The Secret Life of Books Series 2

Episode
Edward Lear’s Nonsense Books
Broadcast Info
2015 (28 mins)
Description
Lifelong fan of Edward Lear, Nicholas Parsons, delves into the book that gave the world The Owl and The Pussycat to discover how the epileptic, bronchial, asthmatic depressive pioneered a new kind of poetry that married brilliant wordplay with astonishing artwork.
Published in 1871 Lear’s Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets contains the much loved poem, The Owl and Pussycat. Veteran broadcaster and undisputed National Treasure, Nicholas Parsons, has always been fascinated by its idiosyncratic author: "I’ve loved Edward Lear since I was a child. Nowadays I do a whole show devoted to him and his wonderful, distinctive nonsense verse."
Nicholas begins his journey by meeting children’s author, Julia Donaldson. While researching her sequel, The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussycat, Julia discovered that Lear wrote - but never completed - his own follow-up. In this fragment the cat falls out of a tree and the "elegant fowl" goes demented with grief. Nicholas and Julia discuss the fine line between joy and melancholy in Lear’s writing.
Edward Lear - the 20th child of a bankrupt and widowed businessman - was brought up by his elder sister. Nicholas explains how the young Lear had epilepsy - a condition stigmatised at the time. But Lear also had precocious artistic gifts. As a young man he was summoned to Knowsley Hall in Merseyside to paint the Earl of Derby’s menagerie. Nicholas discovers that the aboriginal names of some of the exotic Australian creatures at Knowsley may have found their way into the nonsense verse that he was beginning to write for the Earl’s children.
Lear’s verse coincided with an explosion in English nonsense literature - including Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. But Lear introduced a unique visual style to his books. To find out how Lear combined image and text Nicholas visits cartoonist Ralph Steadman. Together they create a nonsensical creature very much in the anarchic spirit of Lear - a "Parstard."
For Nicholas Edward Lear’s poems represent a wonderfully childish, creative antidote to the relentless, and dehumanising, march of Victorian "progress". His impish voice continues to speak to us today.
Genre
Arts; Literature; Writing; History
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How to cite this record

The Open University, "The Secret Life of Books Series 2". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/219312 (Accessed 23 Nov 2025)