.

Please let me know your story if you have one. This episode also examines a classic poltergeist case from Windsor in 1841 - one which would seem impossible to hoax. Thanks for listening - and welcome to the Secret University.