Can Books Heal? A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation podcast, with OU English academics

Image of a paperback hand held book being read

OU English researchers Sara Haslam and Edmund King were heavily featured contributors in this podcast on 3000 years of the history of the healing book. Part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s programme of contemporary thought, CBC Ideas, ‘Do books have the power to heal us?' (Apple Podcasts) took listeners back to Pharaoh Rameses II in its contextualised history of bibliotherapy - the inscription ‘healing place of the soul’ was placed above the portal of Rameses’ library. Edmund King brought the story up to date before conversation moved to a focused account of what Sara Haslam has termed ‘literary caregiving’ during the First World War. Literary caregiving, Haslam suggested in the discussion, is important to the understanding of modern bibliotherapy because it recovers the story of volunteer labour by women largely omitted from the historiography - women such as Helen Mary (May) Gaskell who on the outbreak of the conflict launched her War Library of donated books to aid sick and wounded soldiers in their recovery. Crucially, in Gaskell’s concept of the healing book men read what they wanted to read.

The podcast first released on 2 June 2025, came hot on the heels of publication of Haslam and King’s co-edited (with Siobhan Campbell) book One Hundred Years of Bibliotherapy: Healing through Books (Routledge). In his conversation with the presenter, Edmund King developed key ideas from the introduction to the collection, as to pharmaka, for example (the idea as originated in Plato that agents of healing possess simultaneously the ability to cause harm) and the issues raised by what can feel like a relentless contemporary drive to instrumentalise literature.

The episode, which in addition to Haslam and King featured two further contributors on the more contemporary world of bibliotherapy, closed on discussion of the too-early pronouncement of the death of print, and on why, despite the delights of BookTok and all that digital formats have to offer, engaging with material texts remains such enjoyable and important activity for readers. You'll need to listen to the end to learn ‘where Sara stands on reading now’ as the presenter put it as she wrapped the episode up!