I really enjoy Steve Donoghue's easeful articulation and erudition. I've long had Boswell's thick book on my bookshelf. I just got an audiobook of it as well. This delightful summary and analysis is encouraging me to finally get into it. Johnson, perhaps only rivaled by Goethe, was probably the greatest literary conversationalist ever, so it's a joy to spend time with him through the eyes and ears of Boswell.
Steve this was an absolute blast! Listening to you speak about Boswell and Johnson makes 18thC London seem joyously alive, like you have a time-machine and have spent afternoons loitering in the same bookshops and public houses! I can't wait for more of their contemporaries!!!
Dear Steve, is there any way you could increase the sound volume of your voice, or perhaps nearer to the mic... I hang on your every informative word but the recordings sound a bit quieter than other channels. Apologies hope you don't mind me saying this 🐺🌞
Boswell…Johnson….Gibbon…Burke…Smith…Addison…Hume…Sheridan…Goldsmith.. these men were the crème de la crème absolute best English literature has to offer to any common reader and the prose masters of the English language, as the romantics were for poetry. One can improve on their own basic vocabulary and personal insights just by merely reading them. Like Shakespeare and Milton before them, they should be required reading by every civilized and self or well educated person, or simply one who intends to dive into 18th century neoclassical/Augustan age of literature.
