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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:

James Shapiro: Shakespeare in a Divided America Apr 29, 2020

Show notes

In this week's books podcast I'm joined from across the Atlantic by the eminent Shakespearean James Shapiro to talk about his new book Shakespeare in a Divided America, which discusses the myriad ways in which America has taken Britain's national playwright up as its own; and then used him as a lightning-rod for the deepest issues about its own national identity - issues of masculinity, race relations, immigration and assassination. Jim talks about why a country founded by theatre-hating, Brit-hating Puritans fell in love with a British playwright; how Lincoln was the greatest reader of Shakespeare in American history; about whether America is the purest repository of Shakespeare's language; about how a beef between two Shakespeare actors once led to light artillery being deployed in downtown Manhattan - and how Ulysses S Grant may have been the greatest Desdemona the theatre never quite had.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte Apr 22, 2020

Show notes

‘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. Sam met Salman in New York a few weeks ago, before coronavirus struck down the city. This episode is a recording of that interview, where 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. Sam's full interview is out in this Thursday's issue.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Toby Muse: Kilo Apr 15, 2020

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, I talk to the reporter Toby Muse about the vast, blood-soaked and nihilistic shadow economy that links a banker's 'cheeky little line of coke' to the poorest peasants in Colombia. Toby's new book Kilo: Life and Death inside the Cocaine Cartels traces cocaine's journey from that unremarkable-looking shrub to its entry into a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise, interviews farmers, prostitutes, pious assassins and cartel capos - and along the way describes how it has transformed Colombia's whole politics and way of life.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Craig Brown: One Two Three Four Apr 08, 2020

Show notes

My guest in this week's podcast is the multi-talented satirist Craig Brown, whose new book One Two Three Four: The Beatles In Time is, I feel confident in guessing, the most entertaining book about the Fab Four ever written. Craig joins me to talk about how he goes about his jackdaw work picking out the most curious and striking details from the mass of information in his research, what attracts him to his subjects, and why Paul McCartney has always been his favourite Beatle. Plus: a flabbergasting cameo for our own Stephen Bayley.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

John Carey: A Little History of Poetry Apr 01, 2020

Show notes

This week's Book Club podcast features one of the great wise men of the literary world: Professor John Carey - emeritus Merton Professor of English at Oxford, author of authoritative books on Milton, Donne and Dickens as well as the subject-transforming broadside The Intellectuals and the Masses. (He's also lead book reviewer for a publication we shall call only the S****y T***s, but we pass over that.) In his new book, A Little History of Poetry, he sweeps us with his usual elan from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the backyard of Les Murray. I asked him (among other things) what constitutes poetry, why 'Goosey Goosey Gander' has it all, what he discovered in his researches, and why the so-called New Criticism got old.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Blake Gopnik: Warhol Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

On this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam is joined by Blake Gopnik — the author of a monumental new biography of Andy Warhol. Blake tells Sam how everything — fame, money, and other human beings — were 'art supplies' to Warhol, but that underneath a succession of contrived personae Warhol could be warm, generous and even romantic; that the affectlessness of his art was not the expression of an affectless man; and that if he’d lived on, Gopnik thinks, he could have produced something equal to the late work of Titian.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Don Paterson: Zonal Mar 18, 2020

Show notes

Sam's guest on this week’s Book Club is the poet Don Paterson — whose new book Zonal finds him accessing a new, confessional mode, a longer line and a childhood interest in the spooky TV show The Twilight Zone. Don talks about the relationship between poetry and jazz, the split between 'page poetry' and spoken-word material, the shortcomings of Rupi Kaur, whether poems should include 'spoiler alerts', and lifts the lid on his vicious feud with the man he calls 'Alan Jacket'.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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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.

Hadley Freeman: House of Glass Mar 11, 2020

Show notes

In this week’s Book Club, Sam's guest is the writer Hadley Freeman, whose new book House of Glass tells the story of 20th century jewry through the hidden history of her own family. The four Glahs siblings — one of them the writer’s grandmother — grew up in a Polish shtetl just a few miles from what was to become Auschwitz. They fled the postwar pogroms to Paris; and then had to contend with the rise of a new and still more dangerous antisemitism under the Vichy regime. Hadley traced their story through two wars and across continents, and tells Sam how the story reflects both on Jewish history and on urgent concerns of the present day. And she even offers an intriguing cameo of the teenage Donald Trump…
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Christina Lamb: Our Bodies Their Battlefield Mar 04, 2020

Show notes

In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam's guest is the veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. Christina’s new book, Our Bodies Their Battlefield: What War Does To Women is a deeply reported survey of rape as a weapon of war, described in the Spectator's pages by Antony Beevor as the most powerful and disturbing book he has ever read. From the fates of Yazidi and Rohingya woman at the hands of IS and the Burmese military, to the German victims of the Red Army and the Disappeared of the Argentinian Junta, Christina looks at the past and present of this phenomenon and talks to me about why it’s so little reported or discussed, let alone prosecuted, how it happens, what it means — and why it’s seemingly on the increase even as wealthy western liberals congratulate themselves on the success of the #metoo movement.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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.

Why 42 is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything Feb 26, 2020

Show notes

Don’t Panic! Next month marks the 42nd anniversary of the first radio broadcast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Joining Sam on this week’s podcast to discuss the genesis, genius and legacy of the show and the books it spawned are the literary scholar and science fiction writer Adam Roberts, and John Lloyd, the founder of QI and a close collaborator and lifelong friend of Douglas Adams. Do they let slip the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything? Nearly.
Presented by Sam Leith.

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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