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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:

Caroline Frost: Carry On Regardless May 11, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is Caroline Frost, author of the new Carry On Regardless: Getting to the Bottom of Britain's Favourite Comedy Films. She tells me what those movies tell us about British social history, makes the case for their feminism, argues that their special magic belongs to a British sensibility that no longer exists – and explains why it took twenty or more attempts to get Barbara Windsor out of her bra.

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Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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

Simon Kuper: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK May 04, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the writer Simon Kuper, whose new book – Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK – argues that to understand the social and psychological dynamics of our present government, you need to understand the Oxford University of the 1980s, where so many of those now in power first met. He argues that the PM's love of winging it was nurtured in the tutorial culture of his Balliol days, that the dynamics of Tory leadership contests are throwbacks to the Oxford Union, and that Brexit – the grand project of this generation – was at root a jobs-protection scheme for the old-fashioned ruling class. Can that be the whole story? He tells me why he thinks we need to decommission the UK's rhetoric industry and learn to be more like Germany.

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Stephen Dodd: Beautiful Star – Yukio Mishima Apr 27, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, our subject is the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima - whose novel Beautiful Star is being published in English for the first time this month. My guest is its translator Stephen Dodd, who explains the novel's peculiar mixture of profound seriousness and humour, and its mixture of high literary seriousness with, well, flying saucers. He tells me about Mishima's sheltered life and shocking death, his place in Japanese literary culture, and the way the hydrogen bomb hangs over this remarkable and strange novel.

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

Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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Gideon Rachman: The Age of the Strongman Apr 20, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the FT’s foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman. In his new book The Age of the Strongman, he takes a global look at the rise of personality-cult autocrats. He tells me what they have in common, what’s new about this generation of strongman leaders - and why his book places Boris Johnson in a cast including Putin, Orban, Bolsonaro and Duterte.

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Felipe Fernández-Armesto: Beyond the Myth of Magellan Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto. 500 years after Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition circumnavigated the globe, Felipe’s gripping new book Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan goes back to the original sources to discover that almost everything we think we know about this hero of the great age of exploration is wrong.

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Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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Helen Bond and Joan Taylor: Women Remembered Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, we ask: did the chroniclers of the early Church cover up evidence that the disciples and evangelists of Christ were as often women as men? My guests are the scholars Helen Bond and Joan Taylor, authors of Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples. They pick out the hints and clues that, they say, indicate that women were doing more than just cooking, mourning and anointing in first-century Judaea – despite the difficulties of keeping track of all those Marys and Salomes.

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Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk

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Francis Fukuyama: Liberalism and its Discontents Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s Book Club podcast I’m joined by Francis Fukuyama to talk about his new book Liberalism and its Discontents. He tells me 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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Colm Toibin: Vinegar Hill Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Colm Toibin. Best known as a novelist, Colm’s new book is his first collection of poetry, Vinegar Hill. He tells me about coming late to poetry, the freedoms and austerities it offers, and why writing isn’t fun. Plus: surviving cancer and outstaying his St Patrick’s Day welcome at the White House…

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Tom Burgis: Kleptopia Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm talking to the investigative reporter Tom Burgis – just days after the High Court threw out an attempt from a London-based company run by eastern European oligarchs to suppress his book Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World. Tom tells me how massacres in Kazakhstan connect to the City of London, how western legal frameworks struggle to cope with international crime, how international kidnapping can be perfectly legal, why Tony Blair helped launder the reputation of a blood-soaked dictator – and how the conflict in Ukraine is the new front line of an ongoing world war between kleptocracy and democracy.

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Christopher de Bellaigue: The Lion House Mar 02, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m joined by the historian Christopher de Bellaigue to talk about The Lion House, his scintillating and idiosyncratic new book about the great Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. It’s all here: massacres, sieges, over-mighty viziers, Venetian perfidy, and… true love?

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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.

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