Context:

Stephen Fry's new book about the Trojan War is discussed throughout the episode - it's the third in his sequence of books about Greek myths, following books about the gods and heroes.

Context:

Stephen Fry mentions reading Robert Graves as a child, noting that Graves 'wrote two versions of his collection, one for adults and a children's version as well' about Greek mythology.

Context:

Stephen explicitly mentions 'Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his Tanglewood Tales for Children, in which he told some of the great stories of Greek myth, particularly the sort of Ovid stories of transformations.'

Context:

Tom mentions 'a science fiction novel by a guy called Dan Simmons... He wrote a book called Ilium' set on Mars where 'nano-enhanced superhumans are restaging the Trojan War.'

Context:

Stephen mentions William Goldman 'did the Princess Bride' in the context of discussing Goldman as his mentor for storytelling.

Context:

Stephen references 'Ian Foster' (E.M. Forster) saying characters can be 'rounded characters rather than flat characters' - this distinction comes from Forster's 'Aspects of the Novel.'

Context:

Stephen discusses how 'Hesiod wrote down the birth of the gods, theogony, and gave very clear stories of who was the father and the mother and where they all came from.'

Context:

Extensively discussed throughout as the primary source for the Trojan War, with Stephen noting 'the butch mano a mano fighting that formed so much of the Iliad' and praising Homer's writing about the battles.

Context:

Referenced multiple times in discussion of Odysseus's homecoming (nostos) and Greek mythology, with Stephen noting 'you can read the whole of the Iliad and the whole of the Odyssey.'