Neuromantics is a long-running podcast, hosted by the neuroscientist Sophie Scott and the writer and composer Will Eaves. Their conversations range across language, gesture, and other modes of communication in the arts and sciences. The current episode features a lively discussion of Liz Hodgkin’s Letters from Isohe. With their characteristic wit and sublimity, Will and Sophie locate the book in the long tradition of public letter-writing and witness-bearing.
An extract from their conversation: “The book memorably evokes the challenges of life in this beautiful but remote community. Food supplies falter, girls are forced into marriage, teachers’ salaries disappear, people die: but the village schools survive…. Hodgkin’s dispatches are responsive and informal; they bring us close, as only letters can, to the moment of witness…. that feeling of responsiveness has something to do with handwriting itself…”
cityofwords.net 