Curiously Specific

We like books. We like maps. We like dates. We like walks. We stuck them together and made a podcast. Presented by Tim (@moongolfer) and Lloyd (@lloydshep).

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While you're here finding out about our latest episode, may we take the chance to remind you that @davidhepworth made us his Podcast Pick of the Week this week in @RadioTimes. We are, as AA Milne might have said, chuffed.

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@agirlcalledTom Cor! How beautiful

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Hope this hasn't hit our loyal subs too hard. Poor form from Patreon.

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The challenge with a tongue-in-cheek approach to chastising authors for being fast and loose with dates and locations is this: what do you do when a famous book features an absolute howler? In the case of The 39 Steps, @moongolfer had no choice. He went postal.

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Listen to the new episodes - and all our episodes - wherever you get your pods. 45 books to discover and enjoy. https://t.co/tD23ZlbL5S

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The second part of our adventure with John Buchan's THE 39 STEPS is now live on all platforms - Patreon subs had it a week ago! Strange goings-on are breaking out on the Kent coast. Includes a newspaper owner being shelled by a German warship, something we can all get behind!

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Series 3 has been a thrill ride and we have criss-crossed the country in our search for the secret locations in cracking books. We're off for a bit of a rest now. See you soon!

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Listen now wherever you get your pods! Or subscribe to us on Patreon and get part two of the episode right away - with an unveiling of the 39 steps themselves. https://t.co/FY6g3gWf0C

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We have reached our last book in our third series, and it’s the grandfather of all chase thrillers - John Buchan’s THE 39 STEPS. In Part One Richard Hannay (and us) is being chased across the hills of Galloway. We begin, as we love to do, at an abandoned railway line

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Buchan hasn’t made it easy for us - he was famously unimpressed by podcasters - but we believe we’ve found some uniquely accurate candidates for the book’s Scottish locations. And of course a great bench.

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We discussed TV detector vans in our most recent episode and our most excellent Patreon premium member @ruperthowe has found this magnificent debate about them from the old Guardian Notes and Queries section. https://t.co/BlBEHzx5YG

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A little clip from our latest episode on Margot Bennet’s 1952 thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH. The book came out the same year as the first TV detector van. But did detector vans ever really exist?

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To get the full picture, have a listen, wherever you get your pods https://t.co/9risWppMIE

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It’s time for part two of our adventure with Margot Bennett’s exceptional 1952 thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH. We’ve got two more locations in Ramsgate to scout out before finding something *amazing* five miles north, following the action in the book

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What did we find? Well, put it this way. Bennett was up to something with her locations in this book. Something rather interesting. There’s a deliberate homage, we think, to another, earlier book. Here’s a clue!

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@thebellow Amazing! Thanks for sharing @moongolfer

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In our latest podcast on Margot Bennett's THE WIDOW OF BATH we discussed (among a great many other things) restaurants, hotels and reviewers in the 1950's. Which led @moongolfer to discover the amazing life of Oliver Postgate's Dad.

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So why not spend the day with us, on the trail of the killers of a judge named Bath. If you don't know Margot Bennett, you are in for a treat. This book is an absolute pearl. Available wherever you get your pods! https://t.co/dzEcWYCzC2

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We do like to be beside the seaside, and we're back there for our new episode, with Margot Bennett's 1952 thriller THE WIDOW OF BATH as our guide. A man with a shady past is 'reviewing' a hotel staffed by suspiciously Teutonic waiters, when in walks a femme fatale. Classic!

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But where is the book set? Bennett never tells us (though she's clear this is 'not Bournemouth'). So we follow the clues in the book, and are drawn, inexorably, to the Kent town of Ramsgate. It fits the bill to perfection.