The Secret Diary of a Stoic Emperor... and other stories

O Marcus Aurelius – noblest of emperors, smoothest of orators, wisest of men. Who could forget his timeless meditations, every word a pearl? Friends, Romans, lend an ear to this: “I slept in a bit because I’ve got a touch of a cold, but it seems to have settled down.” Or how’s this, for statesmanlike composure: “My sister suddenly had such a terrible pain in her private parts that it was awful to look at her. Then my mother – in a panic, without thinking – banged her side against a corner of a wall… I went to turn in, and found a scorpion in my bed!” 

The first episode of Being Roman with Mary Beard (Radio 4) offered an unconventional portrait of the last of the “Five Good Emperors” by delving into his Adrian Mole-ish teenage letters. Lost for centuries, they were discovered in 1815 by a librarian, to the embarrassment of those who felt these naive scribbles damaged his unflappable Stoic reputation. The episode began with that famous statue of him on Rome’s Capitoline Hill – you know the one: big horse, curly beard, godlike mien – before giving that statue back its feet of clay. 

Beard travelled to the ruins of a farm where once Aurelius spent his summer, helping out with the grape harvest, and painted a picture of Marcus the mummy’s boy: alternately moaning about his homework and mooning over over his “odd” tutor Fronto. One of the 18-year-old Marcus’s letters to Fronto ends with a sigh: “My honeyest honey, my love, my pleasure, what is it with me and you? I love someone and he’s not here.” Scholars don’t often quote that bit, apparently. Was this romantic gushing just an epistolary convention, the equivalent of today’s “dear” or “yours faithfully”? No, an expert assured it was not. 

Last week, tea-towel salesman and Nancy Mitford tribute act Nicky Haslam included “podcasts” among his annual list of things deemed “common” (alongside “strawberries” and “grieving”). My fellow commoners will be glad to know that all six episodes of Being Roman are now available as a podcast – as are all nine of The Exploding Library (Radio 4), which completed its third season this Monday, with an episode about Octavia Butler’s sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower, set in a drought-ridden alternate 2024. 

Book-recommending programmes on television and radio can be deathly; we too often just end up with people on sofas agreeing how much they were moved. (See BBC Two’s Between the Covers – or don’t.) The Exploding Library is a joyful exception. It celebrates adventurous fiction with equally adventurous, playful programme-making. In each episode, a comedian presents a one-off documentary about a novel they love. You could start with the most recent episode – Desiree Burch on Butler – and work backwards in an orderly fashion; or start at the beginning, with Mark Watson on Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. But why be a slave to order? Life isn’t orderly, and literature shouldn’t be, either. 

That was the belief of BS Johnson, whose autobiographical novel The Unfortunates was published unbound in a box. Rob Auton paid tribute to Johnson in the eighth episode (this season’s highlight), by chopping up his documentary and reshuffling the sections via “high-tech tombola”. If you’ve not heard the show, start there. Auton’s anarchic, deadpan style was a perfect match for Johnson’s own mix of the daring and the mundane. 

At one point, the Yorkshire comedian mused about water: “the elbow of a puddle, arch-enemy of the Dyson Airblade, the opposite of pastry, soup for people who don’t like ingredients or soup.” In the name of research, he went to a chip shop, tried to order sherry in a wine bar, and interviewed a sports journalist about Johnson’s old match reports: “Do many football writers now do it to pay for their career as an experimental novelist?” Perhaps more of them should. Approachable but unpatronising, it was proof that lighthearted doesn’t have to mean lightweight; that you can be irreverent and intelligent. 

Haslam would be disappointed to learn the episode was produced by an escapee from the “common” podcast world, Benjamin Partridge, a name to watch. He brings a Python-ish madness – but also sensitivity and respect, ending on a poignant note, with a discussion of Johnson’s suicide. The novel’s final line became the programme’s epitaph for its author: “Not how he died, not what he died of, even less why he died, are of concern, to me, only the fact that he did die, he is dead, is important: the loss to me, to us.”