Swim Chats

It’s a swim literature episode! Featuring John Hancock, who told us the colourful life story of Sir Bernard Freyberg and his wartime swim.

This time John and Shona talk about:

The “mad, bad and dangerous to know” poet Lord Byron’s 1810 swim across the Dardanelles (formerly the Hellespont, between Europe and Asia). Lord Byron was inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Leander, who swam across the same body of water to his lover Hero’s lantern-lit tower each night. Byron recounted his swim triumph in his poem ‘Don Juan’. 

The Old English poem Be...