London Review Bookshop Podcast

Latest Episodes:

On Claude McKay: Raymond Antrobus, Paul Mendez & Kevin Okoth Dec 14, 2022

Show notes

Claude McKay's Harlem Shadows was published in 1922 and is only now beginning to receive its due. The collection stands alongside the better-known masterpieces of that year in its distillation of the spirit of the age and its outsize influence.

Writer, researcher, and LRB contributor Kevin Okoth joined poet Raymond Antrobus and author Paul Mendez to discuss McKay's extraordinary life and work.

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Mohsin Hamid & Jo Hamya: The Last White Man Dec 07, 2022

Show notes

In his fifth novel The Last White Man (Hamish Hamilton) Mohsin Hamid continues his exploration of cultural and racial displacement, commenced so brilliantly with Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Exit West. In what has been described as a contemporary remoulding of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ a man awakes one morning to find that his skin has turned dark. Hamid was in conversation with Jo Hamya, author of Three Rooms (Vintage).

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Dawn Foster Forever: K Biswas, James Butler, Lynsey Hanley, Gary Younge Nov 30, 2022

Show notes

Dawn Foster, chronicler of austerity Britain and leading voice from the housing crisis, passed away last year aged 34. Foster, author of Lean Out (Repeater, 2016) and LRB contributor, was a working class feminist who rose to prominence as a newspaper columnist and broadcast commentator; she was a fearless champion for those at the sharp end.

In the week of the Queen's funeral, friends and colleagues discussed her life and legacy: K Biswas, critic and director of Resonance FM and On Road Media; James Butler, LRB contributing editor and co-founder of Novara Media; Lynsey Hanley, broadcaster and author; and Gary Younge, author and sociology professor at the University of Manchester.

Read Dawn Foster's work in the LRB: lrb.me/dawnfoster

Find more Bookshop events via the website: lrb.me/eventspod

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Jeremy Lee & Olivia Laing: Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

Chef proprietor at London’s Quo Vadis, Jeremy Lee’s commitment to locality, excellence and simplicity has made the restaurant a must-eat-at destination for every resident or visiting gourmet. He’s also, in stark contrast to the popular image of the celebrity chef, the jolliest and most affable host you might ever hope to be fed by. His new book Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many (4th Estate), ‘one of the most beautiful cookery books I have ever seen’ according to Rachel Roddy, encapsulates his approach to food and cooking: first and foremost, it is about giving and receiving pleasure.

Lee is in conversation about food and pleasure with the writer and critic Olivia Laing, who has written of him: 'I worship Jeremy Lee … He has a true gift for living, and for writing about it too.

Find out about upcoming events: https://lrb.me/upcomingevents

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Michelle Tea and Isabel Waidner: Knocking Myself Up Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

In Knocking Myself Up (Dey St.), Michelle Tea brings all her characteristic passion, wit and occasionally alarming candour to bear on the trials, tribulations and joys of trying to become, and becoming, a queer parent. Witch-enhanced honey, intrusive medical procedures, impertinent questions and generous drag queens collide in a memoir that is both hugely entertaining and, in the end, profoundly moving.

Tea was in conversation with Isabel Waidner, author of We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff andSterling Karat Gold.

Find more upcoming LRB Bookshop events via the website: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Derek Jarman: Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

Now published for the very first time, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (House Sparrow Press) is Derek Jarman’s only piece of narrative fiction. Somewhere between a fairytale, acid trip and road movie, the work lays the foundations for many of the themes and styles that characterise Jarman’s work in film, painting and design.

Joining host So Mayer, author of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula), to explore the book were writer Philip Hoare, Jarman scholar Declan Wiffen and artist Michael Ginsborg.

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Remember the Details: Skye Arundhati Thomas and Preti Taneja Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

In Remember the Details, Skye Arundhati Thomas reflects on the Indian protest movement that began in mid-2019 against xenophobic and casteist citizenship laws. In the wake of the state erasure of these events, it asks what it means to remember, and how words and imagery inscribe reality into history. Thomas was joined by Preti Taneja, writer, activist, and contributing editor at The White Review.

Find more upcoming LRB Bookshop events via the website: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Caroline Bird and Helen Mort Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

Helen Mort’s latest collection, The Illustrated Woman, has just been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the latest accolade in what has been an incredibly productive year: 2022 has also seen the publication of her memoir of walking and motherhood, A Line above the Sky, and a collaborative lyric essay (with Kate Fletcher), Outfitting, exploring fashion and wild ecology.

Caroline Bird’s latest book is Rookie, a long-awaited selection gathering material from her seven Carcanet collections – including The Air Year, which won the Forward Prize in 2020. She is also a playwright, and was an official poet for the London Olympics in 2012.

Mort and Bird discuss and read from their work.

Find upcoming events at the Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/upcomingevents

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Small Fires: Rebecca May Johnson and Jonathan Nunn Oct 19, 2022

Show notes

Cooking, we are told, has nothing to do with serious thought; the path to intellectual fulfilment leads directly out of the kitchen. In Small Fires (Pushkin), essayist and food writer Rebecca May Johnson takes a different path, rewriting the kitchen as a vital source of knowledge, revelation and radical thought.

Johnson, author of the popular Substack ‘Dinner Document‘, was in conversation with Jonathan Nunn, who writes about the London food scene for eater.co.uk and edits the ‘Vittles’ newsletter.

Find more upcoming LRB Bookshop events via the website: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Signe Gjessing, Ray Monk and Max Richter on the ‘Tractatus’ Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in English for the first time a century ago thanks to the efforts of his tutor at Cambridge Bertrand Russell, set out to solve all of the problems of philosophy in less than 100 pages, through a hierarchically numbered series of logical statements, or prepositions. He didn’t succeed, exactly – indeed, Wittgenstein himself was one of the book’s harshest critics – but that didn’t stop it becoming widely recognised as the most important work of philosophy of the 20th century. And its influence has extended into other artistic and intellectual fields too, from literature to cinema and music, and beyond.

Joining Ray Monk, biographer of Wittgenstein and Russell and professor of analytic philosophy, for a conversation about the power of the Tractatus and the unparalleled breadth of its influence, were Signe Gjessing, whose Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus, a dazzling poetic reimagining, was published earlier this year, and the celebrated composer, musician and interdisciplinary pioneer Max Richter. The conversation will be chaired by Sam Kinchin-Smith, Head of Special Projects at the LRB.

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