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The Book Club — Arts
The Book Club

Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented weekly by Sam Leith.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Latest Episodes:

Lawrence Freedman: Command Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is the doyen of war studies, Lawrence Freedman. His new book Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine takes a fascinating look at the interplay between politics and conflict in the post-war era. He tells me why dictators make bad generals, how soldiers are always playing politics, how the nuclear age has changed the calculus of conflict and gives me his latest read on the progress of the war in Ukraine.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rediscovering Josephine Tey Sep 21, 2022

Show notes

On this week’s Book Club podcast we’re talking about the best crime writer you’ve (probably) never heard of. As Penguin reissues three of Josephine Tey’s classic Golden Age novels, I’m joined by Nicola Upson, whose own detective stories (most recently Dear Little Corpses) feature Tey as a central character. She tells me about the unique character of Tey’s writing, her discreet private life, and about how she made possible the psychological crime fiction that we read now.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A.M. Homes: The Unfolding Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is A. M. Homes. She talks about her new novel The Unfolding, which imagines a conspiracy of angry Republicans forming after John McCain’s 2008 election defeat in the hopes of taking their America back. She talks about her history of prescience, about the deep weirdness of the Washington she grew up in, and why there’s more than one 'deep state'.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian McEwan: Lessons Sep 07, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week’s Book Club is Ian McEwan – whose latest novel Lessons draws on his own biography to imagine an 'alternative life' for himself. He tells me about what drew him, in his late career, to using autobiography; about why there’s no contradiction in combining realism with metafiction; about the importance of sex; the rise of cancel culture – and why literary fiction by 'comfortable white men of a certain age' may have had its day, but he’s not complaining.

Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.

For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Francis Fukuyama: Liberalism and its Discontents Aug 31, 2022

Show notes

This week we spotlight our most popular episode of the last year, Sam's conversation with Francis Fukuyama about his book Liberalism and its Discontents. He tells Sam how a system that has built peace and prosperity since the Enlightenment has come under attack from the neoliberal right and the identitarian left; and how Vladimir Putin may end up being the unwitting founding father of a new Ukraine.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte Aug 24, 2022

Show notes

This week we revisit Sam Leith's conversation with Sir Salman Rushdie, recorded just before the pandemic. ‘Things that would have seemed utterly improbable now happen on a daily basis’, Sir Salman Rushdie said to Sam when they spoke in an interview for the Spectator's 10,000th edition. They discuss everything from his latest book Quichotte, to his relationship with his father, who we learn made up the surname 'Rushdie', and how he feels about The Satanic Verses now.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones: A Question of Standing Aug 17, 2022

Show notes

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones – whose new book A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA looks at the real-life story behind one of the most mythologised agencies of American power. How does the world's first democratically answerable spy agency actually work? Were all those dirty tricks, extra-legal shenanigans and attempted assassinations – sorry: "health adjustments" in the lingo of Langley – really the work of an agency gone rogue? Did the CIA fail to foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iranian Revolution, the Arab Spring and the Twin Towers – or has it been made to take the fall for political ineptitude? And what is its standing now?

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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Andrea Wulf: Magnificent Rebels Aug 10, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by Andrea Wulf to talk about the birth of Romanticism at the end of the 18th century. Her new book Magnificent Rebels tells the story of the "Jena set" -- a staggering assemblage of the superstars of German literature and philosophy who gathered in a small town and collectively came up with a whole new way of looking at the world. Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, the von Humboldt brothers -- and their brilliant and daring wives and lovers... their intellectual fireworks were matched by a tangle of literary feuds and hair-raising sexual complications. Here's a piece of the jigsaw of intellectual history that most British people will only vaguely know of if at all -- and it's fascinating.

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For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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Chloë Ashby: Colours of Art Aug 03, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the critic, novelist and art historian Chloë Ashby. In her new book Colours of Art: The Story of Art in 80 Palettes she takes a look at how the history of colour - how it was made, how much it cost, what it was understood to mean - has shaped the history of painting. She tells me about the age-old disagreement between the primacy of drawing and colour in composition, where Goethe and Gauguin butted heads with Newton, why Matisse was so excited by red, how Titian got blurry… and how the first female nude self-portrait was, astonishingly, as recent as 1906.

Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.

For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anne Weber: Epic Annette Jul 27, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Anne Weber, author of Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale. She tells me how she came to uncover the remarkable story of Annette Beaumanoir, heroine of the French Resistance, partisan of the Algerian independence struggle, jailbird, exile and survivor – and why when she came to write that story down she chose to do it in verse…

Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.

For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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