London Review Bookshop Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Francesca Wade & Lara Pawson: On Gertrude Stein Jan 21, 2026

Show notes

Francesca Wade’s biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, follows on from her acclaimed Square Haunting (Faber, 2020) to present a portrait of one of 20th century modernism’s most rowdy and confounding geniuses, in what Lisa Appignanesi has described as both a ‘discerning literary biography and a page-turning whodunit’.

Wade was joined by Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light (CB Editions, 2024).

More from the Bookshop:

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Vittles Issue 1 Launch: Robin Craig, Amy Key & Waithera Sebatindira Jan 14, 2026

Show notes

Since its founding, the online food and culture publication Vittles has sought to disrupt mainstream ideas of what food writing looks like. To mark its fifth anniversary, Vittles produced its first print issue – an engaging mix of newly commissioned articles and a selection of some of the best essays it published in the previous five years.

At the Bookshop, three contributors to Vittles Issue 1 – Robin Craig, Amy Key and Waithera Sebatindira – discussed what it means to write about food as a non-food writer with Vittles editor Odhran O’Donoghue.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Zarina Muhammad & Lola Olufemi on bell hooks’s Art on My Mind Jan 07, 2026

Show notes

To celebrate the Penguin Classics reissue of bell hooks’s Art on My Mind, Zarina Muhammad & Lola Olufemi discuss her work.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Danny Dorling & Arianne Shahvisi: The Next Crisis Dec 31, 2025

Show notes

If the first quarter of the 21st Century has been rich in one thing, it is anxiety. Pandemics, asteroids, climate change, global instability, the cost of living, tsunamis, migration – the list of things to be worried about seems to grow longer every day. We should thank our lucky stars then for Oxford Professor of Geography Danny Dorling. In ⁠The Next Crisis⁠ (Verso), he delves into the data with characteristic diligence and level-headedness to discover what we’re worried about, what we shouldn’t be worried about, what we should be worried about and what we should do about it.

Dorling was joined by writer and philosopher Arianne Shahvisi. More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Lamorna Ash & James Butler: Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever Dec 29, 2025

Show notes

In Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever (Bloomsbury) Lamorna Ash, author of the coming-of-age memoir cum anthropological study of the Cornish fishing industry Dark, Salt, Clear, visits Evangelical youth festivals, Quaker meetings, a silent Jesuit retreat along the Welsh coastline and a monastic community in the Inner Hebrides to investigate, through interviews and personal reflections, what drives young people in the twenty-first century to embrace Christianity. Poet Seán Hewitt writes ‘Humane, curious and unexpectedly moving, Lamorna Ash’s book is as much an account of the human condition as it is an investigation of faith. Quietly radical in its empathy, this is a book I have waited years and years to read, without even knowing it.’

Lamorna Ash was in conversation with James Butler, contributing editor at the London Review of Books.

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Jamieson Webster & Katherine Angel: On Breathing Dec 27, 2025

Show notes

In On Breathing(Peninsula Press) Jamieson Webster, a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York and part-time faculty member at The New School for Social Research, draws on psychoanalytic theory to reflect on her own experiences as an asthmatic teenager, a deep-sea diver, a palliative psychologist during covid and a new mother to explore how the experience of air and breathing serves to undermine the pervasive myth of the individual, and to underline how dependent we are on invisible systems, and on each other.

In this recording, Webster is breathing the same air as Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered, Daddy Issues and Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again.

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Laleh Khalili & David Wearing: Extractive Capitalism Dec 24, 2025

Show notes

Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, looks behind the glossy surface promises of frictionless trade and limitless growth to uncover the hidden stories behind late capitalism, from seafarers abandoned on debt-ridden container ships to the nefarious reach of consultancy firms and the cronyism that drives record-breaking profits. Piercing, wry and constantly revealing, Extractive Capitalism (Profile) brings vividly to light the dark truths behind the world's most voracious industries.

Professor Khalili was joined in conversation about her work by lecturer, commentator and broadcaster David Wearing, whose AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain (Polity) was published in 2018.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Sheila Fitzpatrick & Owen Hatherley: The Death of Stalin Dec 22, 2025

Show notes

In the first of a new series from Old Street in which historian focus on a single moment of history, pre-eminent English-language expert on the Soviet Union Sheila Fitzpatrick gives a detailed and darkly humorous account of the day in 1953 on which Stalin died, an event for which, despite its inevitability, both Russia and the wider world were almost completely unprepared. Fitzpatrick discussed The Death of Stalin with Owen Hatherley (Trans-Europe Express, The Alienation Effect).

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Laura Beatty & Edmund de Waal: Pear Trees Dec 20, 2025

Show notes

Pear Trees (Hazel Press) is a short story by Laura Beatty, the Ondaatje Prize-shortlisted novelist and biographer. Set in an Albanian mountain village, Pear Trees blends folklore and ecology to pose the largest of questions about our relationship with the living world.

Beatty was joined in conversation by potter and author Edmund de Waal, whose most recent books include Letters to Camondo(Chatto) and Perdendosi (Hazel Press).

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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T.S. Eliot at Faber Dec 17, 2025

Show notes

On 23 April 1925, T.S. Eliot was invited by Geoffrey Faber to join the newly founded publishing house of Faber & Gwyer. It was to prove the most momentous appointment in 20th-century poetry in English. As a pioneering talent scout for Faber & Gwyer (which would become Faber & Faber in 1928) Eliot launched the careers of W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, David Jones and Stephen Spender, and oversaw the publication of the work of the poet who had discovered him, Ezra Pound.

Exactly a hundred years on, poet and critic Mark Ford, emeritus professor of English at Sheffield John Haffenden, former Faber managing director Toby Faber and senior lecturer at the University of Brighton Aakanksha Virkar visited the Bookshop to discuss the events leading up to Eliot’s appointment, and his early years with the firm.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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