Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (2015). What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers? How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history? And why does a product of the Obama era still resonate so powerfully in the age of Trump and Biden?

The latest edition of our free fortnightly newsletter - which accompanies the last three episodes in this Fictions series including Hamilton - is out tomorrow, with lots of extra info, clips and reflections – just sign up here: https://linktr.ee/ppfideas

And sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming very soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Gary Gerstle on the Republican National Convention

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The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the Bush presidency? How does an ordinary life become an extraordinary one? And where is the line between fact and fiction?

Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

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Our political fictions series returns with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberation. It also contains perhaps the greatest of all fictional portrayals of a real-life prime minster: Thatcher dancing the night away.

Sign up now to PPF+ to get all our bonus episodes along with ad-free listening: coming soon for PPF+ subscribers Robert Saunders on his favourite political novel plus a special episode on Evita: www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Curtis Sittenfeld re-imagines Laura Bush in American Wife

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.