Dracula by Bram Stoker | Hay Festival Book Club MAY 2026

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Well, hello and welcome to the Hey Festival book club for May in which of course we are reading Dracula together.

[00:00:08]Now, before we get into the chat, I'll give you a brief overview about how it's going to go today. I will start with some introductions. Then we will have a general chat about the book and we've saved your questions for the last 15 minutes of the chat which we're really excited to get to. But before that, we have some housekeeping. So bear in mind today that the Hay Festival is a charity with yearround activities to connect audiences with artists. So thank you to everybody for their continued support and engagement, including watching this today. Dracula by Bram Stoker is the Hay Festival book club pick for May, selected in partnership with Four Corners Books to celebrate their gorgeous special edition. And copies are available for purchase on the Hay Festival website. And hey Festival Book Club is supported by Unwind Charitable Trust and you can find past events available to rewatch online now for free. Now that we've got the housekeeping out of the way, I am so excited to get on to our intros because joining me today we have EM McBride who is of course the award-winning author of four novels. A girl is a Half-formed Thing, The Lesser Bohemians, Strange Hotel, and The City Changes Its Face.

[00:01:23]Her debut novel, A Girl is a Half-for-med Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmith's Prize, Irish Novel of the Year, the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction, the Desmond Elliot Prize, and the Jeffrey Faber Memorial Award. Her latest novel, The City Changes Its Face, is a continuation of her first book and follows an intense story of passion, jealousy, and family. And then, Katherine Spooner is professor of literature and culture at Lancaster University. Her academic research is centered on the Gothic in literature, film, and popular culture, and fashion and costume in literature and film, all within the broader spectrum of literature and cultural from the late 18th to the 21st century. She has published three monographs, fashioning Gothic bodies, contemporary Gothic, and postmillennial Gothic comedy, romance, and the rise of happy gothic. Katherine and EMR, thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation about Dracula.

[00:02:26]>> It's a pleasure. Absolutely pleased to be here.

[00:02:30]>> Now, I am very aware that we are talking today about a book that was published in 1897 if I'm not mistaken.

[00:02:41]And we are here in 2026. The world has changed immeasurably.

[00:02:46]And the first thing I want to ask is when you were revisiting this and that's me assuming you haven't read Dracula before, but it tends that people come back to Dracula again and again. So let let's say whatever whether you've read it before or not. Reading this book in 2026, Katherine, we'll we'll start with you and then we'll cross over to EMR.

[00:03:06]What resonated with you differently about reading it now? because we can't help but let what's happening in the world infiltrate into our reading of things, right? We are products of our own time. So, so what was it about 2026 that struck you about this particular reading of Dracula?

[00:03:26]>> That's a really interesting question, Anthony. So, I revisit the book a lot because I teach it with undergraduate students. So, I I you know read it in whole or in parts at regular intervals and it is different every time. Every time I read it, different things leap out at me. I think this year because of the recent release of Robert Edgars's film Noseratu, students are particularly keen to talk about vampires. They've all been thrilled and excited by this film.

[00:03:52]Of course, the original novel is quite different and um in some very striking ways, I think. So, I think two of the things that struck me this time as I was preparing for um this session is firstly the absolute modernity of the novel.

[00:04:08]It's full of upto-date technologies for 1897. It is cutting edge. It's full of things like the Kodak camera, the phongraph, the typewriter, all of the latest technologies. And it struck me that this resonates very strongly with a moment in which we're very concerned with technology, with the rise of AI. Um I'm sure that Bram Stoker would have been fascinated by that had, you know, he' been writing at this moment. So, you know, across more than 100 years, I think it's speaking to that very specifically. I think it's also a book that speaks to our present moment in terms of national borders and our sense of national identity. It's about a foreigner who travels from Eastern Europe to Britain and um is uh then repelled or unwanted by the the people that are already there. So, I think it speaks to some of our underlying concerns at the moment that perhaps informed things like Brexit or the rise of reform or um any of those politics that we are so concerned with at the present moment. I don't think it maps directly onto them, but perhaps looking at the novel again might help illuminate the present moment that we're in and how those national feelings um perhaps first started to take form.

[00:05:28]Uh, Emor, how about you? Was there something that that struck you that was particularly resonant or pertinent for 2020 2026 reading?

[00:05:36]>> Well, I don't know if it if if it was anything exactly for this year, but it was an interesting experience for me to reread the book, which I hadn't read since I was 15, I realized, so 35 years ago. So, it uh it had quite a different effect upon me this time round, although I I I loved it as a teenager. Um, what struck me, I suppose, was the slightly more a modern attitude to women and women's uh ability to intervene in action sequences.

[00:06:08]um which is not something that you associate tremendously with Victorian novels and perhaps in my youth I had you know skimmed over that as a a sort of a given whereas to me it seemed quite interesting how completely involved and integral to the action and to the to the uh the eventual uh uh destruction of Dracula Maz is and and how reliant everyone is upon her and and then also how overt the the sexuality of the novel is and which I don't particularly remember as a as a teenager. Obviously, I was hoping for much more overt at that age than Dracula was able to provide, but um but but now I I find it almost shocking that it it was as as open and overt as it as it was coming from that time.

[00:07:01]>> I think it's one of those things to bear in mind, isn't it? that despite us bringing our contemporary selves to any reading of anything that we do whenever it was written these novels owe these books generally owe us nothing. Bron Stoer writing in 1897 owes no reader in 2026 anything at all. In fact, we probably have to meet him where he is in his time when he's writing that novel.

[00:07:27]But at the same time, it really was quite striking this idea of borders, as you were saying, Katherine, and about who's coming across the borders and the implications that come with those people. So, we're talking about Dracula coming. He's spreading disease is in there if you want to read that into it.

[00:07:47]So it's it's quite an interesting and in many ways fearfilled depiction of what what a lot of people I know have referred to as kind of reverse colonialism that it's coming into Britain. But but maybe an EMR if if we start with you on this side. I'm also very aware that that uh Stoker, Abraham Stoker to give him his his full title, is one of our fellow Irishmen and he occupies a very interesting position in that society society and in London society when you when he eventually comes over there. And I'm just wondering for you how much you see Stoker in the pages of Dracula, if you do at all. Maybe maybe you think it's totally ripped bare of him because it's very difficult I think often to get to Stoker. I'm just wondering if you if you saw him in there at all, if you if you were thinking of him as you were going through it or or if he struck you in in your rereading this time.

[00:08:44]>> I found it tremendously Irish in a way that I had not expected to do. And I remember my first introduction to the story of Dracula was my father telling me this story as a very small child, but describing it as being set in Ireland and that the the Dracula figure was was a a gumbin man who was sucking the blood out of the Irish peasantry and and so when I came to read the novel, I was expecting that and obviously it's not there, but on on rereading you can see the sort of intense Irishness and the the the struggle against the colonialization of of the self, I suppose, and the idea of of the Irish language seems to be something that it was kind of infected and and destroyed.

[00:09:37]And I I feel as though, you know, Stoker brings that with him through the writing. Katherine, maybe you could expand on that for us a little bit because it's so interesting humor to hear you say that you expect this Gambin man type thing to come in. But but the the Dracula type figure, although it's not Dracula per se, but but similar Gothic iterations appear in some of other um of Stoker's other work and it feeds very much into that Gumbin element. So I wonder if your dad was was talking about some of them, but Katherine, maybe you could tell us about how that type of character goes through some of Stoker's other work.

[00:10:12]Interestingly, I was just talking about a similar topic with some of my my um PhD um researchers yesterday. Um we were actually talking about Sheridan Lefanu's novela Carmela, which predates um Dracula by 25 years and is um sometimes referred to as the first lesbian vampire narrative and it it's a wonderful wonderful book that I would you know completely recommend to everybody. But the interesting thing about it is that um Lefanu um was uh again a a Protestant Irish writer. He was told that he couldn't set his fiction in Ireland because it wouldn't sell to English audiences. So he set his vampire story in Stereo, which is modernday Austria.

[00:10:55]However, many critics have read it and suggested that actually it's Ireland.

[00:11:00]It's just in disguise. and that Carmela does that same thing of kind of praying on the the peasants as as a kind of member of the of the uh AngloIrish ascendancy I suppose. So um I think it's really interesting to draw those connections with that previous earlier strand of Irish vampire literature and Stoker Stoker would absolutely have known about this story. Um, lots of people have suggested that Camila was a big influence on him. And I wonder if you can kind of see that shadowing of of Irish culture in the same kind of way that it's forcibly being repressed to to appeal to a particular kind of audience that perhaps doesn't appreciate it, but nevertheless, it's informing the way that the story is written. Yeah, it's it seems that he is part of some type of Gothic inheritance almost when it comes to this ideas that are are percolating through and and I I I know that in uh some of his earlier work I think the the private path for instance there are echoes of a Draculaike figure and then in some of his later work again um and and some of that earlier work is set in Ireland Demer. It is really interesting that there may be threads feeding into what we see in Dracula. Imran, I love this idea that you said earlier there about when you read it first and you had certain expectations and some of them were met and some of them were not met.

[00:12:26]Um, you read it at 15, you said. What when you walked away from it, what was your what was what were you left with?

[00:12:34]What what stuck with you about your 15year-old reading of Dracula? And then was that shattered a little bit in the more recent rereading?

[00:12:43]Uh, as a 15-year-old, you know, I was all for Dracula.

[00:12:46]Uh, I was kind of on his side. He was the the romantic and and tortured figure, the outsider who nobody could understand. And, uh, that sort of complete lack of regard for the destruction that he met upon everyone surrounding him. Sorry. I think was very characteristic of a teenage kind of reading where, you know, you you kind of see yourself as the outsider who who is surrounded by malevolent forces. Um, and and I think that sort of stayed with me over the years in conversations I'd had about Dracula, this kind of notion of the hunted animal, hunted outsider, um, who could not be but what he was and and was sort of being tormented out of it.

[00:13:33]And uh and of course on returning to it now you I see it in a completely different way. You see the destruction that he he he meets out on all those around him and the the horror that that trails in his wake. Um, but I I suppose that that sort of early romantic notion of Dracula is also something that's been fed by the culture around it, by films and everything that, you know, we see that's connected to Dracula in which he's he's kind of the the handsome and desirable and uh somewhat transgressive figure.

[00:14:08]>> Uh, Katherine, how about you? What was your what was your first encounter, shall we say? So I read Dracula in my first term as an undergraduate. So I would have been 18. Um I I'm really enjoying what I is saying here because that's exactly what I see in my undergraduate students who absolutely want to identify with the vampire. And it's really interesting because this is a very contemporary way of reading the book. It's not necessarily one that would the Victorian readers as far as we know would um would have made um the the tenor of the novel is very much that Dracula is the villain. He's awful. He's frightening. He's someone that you want to destroy. And the sympathy should be with the the crew of light, the character Jonathan and Mina and the others who are trying to get rid of him.

[00:14:58]But this isn't how we read it. or or I say we obviously you know people have different readings but how a large majority of contemporary readers read it they want to identify with the vampire and I think you know again as Ema says this is partly because of the media that's come after Dracula the way that it's been adapted and retold particularly since the 1970s the legacy of um the TV show Dark Shadows which is the first sympathetic vampire proper sympathetic vampire story and Rice's series Interview with vampire in the Vampire Chronicles. All of which present these vampires that are that have backstories that have interior inter interiority. And this has influenced um other versions of Dracula that you know film adaptations, stage adaptations and so on. And it's really shifted the way that we approach the novel where we contemporary audiences really want to identify with um uh with the outsider. I suppose that wasn't my experience. you asked how I read it as 18. I didn't read it in that way. Um, I actually can't remember because I've read it so many times since that it's kind of vanished and different details um pop out to me now and different different characters and um I I'm really interested in the the wolves in the book at the moment.

[00:16:18]That's that's my current interest, but that's perhaps a tangent that we can talk about later.

[00:16:23]>> Absolutely. Um, I'm going to share my first uh my first encounter with because it's utterly bizarre and totally inappropriate. When I was six years old, my grandfather would take me out to the back of the house in his wheelchair and read Bram Stoker's Dracula to me as I sat by the wheel of his wheelchair. And when I tell you that I was not out of the foot of my parents' bed for a good six months after that because I was so utterly utterly disturbed. But but it it definitely laid a foundation of uh kind of dark imagination and and and I you know I lived in rural Ireland so there was this gothic landscape all around me anyway that was you know constantly delued with rain. So he knew what he was doing. He was he was breeding imagination and he he did it very successfully. Um, one thing I want to talk about, uh, Katherine, which is something you just picked up on there, and I know this is one of your areas of of of expertise as well, is the depiction in popular culture, because we talk about Gothic novels, and, you know, we can we can talk about Frankenstein, we can talk about other iterations, some of those uh, earlier 18th century, late 18th century novels as well. I don't know if anything else has endured in popular culture the way a Dracula type figure has, if not Dracula himself. Um, I'm sure you ask this question all the time. Why is it do you think that he pushes through in that way?

[00:17:49]>> Yeah. So, I think Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are the most filmed um fictional characters ever. There are more versions of them than any other. So I guess we could see Sherlock Holmes as kind of a parallel interestingly from the same literary from the same historical period.

[00:18:03]>> Um I think that the reason that Dracula pushes through is because it translated so well to film so early. So if you go back to the novel and reread it now, it's an incredibly cinematic novel. The way that landscape is presented, the way that um perspective is presented, it's almost like a camera zooming in and out at different points. It it it's cinematic before cinema properly existed and it was one of the first novels to be really taken up by cinema. First of all, in the uh 1922 film Noseratu, which of course was an illegal um pirated um uh version adaptation of the novel that didn't have copyright permission. Um and then in the 1931 version, the Hollywood version by Todd Browning starring Bella Lozi. And Bella Los Gozi's performance in that film is so iconic is so immediately recognizable that I think it has determined, you know, all our subsequent perceptions of the novel. So there's a a a critic, a literary critic called Ken Galder who says this is where vampire recognition begins. And I tested his theory when I had small children um who had never read Dracula, never you know seen a version of Dracula on screen. I showed them a picture of Bella Lo Gozi and I said who's this and they said that's Dracula that's a vampire. So somehow that kind of it's almost like a brand like Los Goi has this incredible recognition value because of his amazing accent his amazing appearance his performance in that film and um that's really endured I think the sense that we recognize the vampire even before we know who he is even before we've invited him over the threshold if you like.

[00:19:45]I could go on. Um, yeah. I mean, I think this figure speaks across the ages that there are different vampires for different ages and they embody different things for us at different moments.

[00:19:59]>> Yes. Certainly. Also, uh, the count in Sesame Street, I remember as a very early iteration.

[00:20:04]>> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's probably where my kids got the recognition from.

[00:20:11]Is there is there any um specific iteration or or or representation in popular culture of of Dracula that you remember most of all that left an impact?

[00:20:22]>> Well, I think probably it has to be Gary Oldman as as as Dracula in in Coppa's uh early ' 90s um version, which having reread it, I realize is surprisingly faithful to the novel. uh apart from sort of a a lengthy backstory than love story through the ages they introduce, it's it's actually fairly fairly faithful in comparison to a lot of other uh Dracula movies. But, you know, I think again maybe at 15 16 whenever I had sneaked in to see it, it was the figure of Gary Oldman um looking longingly at his his lost love informed my uh impression of Dracula who stayed ever since. Um, and and I suppose also the one that that really resonates with me and and still freaks me out is actually Vera Herzog's nonspirat, which I think is one of the most frightening versions in existence.

[00:21:22]>> Yeah, they are quite a haunting thing. I think that's a that's a really kind of good way to put it. Like it just essentially freaks you out, doesn't it?

[00:21:31]Like it it acts as a haunting. The image itself acts as a haunting of these people. Um, let's come to the text itself now. And Emma, I wonder if you wouldn't mind. You've chosen a passage from the book that you wanted to share with us today. I wonder if you wouldn't mind reading that for us now, and we can we can have a quick discussion about it afterwards.

[00:21:49]>> Yes, I have my very battered version that I think I stole from my parents' shelves back in the day. So, I'm going to read just a a a section from uh when Jonathan is locked in the castle and the brides of Dracula uh are about to have a go at him.

[00:22:09]I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was the deliberate voluuptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and she arched her neck. She actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white teeth.

[00:22:37]Lower and lower went her head, as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin, and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer.

[00:23:02]I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a langorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

[00:23:20]But at that instant another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning, I was conscious of the presence of the count and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily, I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back. The blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth choing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion.

[00:23:47]But the count, never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even in the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hellfire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of hot of white hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back. It was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though, and almost a whisper, seemed to cut through the air and then ring around the room, he exclaimed, "How dare you touch him? Any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it. Back, I tell you all.

[00:24:43]>> Oh, it's still it still works so well, doesn't it? It's it's one of those it's just so iconic in so many different ways. I genuinely have have goosebumps now after listening to you read that. Do you know one of the things that and we'll talk far more highbrow about this now in a minute, but one of the things that I want to point out and I noticed on this rereading is the word voluumptuous is used so often in this book. I had had never noticed that before and when I heard you doing that passage I was like it's good. I'm glad you picked it because it has an example of voluumptuous and voluumptuous comes up so so much. I was like Christ almighty he's being obsessed with voluumptuousness. But tell us Emer did you pick that? I mean, there's a million reasons. I can I can guess at them all, but give us an insight as to why that's the one that you went for this time.

[00:25:29]>> Well, I think for one thing, the use of the word voluuptuous because I also really noticed it's, you know, it's, you know, there's a limited vocabulary in Dracula. The same words do get recycled over and over again. But obviously the voluuptuousness of women, which is so, you know, morally wrong and yet he gives so much rain to here and takes such delight in using. he just he can't he can't u forbid himself use of this intensely sort of sexual sounding word. Um but yeah I chose that that piece. Yes.

[00:26:04]because because that was there because I think that describes the the transgressveness of the sexuality of the novel, the overt sexuality of the novel in in a way that I had kind of forgotten or not expected or had not experienced in that way when I was when I was a a girl reading it. And um yeah, well, you know, and I also love a bit of the old melodramatic, so why not?

[00:26:29]>> Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. It's the most naturalistic scene I've ever heard described in any book ever. Um, Katherine, let's talk about um Stoker's view on that. So, so he offers up this very tantalizing, very voluumptuous scene that it's constantly almost on the edge of something happening for for a decent amount of time in terms of page space as well.

[00:26:53]>> What's what's Stoker telling us there, do you think? Is this something is is this Stoker's fantasy written on the page or is this Stoker's condemnation to, you know, a western society degenerating as we move into the 20th century?

[00:27:07]>> I think it can be a bit of both. I'm really glad that Ema chose that section because that was actually the scene that began the novel. So, um, Stoker had a dream where basically that scene he dreamt it and he woke up and he was like, "Oh my god, I have to write this down." And many many Gothic many many Gothic novels have that kind of origin story of of emerging in a dream. And I think the fact that he um says that it was a dream tells us an awful lot about the content of that particular moment in the novel that it's something from the unconscious that's rising up and perhaps articulating more than he knows that it's articulating.

[00:27:49]And yeah, it's a really sexy scene, isn't I think that's probably the sexiest scene in in the book in my in my opinion and it's hard not to read it as a contemporary reader as sexual.

[00:28:02]There's Emma mentioned the um the Gary Oldman version and that scene with Ku Reeves is is CoppPa shoots that is a is you know soft porn very erotic and um I think it definitely is his fantasy as you asked but there is a certain amount of condemnation in there as well. I think in the act of writing he's also distancing himself from that desire that the that the writing self doesn't have to be exactly the same as the unconscious self. There's a there's a little bit of a gap between the two.

[00:28:36]>> Yeah, it is. That's so interesting. I didn't realize Iran that that had come to him as a dream because there is there's something and that that's how the novel began. There is something in that particular scene for me that is potentially some of the best writing in the novel overall. And so that's interesting that it's it's a subconscious fabrication to some extent and that it maybe that's why it seems so freeing and that it it just seems so natural to go from from one part of it to to the next. Katherine, you've also chosen a passage that you wanted to share with us. Could we could you share that with us now?

[00:29:12]>> Yes. So I I picked several but I am going to go with this one because this is also about sleep and dreaming but in a different way. It's the passage where Lucy is sleepwalking on the cliffs at Whitby and Mina, who's narrating this particular section of the novel, um, runs out of the hotel that they're staying in order to go and try and find her. So, it's it's a slightly different perspective, and Dracula does appear in it, but in a different kind of way because it's from Mina's point of view.

[00:29:39]I took a big heavy shaw and ran out. The clock was striking one as I was in the cresant and there was not a soul in sight. I ran along the north terrace but could see no sign of the white figure which I expected.

[00:29:54]At the edge of the west cliff above the pier I looked across the harbor to the east cliff in the hope or fear I don't know which of seeing Lucy in our favorite seat. There was a bright full moon with heavy black driving clouds which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diarama of light and shade shade as they sailed across. For a moment or two I could see nothing as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church and all around it. Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view. And as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as the sword cut moved along the church and the churchyard became gradually visible.

[00:30:35]Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed. For there, on our favorite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much. The shadow shut down on light almost immediately, but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it.

[00:31:00]What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell. I did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier, and along by the fish market to the bridge, which was the only way to reach the east cliff.

[00:31:13]The town seemed as dead, for not a soul did I see. I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of Paul Lucy's condition. The time and distance seemed endless, and my knees trembled, and my breath came labored, as I toiled up the endless steps to the abbey. I must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty.

[00:31:35]When I got almost to the top, I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was now close enough to distinguish it, even through the spells of shadow. There was undoubtedly something long and black bending over the half-relining white figure. I called in fright, "Lucy, Lucy!" and something raised ahead and from where I was I could see a white face and red gleaming eyes. Lucy did not answer and I ran on to the entrance of the churchyard. As I entered the church was between me and the seat and for a minute or so I lost sight of her. When I came in view again the cloud had passed and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying back over the back of the seat.

[00:32:20]She was quite alone and there was not a sign of any living thing about.

[00:32:27]>> There is so much of what we understand as the Gothic in what you just read, Catherine. It's actually remarkable when you pick these little pieces out and you read them. We have a shadowy pale figure that is operating at nighttime. There's the moon. There's a church. There's a silhouette of a church. We're up on the top of a cliff. The winds are going.

[00:32:49]There are there is a woman who is not fully dressed properly. She shouldn't be out in those clothes. And then when we do encounter her, she's reclining. And then it's like it's tick tick tick tick tick of what we understand to be the the Gothic.

[00:33:02]>> Um EMR, anything that sticks out to you about that particular passage? It it's it's it's not one I remember as clearly as the one you picked, but actually there's so much in there.

[00:33:13]It's a really beautiful piece of writing actually that section because it encapsulates all the kind of the wonder of the Gothic of the the moment of horror of the of the the person the vulnerable person in peril, the dark force surrounding it, but also the kind of the the the visual beauty of that moment and the effort that Stoker takes with the writing of it that it really kind of elicits a a very uh complex reaction I think from the reader that you have there's a a romance to this moment and a darkness and a fear and a and a sense of dread and and you know that's you know why Dracula is is kind of the the great vampire novel because Stoker is the first person who introduced so many of these ideas into into vampire stories and and and of course he also introduced lots of technical things into the into the the vampire story that hadn't existed in earlier versions or in folk versions and things like staking and sleeping on his on having to sleep on his home soil and those kind of things. And I I but he weaves it very delicately in that moment and writes it almost like uh a romantic moment which makes it so engaging.

[00:34:36]>> And Katherine, tell us why did you pick it? Well, rereading it, it struck me.

[00:34:42]Two things about that particular section struck me. One is the sense of place, the specificity of Whitby. Obviously, Stoker was staying in Whitby when he wrote part of Dracula. And you can just see that he knows exactly how hard it is to run up the steps to the army and how much effort that's going to take Mina because anyone who's been to Whitby will know this is very steep and there's 200 step, 199 steps, I think. Um, so I love that sense of place and that sense of specificity which comes out in other parts of the novel as well. But the main reason I chose was because I think this is a really cinematic passage and shows what I was suggesting before that um this is a pre-cinematic novel. It's anticipating the rise of cinema. The play of light and dark uh the Kiara Skira of the passage is really emphasized all the way through the white figure, the black figure standing over it, the light and shade that's happening in the sky and the moonlight and the clouds and he Stoker even refers to it as a diarama at one point which seems to suggest you know that it's filmike even even before film. So, of course, film had been invented in the 1890s, but only very, very recently. It's very noticeable that it's the only sort of really up-to-date technology that Stoker doesn't mention. And it's curious that he doesn't. I think >> I I love that. I think it's one of the again one of the things that sticks with me even from the first time I was I was read Dracula as then when I read it myself is you can see it. It's a very easy novel to see even reading it in 2026 despite the fact that it's that it's published in 1897. And that's kind of remarkable actually. The world is very clear and therefore it's it's that it's so easy to haunt us as as I was saying to EM earlier about this idea that there are certain passages that haunt us because we can see it so clearly. Right. I have a bug bear with this book and I want to I want to get both of your takes on it. Um, EMR, we'll come to you first.

[00:36:39]>> How do you feel about the the form of the novel in in that it uses letters, it uses different there's different voices coming through and they're all writing to one another and they're telling the story? Is that something that that helps you to get different perspectives or is it something that you were like, wait, where are we now and who's talking? What what what was your kind of feeling on it as you went through it, especially this time background?

[00:37:04]Well, I suppose the epistolary novel I've always found a bit of a a a tedious thing to have to trudge through and and so I was expecting to be irritated by it as I as I was reading, but actually it really didn't have that that effect on me at all. And I was very aware of it as a sort of proto stream of consciousness where it's it's a a a way that you are allowed into the inner world of the character in that you wouldn't be if it was written in the in a in a in a in a straighter way in a in the usual way.

[00:37:43]And I actually think that's it's quite fascinating and you see the the sort of the beginnings of an interest in psychology and and also in in the the kind the scientific mind beginning to engage with the notion of of psychiatry as well. And I know um and that sort of was quite fascinating to see these kind of early engagement with a kind of writing which then later obviously was about to explode post first world war and with with with modernism but actually the importance of allowing you into the inner world and into the inner world of of women as well. the kind of the the the secret life that that you know many Victorian male writers were not terribly interested in as long as women were behaving themselves properly. Suddenly Stoker allows these women who are not behaving properly albeit against their will but of course Victorian women could only ever behave improperly against their will. Um allows you access to them and and to a fuller sense of of themselves and of who they are. And I I found that that actually really worked for me.

[00:39:01]>> Katherine, what about you? How does that how does the structure and the form work for you?

[00:39:05]>> It's actually one of my favorite things about the novel.

[00:39:08]So um this is a very distinctive feature of Gothic fiction right from the very earliest Gothic novel which is usually identified as Horus Walpole's Castle of the Tranto 1764. You've got this idea that Gothic novels often take the form of a found manuscript that somebody's discovered and edited and presented to modern readers with notes or framing narratives or or you know they've heard a story told to them in a pub and that they're going to pass this on to the new reader to the next reader and so on. I think what Stoker does, he takes this and again he modernizes it. Exactly what Emir has just said about being kind of on the brink of modernism of anticipating things that are going to happen in the new century in terms of um literary experimentation with form. Um he's he's not entirely the first person to do this. I think he is very influenced by Wilky Collins's The Woman in White, which has a similar kind of structure with lots of different um voices of journals and diaries and letters that have come from different people. But nevertheless, he he crystallizes it in a in a particularly striking way, I think, because of the things that Ames just suggested about being able to show an array of different voices in this book. And again, you ask how, you know, what we see new each time we go back to it. And something that I've really started to think about recently is all the peripheral voices in the novel. So we expect um you know Lucy well actually Lucy doesn't have much of a voice but Mina and Jonathan and um Dr. Seard and some of the other main protagonists to kind of have their phonograph recordings or their diary entries or whatever. But there are also newspaper clips that give us the voices of children in um in 1890s London who gives the voice of the zookeeper at London Zoo and sort of oblquely the voice of the wolf. And um there were all these kind of peripheral voices including Dracula himself who never gets to narrate his own text. We always hear him through other other um narrators, Jonathan particularly. And so he becomes a kind of peripheral character in his own narrative. And I love that sense of all those peripheral voices that are being enabled through this through this you know quai experimental form. So I absolutely love this. I think there's a real metaphictional quality to it. It's anticipating not just modernism but also postmodern metaphiction.

[00:41:30]>> I'll admit similar to EMR actually I generally can't abide it as a style. However, and I and I hate Castle of Atranto as well.

[00:41:42]I absolutely hate it. Um, if you haven't read it, don't bother. No, I'm joking.

[00:41:46]You should read it. It's fine. Um but there is something about that stream of conscience that you mentioned that this this um particular novel transcends it a little bit where where actually once you once you get past that that initial thing of oh I'm reading a letter now or I'm reading a an article or whatever it is whatever it's supposed to be actually once you get into it it's so valuably deep as you're both saying that that I can see past it in this more easy than I can in in other novels that employ the similar a similar type of of way of telling. For me, it's always been a block where I go, there's too many voices. I feel overwhelmed. I can't do it. But with this one, there's just I don't know, maybe he takes his time with with the passages. They don't feel rushed. They feel they feel very immersive. So, it it does it does work for me, I suppose, in that sense. Not that anybody is is asking me how I whether I think Dracula works. Clearly, Dracula works. But actually on that and before we get we're going to come to um the the the book club members questions now in just a moment. I want to just end on this between ourselves.

[00:42:54]Emir, I'll come to you first.

[00:42:57]There are some people who would say, and it's not me now. I'm just, you know, saying what other people say, but there are some people that would say that Dracula isn't necessarily a particularly well-written novel, but that the the invention of that Dracula type is what has made this novel endure, that the the the character endures more more than the novel stands up to scrutiny. Um, I what would you say to that?

[00:43:23]I wouldn't entirely disagree with it. I don't I don't think you'd love it for its its literary merits. That's that's not the the purpose of the novel. But I was surprised on this rereading actually how much more I loved a lot of the pros particularly the early writing of Jonathan's uh journal as he makes his way through Europe to the castle initially was actually incredibly beautifully uh written and incredibly effective and evocative and uh and he does Stoker does return to that every now and then. And I think there is you know there is there a problem with with repetition like everyone has stersous breeding all breathing all the women have you know voluup they turn voluuptuous when you know they're suddenly out of control and and that is a little bit it's very noticeable and it's a bit tiresome but actually in between there is a lot of writing to love.

[00:44:24]>> Yeah I agree Katherine what what what do you what do you think is Bram Stoker I think >> now >> I'm kind of with Emma really. I think he's neither he's neither as bad as he sometimes made out to be, neither as nor as good as he could be. He's he's kind of a mediocre writer perhaps that has certain passages that are, you know, that transcend the rest of the novel that that stand out.

[00:44:55]But to me, that's not really important.

[00:44:56]That's not what I I go to Dracula for.

[00:44:59]It's about the the the way that that novel almost despite itself seems to distill so many things and to bring so many things within itself. Um I've recently started teaching creative writing as well as English. And when I'm teaching English, how well a book's written doesn't matter. When you teaching creative writing, how well it's written doesn't matter. So it's an interesting um contrast of approaches perhaps. I don't really care how well it's written. I just care how interesting it is.

[00:45:30]>> Yeah, I fully fully agree with that. I think it's it's experiential, right? It it's something that you you get something new from every single time and and that's demonstrated in some of the questions that we've had from the audience. So, I'm going to now we've covered some of these already. So, Sean, for instance, had asked what our first experiences reading Dracula was like.

[00:45:51]So, we've we've covered that already, but here's one to kind of carry on from that from Tim, who has asked, "Has your reading of the book changed over the years? And if so, how?" Katherine, I'll come to you first on that because you have probably read it the most of all three of us or probably anybody listening. Um, so how has your reading changed over the years, do you think?

[00:46:13]Was there was there a process that you went through?

[00:46:16]>> I think it definitely has. It would be hard to sort of chart each step kind of off the top of my head, but I think certainly what I've I've referred to earlier about the way that I've started to notice things like the peripheral characters much more. Mr. Swales is another fascinating one or these just odd moments in the novel that kind of don't add up. Um I think um stand out to me more and more the more I read it. I'm also coming to notice the animals in the novel much more. That's what I'm particularly interested in at the moment. It's a novel that's full of animals. um wolves, flies, spiders, cats, rats, bats. There's dozens and dozens in there. And I think there's interesting room for rethinking Dracula in the night light of eco-riticism, which of course some people have started already to do, but I suppose that's where my attention is most focused at the moment.

[00:47:09]>> Oh, that's so interesting. The animals, I never really thought about it through that lens. And also almost everything you mentioned there is very witchcraft adjacent in terms of 17th century witch trials. They're all animals that you would find in and around some of those things also associated with the devil of course which is no, you know, huge breakthrough. The devil is clearly going through the the book. Um I what about you? Was there a was there a a a change?

[00:47:34]I mean we've spoken about it briefly already, but is is is it something that you were conscious of as you were listening this time?

[00:47:40]Yeah, I mean I feel as though I I've stepped through the mirror this time that you know I I I read it in one very particular way as a as a teenager and as a as an adult I'm much more aware of the other characters on the receiving end of the terror. The the idea of being swept along by something over which you have no control but must try to find control in order to regain yourself. And I I think that's, you know, it's a very powerful feeling alive at the moment and probably within me and and that that notion of of of how you uh stand back from the forces that are pulling you against your will.

[00:48:26]But I but also, you know, as as Katherine said, I I was very aware of the other voices. I was very aware of odd moments of of humor. I think, you know, the the fact that we know that possibly Henry Irving, the actor, the great 19th century actor, was a a a model for Dracula and and Stoker manages to drop in a reference to Ellen Terry, who of course was Irving's great partner for many years. You know, there's kind of odd moments of of humor as well. And and also possibly his his strange attempt to portray every single working-class person as someone who is only interested in drinking. um was something that certainly jumped out at me this time around.

[00:49:10]>> Yeah. Yeah, you do. Once the class element starts to come in, you're like, "All right, Bram, calm down just a little bit there. You'll be all right.

[00:49:17]You might get to need to know some new people in your social circle." Um, I this one is for you specifically and it comes to us from uh Jay and Jay wants to know as a novelist, what did you find most impressive about this particular novel?

[00:49:36]I think that he was able to make the epistolary novel really work so well and become, you know, such a page turner because normally it's just kind of reports of people doing stuff. But the fact that he was able to examine the interior lives of the characters and to not only use that as a point of interest, but as a way of pushing the plot forward, propelling the plot forward. I I really admire that because that's, you know, something that I'm very interested in. And, you know, as I continue my quest to write a novel as popular as Dracula, I'm I'm using him as my model. Now, >> listen, you're you're almost there, Ruth. You're almost there. Ruth has a question for um Katherine. Katherine, and it feeds into what I was just talking about there um about this form.

[00:50:26]And and I so agree, Emma, that really strikes me. And actually something new I'm going to take away from this conversation is despite my sometimes distaste for the epistleary novel, this one seems to break through. And actually there's something really meritful in that um to to remember. But but Katherine H you touched on before but Ruth asks how innovative was this form when it comes to 1897? Um what kind of what is the legacy that that Stoker's writing into?

[00:50:56]So in some ways it's not innovative at all because as I already suggested it's uh it is a standard feature of the Gothic and particularly as I mentioned Wilky Collins's novel um the woman in white which takes a very very similar form. Um, so Stoker is definitely borrowing from that, but I think he perhaps goes one further that he takes it towards something else as we were talking about earlier on that he is on the cusp of uh literary modernism that he's kind of anticipating um some of those more experimental modes of writing that you that start to emerge you know 20 years after his writing. So I I I think my answer Ruth is sort of yes and no. It is innovative and it's not innovative. But in a sense that's true of all literature, isn't it? That all literature it builds on its precedence but also takes it a step further if if you know all great examples of it do anyway. So I think perhaps that's what Stoker does. And of course um there are if you think now about um the Gothic as it appears in the 21st century the found footage film uh those kind of metaphictional horror works um it's you know it's everywhere and I think so much of contemporary Gothic owes a huge debt to to Stoker's innovation in that respect.

[00:52:20]>> Now as a historian I love this next question. And it comes from Gareth and he asks, "What elements of the vampire myth did Stoker originate and what did he draw on?" Now th this is kind of a little more complex, right? Because I don't know, my general understanding of it is that uh the the vampire bat association, Katherine, you can definitely tell me better than I can of what I'm getting right and wrong here. I think the vampire bat thing is quite him. I don't know if he invented it, but it's he definitely standardized it potentially. Um, the Transian nobleman thing. I think that's him. The resting place in the soil. Emmer, you mentioned that earlier. I think that's Stoker. Oh, like a systematic vampire hunt. That's him, too. And and a team, a vampire hunting team. I think that's quite Stoker specific. But but Katherine, illuminate that for us because you'll be you'll be able to speak to that better than I am.

[00:53:14]>> Yeah, there's kind of a vampire hunting team in Carmela in the in the last chapter. All the men get together to kind of >> Yes.

[00:53:21]Hunt Carmea. So I don't I I'm not sure.

[00:53:25]So there's a huge vampire literary tradition um throughout the 19th century leading up to Dracula. And that's often overlooked. We tend to forget that people were writing about vampires for my math is not very good here, but about 80 years before before um before Dracula was published. And it's often hard to determine exactly what Stoker invented and what he's taken from somewhere else.

[00:53:52]You'd need to be much more uh kind of thorough and systematic perhaps in your reading of that tradition than than I can be kind of on the spur of the moment. Um but he did do a lot of research. He did famously he did research both um locally in Whitby and Whippy Library and also in the British Library and um read up on vampire traditions. We know some of the texts that he drew from some of them again we're not sure where he got ideas from.

[00:54:17]So it is possible to trace some of those ideas back and he did innovate hugely on those as well. I'm trying to think of a good example. The um late novelist Marcus Cedric actually wrote a beautiful essay about his research for a vampire novel that he was writing called My Sword Hunter Singing. And he said that he went back through all the folkloric traditions about vampires to try and find out what was the core you know what was the core tradition. the only thing that he could find that was consistent was garlic. So, so even if you go back into the folklore on which um all of those literary vampire stories of the 19th century were were based or inspired by, there's not kind of not one version.

[00:54:56]There's not kind of one stable um vampire mythology that we we can um we can go back to. And I think that's beautifully reflected actually in the end of Dracula when um you have the moment when um Jonathan I think is is reflecting on you know the end of the story and how the story's kind of come into being and he says that there was that all the original documents have been destroyed and so the manuscript only exists as a mass of typewriting these things that Mina has been typing up. So there is no original in the same way that the we we can't find the originals of these vampire myths.

[00:55:30]>> Yeah, I love that that they're bleeding into one another. I I really like that idea, Catherine. Um EMR, this one's for you. Recent retellings, this comes from Laura. Recent retellings in print and on stage have tried to center the women in the story. What do you make of the women in Stoker's Dracula and what it says about gender?

[00:55:50]As I said before, I was surprised by how integral the the kind of the intellectual engagement of certainly Mina is to driving this story forward and to the success of the of the vampire hunt. Um, I think obviously there are layers and layers and layers of Victorian sentimentality about womanhood in there which are quite tiresome after a while and and those gender roles are very heavily enforced and stuck are also you know I think a bit bitchilly perhaps has Mina you know stick a knife into the new woman and what a terrible thing the new woman is and she certainly isn't one although obviously she is in the writing Um, so what what can I say? This doesn't tell us anything new about gender roles.

[00:56:43]These are old old stories. And it's just a it's a a delight to see it almost in a way that reminds me of of Toltoy saying that, you know, he he tried to write an as a morality tale, but she took him over. I feel that um perhaps perhaps Stoker um ended up writing a more forceful female character than he had intended.

[00:57:08]>> Yeah, I think that's so true. Right, one last thing and we'll we'll do this as quickly as we can because our time is seeping away from us. Um Julie would like to know for readers like her that loved Dracula, what else would you both recommend that readers look at next? Uh, Catherine, we'll come to you first.

[00:57:28]>> I would definitely go and read Carmela.

[00:57:30]I think it's better than Dracula. It's It's got um a more engaging pair of protagonists. It's more beautifully written and um it's genuinely haunting and enchanting. So, I would absolutely Joseph Sheridan Lefan Carmela, that's where I would tell you to go next.

[00:57:50]>> Well, I I would go much more down market. I think my my 15-year-old self went straight on to Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire and stayed there for quite some time.

[00:58:01]>> Yeah, we can't go wrong with Anne Rice.

[00:58:03]Well, actually, you can, but not an interview with the Vampire. So, that's I I will I will second that one. Listen, we have to go. They're shoving us out the door of the Hay Festival uh book club right now because we are slightly seeping over time. But, lads, when you have this group of people together, how could you not talk about Dracula forever and ever and ever? What an absolute treat this conversation has been. I hope you have enjoyed listening and watching along. Do remember that the Hay Festival Book Club will be back next month with another gripping title. And you can follow the books the book club's new Instagram page at Hay Festival Book Club to hear everything you need to know first. And of course, vitally, the Hay Festival 2026 kicks off next week and we hope to see many of you there in person.

[00:58:45]Until then, thank you for watching.