The Canon Club is a show about the Western canon: the great cultural inheritance we're handed, across music, art, and literature.

It was born of a blog by Ed West, in which he pined for a return to the schools of art and literary appreciation that were so famous in pre-WWI Vienna.

An era when people took seriously their commitment to appreciating the art that had come before them: from Beowulf to The Divine Comedy, from Goya to Beethoven, from Brahms to Ibsen.

This podcast is that latter-day Viennese salon.

The Western canon is everyone's birthright, even if most of us feel under-educated in it. Paul and Ed have set out to reclaim it for themselves, and thereby transmit it to a wider audience.

Ed West is a prominent British journalist, and the author of the wildly popular Wrong Side of History Substack.

Paul Morland is a renowned expert in demographics, and the author of several books.

In Season One, they'll be discussing one person or movement per episode:

E01: Caravaggio with Andrew Graham DixonE02: Macbeth with Neema ParviniE03: Anton Bruckner with Bryan GilliamE04: Anna Karenina with Rosamund BartlettE05: The Romanesque with John McNeillE06: Thomas Mann with Tobias BoesE07: Van Gogh with Martin Gayford