The TLS Podcast

Once Upon a Time Mar 06, 2025

This week, Toby Lichtig chats to Sam Leith about formative literature at Jewish Book Week; and David Horspool meets Sue Prideaux, winner of this year's Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize.

'The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading', by Sam Leith

'Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin', by Sue Prideaux

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Hidden Realms Feb 27, 2025

This week, Michael Caines interviews the men behind the Royal Shakespeare Company's thrilling new production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II; and Nat Segnit finds Pico Iyer's journeys to a Californian monastery a welcome retreat from the world.

'Edward II', by Christopher Marlowe, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until April 5 2025

'Learning from Silence: Lessons from More Than 100 Retreats', by Pico Iyer

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Hubris and Nemesis Feb 20, 2025

This week, Edith Hall finds herself mesmerised, entranced and perplexed by Sophocles; and Barnaby Phillips on a bizarre imperial incursion in 19th-century Africa.

'Oedipus', by Sophocles, Old Vic until March 29

'Electra', by Sophocles, Duke of York's Theatre until April 12

'A Training School for Elephants', by Sophy Roberts

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Elegant Variations Feb 13, 2025

This week, we're joined by Eimear McBride as she publishes a compelling new novel; and Anne Fuchs celebrates WG Sebald's illuminating and idiosyncratic essays.

'The City Changes Its Face', by Eimear McBride

'Silent Catastrophes: Essays in Austrian Literature', by WG Sebald, translated by Jo Catling

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Close Encounters Feb 06, 2025

This week, Kevin Brazil on the revealing tour d'horizontal of a great writer; and Keith Miller goes down a rabbit-hole in search of Richard Ayoade.

'The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir', by Edmund White

'The Unfinished Harauld Hughes', 'Plays, Prose, Pieces, Poetry', 'The Models Trilogy', 'Four Films', by Harauld Hughes/Richard Ayoade

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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His Back Pages Jan 30, 2025

This week, Toby Lichtig assesses the latest recreation of Bob Dylan, man and myth; and David Gallagher on an academic and spy who inspired the work of Javier Marias.

'A Complete Unknown', a film by James Mangold

'Scholar-Spy: The Worlds of Professor Sir Peter Russell', by Bruce Taylor

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Tales of the City Jan 23, 2025

This week, Boris Dralyuk on a compelling portrait of the Black Sea port of Odesa, past and present; and Russell Williams is put in mind of the rumpled TV detective Columbo by a pacy French novel.

'Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War', by Julian Evans

'Bristol', by Jean Echenoz

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Picture This Jan 16, 2025

This week, Vanessa Curtis is entranced by the candour of the Bloomsbury set's photograph albums; and Emma Greensmith on the mythical creatures that fascinated the ancient world.

'The Bloomsbury Photographs", by Maggie Humm

'Centaurs and Snake-Kings: Hybrids and the Greek Imagination', by Jeremy McInerney

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Keeping The Pot Boiling Jan 09, 2025

This week, JS Barnes trembles in his boots before the latest incarnation of a classic vampire tale; and Mary C Flannery on the practical magic of the medieval kitchen.

'Nosferatu', various cinemas

'Recipes and Book Culture in England, 1350-1600', Carrie Griffin and Hannah Ryley, editors

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Happy New Year! Jan 02, 2025

This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas look forward to 2025's most tempting reading, plan a Jane Austen road trip and resolve to sit up straight.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Glad to Exist Dec 19, 2024

This week, Simone Gubler ponders the contents of a dog's mind; and Tristram Fane Saunders praises the poet Wendy Cope's strengths and subtleties.

'The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living', by Mark Rowlands

'Collared: How We Made the Modern Dog', by Chris Pearson

'Collected Poems', by Wendy Cope

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Revolutionary Roads Dec 12, 2024

This week, Catriona Seth goes in search of the mysterious last queen of France; and Maria Margaronis is entranced by the stage adaptation of a children's classic.

'Marie-Antoinette', by Charles-Éloi Vial

'Ballet Shoes', adapted by Kendall Feaver from Noel Streatfeild's novel, National Theatre, London, until February 22

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On the Shoulders of Giants Dec 05, 2024

This week, novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips remembers his friendship with the magnificent James Baldwin; and Robert Potts on the ingenious return of George Smiley.

The works of James Baldwin

'Karla's Choice', a John le Carré novel, by Nick Harkaway

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Friends, Romans... Rhinoceroses? Nov 28, 2024

This week, Mary Beard squares up to the gorefest of Gladiator II; and Alan Hollinghurst in conversation at the Cambridge Literary Festival.

'Gladiator II', various cinemas

'Our Evenings', by Alan Hollinghurst

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Coup de Foudre Nov 21, 2024

This week, Lauren Elkin on a Nobel Prize-winner's obsession with images; and Judith Flanders assesses bold claims about the origins of contemporary English.

'The Use of Photography', by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, translated by Alison L. Strayer

'La Langue Anglaise N'existe Pas: C’est du français mal prononcé', by Bernard Cerquiglini

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Watch This Space Nov 15, 2024

This week, Toby Lichtig talks to the new Booker Prize-winner Samantha Harvey about her voyage to the stars; and TLS contributors choose their books of the year.

‘Orbital’, by Samantha Harvey

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Good at Games Nov 07, 2024

This week, Norma Clarke explores the world of 18th-century chameleon Mary Robinson; and Devoney Looser on a soccer player's passion for Virginia Woolf.

'Mary Robinson: Actress, mistress, writer, radical', Chawton House, Chawton, Hampshire, until April 21, 2025

'The Striker and the Clock: On Being in the Game', by Georgia Cloepfil

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Letter from the Capitol Oct 31, 2024

This week, Mary Beard reports on the American election from her billet on Pennysylvania Avenue; plus Regina Rini opens a can of temporal worms in a quest to cure worry.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Double Vision Oct 28, 2024

In a special interview, Lucy Dallas meets artist William Kentridge to explore his new set of films.

'Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot', by William Kentridge, available on Mubi

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Home Truths Oct 24, 2024

This week, Oonagh Devitt Tremblay is intrigued by the multiple voices in Sarah Moss's new memoir; and Lucy Dallas speaks to artist William Kentridge.

'My Good Bright Wolf', by Sarah Moss

'Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot', by William Kentridge, streaming on Mubi

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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From Seoul to Stockholm Oct 17, 2024

This week, Yoojin Grace Wuertz celebrates this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature, South Korea’s Han Kang; and David Morley reads his new poem, and discusses the link between birds, music and poetry.

‘The Vegetarian’, ‘Human Acts’ and ‘Greek Lessons’, by Han Kang

‘Beethoven’s Yellowhammer’, by David Morley

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Cherchez La Femme Oct 10, 2024

This week, Lisa Hilton on the truth behind life as a 'grand horizontale'; and Juliette Bretan explores why Virginia Woolf served up boeuf en daube in To the Lighthouse.

'Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power', by Sonia Purnell

'Europe in British Literature and Culture', edited by Petra Rau and William T Rossiter

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Taking flight Oct 03, 2024

This week, Larry Wolff admires an opera propelled by drone warfare; and Edward Carey describes how a love of theatre inspired his new novel.

'Grounded', by Jeanine Tesori, libretto by George Brant, Metropolitan Opera, New York, until October 19

'Edith Holler', by Edward Carey

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Tuning In Sep 26, 2024

This week, we start with Donna Summer and finish with a Scotch Woodcock, as Milo Nesbitt goes in search of the future of music, and Roger Domeneghetti sings the praises of a little fish with a big flavour.

'Futuromania: Electronic dreams, desiring machines and tomorrow's music today', by Simon Reynolds

'A Twist in the Tail: How the humble anchovy flavoured western cuisine', by Christopher Beckman

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Autumn Leaves Sep 20, 2024

This week, Toby Lichtig previews the season’s fictional highlights; and Ann Manov on Sally Rooney’s latest gambit.

‘Creation Lake’, by Rachel Kushner

‘Intermezzo’, by Sally Rooney

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Typecast Sep 12, 2024

This week, typographer Tom Cook on the fonts of all knowledge; and Graham Daseler explores Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler's firecracker relationship.

'Albertus: The Biography of a Typeface', by Simon Garfield

'Baskerville: The Biography of a Typeface', by Simon Garfield

'Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface', by Simon Garfield

'From the Moment They Met it was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir', by Alain Silver and James Ursini

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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HAPPY DAYS Sep 05, 2024

This week, Mary Beard joins us to explain why two recently discovered fragments of Euripides are big news; and an interview with director James Macdonald and actor Lucian Msamati on their new production of Waiting for Godot.

'Ino' and 'Polyidus', by Euripides

'Waiting for Godot', by Samuel Beckett, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until December 14 2024

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Magic of the Minds Aug 29, 2024

This week, medieval spells and modern cures, as we look back at some podcast highlights with Mary C Flannery and Charles Foster.

'Textual Magic: Charms and Written Amulets in Medieval England', by Katherine Storm Hindley

'Ten Trips: The new reality of psychedelics', by Andy Mitchell

'Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert', by David Nutt

'I feel love: MDMA and the quest for connection in a fractured world', by Rachel Nuwer

'Psychonauts: Drugs and the making of the modern mind', by Mike Jay

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Making Change Aug 22, 2024

This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by Amber Massie-Blomfield, who discusses her new book about the connections between art and protest.

'Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create a Better World', by

Amber Massie-Blomfield

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Fixtures and Funerals Aug 15, 2024

This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by the novelist David Peace, who explains what drew him to writing about the 1958 Munich Air Disaster.

'Munichs', by David Peace

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The History Boys Aug 08, 2024

This week, we take a look back at Fintan O'Toole's pre-election assessment of Keir Starmer; and revisit a conversation with William Boyd.

'Keir Starmer: The Biography', by Tom Baldwin

'November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War

II’, by Peter Englund', translated by Peter Graves

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Mind Bind Aug 01, 2024

This week, Philip Ball assesses the anxiety about AI - and provides some reassurance; and Jane Robinson on Emily Davies, the woman who founded Girton College, Cambridge.

'Moral AI: And how we get there', by Jana Schaich Borg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer

'The AI Mirror: How to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking', by Shannon Vallor

'Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to our humanity in an age of social robots', by Eve Herold

'The Atomic Human: Understanding ourselves in the Age of AI', by Neil D. Lawrence

'Emily Davies and the Mid-Victorian Women's Movement', by John Hendry

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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After the Deluge Jul 25, 2024

This week, Isaac Nowell takes us out in all weathers, Sean O'Brien reads a new poem, and Norma Clarke on a fascinating story of exile and doomed love.

'In All Weathers: A Journey Through Rain, Fog, Wind, Ice and

Everything in Between', by Matt Gaw

'Fingerpost', by Sean O'Brien

'In Pursuit of Love: The Search for Victor Hugo's Daughter', by Mark Bostridge

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Sitting Pretty Jul 18, 2024

This week, Anna Katharina Schaffner on a top-to-tail exploration of deportment; and Toby Lichtig in conversation with novelist Hari Kunzru at the Hay Festival.

'Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America', by Beth Linker

'Blue Ruin', by Hari Kunzru

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Testaments of Youth Jul 11, 2024

This week, Lily Herd on a child's-eye view of rockstar royalty; and Toby Lichtig talks to novelist Chigozie Obioma at the Hay Festival.

'My Family and Other Rock Stars', by Tiffany Murray

'The Road to the Country', by Chigozie Obioma

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Private Eyes and Private Lives Jul 04, 2024

This week, Heather O'Donoghue puzzles over the locked rooms and red herrings of the crime genre; and Josh Raymond on an animated attempt to understand teenage turmoil.

'The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators', by Martin Edwards

'Inside Out 2'

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Marginal Gains Jun 27, 2024

This week, we accompany Stephen Sawyer on a speeded-up saunter through the arrondissements; and Toby Lichtig in conversation with Rory Stewart at the Hay Festival.

'Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century', by Simon Kuper

'The Zone: An Alternative History of Paris', by Justinien Tribillon

'Politics on the Edge', by Rory Stewart

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Here Comes the Sun Jun 20, 2024

This week, TLS editors and writers guide you through a summer of reading; and Sarah Watling explores the extraordinary story of an artistic double act.

'Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story', Charleston, Lewes, Sussex

'The Secret Art of Dorothy Hepworth, aka Patricia Preece', by Denys J. Wilcox

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Metamorphosis and Myth Jun 13, 2024

This week, Ben Hutchinson on the making of Franz Kafka, a century after the writer's death; and an interview with Roz Dineen about her vision of climate catastrophe and societal collapse.

'Kafka: Making of an icon', Weston Library, Bodleian, Oxford, until October 27

Accompanying book edited by Ritchie Robertson

'Briefly Very Beautiful', by Roz Dineen

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The TLS on Tour Jun 06, 2024

Join us for at the Hay Festival for a conversation encompassing portals to other worlds, rock bands, improbable giraffes and the travails of the M4.

'Impossible Creatures', by Katherine Rundell

'One Ukrainian Summer: A Memoir About Falling in Love and Coming of Age in the Former USSR', by Viv Groskop

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Found in Translation May 30, 2024

This week, we hear from two international prize-winning authors, Jenny Erpenbeck and Mircea Cărtărescu.

'Kairos' by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

'Solenoid' by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Let the Games Begin! May 23, 2024

This week, writers including Andrew O'Hagan, Rose Tremain, Ayobami Adebayo and Marian Keyes select their most memorable sporting moments; and we drop in on the European Writers' Festival at the British Library.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Regeneration Games May 16, 2024

This week, we look at the busy afterlives of two canonical characters: Nathalie Olah on Tom Ripley and Emelyne Godfrey on Sherlock Holmes.

'Ripley', on Netflix

'The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes: The inspiration behind the world’s greatest detective', by Andrew Lycett

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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How to Dress for Bouillabaisse May 09, 2024

This week, Susan Owens explores the surreal and vivid life of the artist Eileen Agar; and Rosie Goldsmith, curator of the European Writers' Festival, joins us to explain what's on the bill.

'A Look at My Life', by Eileen Agar

The European Writers' Festival, the British Library, London, 18-19 May 2024

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Better to Travel Hopefully May 02, 2024

This week, Oxford Professor of Poetry AE Stallings explores the elliptical brilliance of Anne Carson; and an interview with writer, filmmaker and artist Miranda July about her forthcoming novel.

'Anne Carson: The Glass Essayist', by Elizabeth Sarah Coles

'Wrong Norma', by Anne Carson

'All Fours', by Miranda July

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Super Furry Animals Apr 25, 2024

This week, Kathryn Hughes introduces her new book on the cat craze that swept Edwardian England; and she also tells us about an exhibition of the work of Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman. Plus a review of Sunjeev Sahota's The Spoiled Heart.

'Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World', by Kathryn Hughes

'Portraits to Dream In', at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 16 June, 2024

'The Spoiled Heart', by Sunjeev Sahota

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Power Plays Apr 18, 2024

As the TLS celebrates all things Shakespeare, Emma Smith goes to see Ian McKellen's larger-than-life Falstaff; plus Rana Mitter on the immense impact and lasting legacy of the Tokyo Trial.

'Player Kings: Henry IV Parts 1 and 2', by William Shakespeare, adapted by Robert Icke, Noël Coward Theatre, London, until June 22, then touring 'Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia' by Gary J. Bass.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Unjust Deserts Apr 11, 2024

This week, George Berridge is at the theatre to see Brian Cox in a classic role; and Toby Lichtig on a literary scandal with tragic consequences.

'Long Day's Journey into Night', by Eugene O'Neill, Wyndham's Theatre,

London, until June 8

'Bound to Violence', by Yambo Ouologuem, translated by Ralph Manheim

'The Most Secret Memory of Men', by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated

by Lara Vergnaud

'The Extinction of Irena Rey, by Jennifer Croft

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Time Past and Time Future Apr 04, 2024

This week, environmentalist Bill McKibben joins us to talk about the latest in the fight to avert climate catastrophe; and a conversation with the brilliant novelist Hisham Matar about his new novel.

'The Exhausted Earth: Politics in a Burning World', by Ajay Singh Chaudhary

'My Friends', by Hisham Matar

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Illustrated Men Mar 28, 2024

This week, Suzi Feay sizes up the public intellectuals, deadbeat aristocrats, hedonistic oligarchs and hardened street soldiers of Andrew O'Hagan's panoramic new novel; and Michael Caines on the prolific and endlessly imaginative world of Ray Bradbury.

'Caledonian Road', by Andrew O'Hagan

'Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury', edited by Jonathan R. Eller

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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O Pioneers! Mar 21, 2024

This week, Andrew Holter takes us into the extraordinary world of Helen Keller, in her own words; and Peter Maber hails a magnificent retrospective of Yoko Ono's radical art and music.

'Autobiographies and Other Writings', by Helen Keller

'Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind', Tate Modern, London, until 1 September 2024

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Between The Sheets Mar 14, 2024

This week, Miranda France contemplates the final novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and Nicola Shulman on what women write in their diaries.

'Until August', by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, translated by Anne McLean

'Secret Voices: A Year of Women's Diaries', by Sarah Gristwood

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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A Worm’s-eye View Mar 07, 2024

This week, novelist William Boyd praises a polyphonic account of a pivotal wartime moment; and Sarah Richmond explores how we may escape ceaseless toil.

‘November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War II’, by Peter Englund, translated by Peter Graves

‘Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take it Back’, by Elizabeth Anderson

‘After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time’, by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Revivals Feb 29, 2024

This week, Damon Galgut praises Diane Oliver's exceptional short stories, newly published over half a century after her death; and Rosemary Waugh on theatre director Yaël Farber's visceral engagement with Shakespearean tragedy.

'Neighbors and Other Stories', by Diane Oliver

'King Lear', by William Shakespeare, directed by Yaël Farber, at the

Almeida Theatre, London, until March 30, 2024

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Cometh the Hour Feb 22, 2024

This week, Fintan O'Toole assesses what makes Labour leader Keir Starmer tick; and Linda Kinstler on the Ukrainian writer, musician and activist Serhiy Zhadan's chronicles of life during wartime. Plus John Kinsella reads his new poem, 'Rooks'.

'Keir Starmer: The Biography', by Tom Baldwin

'Rooks', by John Kinsella

'How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems', by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps

'Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front', by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Flights of Fantasy Feb 15, 2024

This week, comedian and actor Tim Key introduces us to his new book of poetry; and Devoney Looser on the bold runaway women of early British novels.

'Chapters', by Tim Key, designed by Emily Juniper

'Gone Girls,1684–1901: Flights of feminist resistance in the

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novel', by Nora Gilbert

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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In Conversation with Richard Sennett Feb 11, 2024

The distinguished sociologist and cultural thinker Richard Sennett was once a professional cellist and his new book, The Performer, examines the links between artistic performance, politics and the public-sphere.

We were delighted to talk to him about his own experiences asa musician and about prominent figures from Leonard Bernstein and Roland Barthes to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

'The Performer: Art, Life, Politics', by Richard Sennett

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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All the World's a Stage Feb 08, 2024

This week, a special interview with the sociologist Richard Sennett takes us from Roland Barthes to Leonard Bernstein; and Hettie Judah on two memoirs inspired by a love of 17th-century art.

'The Performer: Art, Life, Politics', by Richard Sennett

'Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death', by Laura Cumming

'The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters', by Benjamin Moser

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Splendid Isolation Feb 01, 2024

This week, Sinéad Gleeson delights in the byways of Maeve Brennan's New York; and Costica Bradatan explores the enduring appeal of Henry David Thoreau.

'The Long-Winded Lady', by Maeve Brennan, with an introduction by Sinéad Gleeson

'Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture', by Caleb Smith

'Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living', by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle

'Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently', by Lawrence Buell

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Class Struggles Jan 25, 2024

This week, Lamorna Ash goes back to school for the latest reboot of Tina Fey's Mean Girls; and Professor Eric Naiman on the challenges of teaching in the age of ChatGPT.

'Mean Girls', screenplay by Tina Fey, directed by Samantha Jayne and

Arturo Perez Jr

'The Brothers Karamazov', by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Energy Creation Jan 18, 2024

This week, will George Berridge be convinced by the film adaptation of Alasdair Gray's Poor Things? And Peter Geoghegan explores how the climate emergency is being treated in Westminster.

'Mission zero: The independent net zero review', by Chris Skidmore

'Climate capitalism: Winning the global race to zero emissions', by Akshat Rathi

'The price is wrong: Why capitalism won’t save the planet', by Brett

Christophers

'Poor things', directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Out Of Our Minds Jan 11, 2024

This week, Charles Foster explores how psychedelic drugs are changing lives; and Alan Jenkins on the lure of the open seas.

'Ten Trips: The new reality of psychedelics', by Andy Mitchell

'Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a

guide from the expert', by David Nutt

'I feel love: MDMA and the quest for connection in a fractured world',

by Rachel Nuwer

'Psychonauts: Drugs and the making of the modern mind', by Mike Jay

'Sailing Alone: A history', by Richard J King

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Turning Leaves: Dame Penelope Lively and Josephine Lively Jan 04, 2024

The acclaimed novelist and her musician daughter on the joys of reading in trees, childhood gardens and what it's like to have a David Austin rose named after you.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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A Cure for Twixmas Dec 28, 2023

A special seasonal highlights show, with contributions from novelists Anne Enright and Samantha Harvey; and James Marcus on partygoers Susan Sontag and George Steiner.

'The Wren, The Wren', by Anne Enright

'Orbital', by Samantha Harvey

'Maestros and monsters: Days & nights with Susan Sontag & George

Steiner', by Robert Boyers

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Worlds of Pure Imagination Dec 21, 2023

This week, Toby Lichtig goes to see the latest Roald Dahl adaptations, junior critic in tow; and Dinah Birch celebrates the enduring power of Ebenezer Scrooge.

'The Witches', at the National Theatre, London, until 27 January 2024

'Wonka', on general release

'A Christmas Carol', by Charles Dickens

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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From Paris To The Prairies Dec 14, 2023

This week, Lauren Elkin takes an artistic stroll in the footsteps of Gertrude Stein; and Maria Margaronis goes in search of Willa Cather deep in the Midwest.

'Gertrude Stein et Pablo Picasso: L'invention du langage', at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, until 28 January 2024

'Chasing Bright Medusas: A life of Willa Cather', by Benjamin Taylor

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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There May Be Trouble Ahead Dec 07, 2023

This week, TLS editor Martin Ivens and writer and broadcaster James O'Brien on the long decline of the Conservatives; and Muriel Zagha celebrates 75 years of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes.

'The Party's Over: The rise and fall of the Conservatives from

Thatcher to Sunak', by Phil Barton-Cartledge

'The Right to Rule: Thirteen years, five prime ministers and the

implosion of the Tories', by Ben Riley-Smith

'The Case for the Centre Right', edited by David Gauke

'All to Play For: The advance of Rishi Sunak', by Michael Ashcroft

'The Red Shoes: Beyond the mirror', BFI Southbank, until January 7

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Silently And Very Fast Nov 30, 2023

This week, our special interview with the newest winner of the Booker Prize, Paul Lynch; and Emily Kopley on new editions of Virginia Woolf's mesmerising diaries.

'Prophet Song', by Paul Lynch

'The Diary of Virginia Woolf', in five volumes.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Charm School Nov 23, 2023

This week, Mary C Flannery explores the spells and potions of medieval magic; and Jean Wilson on the trail of the ever elusive Anne Boleyn.

‘Love spells and lost treasure: Service magic in England from the later Middle Ages to the early modern era’, by Tabitha Stanmore

‘Textual magic: Charm and written amulets in medieval England’, by Katherine Storm Hindley

‘Hunting the falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and the marriage that shook Europe’, by John Guy and Julia Fox

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Back Of The Net! Nov 16, 2023

On this week's show, TLS contributors on the best books of 2023; and David Horspool explores the crucial part sport has played in the evolution of Britain and Britishness.

'More than a game: A history of how sport made Britain', by David Horspool

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Lost In Space Nov 09, 2023

This week, Samantha Harvey joins us to talk about her voyage around the earth; and Miranda France on a fascinating tour of the British archipelago.

‘Orbital’, by Samantha Harvey

‘The Britannias: An island quest’, by Alice Albinia

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Handmaids' Tales Nov 02, 2023

This week, James Marcus goes partying with Susan Sontag and George Steiner; and Laura Beers sheds a light on Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell's first wife.

'Maestros and monsters: Days and nights with Susan Sontag and George

Steiner', by Robert Boyers

'Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's invisible life', by Anna Funder

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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History in the Making Oct 26, 2023

This week, Colin Jones explores the streets of Paris as the French Revolution grew pace; and an extract from a very special event at the British Library in celebration of Hilary Mantel.

'The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789', by Robert Darnton

'A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing', by Hilary Mantel

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Finding Tongues In Trees Oct 19, 2023

This week, Ruth Scurr on a magnificent biography of Claude Monet; and Fiona Stafford explores how vital trees were to Wordsworth's work.

'Monet: the restless vision', by Jackie Wullschläger

'Versed in living nature: Wordsworth's trees', by Peter Dale and Brandon C Yen

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Punching Above Their Weight Oct 12, 2023

This week, Theo Zenou introduces us to the heroes of Jewish boxing; and Sophie Oliver on the development of Virginia Woolf's 'frock consciousness' .

'Stars and scars: The story of Jewish boxing in London', by Jeff Jones

'Bring no clothes: Bloomsbury and the philosophy of fashion', by Charlie Porter

'Bring no clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion', at Charleston in Lewes until 7 January 2024

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Sing, O muses! Oct 05, 2023

This week, Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the women who fought their way into horticulture; and Mary Beard leads us down a Homeric rabbit hole.

'An almost impossible thing: the radical lives of Britain's pioneering women gardeners', by Fiona Davison

'Homer and his Iliad', by Robin Lane Fox

'The Iliad', translated by Emily Wilson

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Elegies And Energies Sep 28, 2023

This week, Elizabeth Lowry is impressed by a study of Hardy’s late-life love poetry; and TLS science editor Sam Graydon on his ‘mosaic’ biography of Einstein

‘Woman much missed: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy, and poetry’, by Mark Ford

‘Einstein in time and space: a life in 99 particles’, by Samuel Graydon

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Back To The Future Sep 21, 2023

This week, Jonathan Barnes joins us to explore the visionary work of Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale; and a wonderful conversation about literature and horticulture between Dame Penelope Lively and her daughter, musician Josephine Lively.

'The Quatermass Experiment 70th Anniversary', Nigel Kneale, Alexandra Palace

'You Must Listen', BBC Sounds

'Life in the Garden', by Penelope Lively

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Back to School! Sep 14, 2023

This week, poet Camille Ralphs explains why she submitted to WH Auden's exacting syllabus; and Toby Lichtig joins us to preview the autumn's notable fiction.

'Daydream College for Bards', by Camille Ralphs

'The Fraud', by Zadie Smith

'North Woods', by Daniel Mason

'The Variations', by Patrick Langley

'The Wren, The Wren,' by Anne Enright

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Power Play Sep 07, 2023

This week, we drop in on a conversation between Mary Beard and two former TLS editors; and Anne Enright joins us to talk about turning poet in her new novel.

'Emperor of Rome: Ruling the ancient Roman world', by Mary Beard

'Big Caesars and little Caesars: How they rise and how they fall -

from Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson', by Ferdinand Mount

'Palatine: An alternative history of the Caesars', by Peter Stothard

'The Wren, The Wren', by Anne Enright

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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To the Scriptorium! Aug 31, 2023

This week, Nicola Shulman introduces the volunteer army who joined James Murray to create the OED; and John Niven on his extraordinary memoir of his brother's life.

'The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created the Oxford

English Dictionary', by Sarah Ogilvie

'O Brother', by John Niven

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Nevertheless, They Persisted Aug 24, 2023

This week, Adam Mars-Jones on the "fractal brocade" of his semi-infinite novel series; and Amber Massie-Blomfield revisits Susan Sontag's production of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, thirty years on.

'Caret', by Adam Mars-Jones

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Pursuit Of The Interesting Aug 17, 2023

In the last of our summer round-ups, Gwendoline Riley stalks the streets of London in the company of Michael Bracewell; and Ruth Scurron a final work by the indomitable Janet Malcolm.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Femmes Fatales Aug 10, 2023

In this week's round-up, we talk to Mary C Flannery about the continuing attraction of the irrepressible Wife of Bath; and mystery writer Nicola Upson on the unconventional life and unforgettable work of Josephine Tey.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Natural Passions Aug 03, 2023

In the second of our summer round-ups, we revisit Richard Smyth discussing the life and the work of the naturalist Ronald Blythe; and Lucasta Miller on an extraordinary collection of commonplace books.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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School's Out For Summer Jul 27, 2023

In the first of our seasonal round-ups, we look back at Stephen Marche on the agonies of the writing life; and Nat Segnit dives into Adam Gopnik's survey of mastery.

'On writing and failure: Or, the peculiar perseverance required to

endure the life of a writer', by Stephen Marche

'The real work: On the mystery of mastery', by Adam Gopnik

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Running And Dancing Through Our Stories Jul 20, 2023

This week, Kate Hext on women who have run or climbed their way through the world, despite efforts to stop them; and Alice Robb thinks about how - and why - we tell stories through dance.

'In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors', by Rachel Hewitt

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Riders On The Storm Jul 13, 2023

This week, cycling commentator par excellence Ned Boulting on the Tour de France of a century ago; and Peter Parker delves into the many faces of the self-styled 'Master' playwright, Noel Coward.

'1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession', by Ned Boulting

'Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward', by Oliver Soden

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Take A Walk On The Wild Side Jul 06, 2023

This week, AE Stallings, the new Oxford professor of poetry, on the lives of poets; and Ann Kennedy Smith considers the different faces of Cornwall.

'Sleeping on islands: A life in poetry', by Andrew Motion

'The American poet laureate: A history of US poetry and the state', by Amy Paeth

'The granite kingdom: A Cornish journey', by Tim Hannigan

'Treasures of Cornwall: A literary anthology', edited by Luke Thompson

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Writing on The Wall Jun 29, 2023

This week, Mary Beard is fascinated by an ancient graffito, and novelist Michael Hughes on the murder case that almost brought down the Irish government.

A Don's Life: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/virgil-on-pots-and-walls-blog-post-mary-beard/

'A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder', by Mark O'Connell

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Limits of Love Jun 25, 2023

Kathleen Taylor considers human personality under assault from advanced dementia.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/alzheimer-dementia-sandeep-jauhar-dasha-kiper-susan-elkin-book-review-kathleen-taylor/

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Long Hot Summer Jun 22, 2023

In this week's bumper podcast, George Berridge assesses the legacy of Cormac McCarthy; Toby Lichtig on this summer's ideal reads; and an interview with American novelist Brandon Taylor.

'The Late Americans', by Brandon Taylor

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Winning On The Home Front Jun 18, 2023

Owen Matthews on the triumph of the Kremlin propaganda machine

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/russia-ian-garner-jade-mcglynn-alexandar-mihailovic-alexander-etkind-book-review-owen-matthews/

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Sauce Bolognese Jun 15, 2023

This week, an exhibition of the Italian Renaissance painter Lavinia Fontana's work thrills Norma Clarke; and Kieran Setiya on Sarah Bakewell's bravura survey of the history of humanism.

'Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, rule breaker', at the National Gallery of Ireland until August 27, with accompanying book by Aoife Brady, Babette Bohn and Jonquil O'Reilly

'Humanly Possible: Seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, enquiry and hope' by Sarah Bakewell

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Know Thyself Jun 11, 2023

Peter Thonemann on a civilization that questions its first principles.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-west-naoise-mac-sweeney-book-review-peter-thonemann/

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Hay Festival Special Jun 08, 2023

This week, Lucy and Alex head to Hay, and find guest stars Eleanor Catton and Sarah Raven.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Puffed Up with Wind Jun 05, 2023

Edward Chancellor considers why central bankers have lost the plot with inflation.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/we-need-to-talk-about-inflation-stephen-d-king-book-review-edward-chancellor/

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Inheritance Taxes Jun 01, 2023

This week, Norma Clarke unpicks the complicated business of family legacy in Polly Toynbee’s memoir; and Nicholas Clee immerses himself in Paul Murray’s multi-generational saga of Irish small-town life.

'An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals’ by Polly Toynbee

’The Bee Sting’ by Paul Murray

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Their Little Pony May 30, 2023

Joe Moran explores the weird world of fandom.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/fans-michael-bond-book-review-joe-moran/

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O Tempora! O Mores! May 25, 2023

This week, TLS contributors on what art and literature mean in a time of crisis; and we take a trip to the melancholy, beautiful, faded English seaside.

‘The Seaside: England’s Love Affair’, by Madeleine Bunting

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Life In The Slow Lane May 18, 2023

This week, Kate Simpson introduces us to the precarious and vital world of the gastropods; and James McConnachie plunges into the teeming waters of the St George’s Channel.

‘A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions’ by Thom van Dooren

’The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea’ by Jon Gower

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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To The Barricades May 14, 2023

Abigail Green considers a panoramic account of the continent-wide outbreak of revolutions in 1848.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/revolutionary-spring-christopher-clark-book-review-abigail-green/

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All The News That’s Fit To Print May 11, 2023

This week, Ben Hutchinson takes us to Paris to survey the invention of type; and Joe Moran on giving your creativity a workout.

‘Imprimer! L’Europe de Gutenberg’, Bibliothèque nationale de France, until July 16

'Imprimer! L’Europe de Gutenberg 1450-1520’, edited by Nathalie Coilly and Caroline Vrand

‘The Imagination Muscle: Where good ideas come from (and how to have more of them)’, by Albert Read

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Every Little Helps May 07, 2023

Tyler Cowen on the advantages of gradual reform over long-term thinking.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-long-view-richard-fisher-the-lost-future-jan-zielonka-gradual-greg-berman-aubrey-fox-book-review-tyler-cowen/

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To Thine Own Self Be True May 04, 2023

This week, Lucy and Alex discover how James Shapiro created his landmark work on a formative year in Shakespeare’s life; and Miranda France on her spellbinding study of memoir and creative writing.

‘1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare’, by James Shapiro

‘The Writing School’, by Miranda France

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Everyone’s Business Apr 30, 2023

David Throsby on the ruthlessness of the consulting industry.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/consulting-mckinsey-mariana-mazzucato-rosie-collington-walt-bogdanich-michael-forsythe-book-review-david-throsby/

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How To Respect A Chihuahua’s Privacy Apr 27, 2023

This week, Laurie Maguire is in the audience for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; and Lucy and Alex catch up with novelist Curtis Sittenfeld on her whistle-stop visit to the UK.

‘Hamnet’, an RSC production, from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell

‘Romantic Comedy’, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Look Back In Anger Apr 23, 2023

Tristram Hunt revisits the monuments controversy.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/monumental-lies-robert-bevan-everyday-like-of-memorials-andrew-shanken-on-the-street-edwin-heathcote-book-review-tristram-hunt/

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A Place of Greater Safety Apr 20, 2023

Historian Emily Baughan on two books chronicling the immense impact of the NHS and the welfare state on the lives of Britons; and a new film explores Patricia Highsmith’s hinterland.

’The Welfare State generation: Women, agency and class in Britain since 1945’, by Eve Worth

‘Poster, protests and prescriptions: Cultural histories of the National Health Service in Britain’, edited by Jennifer Crane and Jane Hand

‘Loving Highsmith’, a film by Eva Vitija

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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So Long, Farewell Apr 16, 2023

Nicola Shulman on two anthologies that display the obituarist’s art.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/lives-less-ordinary-nigel-farndale-eccentric-lives-andrew-brown-book-review-nicola-shulman/

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Connecting the Dots Apr 13, 2023

Boyd Tonkin visits Complicité’s audacious adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; and Barnaby Phillips on two Victorian explorers at daggers drawn

'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’, staged by Complicité, based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk

‘River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile’ by Candice Millard

Producer: Lucy Dichmont

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Searching for the Good Life Apr 09, 2023

Searching for the Good Life

Skye Clery on how to cope with the fear of death and other anxieties

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/life-is-short-dean-rickles-life-is-hard-kieran-setiya-book-review-skye-cleary/

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Disrupting the Narrative Apr 06, 2023

Lamorna Ash joins us to talk about Shy, Max Porter’s tale of teenage angst; and Jonathan Taylor on an illuminating survey of the uses and abuses of storytelling.

’Shy’ by Max Porter

’Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative’ by Peter Brooks

Producer :Lucy Dichmont

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Mother Knows Best Apr 02, 2023

Mother Knows Best

Michele Pridmore-Brown considers recent insights into parenthood from neuroscience, archaeology and social policy

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/mother-brain-chelsea-conaboy-what-makes-a-person-mark-hanson-lucy-green-growing-up-human-brenna-hassett-book-review-michele-pridmore-brown/

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Always Look On The Bright Side of Life Mar 30, 2023

This week, we go in search of the meaning of life, death and the universe, in the capable hands of Nat Segnit and Skye Cleary.

‘The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery’ by Adam Gopnik

‘Life is Short: An Appropriately Brief Guide to Making It More Meaningful’ by Dean Rickles

‘Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way’ by Kieran Setiya

Produced by Lucy Dichmont

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Scratch The Surface Mar 26, 2023

Irina Dumitrescu considers what psoriasis tells us about social outcasts.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/skin-sergio-del-molino-book-review-irina-dumitrescu/

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Private Faces In Public Places Mar 23, 2023

This week, Margarette Lincoln on the secret life of Daniel Defoe, government agent; and Claire Lowdon transports herself back to the teenage turmoil of Martin Amis’s debut novel, fifty years on.

‘The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Daniel Defoe’ edited by Nicholas Seager

‘The Rachel Papers’ by Martin Amis

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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In A Green Shade Mar 16, 2023

This week, Helen Bynum enjoins us to consider the secret lives of plants; and Jacqueline Banerjee on love and marriage in the world of George Eliot.

‘Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence’ by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence

‘The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life’ by Clare Carlisle

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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American Paranoia Mar 12, 2023

Geoffrey Wheatcroft considers how the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/american-midnight-adam-hochschild-book-review-geoffrey-wheatcroft/

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The Isle is Full of Noises Mar 09, 2023

Flora Willson explores the struggle of four women composers to have their work heard, and Biancamaria Fontana on the late David Graeber’s survey of Madagascan pirate kingdoms.

‘Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World’ by Leah Broad

‘Pirate Enlightenment: Or the Real Libertalia’ by David Graeber

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Turning Leaves Mar 07, 2023

In our first instalment, we talk to novelist Dame Margaret Drabble and her son, gardener and TV presenter Joe Swift. Their wide-ranging conversation includes a disagreement over pelargoniums, Joe’s childhood insistence on playing football in his mother’s cottage garden, the joys of irregular hedges and fashions in fiction and foliage alike.

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Give Them Back! Mar 05, 2023

Mark Mazower asks: did the Ottomans preserve the Parthenon and Elgin wreck it?

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/who-saved-the-parthenon-william-st-clair-book-review-mark-mazower/

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Coming to Fruition Mar 02, 2023

This week, Margaret Drabble and Joe Swift talk about the relationship between literature and gardening; and a new short-story collection from Margaret Atwood.

‘Turning Leaves’, a new podcast from the TLS team

‘Old Babes in the Wood’ by Margaret Atwood

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Good Chaps Feb 27, 2023

Ferdinand Mount considers how the English upper classes appropriated fair play from the lower orders.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/an-english-tradition-jonathan-duke-evans-book-review-ferdinand-mount/

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A Treasure on Your Shelf, Waiting Feb 23, 2023

This week we hear about the pursuit of the perfect library, and celebrate the brilliance of crime writer Josephine Tey.

Irina Dumitrescu on the bibliophile’s life

‘The Franchise Affair’, ‘To Love and Be Wise’ and ‘The Daughter of Time’ by Josephine Tey

Produced by Charlotte

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Into The Woods Feb 19, 2023

Peter Godfrey-Smith on two books about living like a deer and learning from the birds.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/deer-man-geoffroy-delorme-the-parrot-in-the-mirror-antone-martinho-truswell-book-review-peter-godfrey-smith/

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Dogs Days in the Writer’s Life Feb 16, 2023

This week, we examine the highs and very many lows of the writing life. Tom Seymour Evans explores a disquieting biography of crime writer James Ellroy, and Stephen Marche shines a light into the abyss of literary failure in his new book.

‘Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy’ by Steven Powell

‘On Writing and Failure’ by Stephen Marche

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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A Town Called Sue Feb 12, 2023

In an extract from Lawcraft, published by TLS Books last month, Geoffrey Robertson explains how Russian oligarchs use British courts to close down investigative journalism.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/lawfare-geoffrey-robertson-extract-russia-free-speech/

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State Secrets and Private Passions Feb 09, 2023

This week, Richard Norton-Taylor braves the terrifying world of cyberattacks and their brutal cost; and Lucasta Miller on an intriguing collection of 19th-century commonplace books.

'Pegasus: The Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Spyware’ by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud

‘Striking Back: The End of Peace in Cyberspace - and How to Restore It’ by Lucas Kello

The work of scholar and collector William St Clair

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Big Tech Is Reading Your Mind Feb 05, 2023

N. J. Enfield considers how software engineers became social engineers in our democracies.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/freedom-to-think-susie-alegre-the-digital-republic-jamie-susskind-book-review-n-j-enfield/

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All Those Old Familiar Places Feb 02, 2023

This week, Elizabeth Dearnley hunts for the hags, fairies and wandering women of the pagan past; and Ruth Scurr on a thrilling final book from the celebrated journalist Janet Malcolm.

‘Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses In Christian Europe’ by Ronald Hutton

‘Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory’ by Janet Malcolm

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Gene Genie Jan 29, 2023

Nessa Carey explores how recent scientific breakthroughs allow experimentation with the DNA of all living species.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-genetic-age-matthew-cobb-book-review-nessa-carey/

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Telling It Like It Is Jan 26, 2023

Richard Smyth remembers the equanimity and attentiveness of Ronald Blythe; and Mary Flannery on the enduring appeal of Alison, the Wife of Bath.

‘Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside’ by Ronald Blythe

‘The Wife of Bath: A Biography’ by Marion Turner

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Stories That Simply Unfold Jan 22, 2023

Kirsty Gunn considers Katherine Mansfield’s place in the literary canon.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/all-sorts-of-lives-katherine-mansfield-claire-harman-book-review-kirsty-gunn/

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Rattling The Handle On Life Jan 19, 2023

This week, Gabriel Roberts explores the past, present and - we very much hope - the future of bioabundance in animal species; and novelist Gwendoline Riley takes us into the affecting and brutally funny world of Michael Bracewell’s return to fiction after 21 years.

Species loss and bioabundance, by Gabriel Roberts

‘Unfinished Business’ by Michael Bracewell

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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A Sea-Brooding Poet Jan 16, 2023

Christy Edwall reflects on a meditations on Keats’s poems, and a new account of his last days.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/a-greeting-of-the-spirit-susan-wolfson-written-in-water-alessandro-gallenzi-keats-book-review-christy-edwall/

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Radical Barbie Jan 09, 2023

Olivia Laing secrets and lies in the life and work of Kathy Acker.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/eat-your-mind-kathy-acker-jason-mcbride-book-review-olivia-laing/

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Festive Shadows and Feasts of Panackelty Dec 22, 2022

This week, Lucy Lethbridge explains what a curate's eye is, and how ideas of British cooking range from Aga fantasies to bacon butties; and J. S. Barnes takes us to the dark side of the festive season, via Dickens and M. R. James....

'The British Cookbook: Authentic home cooking recipes from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland' by Ben Mervis

'To Be Read At Dusk: Dickens, ghosts and the supernatural', Charles Dickens Museum, London, until March 5, 2023

'The Witch Farm', BBC Radio 4 and Sounds

'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas', Nunkie Theatre Company, December 24, live online

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Simon McBurney of Complicité - "We've always been interested in the idea of connection" Dec 18, 2022

Simon McBurney, the artistic director of the endlessly innovative and influential Complicité theatre company, talks to Lucy Dallas about two of their major new projects.

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

The Power of Connections Dec 15, 2022

This week, we hear how the music-hall star Josephine Baker became a secret agent; and we talk to Simon McBurney of Complicité theatre company, about their haunting audio production of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising.

'The Flame of Resistance' by Damien Lewis

'The Dark Is Rising' by Susan Cooper, BBC World Service, December 20

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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The Road To St Helena Dec 11, 2022

Alan Forrest on Napoleon’s enemies at home and abroad.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/napoleon-michael-broers-napoleon-at-peace-william-doyle-book-review-alan-forrest/

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Female Perspectives Take Centre Stage Dec 08, 2022

This week, Breeze Barrington takes us through a history of art with a difference - there are no men; and Larry Wolff talks us through the diva-rich operatic event of the season, the world premiere of The Hours at the Met in New York.

'The Story of Art Without Men' by Katy Hessel

'The Hours' by Kevin Puts

Metropolitan Opera, New York, until December 15. Live transmission in various cinemas, December 10

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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His Biggest Role Dec 04, 2022

Anna Reid on the improbable rise of Volodymyr Zelensky

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/volodymyr-zelensky-biographies-book-review-anna-reid/

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Roman Coins And Radical Rosa Bonheur Dec 01, 2022

This week, Mary Beard talks us through coins and emperors, real and fake, and the hidden networks beneath the Roman Empire; and Norma Clarke discusses the life and work of Rosa Bonheur, a celebrated female artist who kept her radical private life to herself.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Conquering Sociopaths Nov 28, 2022

Michele Pridmore-Brown on the troubled dreams of the gods of the digital universe

https://www.the-tls.co.uk./articles/survival-of-the-richest-douglas-rushkoff-book-review-michele-pridmore-brown/

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“It Is An Astonishment To Be Alive” Nov 24, 2022

This week, Baillie Gifford Prizewinner Katherine Rundell describes how John Donne’s life force captivated her; and celebrated actor and playwright Wallace Shawn surveys a lifetime of writing essays.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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End Of The Road Nov 20, 2022

George Berridge on Cormac McCarthy’s long-awaited diptych of conspiracy and nuclear anxiety

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-passenger-stella-maris-cormac-mccarthy-book-review-george-berridge/

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Bearing Witness To Terror Nov 17, 2022

This week, we discuss Emmanuel Carrère’s incisive account of France’s judicial response to the Bataclan attacks; and a host of TLS contributors on their favourite books of 2022.

‘V13: Chronique judiciare’ by Emmanuel Carrère

Books of the Year 2022

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Tinker, Tailor, Lover, Spy Nov 13, 2022

Robert Potts considers the inconstancies of John le Carré.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private-spy-letters-john-le-carre-secret-heart-suleika-dawson-book-review-robert-potts/

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Men On A Mission Nov 10, 2022

This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas explore the rise to prominence of Volodymyr Zelensky, the satirical stand-up turned president and war leader; and blow the cobwebs off the world’s rarest medieval manuscripts.

'The Zelensky Effect' by Olga Onuch and Henry E Hale

'Zelensky: Ukraine’s president and his country' by Steven Derix with Marina Shelkunova, translated by Brent Annable

'The Fight of Our Lives: My time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s battle for democracy, and what it means for the world' by Iuliia Mendel, translated by Madeline G Levine

'Zelensky: A biography' by Serhii Rudenko, translated by Michael M Naydan and Alla Perminova

'The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club' by Christopher de Hamel

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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One Step Beyond Nov 06, 2022

Colin Thubron on an anthology of human beings straining at the limits.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/endurance-levison-wood-book-review-colin-thubron/

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes Nov 03, 2022

This week André Aciman toasts the genius of Marcel Proust, a century after his death; and Richard Lea on the mesmerising multiverses of John Banville.

The works of Marcel Proust

‘The Singularities’ by John Banville

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Big Unfriendly Giant Oct 30, 2022

Sam Leith on Roald Dahl’s life of plane crashes, bunk-ups, secret agenting – and children’s writing

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/teller-of-the-unexpected-roald-dahl-matthew-dennison-book-review-sam-leith/

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From Battleground to Billiard Table Oct 27, 2022

This week, we learn about the final years of the Napoleonic era, poke around the exclusive gentlemen’s watering holes of Pall Mall, and discover how Roy Orbison ended up meeting his wife in Batley Variety Club.

’Napoleon: The decline and fall of an Empire, 1811-1821’ by Michael Broers

’Napoleon at Peace: How to end a revolution’ by William Doyle

‘Behind Close Doors: The secret life of London’s private members’ clubs’ by Seth Alexander Thévoz

‘Clubland: How the working men's club shaped Britain’ by Pete Brown

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Acid Raine Oct 23, 2022

Laura Thompson on the much-married daughter of Barbara Cartland who became Lady Diana’s stepmother

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/three-times-a-countess-tina-gaudoin-book-review-laura-thompson/

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A Journey Into The Ambiguous Afterlife Oct 20, 2022

This week, Toby Lichtig interviews the new Booker laureate, Shehan Karunatilaka, and discovers why he killed off his protagonist; and we explore the latest developments in a Chaucerian controversy.

‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ by Shehan Karunatilaka

Mary C Flannery on Chaucer

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Beyond Flesh and Blood Oct 16, 2022

Michele Pridmore-Brown considers our quest for godlike immortality

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/hybrid-humans-harry-parker-the-price-of-immortality-peter-ward-book-review-michele-pridmore-brown/

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Measuring Our Lives, One Reindeer At A Time Oct 13, 2022

Richard Dunn joins Alex and Lucy to discuss how humanity began to measure the world around it; and Lauren Elkin illuminates the immense artistic contribution of Annie Ernaux, this winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

‘Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement’ by James Vincent

The work of Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize laureate 2022

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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What's For Dinner? Oct 09, 2022

Bill McKibben considers the future of farming in a rapidly warming world

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/rooted-sarah-langford-sixty-harvests-left-philip-lymbery-regenesis-george-monbiot-review-bill-mckibben/

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United We Stand Oct 06, 2022

Sofia Chelyak joins us to preview this weekend’s Lviv International Book Forum, in which guests including Margaret Atwood and Henry Marsh will join Ukrainian writers and thinkers in an online extravaganza; plus highlights of our live podcast on narrative arcs in fiction, history and politics and how to support a literary fundraiser for those affected by floods in Pakistan.

Lviv International BookForum, 7-9 October 2022

https://airauctioneer.com/books-for-pakistan

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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If We Only Had Eyes To See Oct 02, 2022

Charles Foster considers the extraordinary variety of animals’ sensory worlds

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/an-immense-world-ed-yong-book-review-charles-foster/

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Marching To Their Own Tune Sep 29, 2022

This week, Dennis Zhou joins us to illuminate the activism, anarchism and agility of the poet Gary Snyder; and Hannah Skoda reports from the Globe on a bold reinterpretation of the life of Joan of Arc.

'Collected Poems' by Gary Snyder, edited by Jack Shoemaker and Anthony Hunt

'I, Joan' by Charlie Josephine

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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Vaccines On Stage, Elves On Screen Sep 22, 2022

This week, we talk to Jonathan Spector about the European premiere of his play at the Old Vic; and Dimitra Fimi unpacks what's behind the new tv series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Eureka Day, The Old Vic, London, until October 31

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Elizabeth II in History Sep 18, 2022

Jane Ridley looks back at the Queen’s eight-decade reign

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The Rise of Your Frenemy’s Sourdough Sep 15, 2022

This week, Miranda France explores a suite of books about motherhood; and we survey the pick of this autumn’s fiction with Toby Lichtig.

‘Don’t Forget to Scream: Unspoken Truths About Motherhood’ by Marianne Levy

‘Motherhood: Feminism’s Unfinished Business’ by Eliane Glaser

‘Motherload: Modern Motherhood and How to Survive It’ by Ingrid Wassenaar

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem’ by Julie Phillips

’Still Born’ by Guadelupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey

‘Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation’ by Sophie Lewis

’The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ by Shehan Karunatilaka

’The Trees’ by Percival Everett

‘Haven’ by Emma Donoghue

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The Hour Of Our Death Sep 11, 2022

Emily Wilson considers how we address our final days

Book reviewed: The Mortal Coil: A history of death by Andrew Doig

The Inevitable: Dispatches on the right to die by Katie Engelhart

All the Living and the Dead: A personal investigation into the death trade by Hayley Campbell

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/mortal-coil-andrew-doig-the-inevitable-katie-engelhart-all-the-living-and-the-dead-hayley-campbell-book-review-emily-wilsoniew-emily-wilson/

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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Sep 08, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi joins us to explain how she captured the stories of her Italian grandmother; and Edmund Gordon admires how Ian McEwan’s new novel juxtaposes an individual life with memorable social and political events.

‘Dandelions’ by Thea Lenarduzzi

‘Lessons’ by Ian McEwan

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Our New Gilded Age Sep 04, 2022

Nat Segnit explores the strange world of the modern rich

Book reviewed: Serious Money: Walking plutocratic London by Caroline Knowles

A Class of Their Own: Adventures in tutoring the super-rich by Matt Knott

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/serious-money-caroline-knowles-class-of-their-own-matt-knott-book-review-nat-segnit/

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Women In Cages, Everywhere Sep 01, 2022

Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rohan Maitzen to discuss the new novel by Maggie O’Farrell, an ingenious and daring Browning version; and Sarah Hill charts musician Vashti Bunyan’s epic walk from London to Scotland in search of freedom.

‘The Marriage Portrait’ by Maggie O’Farrell

‘Wayward: Just Another Life to Live’ by Vashti Bunyan

‘Stories I Might Regret Telling You: A Memoir’ by Martha Wainwright

‘This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music’ edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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In Which Summer’s Lease Runs Out Aug 25, 2022

In the last of our August highlights programmes, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas talk self-improvement with Kathryn Hughes and step into the mire of Westminster with Edward Docx. And we revisit a magical Hay Festival moment courtesy of correspondents Lyse Doucet and Sana Safi.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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Earth Matters Aug 18, 2022

This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas look back at a riveting and prescient conversation with climate writer David Wallace-Wells; plus Margaret Drabble on the allure of roses, and Jeremy Mynott on our affinity with birds.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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

Visionaries Revisited Aug 11, 2022

In this week’s look at the highlights of the last year, Mary Norris explores Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fantasies, and we hear about James Joyce from Booker long-listed novelist Audrey Magee and poet Paul Muldoon.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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Summer Breeze Aug 04, 2022

This week, Alex and Lucy look back over some recent highlights, including Mary Beard’s survey of the Romans at play, and the best summer reads. Plus: we hear from a cat called Vincent Price.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy.

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Revolutionary Roads Jul 28, 2022

This week, Roy Foster introduces us to a Devonshire debutante turned IRA terrorist, and Emile Chabal explains how Marine Le Pen created the phenomenon of ‘cat-washing'.

'Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale' by Sean O’Driscoll

'Qu’est-ce que L’actualité Politique?: Événements et Opinions au XXIe Siècle' by Luc Boltanksi and Arnaud Esquerre

'Marginal Men and Micks on the Make' by Roy Foster

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Boys And Their Toys Jul 21, 2022

This week, we go in search of the woman who created William Brown, beloved outlaw of the suburbs; and take a look at the sporting scene in the Middle East ahead of this winter’s men’s Fifa World Cup.

‘Richmal Crompton, author of Just William: A Literary Life’ by Jane McVeigh

'Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East', edited by Danyel Reiche and Paul Michael Brannagan

'The Business of the Fifa World Cup', edited by Simon Chadwick, Paul Widdop, Christos Anagnostopoulos and Daniel Parnell

This summer we’re celebrating the serendipity of second-hand books - let us know your finds by writing to letters@the-tls.co.uk or tweeting us @TheTLS

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Paradise Lost and Particles Found Jul 14, 2022

This week, Jonathan Bate leads us a merry dance in search of fresh woods and pastures new; and Philip Ball explains the importance of the mysterious Higgs Boson.

‘A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature: Volume 1: Earlier Renaissance; Volume 2: Later Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassicism’ by Paul Holberton

‘Elusive: How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass’ by Frank Close.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Making Waves: An Oceanic Austen And A Modern Orwell Jul 07, 2022

Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig are joined by Devoney Looser, who scrutinises the naval career of Charles Austen, Jane’s youngest brother, in the dying days of the slave trade; and Jeremy Allen talks us through the art of waiting tables in Paris.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

From Mountain Passes To Streets Paved With Gold Jun 30, 2022

This week, Alex Clark and Michael Caines discuss the turbulent history of the Tour de France and wander through London’s richest enclaves

‘Le Fric: Family, Power and Money: The Business of the Tour de France’ by Alex Duff

‘Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London’ by Caroline Knowles

‘A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich’ by Matt Knott

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Lazing On A Sunny Afternoon Jun 23, 2022

This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig to reveal what’s hot in summer reading, with recommendations from TLS contributors; and Henry Hitchings takes a stroll through the complex world of cryptocurrency and one of its most charismatic characters.

‘The Missing Cryptoqueen’ by Jamie Bartlett.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Kidneys, Plums and Free Love Jun 16, 2022

This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Muldoon to celebrate Bloomsday with a close reading of the very first few words of Ulysses; there’s news from the world of Ukrainian literature; and Toby Lichtig catches up with Tessa Hadley at the Hay Festival.

‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce

‘The Orphanage’ by Sergiy Zhadan

‘Free Love’ by Tessa Hadley

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

The TLS podcast at the Hay Festival Jun 08, 2022

Join Alex Clark, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig as they chat to the BBC correspondents Lyse Doucet and Sana Safi, and to the legendary documentarian Norma Percy, in a special conversation recorded live at the Hay Festival.

‘My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women’, compiled by Lucy Hannah, with an introduction by Lyse Doucet

‘Afghanistan and Me: A Female Perspective’, an audio documentary by Sana Safi

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

The Ebb and Flow of Power Jun 02, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Lucy Hughes-Hallett to discuss two books about Mussolini’s Italy, and train buff extraordinaire Andrew Martin gets on board with a history of British Rail.

‘Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism’ by John Foot

’Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good: The Spread of Historical Amnesia’ by Francesco Filippi

‘British Rail: A New History’ by Christian Wolmar

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité May 26, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Tom Seymour Evans to head for the beaches of Fire Island, and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams surveys the country’s philosophical and political landscape, past and present.

‘Fire Island: Love, loss and liberation in an American paradise’ by Jack Parlett

’The French Mind: 400 years of romance, revolution and renewal’ by Peter Watson

‘France: An adventure history’ by Graham Robb

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Mementoes and Mayhem May 19, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by TLS classics editor Mary Beard to find out what the Romans brought back from their holidays, and novelist Edward Docx is roused to righteous fury over the parlous state of the House of Commons.

‘Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman empire’s souvenirs’ by Kimberly Cassibry

’Souvenirs and the Experience of Empire in Ancient Rome’ by Maggie L. Popkin

‘Held in Contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons?’ by Hannah White

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Free-thinking Dinners in the Age of Revolutions May 11, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas is joined by Kathryn Sutherland to tuck into the three o'clock dinners of Joseph Johnson, publisher and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestley, Henry Fuseli, Williams Blake and Wordsworth, and many more great minds of that era. And Boyd Tonkin explains that Napoleon's conqueror, the "Iron Duke" of Wellington, had a great and unexpected gift for friendship - with women.

'Dinner with Joseph Johnson' by Daisy Hay

'Wellington, women and friendship' at Apsley House, London, until October 30

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

The Shape Of Things To Come May 05, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Joe Moran to explore the strange world of precognition, and Elizabeth Lowry is bowled over by the iconoclastic work of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. Plus great news for Terry Pratchett fans, as an all-star cast records his much-loved Discworld series.

'The Premonitions Bureau’ by Sam Knight

‘SYBIL’ by William Kentridge

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

The Birds and the Bees, and Books Made of Cheese Apr 28, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Carol Tavris to discuss two wide-ranging works of biology that cast fascinating light on our understanding of sexual behaviour and gender identity throughout the animal and human world. And James Waddell explores a “bibliobiography” by a Shakespeare scholar that digs deep into centuries of books and their readers - from “shelfies” to book burning to the historical precedent for Jilly Cooper’s Riders.

'Different: Gender through the eyes of a primatologist’ by Frans de Waal

‘Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution and the female animal’ by Lucy Cooke

‘Portable Magic: A history of books and their readers’ by Emma Smith

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Lives, Interrupted Apr 21, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Nat Segnit to discuss the long reach of the gambling industry and the music of chance, and Kevin Brazil brings to life a dystopian novel from 1977.

‘Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain’ by Rob Davies

‘Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict’ by Patrick Foster, with Will Macpherson

‘Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk’ by DBC Pierre

’They’ by Kay Dick

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Life Lessons and Making Sporting History Apr 14, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Dinah Birch to discuss Elizabeth Finch, the new novel by Julian Barnes, and find themselves in a world of charismatic teachers and forgotten Roman emperors. Also, the sports historian David Goldblatt explores a global survey of sport through the ages from the ancient Chinese game of cuju to the glories of Bristol Rovers.

‘Elizabeth Finch’ by Julian Barnes

‘Games People Played: A Global History of Sport’ by Wray Vamplew

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Early Days And Their Long Shadows Apr 07, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Emma Clery, specialist in 18th and 19th-century literature and author of Jane Austen: The Banker’s Sister, to discuss what Austen’s juvenilia and unpublished works tell us about the writer - will we find, as some critics have suggested, a far less restrained and irreverent novelist than we might expect? And Catherine Taylor, who is writing a memoir of her Sheffield upbringing, explores two accounts of growing up in the north of England.

‘Jane Austen, Early and Late’ by Freya Johnston

‘Lady Susan, Sanditon and The Watsons: Unfinished Fictions and Other Writings by Jane Austen' edited by Kathryn Sutherland

‘My Own Worst Enemy: Scenes of a Childhood’ by Robert Edric

‘No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader’ by Mark Hodkinson

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Boundaries Real and Imagined Mar 31, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Cal Flyn, the author of 'Islands of Abandonment: Life in the post-human landscape’, to venture into the 'extreme north' – part place, part concept – where sparsely populated landscapes have long offered a blank canvas on which to project hopes, dreams and neuroses; the critic En Liang Khong considers Ai Weiwei’s artistic rebellion against the Chinese state, situating its roots in the artist's early years and relationship with his father

'Extreme North: A cultural history' by Bernd Brunner, translated by Jefferson Chase

‘1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny’ by Ai WeiWei

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Visions of Violence Mar 24, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Miranda France, the TLS’s Hispanic editor, to discuss the Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor and two new works that approach brutal and brutalized lives in innovative ways; Michael Caines, also of the TLS, considers a collection of essays that sets out to complicate stereotypes of East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain; and there’s focus on film, including Nosferatu at 100, unsung heroines of the big screen, and a fresh look at Marilyn Monroe’s difficult stay in London.

‘Paradais’ by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes

‘Aquí no es Miami’ by Fernanda Melchor

‘East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain’, edited by Helena Lee

‘When Marilyn Met the Queen: Marilyn Monroe’s life in England’ by Michelle Morgan

‘The Performer’s Tale: Nine lives of Patience Collier’ By Vanessa Morton

‘Forever Young: A memoir’ by Hayley Mills

‘The Great Peace: A memoir’ by Mena Suvari

‘Movie Workers: The women who made British cinema’ by Melanie Bell

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Rock Star, Freak, Agitator Mar 17, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Nelly Kaprièlian and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams to discuss ‘Anéantir’, the latest novel by France’s best-known and maybe most controversial writer, Michel Houellebecq; the TLS’s Toby Lichtig talks us through a new memoir by the ‘pre-eminent author of British Jewish novels’, Howard Jacobson, and we consider a masterclass in sympathy from Anne Tyler, a tale of revenge by Japan’s ‘Queen of mysteries’, and a wartime reckoning in Finland.

‘Anéantir’ by Michel Houellebecq

‘Mother’s Boy: A writer’s beginnings’ by Howard Jacobson

‘French Braid’ by Anne Tyler

‘Lady Joker: Volume one’ by Kaoru Takamura, translated by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell

‘Land of Snow & Ashes’ by Petra Rautiainen, translated by David Hackston

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Say What You’re Going To Say Mar 10, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and critic Mary Norris to discuss the phenomenon that is Margaret Atwood – surely her kind of success requires a method? A new collection of essays and talks sheds some light; Sujit Sivasundaram, the author of ‘Waves Across the South: A new history of revolution and empire’, considers a work of non-fiction by the novelist Amitav Ghosh which paints a compelling picture of how the trade in nutmeg prefigured today’s environmental crisis

‘Burning Questions: Essays and occasional pieces 2004–2021’ by Margaret Atwood

‘The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a planet in crisis’ by Amitav Ghosh

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Faint Praise Mar 03, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to discuss a new play by Florian Zeller, ‘the most successful representative of contemporary French theatre’; Kathryn Hughes, the author of ‘Victorians Undone: Tales of the flesh in the age of decorum’, explores the cultural significance of passing out, from ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, via Shakespeare and Bram Stoker; plus, a poem by Ange Mlinko, ‘Storm Windows’

‘The Forest’ by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton, Hampstead Theatre, until March 12

‘Swoon: A poetics of passing out’ by Naomi Booth

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Birds of a Feather Feb 24, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Jeremy Mynott, the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ and ‘Birds in the Ancient World’, to ponder 12,000 years of human–bird relations. ‘How is it that, despite a historically deep-rooted veneration, we could also have predated, exploited and depleted bird populations to the point where more than one in ten species is now threatened with extinction?’; and Janet Montefiore, Chair of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, asks whether this vivid and varied satirical novelist might finally take her place alongside Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen among the canon of accepted classics? Plus, a Life of the poet Valentine Ackland, still best known as Warner’s partner

‘Flight From Grace: A cultural history of humans and birds’ by Richard Pope

‘Avian Illuminations: A cultural history of birds’ by Boria Sax

‘Birds and Us: A 12,000-year history: from cave art to conservation’ by Tim Birkhead

‘Valentine Ackland: A transgressive life’ by Frances Bingham

‘Lolly Willowes’, ‘Mr Fortune’s Maggot’, ‘ The True Heart’, ‘Summer Will Show’, etc, by Sylvia Townsend Warner – for other books by Warner, find Janet Montefiore’s article at the-tls.co.uk.

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A Story With Strings Attached Feb 17, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Alex Clark are joined by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Professor Emerita in Italian Literature at the University of Warwick, to discuss the birth and legacy of Pinocchio, the world’s most famous (and most insolent) puppet – is his story really only for children? And do we need another English translation?; George Berridge, a TLS editor and restaurant-kitchen survivor, considers two close-ups on the troubled life of the chef, restaurateur and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain

‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ by Carlo Collodi, translated and edited by John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna

‘Bourdain: In stories’ by Laurie Woolever

'In the Weeds: Around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain’ by Tom Vitale

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Writers at the Gates of Dawn Feb 10, 2022

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Sara Hudston to talk about how to write about our environment, who gets to write about it, why it is so crucial - and "horsey" books; and James McConnachie, himself a keen player, discusses the future of strategy games, given that the computers are increasingly beating the humans

Women on Nature, edited by Katherine Norbury

Wild Isles, edited by Patrick Barkham

Gifts of Gravity and Light, edited by Anita Roy and Pippa Marland

Out of Time: Poetry from the climate emergency, edited by Kate Simpson

Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun! Feb 03, 2022

This week, to mark 100 years since the publication of ‘Ulysses’, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the novelist Audrey Magee to discuss how James Joyce wrestled with the demands, political and personal, of the Irish language; the anthropologist and science writer Barbara J. King reviews Andrea Arnold’s film ‘Cow’, which attempts to show life from an animal’s perspective; plus, Mary Beard shares a few thoughts on Roman kissing.

'Cow', directed by Andrea Arnold

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Clarity, Honesty, Fluff Jan 27, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Markovits, the novelist, critic and teacher of creative writing, to discuss 100 American essays spanning 300-odd years (‘have we got any better at it?’); the sinologist Rana Mitter discusses the supremely difficult, and controversial, job of adapting the Chinese script for the modern age; plus, ‘Edelweiss’, a poignant new poem by Fiona Benson

‘The Glorious American Essay: One hundred essays from colonial times to the present’, edited by Phillip Lopate

‘Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China’ by Jing Tsu

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Carnival of Darkness Jan 20, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and broadcaster Muriel Zagha to discuss 'Nightmare Alley', an unsettling vision of delight and deceit from the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro; the historian Abigail Green explores the untold stories of the women behind Europe’s premier banking dynasty, the Rothschilds; plus, a dinosaur poem of note

'Nightmare Alley', various cinemas

'The Women of Rothschild: The untold story of the world’s most famous dynasty' by Natalie Livingstone

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Give Me Your Heart Jan 13, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the poet A. E. Stallings to reconsider the ground-breaking work of Edna St Vincent Millay, a modern but not modernist poet, once judged 'the most glamorous, sexually-dangerous since Byron'; Thomas Morris, the author of medical and crime histories, delves into the often-troubling history of medical transplants; plus, a new poem by Ben Wilkinson, ‘What We Were’

'Poems and Satires' by Edna St Vincent Millay, edited by Tristram Fane Saunders

'Spare Parts: A surprising history of transplants' by Paul Craddock

Produced by Sophia Franklin.

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A Constant State of Foreignness Jan 06, 2022

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and translator Chiara Marchelli to revisit the work of Antonio Tabucchi, a master of the uncanny, ten years after his death; and the multilingual critic Irina Dumitrescu discusses a poignant study of bilingualism that considers how mother tongues are lost and found and at what cost

‘Little Misunderstandings of No Importance: And other stories’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Frances Frenaye

‘Requiem: A hallucination’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

‘Pereira Maintains: A testimony’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Patrick Creagh

‘Memory Speaks: On losing and reclaiming language and self’ by Julie Sedivy

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Best of 2021 Dec 30, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back atthis year’s podcasts.

We hear from Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Drabble, Mary Beard and Paul Muldoon, among others, covering literature, film, art, poetry and much more.

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Best of 2021 Dec 30, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back atthis year’s podcasts.

We hear from Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Drabble, Mary Beard and Paul Muldoon, among others, covering literature, film, art, poetry and much more.

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

BONUS: Sarah Hall and Sarah Moss – an interview Dec 23, 2021

A conversation between the novelists Sarah Hall and Sarah Moss, both of whose most recent novels confront life in the middle of a pandemic, chaired by the TLS’s fiction editor Toby Lichtig.

(This event was recorded in November at Hay Festival’s Winter Weekend)

'Burntcoat' by Sarah Hall

'The Fell' by Sarah Moss

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This Is Magic Dec 16, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Emer Nolan, Professor of English at Maynooth University, to discuss the letters of John McGahern, one of Ireland’s most accomplished writers of fiction; How did Napoleon get his hands on Veronese’s enormous masterpiece “The Wedding Feast at Cana”, once safely housed in a Venetian monastery? Does it matter and should we do anything to remedy the situation? Ruth Scurr, the author of ‘Napoleon: A Life told in gardens and shadows’, considers Napoleon’s thirst for art, and its legacy; plus, a quick look at some of 2021’s most favourably reviewed films and plays ‘The Letters of John McGahern’, edited by Frank Shovlin‘Napoleon’s Plunder: And the theft of Veronese’s Feast’ by Cynthia SaltzmanProduced by Sophia Franklin

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On not letting it be Dec 09, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Francesca Wade, at work on a book about Gertrude Stein’s afterlife, to discuss Stein’s ‘lost’ notebooks – and the magnificent amount of research conducted by Leon Katz, who discovered them some seventy years ago – and shed new light on the writer’s process and personal life; and the musician and critic Wesley Stace takes us back to a stormy but productive time in the life of The Beatles, via a new film by Peter Jackson

‘No no no, nonsense, never: Hidden notebooks reveal the tense relationships behind Gertrude Stein’s genius’ by Francesca Wade, in this week’s TLS.

‘The Beatles: Get Back’, on Disney+

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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George Orwell and his Roses and a History of Self-Improvement Dec 02, 2021

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark discuss roses, Orwell and rhizomatic thinking with Margaret Drabble; Kathryn Hughes is our guide through histories of self-improvement; plus, what log-rolling really means.

'Orwell's Roses' by Rebecca Solnit

'The Art of Self-Improvement' by Anna Katharina Schaffner

The Log Driver's Waltz: https://www.nfb.ca/film/log_drivers_waltz

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Books of the Year 2021 Nov 25, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by TLS editors to look through twelve months of intriguing books, as nominated by contributors including Mary Beard, the poet Paul Muldoon and the writer and critic Marina Warner, covering a range of genres and subjects, from ancient Greek swear words to fictional messiahs

For the full round-up, go to the-tls.co.uk/

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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The Mythic Town of Concord and the Magic of the Lighted Window Nov 18, 2021

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are guided by Mark Ford through Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Emerson, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists; we talk to Susan Owens about the mystery and melancholy of lighted windows seen from outside; plus, new work from Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith

'The Transcendentalists and their world' by Robert A. Gross

'The Every' by Dave Eggers

'The Wife of Willesden' by Zadie Smith

'The Lighted Window: Evening walks remembered' by Peter Davidson

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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The Booker-winner and the Beatle Nov 11, 2021

This week, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig speaks to 2021’s Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut, whose recent novel ‘The Promise’ follows one family through three decades of life and death in South Africa; Douglas Smith, whose books include a biography of Rasputin, turns to Russia in the 1830s to try to understand the Russia we face today; plus, the lyrics of Paul McCartney, explained by the man himself

'The Promise' by Damon Galgut

'1837: Russia’s quiet revolution' by Paul W. Werth

'The Lyrics: 1956 to the present' by Paul McCartney, edited by Paul Muldoon – discussed at an event at the Royal Festival Hall, London on November 5; available to stream until November 12

Stream link: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/literature-poetry/lyrics-paul-mccartney-conversation-live-stream

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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Wild Lives Nov 04, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Michael Sherborne to consider a master of science fiction, H. G. Wells, whose life was a runaway spaceship… until it ran out of steam; Niki Segnit, the author of ‘The Flavour Thesaurus’, explores some of the world’s rarest and most endangered foods; plus how sustainable – ecologically and economically – is book selling?

‘The Young H. G. Wells: Changing the world’ by Claire Tomalin

‘The City of Dr Moreau’ by J. S. Barnes

‘Eating To Extinction: The world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them’ by Dan Saladino

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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

Doom, Faith and Sabotage Oct 27, 2021

This week, ahead of COP26, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by David Wallace-Wells, the author of ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’, to discuss a flurry of new books on climate change and what to do about it, from quiet reflection to radical, explosive action; and the biographer of royals A. N. Wilson considers a lively new Life of King George V that suggests the monarch wasn’t that dull after all

‘Deep Adaptation: Navigating the realities of climate chaos’, edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

‘How To Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire’ by Andreas Malm

‘Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world’ by Katharine Hayhoe

‘Geopolitics For the End Time: From the pandemic to the climate crisis’ by Bruno Maçães

'George V: Never a dull moment’ by Jane Ridley

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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Radical Turns Oct 20, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines are joined by Jenni Quilter, the author of ‘New York School Painters and Poets: Neon in daylight’, to discuss the colourful and ceaselessly experimental work of the American artist Helen Frankenthaler; and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, reviews a radical (and watery) new production of ‘Macbeth’ that redeems the fallen world of this overfamiliar tragedy.

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’, Almeida Theatre, London; also streaming

‘Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York’ by Alexander Nemerov

‘Helen Frankenthaler: Radical beauty’, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; until April 18, 2022

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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

The Autumn Livres Oct 13, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Russell Williams, to talk through the uniquely French phenomenon of the rentrée littéraire - the politics, the scandals, the big beasts and the new voices; and Michele Pridmore-Brown considers a recent book that offers a cultural history of breast milk and the rise of the bottle.

‘White Blood: A history of human milk’ by Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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

E.M. Forster's Happy Solution Oct 07, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Peter Parker, the biographer of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood among others, to reconsider the gestation and legacy of E. M. Forster’s final novel, ‘Maurice’, a love story between men across the class divide, published fifty years ago; ‘Keep up, watch out: Or why the people next door have always mattered’ – the historian Arnold Hunt reviews two studies of neighbourly love, and hate, in early modern Britain.

‘Faith, Hope and Charity: English neighbourhoods, 1500–1640’ by Andy Wood

‘Caritas: Neighbourly love and the early modern self’ by Katie Barclay

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When the Flawed Succeed Oct 03, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, the former politician Rory Stewart discusses to power of modern politics, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and the corrosion of morals.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/long-players-tom-gatti-book-review-paul-genders

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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

Survival of the Wittiest Sep 29, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the scholars Janet Todd and Derek Hughes to revisit the life and work of Restoration England’s first woman of letters, the playwright Aphra Behn, who “seems formed for our noisy, sex-obsessed times”; the translator, poet and critic Sasha Dugdale considers Russian protest poetry and the rise of Galina Rymbu; plus, literary festivals rebooted.

‘The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn: Volume IV: Plays, 1682–1696’, edited by Rachel Adcock, et al

‘F Letter: New Russian feminist poetry’, edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky and Ainsley Morse; translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, Ainsley Morse, Alex Karsavin, Helena Kernan, Kit Eginton, Valzhyna Mort and Kevin M. F. Platt

‘Life In Space’ by Galina Rymbu; translated by Joan Brooks

Valzhyna Mort’s translation of the poem ’Summer’, read by Sasha Dugdale, also appears at - www.granta.com/summer-gates-of-the-body

‘The Scar We Know’, a bi-lingual edition of Lida Yusupova's poetry with introductions by Oksana Vasyakina and Ainsley Morse, has just been published by Cicada Books

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Sad and Twisted Stories Sep 23, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Skye C. Cleary to discuss Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘lost’ novel, ‘The Inseparables’, published almost seventy years after it was written; Anna Picard reviews a very dark production of ‘Rigoletto’ at the Royal Opera House; plus, buying and selling (and maybe stealing) Emily Dickinson’s hair (maybe).

'The Inseparables' by Simone de Beauvoir

'Rigoletto' by Giuseppe Verdi, at the Royal Opera House, until September 29, then February–March, 2022

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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

Greatest Hits Sep 20, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Paul Genders discusses the influence of pop music on literature.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/long-players-tom-gatti-book-review-paul-genders

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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

Don't sweat it Sep 16, 2021

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by the critic and gym-sceptic Irina Dumitrescu to consider a clutch of books about fitness – how it came to be the industry it is, what it means to us, even what the smell of sweat does; Alex Clark, a regular contributor to the TLS’s fiction pages, runs through this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, just announced, before turning to a real-life story that reads like a mystery novel: the “Stonehouse affair”, the tale of the MP and former Cabinet minister John Stonehouse, who disappeared while swimming from a private beach in Miami

The Age of Fitness: How the body came to symbolize success and achievement by Jürgen Martschukat

Exercised: The science of physical activity, rest and health by Daniel Lieberman

The Joy of Sweat: The strange science of perspiration by Sarah Everts

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

John Stonehouse, My Father: The true story of the runaway MP, by Julia Stonehouse

Stonehouse: Cabinet minister, fraudster, spy by Julian Hayes

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Indexes, Newsletters, Potatoes, Gold! Sep 08, 2021

Lucy Dallas and Michael Caines are joined by Dennis Duncan, the author of ‘Index, A History of the’, to discuss how we navigate the contents between books' covers, taking in alphabets, concordances, ancient search engines and much more; What is Substack: a publishing start-up or a reboot of a nineteenth-century literary idea?; and the writer and translator Miranda France discusses a new book by the famed psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, which takes us to Peru, in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, who made a fascinating and, to us, troubling expedition to the Upper Amazon region in 1891.

‘Index, A History of the’ by Dennis Duncan

‘The Gold Machine: In the tracks of the mule dancers’ by Iain Sinclair

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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TLS Summer Library: Part IV Sep 01, 2021

Throughout the summer, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode - it's movie week; the author Colin Grant discusses Steve McQueen's Small Axe and the Academy Award-winning Nomadland starring Frances McDormand, Yoojin Grace Wuertz talks us through the Korean American Dream film Minari, and Clifford Thompson reviews Regina King's directorial debut One Night in Miami - which sees Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay gather for a heated debate.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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TLS Summer Library: Part III Aug 25, 2021

Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the comedian David Baddiel joins Toby Lichtig to talk about his book 'Jews Don't Count' which explores the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism, Éadaoín Lynch remembers fully and truthfully the relationship between the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in the British Library's Women Writers series, dedicated to once-popular writers.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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The Guidance of Brains Aug 22, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, the writer and author of Mind the Gap, Ferdinand Mount, asks - how much is too much meritocracy?

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-aristocracy-of-talent-adrian-wooldridge-book-review-ferdinand-mount

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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TLS Summer Library: Part II Aug 18, 2021

Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard emphasizes the importance of teaching Classics in context, the medievalist Hetta Howes reviews a female take on 'Beowulf', and Ruth Scurr reveals the true history of the secretive Freemasons.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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TLS Summer Library: Part I Aug 11, 2021

Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart about his 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain, the writer Laura Thompson joins Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas to discuss the work of Agatha Christie and how she has managed to move with the times, and Edmund Gordon to reviews 'Klara and the Sun' - Kazuo Ishiguro’s new Booker Prize longlisted novel about an Artificial Friend.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Turning poetry into profit with Alighieri Jewellery's Rosh Mahtani Aug 11, 2021

In a special bonus podcast we bring you an episode of Secrets of the Side Hustle that we think you might enjoy.

Host Laura Jackson speaks with Alighieri Jewellery founder, Rosh Mahtani, about her business journey, the importance of connecting with your customers and why a 14th century epic poem makes the perfect inspiration for a 21st century business...

Visit the Alighieri Jewellery website

Follow Alighieri Jewellery on Instagram

Follow The Sunday Times Style

https://www.instagram.com/theststyle/

https://twitter.com/TheSTStyle

To get more of The Times and The Sunday Times, visit thetimes.co.uk/secretsofthesidehustle

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Paternal Effects Aug 08, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, Michele Pridmore-Brown, researcher at The University of California - Berkeley, discusses what science can tell us about manliness.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-better-half-sharon-moalem-are-men-animals-matthew-guttmann-guynecology-rene-almeling-review-michelle-pridmore-brown

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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

A Genius of Cancer and a Queen of Bohemia Aug 04, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Thomas Morris, the author of 'The Matter of the Heart: A history of the heart in eleven operations', to discuss the extraordinary life and influence of the Nobel prize-winning Jewish biochemist Otto Warburg, whose research into cancer, as well as his audacious character, helped him to survive Nazi Germany; the art critic and historian Frances Spalding celebrates the energetic and sophisticated paintings of Nina Hamnett, whose colourful social life has tended to eclipse her talents. Plus, Shakespeare in the open air.

Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the search for the cancer-diet connection, by Sam Apple

Nina Hamnett, Charleston, Sussex, until August 30th

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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

The Miraculous Mundane Jul 28, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau, to discuss William Blake, who saw wonders everywhere (including a tree on Peckham Rye), and communicated them urgently in art and poetry – what does he have to tell us now?; the critic and writer Michael Kerrigan guides us through the ‘improbably enthralling mundanities’ of the Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero; plus, a dazzling history of Sicily, the demise of local journalism, and ‘bald’ philosophy.

William Blake Vs the World by John Higgs

The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott

Panic as Man Burns Crumpets: The vanishing world of the local journalist by Roger Lytollis

Bald: 35 philosophical short cuts by Simon Critchley

The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean history by Jamie Mackay

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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

Private Profits, Public Cost Jul 25, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Joan C. Williams discusses how Amazon’s business practices harm America.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/fulfillment-alec-macgillis-review-joan-c-williams-amazon

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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The movie we want it to be Jul 21, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas as joined by Keith Hopper, a critic of film and literature, to revisit the film ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (1969), a 'dark, difficult masterpiece' starring Jon Voight as an aspirant sex worker and Dustin Hoffman as his friend, an ailing con man; before it’s available in English, the journalist Henri Astier delves into the 'secret' diary of Michel Barnier, the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, who the British tabloids named 'the most dangerous man in Europe'; plus, what does Brexit mean for books?

‘Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, sex, loneliness, liberation, and the making of a dark classic’ by Glenn Frankel

‘La Grande Illusion: Journal secret du Brexit (2016-2020)’ by Michel Barnier

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Insiders, outsiders and insider-outsiders Jul 15, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Noo Saro-Wiwa, the author of ‘Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria’, to discuss developments in travel writing; Alice Kelly, the author of ‘Commemorative Modernisms: Women writers, death and the First World War’, considers how conflict permeates American culture; plus, a new poem by André Naffis-Sahely, ‘At the Graves of Labour’s Fallen’

‘The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in search of a genre’ by Tim Hannigan

‘War and American Literature’, edited by Jennifer Haytock

‘A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War’, edited by Tim Dayton and Mark W. Van Wienen

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No Ideas, But in Things Jul 11, 2021

In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Joyce Carol Oates explores the quintessential American minimalism of Walker Evans.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/walker-evans-svetlana-alpers-review-joyce-carol-oates

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

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Proust's Way Jul 07, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Adam Watt, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, to mark 150 years since the birth of Marcel Proust, whose legacy seems stronger than ever; Sarah Lonsdale, the author of 'Rebel Women Between the Wars', re-considers ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’, a funny novel about interwar life in deepest Devon whose darker tones tend to be overlooked; plus, Mary Beard on new developments at the Colosseum.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Strange Worlds of Their Own Jun 30, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the novelist Margaret Drabble to consider the ‘curiously free-floating reputation’ of Russell Hoban, whose adult novels, including ‘Riddley Walker’, now appear as Penguin Modern Classics; as twin exhibitions mark the centenary of the birth of the English sculptor, painter, writer, designer and illustrator Michael Ayrton, the critic Boyd Tonkin delves into the myth-laden maze of the artist’s thought

‘From Oprah to Medusa: The endlessly various world of Russell Hoban’ by Margaret Drabble: www.the-tls.co.uk

‘Michael Ayrton: A singular obsession’, Fry Art Gallery Too, Saffron Walden, until October 31st

‘Michael Ayrton Centenary: Ideas, images, reflections’, edited by Justine Hopkins

‘Celebrating Michael Ayrton: A centenary exhibition’, the Lightbox, Woking, until August 8th

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Robots Working, Humans Reading Jun 23, 2021

This week: How far off is a world in which robots do most of our jobs? Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Schneider, a DPhil Candidate in Economic and Social History at Merton College, Oxford, to explore Artificial Intelligence, societal change, real and imagined, and the future of work; what will our writers, from Andrew Motion to Joyce Carol Oates, be reading this summer?; plus, it’s Independent Bookshop Week and the nominations came thick and fast…

'Summer books 2021 – Our contributors provide their seasonal reading lists' www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/summer-books-2021

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Mozart the Happy Harlequin and Lost British Labourism Jun 16, 2021

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by Paul Griffiths to discuss the beauty and grace of Mozart, the untortured genius; David Edgerton talks us through the decline and fall of British coal mining and its relationship with the Labour Party; plus, new discoveries about Locke and Leviathan, obituary codes and the Buddha's wife

'La Clemenza di Tito' by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

'Mozart in Prague' by Daniel E. Freeman

'Mozart: The reign of love' by Jan Swafford

'The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the end of industrial Britain' by Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson

'Yasodhara and the Buddha' by Vanessa R. Sasson

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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A Bengali Polymath and an ‘Accidental Modernist’ Jun 09, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rosinka Chaudhuri, the author of ‘The Literary Thing: History, poetry and the making of a modern cultural sphere’, to discuss Rabindranath Tagore, who, in 1913, became the first non-white and non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – since which he has been largely overlooked; Kate Kennedy, the author of ‘Dweller in the Shadows’, a new Life of the war poet Ivor Gurney, considers the “peculiarly direct, urgent intensity” of the later work, composed while confined in an asylum; plus, let’s hear it for independent bookshops

'Rabindranath Tagore' by Bashabi Fraser

'The Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore', edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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‘But Where’s the Poetry?!’ Jun 02, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines are joined by the critic and literary scholar Marjorie Perloff to discuss an encyclopedic work that sets out to tackle ‘Art and thought in the Cold War’, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Elvis Presley; the English professor and literary critic Rohan Maitzen explores the meticulously observed world of Olivia Manning’s Balkan novels; plus, the unhappy story of a youthful romance between Eric Arthur Blair and Jacintha Buddicom, played out in poetry

‘The Free World: Art and thought in the Cold War’ by Louis Menand

‘The Balkan Trilogy’ by Olivia Manning

‘“Dracula’s Daughter”: The rediscovery of a love poem for George Orwell’, by Eileen M. Hunt, and ‘Annotating George Orwell’, by D. J. Taylor – both in this week’s TLS: the-tls.co.uk

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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D. H. Lawrence in Flames May 27, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Gerri Kimber to discuss a bold new biography of D. H. Lawrence, 'the most judged writer of his age'; twenty-odd writers share their formative encounters with nature, including the novelists Maaza Mengiste and Ali Smith; plus, reviews of the television adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Harm', a new play about loneliness and social media addiction

Burning Man: The ascent of D. H. Lawrence, by Frances Wilson

'Sinister, sublime, exhausting, hungry – formative encounters with the natural world', see the-tls.co.uk

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, BBC iPlayer

'Harm' by Phoebe Eclair-Powell, the Bush Theatre, London

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Jane Austen and Abolition May 20, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and the author of ‘The Making of Jane Austen’, to discuss new research into the Austen family’s ties with slavery; Colin Grant, critic and writer, introduces Writers Mosaic, a new platform for writing and recordings; and Mary Beard considers the Roman love of temple-building and Euripides as reimagined by a poet and a comic-book illustrator.

Jane Austen & Co

writersmosaic.org.uk/

The Trojan Women: A comic book by Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses. Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

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Angela Thirkell’s Relentless Self-Belief May 12, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Dinah Birch, Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, to consider the work of Angela Thirkell, a kind of (but not really...) Anthony Trollope for the twentieth-century; the writer and audio documentaristMaria Margaronis considers the transformation of London’s Royal Court Theatre into a radical and moving “living newspaper”; plus, a library of the world’s literature that no censor can get to

‘Angela Thirkell: A writer’s life’ by Anne Hall

‘Living Newspaper’, Editions 6 and 7, Royal Court Theatre and royalcourttheatre.com

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses.

Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Pirandello’s Controlled Chaos May 05, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Ann Hallamore Caesar to mark 100 years since the première of the modernist masterpiece ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, considering it in the context of Luigi Pirandello’s life and work; Alexander Leissle reviews ‘Promises’, an intoxicating intergenerational collaboration between a jazz saxophonist and an electro producer; plus, a new poem by Andrew Motion, “At Low Tharston”, written in memory of the late Anthony Thwaite.

'Stories for the Years' by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Virginia Jewiss

'The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio' by Luigi Pirandello, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

'Promises' by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses.

Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Violence Upon the Roads Apr 28, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Patricia Craig, a writer and critic from Northern Ireland, who relates a sad and murky case of accidental killings, which took place during the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s; the TLS’s politics editor Toby Lichtig reviews a handful of recent films – works of documentary and fiction – with political stories, mostly atrocities, at their hearts; plus, a lost Proust manuscript finally sees the light of day.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head, BBC iPlayer

The Mauritanian, Amazon Prime

The Dissident, Amazon Prime

Quo Vadis, Aida?, Curzon Home Cinema

Les Soixante-quinze feuillets et autres manuscrits inédits, by Marcel Proust, edited by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer, with a preface by Jean-Yves Tadié (Gallimard)

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Underground and on the Run Apr 21, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Patricia J. Williams to discuss ‘Giving a Damn: Racism, romance and Gone with the Wind’, Williams’s deeply researched, and deeply felt, essay on the roots and legacy of racial injustice in the United States; Douglas Field considers a novel about a 'human mole' by Richard Wright, the African American writer best known for 'Native Son', which now sees the light of day, eighty years after it was written; plus Sylvia Plath’s domestic embellishments and the greatest novels of the twenty-first century to date (cont.)

Giving a Damn: Racism, romance and 'Gone with the Wind' by Patricia J. Williams, published next week by TLS Books

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

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Getting Shakespeare’s Measure Apr 14, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, to discuss the new Arden 3 edition of ‘Measure for Measure’, one of the "problem plays" (word-bothers, en garde); the poet and translator Beverley Bie Brahic marks 200 years since the birth of Charles Baudelaire, whose extraordinary work seems bizarrely neglected; plus, Charlotte Mew, and the dangers of ancient Greek medicine.

Measure for Measure, edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Robert N. Watson (Arden Shakespeare)

The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates, by Robin Lane Fox

This Rare Spirit: A Life of Charlotte Mew, by Julia Copus

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Philip Roth, For Better, For Worse, Forever? Apr 07, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Elaine Showalter, Professor Emerita of English at Princeton University, to discuss Blake Bailey’s keenly anticipated ‘Philip Roth: The biography’; and Alexandra Harris, the author of ‘Weatherland: Artist and writers under English skies’, considers a twenty-first century perspective on Joseph Wright of Derby, an eighteenth-century painter who is perhaps more darkness than light, more magic than science, and who deserves to be ranked among Europe’s greats.

Philip Roth: The biography by Blake Bailey

Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of darkness by Matthew Craske

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Dreams of America Mar 31, 2021

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by Mary Norris, a New Yorker and editor at - what else? - the New Yorker magazine, to discuss the changing life of the city and its inhabitants; Yoojin Grace Wuertz talks us through a film garlanded with Oscar nominations, Minari, which casts a new light on the immigrant story and the American Dream; plus, the week's fiction reviews

New Yorkers: A city and its people in our time by Craig Taylor

Pretend It's A City: Netflix

The Barbizon: The New York hotel that set women free by Paulina Bren

Minari: Amazon Prime, Apple TV, etc

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Myth-busting, awkwardness, pure Marvellousness Mar 25, 2021

Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the historian Mark Mazower, who presents new approaches to the battle for Greek independence in 1821; Noreen Masud reviews a performance of Stevie Smith’s poems that conveys the unsettling power of her presence; plus, Paul Muldoon marks 400 years since the birth of Andrew Marvell with a new poem, ‘The Glow-Worm to the Mower’.

Stevie Smith: Black March – Dead Poets Live, filmed at the Wanamaker Playhouse, available on Globe Player until April 5th

Please visit the TLS website to read Mark Mazower’s essay (including bibliography) and to find Paul Muldoon’s poem, as well as those by Angela Leighton and Will Harris.

www.the-tls.co.uk

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Vivian Gornick’s Time Mar 18, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic and novelist Claire Lowdon to consider Vivian Gornick, an American writer of essays – on literature, politics, the self – that demonstrate a rare “ability to stand back and look at the world in which she finds herself, and then set it down calmly on paper”; the TLS’s poetry editor Camille Ralphs explores the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and some of the literature that inspired it; plus, libraries under threat (again), Unica Zürn gets her time in the sun, and the three greatest novels of the twenty-first century...so far.

Taking a Long Look: Essays on culture, literature, and feminism in our time by Vivian Gornick

Appendix N: The eldritch roots of Dungeons and Dragons, edited by Peter Bebergal

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Avoidance and absurdity Mar 11, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Ann Pettifor, the economist and author of ‘The Case for the Green New Deal’, to discuss some inconvenient but incontrovertible truths left out of Bill Gates’s vision of the fight against climate change; Anna Aslanyan on a freewheeling account of the unpredictable life of the twentieth-century German writer Hasso Grabner; plus, re-reading Philip Larkin.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

Journey through a Tragicomic Century: The Absurd Life of Hasso Grabner, by Francis Nenik, translated by Katy Derbyshire

www.the-tls.co.uk

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Ishiguro’s AI and Grendel’s Mother Mar 04, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Edmund Gordon to review 'Klara and the Sun', Kazuo Ishiguro’s surprisingly hopeful new novel about an Artificial Friend; the world’s first poem about Superman (perhaps) was written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1942 but not published until now, in this week’s TLS – we discuss; and the medievalist Hetta Howes reviews two new translations of 'Beowulf', taking us back to the rich and troubling ambiguities of the original.

Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro

“The Man of To-morrow’s Lament”, a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, with commentary by Andrei Babikov

Beowulf: A new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Beowulf: In blank verse by Richard Hamer

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Nostalgia, Outsiders and "Rubber Tramps" Feb 25, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Joyce Carol Oates to talk about the minimalist beauty in the photographs of Walker Evans, and his austere approach to his art. Colin Grant discusses the new film Nomadland, a blend of fact and fiction about US citizens who take to the road when they realize they cannot afford to grow old...and we look through a science fiction dictionary and check up on the latest writing by robots.

Walker Evans: Starting from scratch by Svetlana Alpers

Nomadland, on Hulu - UK release April 2021

www.the-tls.co.uk

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Weapons, Grouse and Red Herrings Feb 18, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, to discuss the rise of Bellingcat, an investigative body, started in one man’s bedroom in 2014, now able to get to the bottom of even the murkiest global events; Dante, Dante, Dante…. and Anne Weber’s epic of Annette Beaumanoir; and who was Keats’s mysterious Mrs Jones? The biographer Jonathan Bate shares a theory.

We Are Bellingcat: An intelligence agency for the people by Eliot Higgins

Dante by John Took

Annette, Ein Heldinnen Epos / Epic Annette by Anne Weber

‘Cherchez la femme’ – Keats and Mrs Jones, by Jonathan Bate in the TLS

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Tentatively Pressing Feb 11, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Cal Revely-Calder, who finds that, in Samuel Beckett Studies, jargon and certainty too often crowd out impressions of the work and the importance of ‘knowing what you don’t know’; Alice Wadsworth brings snippets of interest from this week’s TLS, including ‘women who wouldn’t wait’ and Borges in Inverness; and Ruth Scurr on the history of the secretive, ritual-loving Freemasons.

Beckett’s Political Imagination by Emilie Morin

Samuel Beckett and the Visual Arts by Conor Carville

The Craft: How the Freemasons made the modern world, by John Dickie

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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The Barbara Comyns revival Feb 04, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Avril Horner, author of a biography of Barbara Comyns whose quirky, menace-laced novels, long championed by Graham Greene, are finding their way back to us; a new poem by John Kinsella, 'Villanelle of Star-Picket-Hopping Red-Capped Robin'; and En Liang Khong describes the powerful pull – particularly difficult to resist during lockdown – of the fantasy urban landscapes portrayed in video games and anime

Several novels by Barbara Comyns, including: 'Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead', 'Mr Fox', 'Sisters by a River', 'The House of Dolls' and 'The Vet's Daughter'

'The legend and the crazy novelist: Graham Greene’s role in Barbara Comyns’s writing career' by Avril Horner

Virtual Cities: An atlas and exploration of video game cities, by Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Anime Architecture: Imagined worlds and endless megacities, by Stefan Riekeles

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BONUS: David Baddiel - Jews Don't Count Jan 29, 2021

The writer and comedian David Baddiel has written a book called 'Jews Don't Count', which explores the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism. Here, he talks to Toby Lichtig about how and why one of the most persecuted minorities in history continues to be overlooked

'Jews Don't Count' by David Baddiel

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Borges - Encounters and "Encounters" Jan 28, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by David Gallagher to discuss two new books about Jorge Luis Borges – one a collection of essays and remembrances by the great Latin American writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the other a more curious offering by the American writer and critic Jay Parini; David Baddiel on the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism; Alice Wadsworth and Lucy Dallas on food podcasts and the French comedy-drama Call My Agent!

Medio siglo con Borges, by Mario Vargas Llosa (published in Spain by Alfaguara)

Borges and Me: An encounter, by Jay Parini

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel

'The Sporkful' and 'Off Menu' available on podcast platforms

Call My Agent!, Netflix

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Delicate Matters Jan 21, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Clifford Thompson to discuss One Night in Miami, a film by Regina King, which sees Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay gather for heated debate; from exclusivity and luxury in imperial China to cheap ubiquity in modern day Europe, Norma Clarke considers the rise and fall of porcelain; plus, a new poem by Anne Carson, “Sure, I Was Loved”

One Night in Miami, dir. Regina King

The City of Blue and White: Chinese porcelain and the early modern world by Anne Gerritsen

Porcelain: A history from the heart of Europe by Suzanne L . Marchand

“Sure, I Was Loved” by Anne Carson, in this week’s TLS

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Epiphanies and Kidneys Jan 14, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard, who, via an old exam paper, emphasizes the importance of teaching Classics in context (Q1: "Dryads, Hyads, Naiads, Oreads, Pleiads … Does 'Classical influence' in modern poetry always come down to snobbery and elitism?”); Zachary Leader reports on the latest offerings from the Joyce Industry; and Jane O'Grady considers how the Enlightenment undid itself.

James Joyce and the Matter Of Paris, by Catherine Flynn

James Joyce and the Jesuits, by Michael Mayo

Panepiphanal World: James Joyce’s epiphanies, by Sangam Macduff

The Enlightenment: The pursuit of happiness 1680–1790, by Ritchie Robertson

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This is Pakistan Jan 07, 2021

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the Karachi-based journalist Sanam Maher to discuss cliché and originality in foreign correspondents' writing on Pakistan; a whistle-stop tour through (some) of the books of 2021; Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in the British Library's Women Writers series, dedicated to once-popular writers

The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a divided nation, by Declan Walsh

O, the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair

Chatterton Square by E. H. Young

Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim

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Jacques Tati’s Serious Gags Dec 17, 2020

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to marvel at a five-volume, “definitive” study of the iconic French filmmaker Jacques Tati, every aspect of whose apparently chaotic cinematic universe was controlled to the nth degree; Calum Mechie considers some new approaches to the life and legacy of George Orwell; and – “Can we take it? Can Dickens take it?” – ’tis the season for adaptations of A Christmas Carol…

The Definitive Jacques Tati, edited by Alison Castle

On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A biography by D. J. Taylor

Orwell: A man of our time by Richard Bradford

Becoming George Orwell: Life and letters, legend and legacy, by John Rodden

Eileen: The making of George Orwell, by Sylvia Topp

Subscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/

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Stalin, little and large Dec 10, 2020

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig are joined by Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London, to discuss two important biographies of Joseph Stalin, covering the opposite ends of the dictator’s life; the debate around the official Home Office history of Britain, a document full of omissions and riddled with errors, rolls on; and can a book make you a better person? Can even the high modernists be mined for lessons in life? Joanna Scutts considers the relationship between 'serious' literature and self-help.

Stalin: Passage to revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny

Late Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. Savage

The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth Blum

Reading for Life by Philip Davis

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Beethoven at 250 Dec 03, 2020

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Griffiths, the author most recently of the novel Mr Beethoven, to discuss the heroic oeuvre of the great composer, 250 years after his birth; Joseph Farrell takes us through the life and work of Gianni Rodari, a kind of Italian George Orwell transplanted to Neverland.

Selected books:

Beethoven's Conversation Books, translated and edited by Theodore Albrecht

Beethoven's Lives by Lewis Lockwood

Beethoven: A Life by Jan Caeyers

Beethoven: A life in nine pieces, by Laura Tunbridge

– read the full piece here

Telephone Tales, by Gianni Rodari, translated by Antony Shugaar

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BONUS: 2020 Booker Prize Winner - Douglas Stuart Nov 27, 2020

In this special bonus episode, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart about his 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain

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Neither Victims nor Perpetrators Nov 26, 2020

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Colin Grant, the author of Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush generation, to discuss Small Axe, a series of films by Steve McQueen that centres on Black British life between the 1960s and 80s; and the author and musician Wesley Stace tells the story of the “real” James Bond, a celebrated ornithologist whose "dull" name was poached by Ian Fleming.

Plus, the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart, the winner of this year’s Booker Prize for fiction

Small Axe, BBC One, BBC iPlayer

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

The Real James Bond: A true story of identity theft, avian intrigue and Ian Fleming, by Jim Wright

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Gagged with Ashes Nov 19, 2020

Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Mark Glanville to mark the centenary of the birth of Paul Celan, probably the most important post-war German-language poet, by revisiting the early poems in light of his later transformation; and Margaret Drabble considers the literature of urban walking, via the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells and other metropolitan ramblers.

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The collected earlier poetry: A bilingual edition, translated by Pierre Joris

Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous prose, translated by Pierre Joris

Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan, by Jean Daive, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

The Walker: On finding and losing yourself in the modern city, by Matthew Beaumont

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Books of the Year 2020 Nov 12, 2020

Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by two TLS editors, David Horspool and Toby Lichtig, to discuss books that have sustained and stimulated over the past twelve months, as selected by sixty-five writers from around the world; and we discuss the controversy surrounding a long-awaited statue of – or "for" – Mary Wollstonecraft.

Read the TLS's Books of the Year feature here [https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2020/]

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You Have Fixed Me Nov 05, 2020

As Remembrance Day approaches, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Éadaoín Lynch to remember fully and truthfully the relationship between the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; and the TLS's sports editor David Horspool talks us through a couple of books on professional game playing, including a football memoir of obsession and crucial omissions by Arsène Wenger.

My Life in Red and White by Arsène Wenger

This Sporting Life: Sport and liberty in England, 1760–1960 by Robert Colls

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Terrifyingly True (or Not) Oct 29, 2020

Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Lucy Scholes to revisit the work of the master of terror Shirley Jackson and review the new film Shirley (“about as far from a traditional biopic as you can get”); and Jane Darcy grapples with the neither quite Romantic nor quite Victorian Thomas De Quincey, whose life-writing paved the way for the autobiografiction to come

Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker (various cinemas / Hulu)

Thomas De Quincey: Selected writings, edited by Robert Morrison

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Classical music conductors: Overpaid, oversexed and over the hill? Oct 27, 2020

In a special bonus podcast we bring you an episode of Stories of our times that we think you might enjoy.

The Times's chief music critic, Richard Morrison muses over whether a combination of the coronavirus, environmental concerns and the MeToo movement will be the end of the 'maestro' - the classical music conductor - as we know it.

Guest: Richard Morrison, Times chief culture critic and music writer.

Host: David Aaronovitch.

Clips used: Metropolitan Opera, Aurora Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Hendon Band YouTube Channel, ABC News, Washington Post, NBC News.

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Out Caravaggio-ing Caravaggio Oct 22, 2020

The critic and novelist Elizabeth Lowry joins Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig to discuss the Italian Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London, a painter whose Life is as dramatic and moving as her art; and Toby reviews new fiction steeped in dread, paranoia and failure, including a short work by Don DeLillo and the debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman

Artemisia – National Gallery, London, until January 24, 2021

The Silence by Don DeLillo

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

Reality: And other stories by John Lanchester

Why Visit America by Matthew Baker

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Dancing on Air Oct 15, 2020

From a ballet stream to Homer's wine-dark sea. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the historian and critic Judith Flanders to review the return of dance with new offerings from the Akram Khan Company and the Royal Ballet, and the novelist and poet Will Eaves returns to the Odyssey to explore the nature of memory.

Back on Stage – The Royal Ballet, available online until November 8th

The Silent Burn Project – Akram Khan Company

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer – Barbican, until January 2021, then at the V&A Dundee

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Milk as Metaphor Oct 08, 2020

From a carvery lunch in Howards End to emotional Eurocrats. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Norma Clarke to discuss the role in literary creation of food and its increasingly fraught means of production, and Russell Williams reports on the bookshops of Paris during lockdown and reviews the new novel by a totemic figure in French literature, Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

The Literature of Food: An introduction from 1830 to present by Nicola Humble

Farm to Form: Modernist literature and ecologies of food in the British Empire by Jessica Martell

Read My Plate: The literature of food by Deborah R. Geis

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food, edited by J. Michelle Coghlan

Les Émotions by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

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Seduction and Uprisings Oct 01, 2020

From Ovid to the "Black Spartacus". Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's classics editor Mary Beard to pick apart the story of "seduction", ancient and modern, the poet Fiona Benson reads her latest work, and the TLS's history editor David Horspool explores two accounts of America's domestic slave trade and a new biography of Toussaint Louverture.

Strange Antics: A history of seduction by Clement Knox

Williams’ Gang: A notorious slave trader and his cargo of Black convicts by Jeff Forret

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A true story of slavery and restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel

Black Spartacus: The epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh

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Murder at the Opera Sep 24, 2020

From Poirot on the River Nile to Verdi's take on the infamous Scottish play. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas talk to writer Laura Thompson about the work of Agatha Christie and how she managed to move with the times, and Professor Larry Wolff joins us from Florence to discuss the tentative return of live opera in Italy with Verdi's Macbeth at the Parma Verdi Festival.

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Books! Books! Books! Sep 16, 2020

Toby Lichtig talks us through this year's Booker shortlisted novels, plus a couple of others, and Lucy Dallas reports on the French scene (where real life and fiction blur...); finally, we explore the situation in Israel and Palestine from three rather different perspectives.

An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces made a nation by Haim Bresheeth-Zabner

The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine campus debate by Kenneth S. Stern

The new peace? – Israel’s unexpected ray of light by Ari Shavit – www.the-TLS.co.uk

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Sex and the City of Ladies Sep 09, 2020

In 1405, Christine de Pisan took up the pen in defense of her maligned sex, imagining a 'City of Ladies' in which the most virtuous female leaders of history might be preserved from the distortions of misogyny. Six hundred years later, with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great as her guides, the novelist and historian Lisa Hilton revisits the City to shake the foundations of the way we write about power

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The TLS, rewind #4 Aug 26, 2020

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, and today we’re returning to last year’s suggestions. In 2019, our contributor Diana Darke said in the paper: "A lot of things need saving this summer – tangible things like bees, Notre-Dame, water … and intangible things like democracy, humanitarian ideals, community". Among the many subjects under discussion here are Oulipo, impeachment, and climate change.

We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.

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The TLS, rewind #3 Aug 19, 2020

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on books you might have missed. Today we are sauntering back to the summer of 2018, and an episode in which we learnt which books our contributors – including Bernardine Evaristo, Claire Lowdon and Carlo Rovelli – were looking forward to. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.

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The TLS, rewind #2 Aug 12, 2020

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance once again to hear recommendations from our writers and editors, on subjects like Marcel Proust’s letters, tech-ensnared science fiction and Euripides. In this episode, from 2017, there is also an interview with that year’s Man Booker International Prize Winner, David Grossman, and his translator Jessica Cohen. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.

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The TLS, rewind #1 Aug 05, 2020

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on all that good stuff. Today we’re skipping back to 2016’s books of the year recommendations. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.

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Climate change, from 'doomism' to optimism Jul 29, 2020

Gabrielle Walker talks us through three unhelpful attitudes to global warming, as exemplified in the Michael Moore-produced film Planet of the Humans; Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses the complex relationship between charisma and celebrity in the age of Revolution (spoiler: it helps to have a horse)

Planet of the Humans - YouTube

Men on Horseback by David Bell

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Life as a Roman emperor Jul 22, 2020

What style of life did an ancient Roman emperor lead? How did he actually spend his time? Mary Beard fills us in; Frances Wilson on literary couples (and their pet names) and what they can, and can’t, tell us about marriage; Mika Ross-Southall on how gentrification works and who it works for

The Emperor in the Roman World by Fergus Millar

Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and intimacy by Janine Utell

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian marriages by Phyllis Rose

Newcomers: Gentrification and its discontents by Matthew L. Schuerman

Us Versus Them: Race, crime, and gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods by Jan Doering

The Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change, edited by Lisa Berglund and Siobhan Gregory

Alpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich, by Rowland Atkinson

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How the West was written Jul 15, 2020

Geoff Dyer on why Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove was one of the most memorable reading experiences of his life (a taster from his essay: “There was no book and no reader. There was just this world, this huge landscape and its magnificently peopled emptiness”);In April 1939, the black contralto Marian Anderson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and performed to a crowd of 75,000 people. Carol J. Oja sheds light on the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. Read more at the-tls.co.uk

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Romance versus realism Jul 08, 2020

Min Wild on recent attempts to get to grips with that most slippery of beasts, the history of the novel (expect a lively cast, including Frances Burney, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne and Jane Porter); Declan Ryan on where writing overlaps with boxing and the story of the eighteenth-century boxer Daniel Mendoza, known as The Fighting Jew, who made of the sport an art form

Books

Without the Novel: Romance and the history of prose fiction by Scott Black

Revising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from manuscript to print by Hilary Havens

Public Vows: Fictions of marriage in the English Enlightenment by Melissa J. Ganz

Born Yesterday: Inexperience and the early realist novel by Stephanie Insley Hershinow

Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe, edited by Manushag Powell

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, edited by Judith Hawley

Thaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter, edited by Thomas McLean and Ruth Knezevich

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The Pet Shop Boys paradox Jul 01, 2020

Lynsey Hanley on the Pet Shop Boys and how a music duo that has always refused to play the pop game just keeps winning; The TLS’s history editor David Horspool talks us through a selection of articles on medieval history, including a compelling account of Henry III, a pious and peculiar king, who, against the odds, reigned for more than half a century

‘Pet Shop Boys, Literally’ and ‘Pet Shop Boys Versus America’, both by Chris Heath

Blood Royal: Dynastic politics in medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett

Henry III 1207–1258: The rise to power and personal rule by David Carpenter

Westminster Abbey: A church in history, edited by David Cannadine

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Bernardine Evaristo wins again Jul 01, 2020

When, last year the writer and activist Bernardine Evaristo, won the Booker Prize for fiction – becoming in fact, the first black British person to do so – we at the TLS were not surprised. Evaristo has written for us for some years now, and ‘Girl, Woman, Other’, the novel for which the prize was awarded, was only the latest in a run of novels full of life and questions and challenges. And the recognition keeps coming. This week brought two more prizes at the British Book Awards; 'Girl, Woman, Other' won in the Fiction category and Evaristo was named Author of the Year. In this reissued episode of the TLS podcast, recorded just after winning the Booker Prize, the author speaks to our fiction editor Toby Lichtig

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Holiday in the living room Jun 24, 2020

TLS editors pick through the books some of our writers will be reading this summer, and share their own selections.

Visit the-TLS.co.uk to read the 'Summer Books' feature in full

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Don’t forget Edward Earl Johnson Jun 17, 2020

The death row lawyer Clive Stafford Smith certainly can’t, especially as this week should have seen Edward Earl Johnson turn sixty. Instead, in 1987, he was executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary for a crime nobody thinks he committed; Harry Sidebottom considers the ancients’ view on the plague, a serious outbreak of which occurred somewhere around the Mediterranean every ten to twenty years; “If oil is the blood of the global economy, shipping is the circulatory system”, say Tom Stevenson, who describes how the world’s economic and diplomatic relationships play out at sea

Fourteen Days in May – BBC Storyville, on BBC iPlayer

Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and capitalism in the Arabian peninsula by Laleh Khalili

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Finding art in lockdown Jun 10, 2020

What art have we been enjoying in lockdown? What are we most missing? And what is the future of art institutions? The TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas joins us to discuss; Edith Hall tells us about Artemidorus, the author of an ancient dream manual now finally available in English; David Bromwich on democracy and the rise of the strongman

A symposium on art in lockdown by the TLS , plus commentary by Nicholas Kenyon

The Interpretation of Dreams by Artemidorus, translated by Martin Hammond

An Ancient Dream Manual – Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams, by Peter Thonemann

See David Bromich’s round-up of books on the TLS website.

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Slave driver, the table is turn Jun 03, 2020

Colin Grant on several hundred years of Jamaican excellence and dysfunction; fifty years since the death of E. M. Forster, Michael Caines considers Forster’s legacy as a novelist and critic; the poet A. E. Stallings on an Athens slowly emerging from lockdown

The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the postcolonial predicament by Orlando Patterson

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How to be alone May 27, 2020

The poet and novelist Adam Foulds on the evolution of loneliness and its traditionally privileged cousin, solitude; Sam Leith on thrills, spills and racism in Willard Price’s children’s Adventure series; Molly Guinness dips into 300-odd years of children’s books and finds leaden instruction, radical ideas and pure nonsense

A History of Solitude by David Vincent

A Biography of Loneliness: The history of an emotion by Fay Bound Alberti

Discovering Children’s Books, the British Library online

British Literature Catalogue, Peter Harrington

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Townies and gownies May 20, 2020

Hirsh Sawhney files a lockdown dispatch from New Haven, Connecticut, the uneasy home of Yale University; Arin Keeble talks us through the tricksy, rewarding and under-known work of Percival Everett; Lauren Kassel on the history of astrology, one of the oldest, most complex, intellectually powerful – and controversial – sciences

Telephone by Percival Everett

A Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the birth of science by Alexander Boxer

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‘How does it smell?’ May 13, 2020

The TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through a selection of reviews and essays from this week’s issue, including on the future of AI and what Thomas Hobbes, Susan Sontag, Montaigne and the trolley problem can tell us about our present predicament; the novelist Will Eaves re-reads Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, “a caravan of episodes, made up of people going through the same horror in different ways”, and ponders a big-screen adaptation…

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Grotesquely good May 06, 2020

Ian Buruma on the twentieth-century Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, a fascist and a fabulist with a hunger for war and a remarkable way of capturing it; Sue Stuart-Smith on gardening in the trenches of the First World War and the concept of horticultural therapy; to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the TLS's history editor David Horspool talks us through a range of books, articles and essays covering the Second World War

Selected books

Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, by Curzio Malaparte, translated from the Italian and the French by Stephen Twilley

The Well-Gardened Mind: The restorative power of nature, by Sue Stuart-Smith

Dresden: The fire and the darkness, by Sinclair McKay

The Volunteer: The true story of the resistance hero who infiltrated Auschwitz, by Jack Fairweather

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Easy as ABC? Apr 29, 2020

James Waddell on the disorderly history of alphabetic order; Beejay Silcox, who fled Cairo for Western Australia as the coronavirus spread, tells a tale of star-crossed lovers; Jordan Sand gives a short cultural history of mask-wearing

A Place for Everything: The curious history of alphabetical order by Judith Flanders

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Godzilla, the plague, etc Apr 22, 2020

Lawrence Douglas, in Massachusetts, on the presidential past, present and future of Donald Trump; Irina Dumitrescu, in Germany, on books as escape (attempt) and reading the plague into plague-free books; Lucy Dallas presents this month’s round-up of audio / visual offerings

A Very Stable Genius: Donald Trump’s testing of America, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig

Unmaking The Presidency: Donald Trump’s war on the world’s most powerful office, by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes

American Carnage: On the front lines of the Republican civil war and the rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta

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‘It’s not him, it’s us’ Apr 15, 2020

William Shakespeare, the writer who – above all others, perhaps – keeps giving and giving. Michael Caines takes us through the latest research, theories and discoveries (or not, as the case may be); Why do women read more fiction than men? Lucy Scholes returns to the age-old conundrum

Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, stabbings and broken hearts by Kathryn Harkup

Untimely Death in Renaissance Drama by Andrew Griffin

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

Shakespeare and Trump by Jeffrey R. Wilson

‘Infecting the teller – The failure of a mathematical approach to Shakespeare’s authorship’ by Brian Vickers, in this week’s TLS

Why Women Read Fiction: The stories of our lives by Helen Taylor

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Introducing: Stories of our times Apr 13, 2020

Today an edition of our new daily podcast - Stories of our times. Our new free daily news podcast takes you to the heart of the stories that matter, with exclusive access and reporting. Published for the start of your day, it is hosted by Manveen Rana and David Aaronovitch.

If you want to hear more please search for Stories of our times and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

With reading on the rise under the lockdown, TLS editor Stig Abell suggests three books for a little escapism during these uncertain times.

Stories of our times is the new daily podcast from The Times. Listen to more episodes here

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‘A very peculiar telegram’ Apr 08, 2020

Ellen Crowell investigates an early-twentieth-century tale of doomed lesbian romance, decadent cryptography, morphine-induced suicide and more; Richard Smyth on the joys of bird-watching during lockdown; Michael Caines reads his poem “Decadence”

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The kangaroo curve Apr 01, 2020

A recovering Alexander van Tulleken shares some thoughts on the British response to Covid-19; What cultural things are people doing to pass the time in isolation? We asked a selection of our writers, and Lucy Dallas joins us (from what sounds like a small tin box) to pluck at the results

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Tweets, memes and the smell of masculine Mar 26, 2020

Samuel Graydon reviews two new albums, by the folk troubadour Sam Lee and indie rock band Cornershop, both of which offer innovative and intelligent musical perspectives on modern England; the TLS’s arts editor Lucy Dallas presents this month’s ‘Audio/Visual’, a monthly round-up of listening and watching; Josephine Livingstone grapples with the 'omnivore paradox' in the arts sector: why broader tastes in art have not led to wider participation

Featured works

Old Wow by Sam Lee

England is a Garden by Cornershop

Audio: ‘Reply All’, the podcast

Visual: ‘Five Guys a Week’, Channel 4

Entitled: Discriminating tastes and the expansion of the arts by Jennifer C. Lena

Steal as Much as You Can: How to win the culture wars in an age of austerity by Nathalie Olah

Smashing It: Working class artists on life, art and making it happen, edited by Sabrina Mahfouz

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Tales of a century Mar 20, 2020

Tim Parks talks us through the lockdown from Milan; A. N. Wilson explains the Prayer Book Controversy of the 1920s, and why it's a bit like Brexit; and Anna Girling looks back on the - failed - poetic and critical career of Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington, Two volumes, by Vivien Whelpton

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Passion projects Mar 12, 2020

Frances Wilson gets implausibly angry about the hypocrisy of Patrick O’Brian; Michèle Roberts makes the case for the forgotten author of the nineteenth century, George Sand; Miranda Seymour turns literary detective to identify a new work by Ada Lovelace. And Roz Dineen fails to be enticed by cakes.

Romans 1 & 2 George Sand; Edited by José-Luis Diaz and Brigitte Diaz

Patrick O’Brian – A very private life Nikolai Tolstoy

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Absolutely worth the hype Mar 05, 2020

Edmund Gordon discusses whether Hilary Mantel's final Cromwell novel lives up to its billing - and whether, at 900-odd pages, it is the right length; Muriel Zagha looks at the female gaze in French cinema, with respect to the new film Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Irina Dumitrescu talks about how to write well, and when to break the rules

The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma

Why They Can't Write, by John Warner

Writing to Persuade, by Trish Hall

Every Day I Write the Book, by Amitava Kumar

First You Write a Sentence, by Joe Moran

Meander, Spiral, Explode, by Jane Alison

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The Mirror & the Light – an extract from Hilary Mantel's new novel Feb 27, 2020

This week the TLS is running an extract from The Mirror & the Light, the long-awaited third and final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels. In 1538 Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, questions Geoffrey Pole, the youngest son of a great family. Pole is accused of conspiring against Henry VIII and attempting to bring back the old religion and reinstate the Pope as head of the Church. (The Mirror & the Light will be published on March 5 by Fourth Estate. The audio book is published by W F Howes and narrated by Ben Miles.)

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West Side Storyless Feb 27, 2020

James Shapiro, the author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, discusses the history of West Side Story, the most popular and successful Shakespeare musical of all time, and Ivo van Hove's flawed Broadway adaptation; Toby Lichtig reviews Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt and talks us through a selection of Jewish-focused pieces in this week's issue of the TLS; David Horspool, the TLS's history editor and a keen consumer of audiobooks, tells us what he has been listening to this month

West Side Story, directed by Ivo van Hove

Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard, Wyndham's Theatre, London, until June 13

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Vanilla sex in Pompeii Feb 20, 2020

Rebecca Langlands on lessons learnt in the only known ancient Roman brothel; Caroline Moorehead reviews Elena Ferrante's latest novel; Rory Waterman reads a new poem, "Defences" ("'Crikey!' you say. 'It’s gorgeous!'...")

Books:

The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, class, and gender at the margins of Roman society, by Sarah Levin-Richardson

La vita bugiarda degli adulti, by Elena Ferrante

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Anne Enright – a reading from Actress Feb 13, 2020

The Irish novelist reads an extract from her new novel, published in this week's TLS, in print, app and online

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Can't go on. Go on. Feb 13, 2020

Is it the best of times or the worst of times to be a satirist? Madeleine Brettingham, a writer on the BBC's News Quiz, joins us to discuss; Toby Lichtig on a new production of Endgame and the constraints imposed on Samuel Beckett adaptations; founded in the 1960s, the Oulipo was – and remains – a group of writers and scientists striving for "potential literature". Anna Aslanyan considers the movement's legacy

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in print and performance 2016–2019, by Stewart Lee

The Joke is On Us: Political comedy in (late) neoliberal times, edited by Julie A. Webber

Endgame / Rough For Theatre II, at the Old Vic theatre, London

The Oulipo and Modern Thought, by Dennis Duncan

All that is Evident is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963–2018, edited and translated by Daniel Levin Becker and Ian Monk

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Daniel Kehlmann, an interview Feb 06, 2020

One of Germany's most acclaimed novelists talks to Maren Meinhardt about his new novel, Tyll, a vivid account of a seventeenth-century trickster's journey through a Europe ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War.

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Bringing Tolstoy down Feb 06, 2020

Caryl Emerson on Tolstoy’s art, ideas and life, and the extent to which these came together; Benjamin Markovits returns to a treasured childhood book: The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook; Eve Babitz – a “fizzy”, “fabulous” chronicler of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles – is mid revival. Megan Marz fills us in.

Lives and Deaths: Essential stories by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Boris Dralyuk

Leo Tolstoy: A very short introduction by Liza Knapp

Leo Tolstoy by Andrei Zorin

The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax

I Used To Be Charming: The rest of Eve Babitz, edited by Sara J. Kramer

Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the secret history of L.A., by Lili Anolik

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Carrier bag or stick? Jan 30, 2020

Lucy Dallas reports on theories, developments and disputes in the world of science fiction; Lawrence Douglas adds crucial historical context – stretching back to the Middle Ages, in fact – to the current US presidential impeachment; the poet Hannah Sullivan emerges from Princeton University Library with fresh insight into T. S. Eliot's love letters

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin

The Expanse, Volumes 1–8, by James S. A. Corey

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Byron's oddness Jan 23, 2020

Did Byron have an eating disorder? Mummy issues? Daddy issues? Does it matter? Emily A. Bernhard Jackson joins us to discuss; Stanley Donwood, the artist and designer of Radiohead's record covers, makes the case for this most democratic of artforms; Keith Miller on the work of the designer and architect Charlotte Perriand, a high-minded high modernist whose life spanned the whole of the twentieth century

The Private Life of Lord Byron by Antony Peattie

Charlotte Perriand: Complete works, by Jacques Barsac

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Bonus episode: Five women, one radical address Jan 16, 2020

Between 1916 and 1940, Mecklenburgh Square was home to the poet and novelist HD, the detective novelist Dorothy Sayers, the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, the historian and activist Eileen Power, and, finally, Virginia Woolf, who saw it reduced to rubble. Francesca Wade, the author of 'Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars', talks to Thea Lenarduzzi about what drew the women to this small pocket of Bloomsbury. Read an exclusive extract from 'Square Haunting' in this week's TLS, in print and online. 'Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on how to read' is available to purchase via the TLS website.

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Huge stars in a minor key Jan 16, 2020

Muriel Zagha reviews Marriage Story and considers a few other deserving/undeserving films either lauded or ignored by this year's awards panels; a clip from an interview with Francesca Wade, the author of Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars (you'll find the full interview in your podcast feed); this month marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anne Brontë, the sister whose reputation has been slowest to blossom but who, according to Samantha Ellis, was the most radical and modern of them all

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Seen and not heard? Jan 09, 2020

Sanam Maher looks at how Muslim women are viewed in the West; Claire Lowdon finds puzzles and philosophy but no pleasure in J. M. Coetzee's recent work; Alan Jenkins explains the significance of the recently opened archive of T. S. Eliot's letters; Jeffrey Wainwright reads his poem "If all this did begin"

Books

From Victims to Suspects: Muslim women since 9/11 by Shakira Hussein

It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim women on faith, feminism, sexuality and race, edited by Mariam Khan

The Death of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee

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Apples and oranges in space Jan 02, 2020

Sam Graydon grapples with quantum physics and the subatomic world; Elaine Showalter considers the 'startlingly racy, contradictory, emblematic' E. Nesbit, the 'first modern writer for children'; Which out-of-print books should be back in circulation and why? Roz Dineen presents the results of a TLS symposium

Books

Six Impossible Things: The ‘quanta of solace’ and the mysteries of the subatomic world, by John Gribbin

Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The search for what lies beyond the quantum, by Lee Smolin

The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘The Railway Children’, by Eleanor Fitzsimons

The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘Five Children and It’ and ‘The Railway Children’, by Elisabeth Galvin

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The decade that was Dec 19, 2019

TLS editors gather to consider some of the decade’s major cultural shifts and events, with specialist insights from Mary Beard on academia, Beejay Silcox on fiction and Zoe Williams on gender

Go to the-tls.co.uk for the full twelve-page retrospective.

For the competition, Barbican membership Terms and Conditions can be found here: https://www.barbican.org.uk/join-support/membership#faqs. The competition closes December 31, 2019. Good luck.

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Haunted by Miss Austen Dec 12, 2019

A newly discovered, pseudonymously signed mock-letter to the editor of 'The Lady’s Magazine' in 1823 tells the story of a wannabe writer who is visited by the "gentle spirit of Miss Austen". Not only might the letter offer new information on what Austen might actually have been like, says Devoney Looser, it is also the first piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan fiction; Anna Picard discusses the poet Anne Boyer’s memoir of modern illness and considers the intersections of literature and cancer; Jonathan Lynn shares memories of adventures with his cousin Oliver Sacks

For more on the Jane Austen story, go to www.the-tls.co.uk

'The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care' by Anne Boyer

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The Iron Lady and the judo politician Dec 05, 2019

Norma Clarke considers the third and final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher; having spent the past twenty years reporting on Russia, Owen Matthews tries to put his finger on why Vladimir Putin may prove to be one of the most successful political leaders of our era

Books

The Code of Putinism by Brian Taylor

Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the rest by Angela Stent

The Putin System: An opposing view by Grigory Yavlinsky

Kremlin Winter: Russia and the second coming of Vladimir Putin by Robert Service

The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev, translated by Stephen Dalziel

We Need To Talk about Putin: How the West gets him wrong by Mark Galeotti

Dealing with the Russians by Andrew Monaghan

Putin v. the People: The perilous politics of a divided Russia by Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson

Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The path from market economy to kleptocracy by Anders Åslund

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Books of the Year, 2019 Nov 28, 2019

It's that time again... TLS contributors and editors share recommendations from a year of reading

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Hallie Rubenhold – an interview Nov 28, 2019

The author of 'The Five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper', which won the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, speaks to Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi

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Elizabeth Strout – an interview Nov 21, 2019

Just over ten years since introducing readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Oliver Kitteridge, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout reprises the character in a new novel, ‘Olive, Again’. Here, Strout talks to the TLS’s Roz Dineen about the craft of writing, why Olive has returned, and ageing on the page

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Two phat ladies Nov 21, 2019

“Apart from capitalism itself, is there any cultural and economic manifestation in the world today as ubiquitous, powerful and globalized as football?” John Foot assesses two new studies of the game; just over ten years ago, Elizabeth Strout introduced readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Olive Kitteridge. The novelist speaks to Roz Dineen about bringing Olive back onto the scene; the famously over-the-top cookery show ‘Two Fat Ladies’ last graced our television screens twenty years ago. Anna Girling celebrates the legacy of this unlikely union

‘The Age of Football: The global game in the twenty-first century’ by David Goldblatt

‘Ultra: The underworld of Italian football’ by Tobias Jones

‘Olive, Again’ by Elizabeth Strout

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How to read Nov 14, 2019

TLS editors talk about Virginia Woolf's writing for the TLS, as we publish a collection of the reviews she wrote for us over a period of thirty years; on the eve of George Eliot's bicentennial, Rosemary Ashton talks about how she came to conclusions, moral and otherwise, in her novels; Caryn Rose sees Bruce Springsteen's new film and looks over his 'storied fifty-year career'

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read by Virginia Woolf

Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen, edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and June Skinner Sawyers

Western Stars by Bruce Springsteen

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Cold War machinations Nov 07, 2019

Sarah Lonsdale recounts how writers became enmeshed in national struggles; Jane Yager tells the surprising story of DIY punk in the DDR; we talk to Robert Potts about the pleasures of reading John le Carré ("I was never happier than when I was reading John le Carré")

Cold Warriors: Writers who waged the literary Cold War, by Duncan White

Burning Down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr

Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré

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Morals and mysteries Oct 31, 2019

Michael Caines reports on an unprecedented gathering of work by William Hogarth, “replete with a bitter exuberance, folly finely observed and sin satirized”; “Sometimes a dark and stormy night calls for nothing more innovative than a classic chilling tale.” Joanna Scutts considers three new compendiums of the spooky and the macabre; Les Green makes a case for changing the UK's constitution (writing it down in one place being a good start...)

Hogarth: Place and progress, at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, until January 5, 2020

A Quaint and Curious Volume: Tales and poems of the gothic

Women’s Weird: Strange stories by women, 1890–1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson

Promethean Horrors: Classic tales of mad science, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes

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Magazine love Oct 23, 2019

Having asked a selection of writers to nominate their favourite magazines/journals, for a symposium in this week’s TLS, we pick through the results; as Granta turns forty, Alex Clark dives into the magazine’s archives, recently given to the British Library, and emerges clutching gems and old boots (including meeting minutes and evidence of fantasy commissioning); finally, the novelist and translator Lydia Davis talks us through her Thoreau-inspired approach to gardening

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Bernardine Evaristo – winner of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction Oct 17, 2019

Bernardine Evaristo speaks to the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig about her novel 'Girl, Woman, Other'

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David Greig – revisiting 'Solaris' Oct 17, 2019

Having been staged in Edinburgh and Melbourne, David Greig's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' is now at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre in London. The TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas asks him about returning to this strange story of contact, consciousness and how to avoid using "fremulators" on stage

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Prize controversies Oct 16, 2019

As the Nobel in Literature and the Booker Prize break the rules, split opinion, and (probably) boost sales of a few books, a bunch of TLS editors share their thoughts on the whole endeavour of prize-giving (Michael: "you may as well throw a stone..."); Alexander van Tulleken considers 'War Doctor: Surgery on the front line', David Nott's tales from the operating tables, and floors, of war-torn places; as his stage adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' comes to London, David Greig, the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, talks to the TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas

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How to grow a human Oct 09, 2019

In this bonus edition of the podcast, William Collins have taken over the feed to play a new episode of their podcast, Ideas Matter. In this exclusive extract, science writer Phillip Ball talks to his editor Myles Archibald about the ideas explore in his book, How To Grow A Human.

To subscribe to Ideas Matter and discover more authors by William Collins, click here.

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Patronizing writers of colour Oct 09, 2019

As #PublishingSoWhite continues to shame publishers into diversifying their lists, Colin Grant discusses some of the anxieties and complexities beneath the surface; Andrew Motion on why he keeps returning to William Wordsworth; Kate Miller reads a new poem, "Turned-down"

Wordsworth’s Fun by Matthew Bevis

The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and their year of marvels by Adam Nicolson

Wordsworth’s Poetry: 1815–1845 by Tim Fulford

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Scavenger of eternal truths Oct 02, 2019

Was the 1960s a good decade for Norman Mailer? Thomas Meaney reconsiders the work; Henry Hitchings on Auberon Waugh, anarcho-snob and master of the "vituperative arts"; Toby Lichtig on the vitality of documentary filmmaking

‘Collected Essays of the 1960s’ and ‘Four Books of the 1960s’ by Norman Mailer

A Scribbler in Soho: A celebration of Auberon Waugh, edited by Naim Attallah

Waugh on Wine, by Auberon Waugh

Say What Happened: A story of documentaries, by Nick Fraser

Open City Documentary Festival – opencitylondon.com

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Unsettled by Sontag Sep 25, 2019

Elaine Showalter on the “avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable” Susan Sontag; Patrice Higonnet goes in search of the real Robespierre; A. N. Wilson cuts through class, aristocracy, family and fantasy in Downton Abbey

Sontag: Her life, by Benjamin Moser

Robespierre: L’homme qui nous divise le plus, by Marcel Gauchet

Downton Abbey (Various cinemas)

Almanach de Gotha 2019, two volumes, edited by John James

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The recipe for superstardom Sep 18, 2019

"When future historians study these troubled times, they will marvel at the relentless rise of sea levels, strongman politics and Kardashians." So says Irina Dumitrescu, who joins us to discuss the phenomenon of celebrity, from Sarah Bernhardt to the Kardashian-Jenners; Rafia Zakaria on the murder of the Pakistani social media star Qandeel Baloch, aka "How I'm looking?" girl; Lamorna Ash on 'Bait', a new film about a timeless clash between them and us, set in a small Cornish fishing village

The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus

Kardashian Kulture: How celebrities changed life in the 21st century by Ellis Cashmore

Tweenhood: Femininity and celebrity in tween popular culture by Melanie Kennedy

A Woman Like Her: The short life of Qandeel Baloch by Sanam Maher

Bait by Mark Jenkin, in various cinemas

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Is it too late? Sep 11, 2019

The future of the planet is in question this week, or at least, humanity's place on it, as Gabrielle Walker discusses possible solutions to climate change and why we don't need to panic - yet - but we do need to act, together. The TLS's fiction editor, Toby Lichtig, talks us through the hype and hoopla around Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - and what the book itself is like. And are you Team Scott or Team Zelda? Joanna Scutts looks at 'the messy intertextuality of a marriage', and the question of influence within the Fitzgerald ménage.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change byNathaniel Rich

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

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What do the kids say? Sep 04, 2019

We turn to children's and YA literature in this week's episode, with Rozalind Dineen and Toby Lichtig presenting new releases (as reviewed by a selection of young readers), as well as discussing some of the pros and cons of age-specific reading; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reintroduces J. M. Barrie's classic work Peter Pan, where a wild imagination masks tragic, sometimes disturbing, realities

Alfie On Holiday by Shirley Hughes

The Fate of Fausto: A painted fable by Oliver

The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell

The Burning by Laura Bates

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'We should all be interested in pigeons...' Aug 21, 2019

What kind of son was Philip Larkin? The TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins finds insight in some of the 4,000-odd letters and postcards the poet sent home to his "Mop" and "Pop"; Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, tells us more than we could ever hope to know about pigeons and pigeon fanciers; Norma Clarke considers the internet artist Cold War Steve, whose ‘furious absurdism’ has won him some 192.8K Twitter followers, and ponders connections with the eighteenth-century satires of Hogarth and Gillray

Letters Home, 1936–1977, by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth

Homing: On pigeons, dwellings, and why we return, by Jon Day

Cold War Steve Presents...The Festival of Brexit, by Cold War Steve

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The most expensive mystery of all Aug 14, 2019

The whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi", the most costly artwork in the world, are still uncertain, as is its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. Federico Varese, best known for his studies of the mafia, follows the trail; the TLS's history editor David Horspool considers the inner and outer worlds of Anne Frank’s diary, the actual anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, and a selection of other contributions to this week's special issue; Ladee Hubbard reflects on the late Toni Morrison, who died last week, and considers 'The Pieces I Am', a documentary that highlights Morrison's multifaceted life, work and legacy

The Collected Works, by Anne Frank, translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, Susan Massotty, Mirjam Pressler and Kirsten Warner and edited by Mirjam Pressler

Peterloo: The English uprising by Robert Poole

Legacy: One family, a cup of tea and the company that took on the world, by Thomas Harding

The Pieces I Am, by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

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How to be modern: conspiracy theory, free will and the avant-garde Aug 07, 2019

Jill Lepore traces the history of conspiracy theories and the conditions that allow them to thrive; Tim Crane talks us through whether we have free will or not, and why it is still a problem; Michael Caines looks at non-traditional approaches to criticism

Books

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski

CONSPIRACIES OF CONSPIRACIES: How delusions have overrun America, by Thomas Milan Konda

THE STIGMATIZATION OF CONSPIRACY THEORY SINCE THE 1950s: ‘A plot to make us look foolish’, by Katharina Thalmann

THE AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES AND COVER-UPS: JFK, 9/11, the Fed, rigged elections, suppressed cancer cures, and the greatest conspiracies of our time, by Douglas Cirignano

REPUBLIC OF LIES: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, by Anna Merlan

A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING:The new conspiracism and the assault on democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

HARVESTER OF HEARTS: Motherhood under the sign of Frankenstein, by Rachel Feder

THE HUNDREDS, by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart

TUNNEL VISION, by Kevin Breathnach

ON THE LITERARY MEANS OF REPRESENTING THE POWERFUL AS POWERLESS, by Steven Zultanski

The Limits of Free Will: Selected essays by Paul Russell

Aspects of Agency: Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will by Alfred R. Mele

Self-Determination: The ethics of action – Volume One by Thomas Pink

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‘We don’t know what he has, we don’t know what he’s done with it’ Jul 31, 2019

Following the discovery of a strange book, Sarah Green revises the story of the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson, whose legacy was distorted in the 1950s by a criminal with a taste for fancy bedding; in the US, of 70,000 cases that went to disposition in 2016, more than 99 per cent resulted in conviction. What does this tell us? Clive Stafford Smith explains why American justice is a mirage; since 2015, Refugee Tales – part walking pilgrimage, part protest, part collection of narratives about those unjustly treated by Britain’s immigration system – has become an annual event. David Herd tells us what ground remains to be covered

Doing Justice: A prosecutor’s thoughts on crime, punishment, and the rule of law, by Preet Bharara

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Nature for sale Jul 24, 2019

Nick Groom ponders the fate of the beleaguered British countryside and shares new theories about the economics of the natural world; En Liang Khong takes us through the increasingly global phenomenon of Japanese manga (which translates as “pictures run riot”); Damian Flanagan on Mishima, a writer who yearned to transcend time and identity

Green and Prosperous Land: A blueprint for rescuing the British countryside by Dieter Helm

Who Owns England?: How we lost our green and pleasant land and how to take it back, by Guy Shrubsole

Manga, and exhibition at the British Museum in London

Star, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Sam Bett

The Frolics of the Beasts, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Andrew Clare

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Unromancing the Romantics Jul 17, 2019

"The sociable side of nineteenth-century musical life is not acknowledged as often as it should be..." – Laura Tunbridge discusses the interconnected, complicated and often contradictory myths and realities that link Chopin, Schumann and Brahms; the TLS's music editor Lucy Dallas takes us through a selection of other pieces on music in this week's issue, including new histories of the blues and the poetic pop of Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys; when Irving Sandler wrote his seminal history of abstract expressionism, he neglected to mention Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan and Elaine de Kooning – Jenni Quilter joins us to put these artists back in the frame

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five painters and the movement that changed modern art, by Mary Gabriel

Fryderyk Chopin: A life and times by Alan Walker

Schumann: The faces and masks by Judith Chernaik

Brahms in Context, edited by Natasha Loges and Katy Hamilton

(with Liebeslieder Walzer, Opus 52, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra)

Up Jumped the Devil: The real life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow

The Original Blues: The emergence of the Blues in African American vaudeville, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff

One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem by Neil Tennant

How To Be Invisible by Kate Bush

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Loving Iris Murdoch Jul 10, 2019

It’s the centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch, the novelist-philosopher who dominated the literary pages for much of the twentieth century. Where do we stand on her now? Michael Caines and Frances Wilson discuss; This was the week that the US women’s football team won the World Cup. Devoney Looser, the roller derby queen of academia, enjoys “a brief opportunity to revel in America’s better strengths”.

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Who reads John Updike? Jul 03, 2019

Do the kids – in these times of identity politics – still read Updike? The answer is “probably not”. But should they? Claire Lowdon makes the case; Toby Lichtig discusses Chelsea Manning, the US Army data analyst turned whistle-blower, and a new documentary on her life; Eric Rauchway considers the prevalence of pro-Nazi feeling and policy in 1940s America and beyond

Novels 1959–1965: The Poorhouse Fair, Rabbit, Run, The Centaur, Of the Farm, by John Updike (Library of America)

XY Chelsea, directed by Tim Travers Hawkins

Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s supporters in the United States, by Bradley Hart

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a village caught in between, by Michael Dobbs

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Talk to the hands Jun 26, 2019

Thea Lenarduzzi on the cultural history of gesture and body language; What is Chaucer to us today? When did he become known as the "Father of English poetry", and what did he get up to when he was not writing rude and memorable poetry? Julia Boffey explains; the Stonewall uprising in New York is remembered as a pivotal moment in LGBTQ rights – fifty years on, Hugh Ryan revisits the history

Books

Dictionary of Gestures: Expressive comportments and movements in use around the world by François Caradec

Silent History: Body language and nonverbal identity, 1860–1914, by Peter K. Andersson

The Stonewall Riots: A documentary history, edited by Marc Stein

The Stonewall Reader, edited by the New York Public Library

Pride: Photographs after Stonewall by Fred W. McDarrah

Love and Resistance: Out of the closet into the Stonewall era, edited by Jason Baumann

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Summer Books 2019 Jun 19, 2019

TLS contributors – including David Baddiel, Mary Beard, Paul Muldoon and Elizabeth Lowry – give their seasonal reading recommendations; TLS editors wreak havoc and suggest their own. (Visit the-tls.co.uk to read the summer books feature in full.)

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Russian greats and fictional eats Jun 12, 2019

A "new" ending to a Nabokov novel and the unregarded first volume of Vasily Grossman's epic, the "Soviet War and Peace"; Rebecca Reich guides us through these and the question of whether the West is paranoid about Russia or vice versa; Laura Freeman joins us to talk about dinner with the Durrells and pond life sandwiches.

Books

Stalingrad: A novel by Vasily Grossman

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

Plots against Russia by Eliot Borenstein

The Russia Anxiety by Mark B. Smith

Dining with the Durrells by David Shimwell

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Ethical economics Jun 05, 2019

If capitalism is broken, can it be fixed? And can it save the environment? Joseph E. Stiglitz discusses; as we mark seventy-five years since the D-Day landings, William Boyd considers a brilliant new "worm's-eye view" of historical events; a decade after leaving academia for the "wilderness of writing", Stephen Marche returns to report on the troubled field of the humanities

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the new anxieties by Paul Collier

Capitalism: The future of an illusion by Fred L. Block

Money and Government: A challenge to mainstream economics by Robert Skidelsky

Normandy ’44: D-Day and the battle for France by James Holland

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Celestial Bodies – winner of the 2019 Man Booker International prize for fiction May 29, 2019

The Omani novelist Jokha al-Harthi and the translator Marilyn Booth won this year's Man Booker International prize for fiction in translation, for the novel Celestial Bodies, an account of three sisters living in the village of al-Awafi in an Oman on the brink of change. A couple of days after the announcement, at Waterstones book shop in Piccadilly, the winners spoke to the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak about the novel, Arabic culture and modernisation, translation, and women’s wisdom.

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Weighty matters May 29, 2019

Anna Katharina Schaffner on the cultural history of fat and fat phobia; the TLS's travel editor Catharine Morris on why Paris will always be disappointing, the solitude of open spaces, and the problem with "Victor" the archetypal travel writer; an extract from the 2019 Man Booker International prize-winning Celestial Bodies by Jokha al-Harthi, read by the novel's translator Marilyn Booth

Books

Fat: A cultural history of the stuff of life by Christopher E. Forth

The Truth About Fat by Anthony Warner

Fearing the Black Body: The racial origins of fat phobia by Sabrina Strings

We’ll Never Have Paris, edited by Andrew Gallix

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

Heida: A shepherd at the edge of the world by Steinunn Sigurðardóttir and Heiða Ásgeirsdóttír, translated by Philip Roughton

Where the Hornbeam Grows: A journey in search of a garden by Beth Lynch

The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, edited by Nandini Das and Tim Youngs

Celestial Bodies by Jokha al-Harthi, translated by Marilyn Booth

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Victoria at 200 May 22, 2019

To mark the bicentenary of Queen Victoria's birth, the TLS's history editor David Horspool guides us through all manner of Victorian matters, including the Widow of Windsor's mastery of soft power, how different things might have been had she been born a boy, how the Victorians amused themselves, and the Rebecca Riots; we also have a symposium in this week's paper, asking writers and thinkers – including Steven Pinker and Bernardine Evaristo – to tell us about the important books from their childhoods. To discuss this – and to share our own youthful reading – we're joined in the studio by a [insert collective noun here] of TLS editors

Go to www.the-tls.co.uk/ to read a selection of articles from our Victorian special issue, and much more.

Our symposium was prompted by an initiative – Books To Inspire – launched by Hay Festival Wales, aiming to compile a crowd-sourced list of titles to inspire the next generation. Find out more at hayfestival.com

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Knowing laughter May 15, 2019

The comedian and writer Helen Lederer joins us to discuss gender and comedy and the new Comedy Women In Print Prize; Lucy Dallas considers a clutch of novels in which animals might offer a little respite from human company; the TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through the riches of this week’s philosophy issue, including how the advent of biological immortality might augur “the greatest inequality experienced in all human history” and what happened when Michel Foucault took LSD in Death Valley

To Leave with the Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, translated by Sophie Lewis

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini, translated by Michael F. Moore

“The last mortals: why we are especially unfortunate to die, when our near-descendants could be immortal", by Regini Rini – see this week’s TLS (in print and online)

Foucault in California: A true story, wherein the great French philosopher drops acid in the Valley of Death by Simeon Wade

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Journey to the centre of the earth May 08, 2019

Robert Macfarlane joins us to discuss our "peculiar times", the memory of ice, and the world beneath out feet; Margie Orford brings our attention to South Africa at a crucial moment in its history, twenty-five years since the first democratic election and as another makes its mark; Nicola Shulman offers a new theory about race in Disney's original Dumbo, from 1941

Underland: A deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

The Café de Move-on Blues: In search of the new South Africa by Christopher Hope

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To infinities – and beyond May 01, 2019

As Avengers: Endgame is released, Roz Kaveney sweeps us through the shifting cast of superheroes and, latterly, heroines that populate the Marvel Universe, considers the evolving politics of the comic-book film, and answers the question on (some) people's lips: "but why...?"; Imogen Russell Williams's introduces some of the best writing on LGBTQ themes for children and young adults

Avengers: Endgame

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag Hood

Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen

Proud: Stories, poetry and art on the theme of pride, compiled by Juno Dawson

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The life-writing issue Apr 24, 2019

Ruth Scurr on the master biographer Robert A. Caro, whose subjects include Robert Moses, Lyndon B. Johnson and, now, himself; Dmitri Levitin talks us through Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, an eccentric and often inaccurate guide to early thinkers; Why bother with literary criticism? Whither this generation's Lionel Trilling? Michael LaPointe joins us to discuss

Working: Researching, interviewing, writing by Robert A. Caro

American Audacity: In defense of literary daring by William Giraldi

Hater: On the virtues of utter disagreeability by John Semley

Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius, translated by Pamela Mensch

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As we like it Apr 17, 2019

There is only one author to whom the TLS devotes an issue every year: William Shakespeare. Michael Caines talks us through the latest theories, research and reviews; Ian McEwan discusses his new novel, Machines Like Me

‘Still a giddy neighbour’ – Shakespeare’s parish in the 1590s, by Geoffrey Marsh, the TLS

The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of interpretation in Renaissance England, edited by Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole

Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in longing, by Claire McEachern

Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama, by Lieke Stelling

What Blest Genius?: The Jubilee that made Shakespeare, by Andrew McConnell Stott

Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence: Politics, print and alteration, 1642–1700, by Emma Depledge

Shakespeare: The theatre of our world, by Peter Conrad

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Cape)

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Ian McEwan – an interview Apr 17, 2019

The novelist discusses his new book Machines Like Me with the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig

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Youth injustice system Apr 10, 2019

Shauneen Lambe on ephibiphobia, fear of the teenager, and why we get youth justice wrong; Alice Bloch considers new possibilities at the frontiers of sex and robotics; George Berridge explains why now is the time to take out shares in the novelist Max Porter

Why Children Follow Rules: Legal socialization and the development of legitimacy by Tom R. Tyler and Rick Trinkner

James Garbarino

Miller’s Children: Why giving teenage killers a second chance matters for all of us by James Garbarino

Turned On: Science, sex and robots by Kate Devlin

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, adapted by Enda Walsh (Barbican Theatre, before heading to New York)

Lanny by Max Porter

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Whitechapel and Weimar Apr 03, 2019

Anna Picard discusses the problems of subject matter and sensationalism in the new opera Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel; Anna Vaux talks us through the Bauhaus school and its global influence, as well as Lucian Freud's compulsion to create and control

Books

Jack the Ripper:The Women of Whitechapel by Iain Bell, ENO, until April 12

Walter Gropius: Visionary founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy

Josef Albers: Life and work by Charles Darwent

Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford

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A deep history of Europe Mar 28, 2019

Richard Fortey takes us on an energetic sprint through 65 million years of Europe's complex biological history; David Robey introduces the life and work of Emilio Salgari, the Italian Rider Haggard; Ella Baron, the TLS's regular cartoonist, discusses her work, including this week's European cover.

Books

Europe: A natural history by Tim Flannery

Emilio Salgari: Una mitologia moderna tra letteratura, politica, società (volumes I and II) by Ann Lawson Lucas

Ella Baron's work will be exhibited at Christie's in London, from April 5 to 10

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Forgotten, not gone Mar 21, 2019

Carol Tavris considers new approaches to the old problem of old age (and the newer problem of old old age); as secularism wanes on the global scale, Rupert Shortt considers whether religion does more harm than good

Books

Bolder: Making the most of our longer lives by Carl Honoré

Borrowed Time: The science of how and why we age by Sue Armstrong

Retirement and Its Discontents: Why we won’t stop working, even if we can by Michelle Pannor Silver

Women Rowing North: Navigating life’s currents and flourishing as we age by Mary Pipher

On the Brink of Everything: Grace, gravity and getting old by Parker J. Palmer

This Chair Rocks: A manifesto against ageism by Ashton Applewhite

Does Religion do More Harm than Good? by Rupert Shortt

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Dave Eggers: The violations start with us Mar 14, 2019

“What we often forget in the daily drumbeat of abuses by the dominant tech companies is our complicity in these abuses, and in the fundamental and unsettling ways the internet has changed every one of us.”

As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enters its seventieth anniversary, Dave Eggers, in the 2018 PEN H. G. Wells lecture, argues that urgent amendments are needed to mitigate the corrosive effects of technology on the societal and the personal. You can read an edited extract from the lecture on the TLS website.

This is a recording of an event that took place on December 16, 2018, at the Bridge Theatre, London.

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O, the Edward Gorey of it all Mar 14, 2019

Phil Baker guides us through the morbid, wistful and yet immensely charming world of the writer and illustrator Edward Gorey; Frances Wilson weighs the pleasures and pains of letter and email writing; Ian Sansom on the struggle to be funny

Books

Born To Be Posthumous: The eccentric life and mysterious genius of Edward Gorey, by Mark Dery

What a Hazard a Letter Is: The strange destiny of the unsent letter, by Caroline Atkins

Written In History: Letters that changed the world, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

In Their Own Words: Volume 2: More letters from history

Wit's End: What wit is, how it works, and why we need it, by James Geary

Messing About In Quotes: A little Oxford dictionary of humorous quotations, compiled by Gyles Brandreth

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A nose is a nose is a nose… Mar 07, 2019

David Coward celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, whose radical thought has long been obscured by his protuberant nose; Muriel Zagha on Molière, France’s most famous playwright, and a bold new adaptation of Tartuffe; finally, a poem by Stephen Knight: “Rail Replacement Bus Service” (sigh)

Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’, a new version by John Donnelly, at the National Theatre, London

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Unsilenced voices Feb 28, 2019

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas

Toby Lichtig comes in to talk the wide scope of Jewish culture, the “lachrymose” theory of history and why it is Arthur Miller time once more. Roz Dineen deals with porn, pile-ons and goop podcasts. And we call Thea when she is “working from home” to check in on her new dog.

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Half glitzy, half dowdy Feb 21, 2019

The writer and comedian Charlie Higson, half of the team behind The Fast Show, on the curious history of comedy written and performed by pairs; the novelist Margaret Drabble considers the dizzying new releases from the estate of Anthony Burgess, the man Philip Larkin once called “the Batman of contemporary letters”

Texts

Stan & Ollie, directed by Jon S. Baird

Morecambe & Wise: 50 years of sunshine, by Gary Morecambe

The Double Act: A history of British comedy duos, by Andrew Roberts

Soupy Twists!: The full, official story of the sophisticated silliness of Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, by Jem Roberts

Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess, edited by Graham Foster

Puma by Anthony Burgess, edited by Paul Wake

The Black Prince by Adam Roberts

Obscenity and the Arts, a talk by Anthony Burgess, edited by Johnny Walsh

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Zadie Smith, in conversation Feb 21, 2019

A conversation between the novelist and essayist Zadie Smith and the journalist Carolina, recorded at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia earlier this month. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: the inaugural Gabriel García Márquez lecture Feb 14, 2019

A recording of the inaugural Gabriel García Marquez lecture given this February by the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org

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Narratives of sexual assault Feb 14, 2019

As the MeToo movement continues to focus our attentions on questions around abuse, consent and justice, Rebecca Watson joins us to discuss the various and prolonged impacts of sexual assault, and the warping effect of trauma on narrative; the TLS’s French editor Adrian Tahourdin considers the inexorable rise of “le globish” (by which English words supplant, or pervert, French ones), and presents the diverse and challenging books in contention for this year’s Society of Author’s Translation Prizes

Books

Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture, edited by Roxane Gay

A False Report: A true story by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

On Rape by Germaine Greer

The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli, translated by Luke Leafgren

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell

Kruso by Lutz Seiler, translated by Tess Lewis

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How Macron went wrong Feb 07, 2019

Eighteen months after Emmanuel Macron rode a wave of optimism to the Élysée Palace, the French are rioting and the President's approval ratings are desperately low – Sudhir Hazareesingh tells us what went wrong; James O'Brien reflects on another week of Brexit bafflement; Laura Freeman introduces the "Hungry Novel", a sub-genre of the post-war British novel in which writers, subsisting on meagre rations of stodge and tinned goods, channelled their appetites into their prose

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‘American Standard’, a new poem by Paul Muldoon Jan 31, 2019

Read by Lisa Dwan. Full text available at the-tls.co.uk

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Everything points north Jan 31, 2019

Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction

Books

The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter

Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson

Section 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode)

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Reddit's new religions Jan 24, 2019

Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done"

Books

White Feather by Catherine and David MacPhail

The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay

An Anty-War Story by Tony Ross

Only One of Me by Lisa Wells and Michelle Robinson (illustrated by Tim Budgen and Catalina Echeverri)

The Afterwards by A. F. Harrold and Emily Gravett

We Are the Nerds: The birth and tumultuous life of Reddit, the internet's culture laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

The Travellers Club: A bicentennial history (1819–2019) by John Martin Robinson

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Egos and experiments Jan 17, 2019

Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs...

Books

Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank Wynne

The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment by Gina Perry

The Hope Circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism by Martin Seligman

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Finer points of murder Jan 10, 2019

Tom Stevenson offers a recent history of political assassination, from a CIA manual of 1953 to the Jamal Khashoggi affair; The literary achievements of Nancy Cunard have long been eclipsed by her image as the archetypal flapper-muse of the roaring 1920s – as Anna Girling reveals a previously unknown short story (published for the first time in this week's TLS), we reassess Cunard's legacy; Who killed Edwin Drood? In 1914, faced with Dickens's final, unfinished novel, prominent literary types gathered to stage the trial of Drood's alleged killer – Pete Orford tells us more...

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Icons familiar and unfamiliar Jan 03, 2019

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas

Lara Pawson drops in to tell the tale of David Wojnarowicz, the New York artist whose time has come. Elaine Showalter examines a new biography of Germaine Greer. Kim Addonizio, winner of the Mick Imlah Prize for Poetry, reads her victorious poem. Plus, Lucy admits to having an allotment, and Stig learns he has been introducing the show all wrong.

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Highlights from 2018 – a bonus episode Dec 27, 2018

An end-of-year edition, bringing together some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months: Kathryn Hughes on whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Margaret Drabble reviews the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we marked this year; David Baddiel discusses whether Jewishness is inherently funny; Clare Pettitt revisits the history of the Peterloo massacre of 1819. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all.

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Mary Beard's 'Introduction to the Odyssey' – a bonus episode Dec 27, 2018

Who is Odysseus? Why can't he get home? And will the gods help or hinder his journey? In this special episode, the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard chairs a panel featuring the author and academic Simon Goldhill, the memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn, the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and the novelist Madeline Miller. This is a recording of a live event, staged in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in October 2018.

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Arts of the Year 2018 Dec 20, 2018

TLS editors discuss some memorable arts events from the past twelve months; plus, food and drink in literature and a preview of the TLS's Christmas double issue, including how to do German food, M. F. K. Fisher, French food slang, pub stories, and a deconstruction of the traditional British Christmas dinner

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Ode to the orca Dec 13, 2018

Lucy Atkins charts our changing relationship with Orcinus orca, from "demon dolphin" to cuddly icon; Ruth Scurr on the lives and unlikely friendship of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn

Books

Orca: How we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator by Jason M. Colby

John Evelyn: A life of domesticity by John Dixon Hunt

The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes

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Who on earth was William Gilbert? Dec 06, 2018

Michael Caines on the little-known romantic William Gilbert, a “man of fine genius” (according to William Wordsworth) who had “unfortunately received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story”; Daniel Beer tells the tale of the Gulag at Solovki, a converted monastery known as “the Paris of the Northern concentration camps”, a place of brutality but also of resistant culture and ideas; finally, Laurence Scott considers the cultural history of shoeshining, from Dickens to Police Squad

Books

William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism by Paul Cheshire

Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki, 1923–1930: The Paris of the northern concentration camps by Andrea Gullotta

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Our problem with cows Nov 29, 2018

Forty years since the controversial Spanish constitution of 1978, Rupert Shortt, Hispanic editor at the TLS, discusses the painful evolution of democracy in Spain; Siobhan Magee considers our problematic relationship with farmed animals, namely dairy cows, and crops, such as palm oil; Dwight Garner, a literary critic at the New York Times, offers glimpses into his commonplace book, in which four decades of favourite quotations converse with each other

Books

The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie

Palma Africana by Michael Taussig

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The best books of 2018 Nov 22, 2018

A handful of TLS editors gather for the yearly process of picking through contributors' Books of the Year selections, and nominate their own books to remember; Serhii Plokhy, the winner of this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for 'Chernobyl: The history of a nuclear catastrophe', speaks to the TLS's History editor David Horspool

Selected books

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

Charles de Gaulle: A certain idea of France by Julian Jackson

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Murmur by Will Eaves

Circe by Madeline Miller

Talking To Women by Nell Dunn

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, edited by Maebh Long

Grant by Ron Chernow

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Is it accurate to call Donald Trump a fascist? Nov 15, 2018

Mary Beard joins us to answer the question: Is it accurate to call Donald Trump a fascist?, while the TLS's fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig discusses how the President is presented, in books and on film; and Julia Bell looks back on her Oxford entrance interview - with no fondness - and wonders: "Was it a trap or a test?"

Books

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Nobody hates Trump more than Trump by David Shields

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WW1: Remembering / forgetting Nov 08, 2018

To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, the TLS's History editor David Horspool talks us through books, exhibitions and events that commemorate cataclysmic slaughter and scars that endure to this day; it’s easy to think of privacy invasion as a peculiarly modern phenomenon, but it has its own history dating back to the American Civil War – Sarah Igo tells us more; finally, the food writer Bee Wilson discusses two new cookbooks that capture a “fresh mood of experiment in the kitchen”

Works discussed

Pandora’s Box: A history of the First World War, by Jörn Leonhard (translated by Patrick Camiller)

Robert Graves: From Great War poet to ‘Good-Bye to All That’, 1895–1929 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Making a New World (across the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Imperial War Museum North)

Plus reviews and original pieces published in the TLS, including “What did Tommy read: The complex mental worlds of soldiers on the Western Front” by Bill Bell – go to the-TLS.co.uk for details

Sight Smell Touch Taste Sound: A new way to cook by Sybil Kapoor

Lateral Cooking by Niki Segnit

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Remembering Peterloo Nov 01, 2018

As Mike Leigh's film of the Peterloo massacre of 1819 is released, Clare Pettitt revisits the history; Marina Benjamin offers a personal and literary account of the threshold between sleep and wakefulness; following the publication of a second volume of Sylvia Plath's letters, Hannah Sullivan looks for fresh insights into the poet's work, life and death; finally, Sam Riviere reads his new poem, "Sushi Tuesday"

Works discussed

Peterloo, directed by Mike Leigh

Insomnia by Marina Benjamin

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I (1940-1956) and Volume II (1956-1963), edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil

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BONUS: Must read – must buy? Oct 24, 2018

Are authors, reviewers and publicists wasting their time on book coverage? The contemporary conversation about books and ideas goes way beyond traditional features and interviews. Book groups, academic seminars, Amazon user reviews, Goodreads, the press, radio, podcasts, and sometimes even TV: the form, tone and quality of coverage has infinite variety. But how much does any of it help the books business – if it can be measured at all? Do authors, reviewers, and publicists feel their efforts are worthwhile? Michael Caines, an editor at the TLS, chairs an eclectic panel for a crucial conversation about the conversation around books. (This a live recording of an event, in collaboration with BookMachine, which took place on October 3, 2018, at the Driver, Kings Cross, London)

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1844, remember the date... Oct 24, 2018

Elaine Showalter on a history of obscenity and censorship and the largely futile efforts of a US Postal Inspector; Ladee Hubbard on five years of Black Lives Matter and the myth of an egalitarian, post-racial America; Kassia St Clair on women, weaving and the rewriting of history

Books

Lust on Trial: Censorship and the rise of obscenity in the age of Anthony Comstock by Amy Werbel

The Fire This Time: A new generation speaks about race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

My Brother Moochie: Regaining dignity in the face of crime, poverty and racism in the American South by Isaac J. Bailey

The Golden Thread: How fabric changed history by Kassia St Clair

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Ever-enigmatic Leonardo da Vinci Oct 17, 2018

Keith Miller joins us to discuss everybody's favourite Renaissance man; the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig meets Anna Burns, the winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman; this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, meanwhile, remains suspended following charges of serious sexual misconduct and cronyism – Richard Orange reports on the mess that has engulfed the Swedish Academy

Books

Living with Leonardo: Fifty years of sanity and insanity in the art world and beyond by Martin Kemp

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An Odyssey for everyone Oct 10, 2018

Mary Beard reflects on the peculiarities of Homer's best-loved, many-sided epic; Neel Mukherjee on the scandalous survival of the Indian caste system; following the recent party conferences, James O'Brien offers a wry overview of Britain's political mess

Books:

The Measure of Homer: The ancient reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Richard Hunter

Ants Among Elephants: An untouchable family and the making of modern India by Sujatha Gidla

How To Be Right ... in a World Gone Wrong by James O'Brien

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Radical Cheltenham and a poem from Paul Muldoon Oct 03, 2018

Michael Caines joins us to discuss female liberation in genteel Cheltenham; we look ahead to an Odyssey extravaganza, with Ted Hodgkinson from the Southbank centre; Paul Muldoon brings a salutary note of optimism to US politics and history with his new poem "With Joseph Brant in Canajoharie"

Books

Votes for Women: Cheltenham and the Cotswolds by Sue Jones

The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Selected Poems 1968-2014 by Paul Muldoon

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Diarmaid MacCulloch on Thomas Cromwell Sep 26, 2018

In this bonus episode, the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography.

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Mexico's great disgrace Sep 26, 2018

Lorna Scott Fox joins us to discuss the fiftieth anniversary of Mexico's Tlatelolco of 1968, a travesty still shrouded in obfuscation; the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography; and finally, Rozalind Dineen offers a round-up of interesting new podcasts

Books and podcasts discussed

México 68: The students, the President and the CIA by Sergio Aguayo

Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Teachers Pet (The Australian)

West Cork (Audible)

The Ratline (BBC)

In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

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Henry James in LA Sep 19, 2018

Philip Horne and Frances Wilson join us to discuss Henry James, the not-always masterly Master who gave us novels as apparently divergent as Washington Square, with its clear, tight prose, The Ambassadors (prone to accidents of publication) and The Golden Bowl, which spills pleasures of an altogether more sinuous nature; plus, details of a little-known trip James took to California, which – unexpectedly, perhaps –“completely bowled” him over

Books

Generous Mistakes: Incidents of error in Henry James by Michael Anesko

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James: The Ambassadors; Edited by Nicola Bradbury. The Portrait of a Lady; Edited by Michael Anesko. The Jolly Corner and Other Tales, 1903–1910; Edited by N. H. Reeve (Michael Anesko, Tamara L. Follini, Philip Horne and Adrian Poole, general editors)

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On booze and art Sep 12, 2018

Roz Dineen on the time-stained image of the artist-addict, The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, and whether “stories about getting better [can] ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart"; "David Foster Wallace would send me letters and I wouldn’t answer them. He would send works in progress with forlorn notes. 'You’re under no obligation to read or to pretend you’ve read the enclosed,' he wrote on one piece. I didn’t." – David Streitfeld recalls being David Foster Wallace's "worst friend"

Books

The Recovering by Leslie Jamison

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close encounters with addiction by Gabor Maté

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Philip Larkin, beyond the grave Sep 05, 2018

Andrew Motion discusses the life, work and curious afterlife of his friend and "subject" Philip Larkin; Imogen Russell Williams has written an essay on diversity (or the lack of it) in children's books and offers some recommendations; Zoe Williams gives her verdict on the very British political tradition that is Prime Minister’s Questions

Books

Philip Larkin: A writer's life by Andrew Motion (1993; reissued September 2018)

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Square by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen

I Am Thunder by Muhammad Khan

Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent

You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry

Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent

You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry

(For all the books discussed by Imogen Russell Williams, go to the-tls.co.uk)

Punch and Judy Politics: An insider’s guide to Prime Minister’s questions by Tom Hamilton and Ayesha Hazarika

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Too smart for our own good Aug 22, 2018

Carl Miller, the author of The Death of the Gods, which deals with how power works and who holds it in the digital age, sheds light on how algorithms, originally devised as simple problem-solving devices, have become so complicated that no one, not even their creators, can control them; Kristen Roupenian points out the problem with an “unfailingly enthusiastic” compendium of twentieth-century female intellectuals (including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion): who is left out and why?; eighty-odd years ago, Zora Neale Hurston, now best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, interviewed Kossola O-Lo-Loo-Ay, the last known survivor of the Atlantic Slave Trade. As her book is finally published, Colin Grant joins us to tell us more

Books

The Death of the Gods: The new global power grab by Carl Miller

Sharp: The women who made an art of having an opinion by Michelle Dean

Barracoon: The story of the last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale

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Same old gags Aug 15, 2018

In the course of his long literary career, Samuel Johnson reviewed only one novel. Who was it by? None other than the "preposterously confident” Charlotte Lennox, a force in eighteenth-century prose and a model for Jane Austen – Min Wild tells us more; What happens if you ask a literary critic to watch top-grossing (pun intended) Hollywood comedies from the past three decades? Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explains how comedy reflects broader culture and anxieties; How are women treated in film and television? Is there cause for celebration? Alice Wadsworth joins us in the studio to discuss.

Books

Charlotte Lennox: An independent mind by Susan Carlile

Stealing the Show: How women are revolutionizing television by Joy Press

Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive portrayals in speculative film and TV by Diana Adesola Mafe

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Turn on, tune in, drop out? Aug 08, 2018

Are we entering a new age for LSD, full of medical potential? Can it shed its heavily tie-dyed cultural baggage? And who has written the finest prose about psychedelics? Toby Lichtig joins us to discuss; Eri Hotta (re)introduces us to Natsume Sōseki, "the greatest novelist of modern Japan"; Kate Chisholm considers the chequered history of Virago, founded in 1973 as a "feminist press", plus 40 years of Modern Classics, a series conceived to challenge the established male dominated literary canon and rescue and rehabilitate forgotten works by women

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Mind and memory Aug 01, 2018

With Stig Abell and Roz Dineen. Steven Nadler drops in to tell us all we need to know about the much-misunderstood Descartes; and En Liang Khong visits the Foundling museum to see an installation about how to commemorate loss.

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Emily Brontë's wuthering wilds Jul 25, 2018

To mark 200 years since Emily Brontë’s birth, we are joined by Robert Potts and Jacqueline Banerjee to look back at Brontë’s life and most famous work Wuthering Heights – with a nod to Kate Bush’s memorable track, as well as to other, more recent tributes; Mika Ross-Southall shares the story of Tommy Nutter, the "rebel tailor of 1960s Savile Row", who, from humble origins, pulled himself up by the force of his wild imagination to dress anyone who was anyone

Books, etc

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (new edition by HQ; with a foreword by Michael Stewart)

Ill Will: The untold story of Heathcliff by Michael Stewart

Emily Brontë: A life in twenty poems by Nick Holland

Emily Brontë Reappraised: A view from the twenty-first century by Claire O’Callaghan

Emily Jane Brontë and Her Music by John Hennessy

The Brontë Stones project - https://bit.ly/2LOgEiQ

House of Nutter: The rebel tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson

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Women, in and out of control Jul 18, 2018

“How much do you make things happen or let them happen to you?” “Can women be happy alone?” – questions such as these form the basis of a series of interviews with women, from heiresses to factory workers, conducted in the 1960s by the British writer Nell Dunn; as a reissue of Talking To Women appears Kate Webb introduces us to this seminal feminist text. And Patricia J. Williams discusses the role and lingering influence of the Progressive Era's 'American Plan' to stamp out immorality through policies including compulsory STD tests and government-endorsed sterilization

Books

Talking To Women by Nell Dunn

Fixing the Poor: Eugenic sterilization and child welfare in the twentieth century by Molly Ladd-Taylor

The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, surveillance, and the decades-long government plan to imprison 'promiscuous' women by Scott W. Stern

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Summer Books 2018 Jul 11, 2018

We’re joined in the studio by TLS editors for arts, features and fiction, respectively, Lucy Dallas, Roz Dineen and Toby Lichtig, to pick through a selection of TLS writers’ summer reading choices – from reworked Classical myths to Deadpool comics – before offering a taste of our own, including books by Sally Rooney, Bruno Latour and an account of witchcraft and agrarian cults in early modern Italy. Go to the-TLS.co.uk to read our summer books feature in full.

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Ode to Lee Child – a bonus episode Jul 11, 2018

Sam Leith, the books editor of the Spectator, and Stig Abell discuss their mutual appreciation of the crime novels of Lee Child.

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Notes on 50 years of the Man Booker Prize Jul 04, 2018

This year marks half a century since the establishment of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The TLS’s Fiction editor Toby Lichtig joins us to debate the point of literary prizes and discuss the most under- (or over-) rated winners; Joan C. Williams, the author of last year’s White Working Class: Overcoming class cluelessness in America, considers the political consequences of class divides in the US and Britain

Books

The White Working Class: What everyone needs to know by Justin Gest

Making Sense of the Alt-Right by George Hawley

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An interview with Tim Winton – a bonus episode Jun 27, 2018

Tim Winton discusses his new novel, The Shepherd's Hut, with the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig. Go to the-tls.co.uk to read an exclusive extract from the novel.

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The wildness of Muriel Spark Jun 27, 2018

Critic and novelist Margaret Drabble joins us to review the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we mark this year; Samuel Graydon discusses a new exhibition on J. R. R. Tolkien, including drawings and doodles, language trees and fan mail; the TLS's History editor David Horspool introduces a selection of new work on the medieval period

Works discussed

The Centenary Edition of the Novels of Muriel Spark, edited by Alan Taylor

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth, an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with accompanying book by Catherine McIlwaine

‘Finding Henry – Why England’s most powerful medieval monarch should be better remembered’ by Claudia Gold, in this week’s TLS

Medieval Bodies: Life, death and art in the Middle Ages by Jack Hartnell

Sea of Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the medieval Islamic world by Christophe Picard, translated by Nicholas Elliott

The Oxford English Literary History, Volume 1: 1000–1350: Conquest and Transformation by Laura Ashe

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Russia's blood games Jun 20, 2018

We're joined by Arkady Ostrovsky to discuss Russia’s long history of using sport as a proxy for war and invasion; E. J. Iannelli draws our attention to the rise and (perhaps...) fall of the automobile in the US, and the distinctly American phenomenon of the car as teenage male rite of passage

Books

Machines of Youth: America’s car obsession by Gary S. Cross

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Changing your mind and opening the doors Jun 13, 2018

We talk to Michael Pollan about his new book How To Change Your Mind: The new science of psychedelics, in which he explores the history and landscape of psychedelic drugs, for therapeutic and personal use.

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Rules of law Jun 13, 2018

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. On the first anniversary of Grenfell Tower, Terri Apter tells us about how art can respond to tragedy; former New York prosecutor David Pitofsky assesses the judicial heft of James Comey; and hear a bit of our interview with Michael Pollan on the beneficial return of psychedelic drugs.

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Jesmyn Ward’s lyrical fiction - a bonus episode Jun 07, 2018

Jesmyn Ward’s most recent novel Sing, Unburied Sing won the National Book Award in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. In this bonus episode, Jesmyn Ward talks to Roz Dineen about fiction, her characters, living through Hurricane Katrina, and the enormous burden of empathy. This continues a conversation started earlier in the year - and included in the podcast of April 26 - when Jesmyn discussed The Fire This Time, a collection of essays she had edited about racial politics and experience in America.

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Those are pearls . . . and Michael Jackson's performative drama Jun 06, 2018

We explore the complex, brutal, swaggering history of pearls and those who found, traded and wore them, with Kathryn Hughes. Sam Byers talks about the self-authored creation that was Michael Jackson and the public's response to him.

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Philip Roth and the translatable May 30, 2018

Philip Roth, who died last week aged eighty-five, has left behind a vast literary canon and a complicated legacy. But is there more to this great American novelist than just sordid sex? Ben Markovits shares his thoughts; TLS Features editor, Roz Dineen interviews Man Booker international prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, and her translator, Jennifer Croft; Eric Ormsby explores the significance of context when translating the seemingly immutable text of the Qur’an.

Books

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

The Koran in English - A biography by Bruce B. Lawrence

The Qur'an - A historical-critical introduction by Nicolai Sinai

The Sanaa Palimpsest - The transmission of the Qur'a n in the first centuries by Asma Hilali

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The making of me May 25, 2018

We’re joined by the novelist Margaret Drabble, whose books have for decades chronicled the difficult path to selfhood, particularly for women, and the actor and writer Robert Webb, whose recent memoir How Not To Be a Boy, focuses on how notions of masculinity shape identity. Recorded in front of a live audience at Bath Festival.

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Roman emperors and football managers May 16, 2018

The world is being slowly poisoned, the environment destroyed. Why don’t we care about such an apocalypse more? Clare Saxby joins us to discuss; Mary Beard considers the cultural legacy of Caligula, that most reviled of all emperors, via a revisionist work of fiction told from the perspective of the emperor's exiled sister; as Arsène Wenger's twenty-two year tenure as Arsenal manager draws to a close, the TLS's History editor and Arsenal fan David Horspool shares his thoughts on football's modern myth-making

Books

Mourning Nature: Hope at the heart of ecological loss and grief, edited by Ashlee and Karen Landman Cunsolo

Walking on Lava: Selected works for uncivilised times, edited by Charlotte Du Cann, Dougald Hine, Nick Hunt and Paul Kingsnorth

Energy Humanities: An anthology, edited by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer

Caligula by Simon Turney

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BONUS: Madeline Miller on Circe May 09, 2018

Lucy Dallas is joined by Madeline Miller to discuss her new book, Circe.

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Mothers and millennials May 09, 2018

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas

Real-life millennial Samuel Earle pops in to consider the status of young people in an unequal society, keeping avocado references to a minimum; Ruth Scurr analyses the role of mothers in life and literature; and Madeline Miller talks about inhabiting the role of Circe.

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Carlo Rovelli's time – a special episode May 02, 2018

In popular science books, including 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' and 'Reality Is Not What It Seems', the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has studied the phenomena – namely time and space – that structure our very existence. In doing so, he has become something of a phenomenon himself, praised for his charm, clarity and humour – things we might not immediately associate with the field of quantum gravity. Here, the TLS's Samuel Graydon asks him about his new book The Order of Time

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Why does everyone hate Nixon? May 02, 2018

How do we account for Richard Nixon's stubborn unpopularity? Sure, he was a liar and a crook, but that has not stopped the rehabilitation of many a politician – as a new biography appears Barton Swaim joins us to discuss; why is it that certain ailments suffered by women are so scarcely discussed or resolved? Leonore Tiefer considers endometriosis and a "legacy of disinterest"; “The world is far more complicated than what we see”, says the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, putting it mildly. Reality “is mind-blowing” – here, he discusses the structure of time with the TLS's Samuel Graydon

Books

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Ask Me About My Uterus: A quest to make doctors believe in women's pain by Abby Norman

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The risky art of cartooning Apr 25, 2018

Martin Rowson, cartoonist for the Guardian and elsewhere, joins us to discuss caricature as political hit-job; the TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas considers the jolly japes and scrapes of the Beano, as that publication marks its eightieth year; and our Features editor Rozalind Dineen goes to meet Jesmyn Ward, a writer described in our pages as “an important new voice of the American South – one developing, perhaps, into the twenty-first-century’s answer to William Faulkner”

Books

The Communist Manifesto: A Graphic Novel, adapted by Martin Rowson

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward

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Culture clash Apr 18, 2018

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. Lionel Shriver castigates the arrogant British for snootiness over American English; David Coward tells the story of Simon Leys, "the man who did for Mao" and who called Sartre a "windbag"; and Kate Bingham reads her poem "This hair".

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Empathy: for better, for worse Apr 11, 2018

Are we hard-wired to feel other people’s pain? And if so, is it necessarily a good thing? Andrew Scull has reviewed three new books on empathy and joins us to tell us more; Charles Dickens's love of all things theatrical – in life as in art – is no secret. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst considers fifty years' worth of Dickens adaptations for the stage (and film)

Books

The Empathy Instinct by Peter Bazalgette

Against Empathy: The case for rational compassion by Paul Bloom

The Invention of Humanity: Equality and cultural difference in world history by Siep Stuurman

Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens (Volume One, edited by Jacky Bratton; Volume Two, edited by Jim Davis

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The New Elizabethans Apr 04, 2018

Who are the most exciting novelists from the British Isles currently working? In a spirit of mischief, the TLS asked 200 notable names in the publishing industry (editors, agents, publishers and writers) to nominate those at the top of their literary game. The critic Alex Clark and TLS fiction editor Toby Lichtig join us in the studio to pick through the results

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Hyper-liberalism and the 6,000th TLS Mar 28, 2018

The political philosopher John Gray discusses the failures of liberalism; as the TLS publishes its 6,000th issue, Ruth Scurr delves into the back issues to explore how the paper has changed, and how it reflects literary culture more broadly; the TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins reads two of his favourite poems from the past century: D. J. Enright 's "The Laughing Hyena, by Hokusai" and "In Your Mind" by Carol Ann Duffy

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Everyone's a winner – a bonus episode Mar 28, 2018

Literary prizes come in more shapes and sizes than ever before: we have prizes that echo the Man Booker, and prizes that set out not to be the Man Booker; we have prizes for first novels, second novels, crime novels that don’t feature violence against women, and, more satirically, a prize for “bad sex in fiction”. Why do we need so many? Do we need them at all? And how do prizes work not only for writers but for those people who do all the reading (and sometimes arguing): the judges? The TLS's Michael Caines chairs a lively discussion between Toby Lichtig, the fiction editor of the TLS, and Alex Clark, a critic and regular prize judge/chair. This live event was a collaboration with BookMachine.

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On the consciousness of cows Mar 22, 2018

Science reporter Jennie Erin Smith joins us to discuss our desire, or evolutionary compulsion, to delve into the minds of other animals, from cows and penguins to the dismally misunderstood hyena; the TLS's George Berridge shares new insights into the work of Cormac McCarthy and the various (failed) attempts at adapting his novels; much has been said about how literary blogs killed off 'proper', print criticism. Jennifer Howard explains why the picture is far more complicated, and positive, than that

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Ada Lovelace: tech prophet and trophy wife Mar 15, 2018

Miranda Seymour reveals the peculiar circumstances surrounding the marriage of Lord Byron's daughter and his super-fan, William King; just how seriously should we be taking the Virtual Reality revolution? Tom Rachman cautiously probes the frontier of what is possible; Death Row attorney Clive Stafford Smith shares the story of Billy Neal Moore, a tale of murder, hope and Mother Theresa; and finally, before the winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses is revealed, the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig meets Neil Griffiths, the prize's founder, to find out more

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Writers and their mothers Mar 08, 2018

Dale Salwak, the editor of a new collection of essays, tells us why he wanted to probe this most complicated of relationships, while Judy Carver, the daughter of William Golding – he of Lord of the Flies – sheds light on her father’s difficult relationship with his mother; Charlotte Shane introduces us to Marjorie Hillis, who, in the 1930s, taught American women how to "live alone and like it"; finally, TLS editor Catharine Morris considers the difficult genesis of Latvian literature

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Jewishness: seriously funny Mar 01, 2018

David Baddiel – comedian and, as per his Twitter profile, Jew – joins us to discuss whether Jewishness is inherently funny; as Italians prepare to elect their next prime minister (an unenviable choice between undesirables and impossibles), Tim Parks – author, translator, and resident of Italy – talks us through the excessively complicated mess that is Italy

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Prickly, profound Isaac Newton Feb 22, 2018

Just how odd was Isaac Newton? Quite, it turns out, because as well as being one of history’s greatest mathematicians, he was also an alchemist and a millenarian, happily wallowing in conspiracy theories – Oliver Moody joins us to tell us more; did the Cold War ever end? Not as straightforward a question as you might think – the historian David Motadel considers a controversial new book; and finally, Thea Lenarduzzi discusses Greta Gerwig and her Oscar-nominated film Lady Bird

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Fiona Mozley and Lisa McInerney – at Hay Festival, Cartagena Feb 21, 2018

This special episode – a live recording of an event at Hay Festival, in Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this year – features a discussion with two novelists: Fiona Mozley, whose Booker-shortlisted novel Elmet caused a stir last year, and Lisa McInerney, an Irish writer described by the TLS as “busily combining the traditions of hardcore Irish crime writing with fast-talking foul-mouthed wit and gentle good humour”.

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Can things only get better? Feb 15, 2018

The "ape bumfodder" of one man (Philip Larkin) is another man's treasure – Susan Irvine makes the case for the relevance of Old English literature in the modern world (and leaves us with a beautiful reading of "The Husband's Message", a poem told from the perspective of a wooden staff...); the Whiggish idea of constant societal improvement has, as its most high-profile advocate, Steven Pinker, whose 'The Better Angels of our Nature' caused a stir in 2011. Now he's back with 'Enlightenment Now', another data-heavy work of optimism – David Wootton weighs up the evidence

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Mothers of #MeToo Feb 08, 2018

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined in the studio by political commentator Zoe Williams to discuss the future of Corbynism, Brexit, Lexit, and British politics more broadly; and, to mark the 100th anniversary of British women’s suffrage, Emelyne Godfrey sheds light on the mosaic of approaches that led, eventually, to something worth celebrating in all its complexity

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Gregory Norminton, an interview Feb 08, 2018

TLS editor Michael Caines meets Gregory Norminton, the author of a collection of aphorisms, two translations of classic French books for children, two collections of short stories and four novels – including, most recently, The Devil’s Highway – that range across history, from the medieval period up to that far more horrific time known as the early 1990s

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The 'real' Jane Eyre Feb 01, 2018

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined by Kathryn Hughes, to discuss whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Katharine Craik looks back on Shakespeare's mysterious, and 'weirdly memorable', sonnets; Kate Brown on the social-media-fuelled Ukrainian uprising of 2013, the David-and-Goliath battle that followed, and the view from 2018

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Having a nice day Jan 25, 2018

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We are joined by Maren Meinhardt to discuss the unrequited love, and painful experiments on frogs, of Prussian polymath Alexander von Humboldt; Ruth Scurr assesses the literary legacy of Julian Barnes; and Joyce Chaplin reveals the seething malevolence beneath American "niceness".

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Language lolz Jan 18, 2018

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined in the studio by Daisy Dunn to discuss the history of the written word (yes, all of it), from the Chinese invention of paper in 100 BC to the advent of a new BuzzFeed-y style guide; What was Stalin's real purpose? Lewis Siegelbaum considers Stalin's middle years in light of a new instalment of Stephen Kotkin’s epic biography.

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Was Jesus a Buddhist? Well, no... Jan 11, 2018

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined in the studio by Marcel Theroux to discuss why a mysterious nineteenth-century Russian writer-explorer may have forged a tale about Jesus in India; the Palestinian writer Linah Alsaafin considers the (f)utility of writing about Israeli occupation, via recent efforts including Kingdom of Olives and Ash, edited by Michael Chabon and Avelet Waldman; Francesca Happé tells us what it means to be 'on the autism spectrum' and how gender affects diagnosis.

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The Problem We All Still Live With Jan 04, 2018

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We are joined by Patricia Williams, to discuss how black girls are silenced, marginalised and abused within American society, an ongoing tragedy with its origins in slavery. Katherine Lewis, the winner of the inaugural TLS/Mick Imlah Poetry Prize, then comes on to read her prize-winning poem, "Memory of An Ocean".

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Highlights from 2017 Dec 27, 2017

A special end-of-year edition of the podcast, with highlights, including: Sudhir Hazareesingh came on thew show back in March, ahead of the French election, to share his thoughts on Emmanuel Macron, the underdog philosopher-politician soon to become President; before Weinstein and #metoo, Charlotte Shane drew our attention to problems and divisions in feminism, and called for responsible, serious literature to take things forward; Clive Stafford-Smith, liberal lawyer and campaigner against the death penalty, on the rise of 'kill lists', an almost-blatant programme of state-sanctioned murder that goes on around the world; finally, in 2017 we marked the bicentennial of the death of Jane Austen by inviting Austen expert Claire Harman for a game of “rank your favourite Austen novels”. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all.

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Arts of the Year 2017 Dec 21, 2017

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined in the studio by TLS Arts editor Lucy Dallas and Fiction editor Toby Lichtig to discuss the best (and worst) arts events of 2017.

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Darwin: good, bad, ugly Dec 14, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The American author and cultural critic Naomi Wolf explores connections between Oscar Wilde and Edith Wharton, taking us from gay rights to "strong" women; Dinah Birch turns to John Ruskin, the great polymath of his age – and ours?; finally, continuing the theme of Victorian excellence, Charles Darwin is the subject of a number of recent books, including an excoriating criticism by A. N. Wilson – Clare Pettitt sets the record straight

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Critical women Dec 07, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Elizabeth Hardwick, the critic, co-founder of the NYRB, and, yes, stoic wife of Robert Lowell, died ten years ago this month – a new Collected Essays is cause for celebration; Suzannah Lipscomb delves into early modern French court records to tell us about the lives of women at a time when moral crimes were punished by strange rituals of public shaming; Leaf Arbuthnot, one of this year's judges of the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Awards, discusses the importance of this playful format, bringing us poems to be read, heard – and sniffed

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Dancing with Anthony Powell Nov 30, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Who reads Anthony Powell now? A. N. Wilson celebrates the muted comedy of a British novelist best-known (only known?) for his twelve-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time; TLS Fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to the novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer at the 2017 Hay Festival in Arequipa, Peru; Imogen Russell Williams rounds up the brightest and most inspiring new children's books

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BONUS: Geoff Dyer on Geoff Dyer Nov 29, 2017

TLS Fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to the novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer at the 2017 Hay Festival in Arequipa, Peru.

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Can Utopia survive 2017? Nov 23, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – 500-plus years since Thomas More coined the term “Utopia”, denoting a too-good-to-be-true land, Chloë Houston considers the relevance, and importance, of Utopian thinking, and asks if we feel more at home in dystopia; prompted by a magisterial new biography by Jonathan Eig, J. Michael Lennon describes the transformation of Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali (and tells us what it was like to meet Ali at Normal Mailer’s seventy-fifth birthday party); TLS editor Lucy Dallas speaks to the novelist Nick Harkaway, no stranger to grim (not necessarily) alternative realities, about his new novel Gnomon

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The best books of 2017 Nov 16, 2017

This week we're joined by TLS editors Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig to pick through the "books of the year", as nominated by a roster of TLS contributors, including Lydia Davis, Hilary Mantel, William Boyd and Tom Stoppard; plus, we bite the literary bullet and share our own nominations, from Reni Eddo-Lodge's account of entrenched racism to Laurent Binet's riotous fictional homage to Roland Barthes

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A woman's 'Odyssey' Nov 09, 2017

We're joined this week by the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard to discuss Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey – the first ever by a woman – as well as other issues surrounding women in Classics and women in power more generally; Andrew Motion considers the life of the editor Edward Garnett, “one of the great taste-makers of the twentieth century”; and finally, could you name anything by Dorothy Dunnett? Rohan Maitzen fills us in on The Lymond Chronicles, the most rollicking historical novels you might never have heard of

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A brand-new London theatre Nov 02, 2017

With Toby Lichtig and Lucy Dallas – London has a brand-new theatre: the Bridge, the latest venture by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr, based in Southwark and dedicated to original writing. And it starts its life with a new play by Richard Bean and Clive Young: Young Marx features Rory Kinnear as a delinquent Karl Marx, with a dash of Monty Python thrown in. The TLS’s Michael Caines joins us in the studio to discuss it; The “common view” of atheists is that religion is a combination of cosmology (a theory of the universe) and morality (or how best to behave) – but for the TLS’s Philosophy Editor Tim Crane this conception seems “deeply inadequate”. Crane identifies a third category, too often ignored: religious practice itself. He joins us on the line to discuss the religion of belonging, along with this week’s other philosophy pieces; The Austrian author Marianne Fritz was hailed in the late 1970s as a literary wunderkind, for a debut novel that described the descent into madness of a young mother in post-war Vienna. But as the decades progressed, her work grew increasingly obscure: brilliant for some, maddening for others. Jane Yager offers her insights into the author often dubbed, perhaps unfairly, “the female James Joyce”.

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Kathy Acker's guts Oct 25, 2017

Georgina Colby joins us in the studio to discuss our growing recognition of the punk writer Kathy Acker, an experimental late-modernist; Alev Scott on 'Weinsteining' in publishing and what we should do about it; Tove Jansson is best known as the creator of the Moomins, but there is a great deal more to her oeuvre than those strange hippopotamus-like creatures – TLS Arts editor Lucy Dallas visits a new retrospective of Jansson's work

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Matthew Arnold's good-bad poetry Oct 18, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The Mexican-born novelist Valeria Luiselli joins us to discuss her new book, Tell Me How It Ends: An essay in 40 questions, about America's role in an ongoing immigration crisis where tens of thousands of Mexican and Central American children arrive at the border, unaccompanied and undocumented; Is Matthew Arnold responsible for the worst opening line of a sonnet in English? Seamus Perry gives an impassioned defence of the poet's dissonant and awkward verse; "If you are transgender, and if you come out as an adult in a position of authority (a tenured professor, say), non-trans people may treat you as an expert." So argues Harvard Professor Stephanie Burt, who has reviewed two accounts of being a trans person, Trans Like Me, by C. N. Lester and The Gender Games by Juno Dawson. She joins us to discuss.

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Valeria Luiselli on the US immigration crisis Oct 18, 2017

The Mexican-born novelist Valeria Luiselli joins us to discuss her new book, Tell Me How It Ends: An essay in 40 questions, about America's role - and her own - in an ongoing immigration crisis where tens of thousands of Mexican and Central American children arrive at the border, unaccompanied and undocumented.

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Heavy with odours Oct 11, 2017

Joining Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas this week: Muriel Zagha, to discuss the redolent funk of French cinema; and James O'Brien, to summarise the rancid political mess of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Sam Graydon goes to see the National Poetry Library in London.

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Authors of injustice Oct 04, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – As a new anthology of stories brings the thrills-and-chills of genre writing to bear on the experiences of the "wrongfully convicted", the author and essayist Leslie Jamison discusses competing impulses in the writer–convict–reader relationship, why we need to talk about guilt rather than innocence, and her own correspondence with three prisoners; Federico García Lorca is well-known as a modernist, avant-garde poet and playwright, but what of his proficiency in haiku? And how does this Japanese tradition relate to the Spanish art of flamenco? We're joined by Paul Chambers, himself a haiku poet who has translated a number of Lorca's poems for the first time

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Good, bad and loud feminist writing Sep 27, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – "For every competent feminist book”, Camille Paglia wrote in 1995, “there are twenty others shot through with inaccuracies, distortions, and propaganda.” Charlotte Shane runs us through a clutch of recent books by, among others, Laurie Penny, Rebecca Solnit and Paglia herself; How do we account for the extraordinary and enduring popularity of the French theorist Roland Barthes? Might it have something to do with his incurable boredom? Samuel Earle joins us in the studio to discuss the bundle of contradictions that was, and is, Barthes

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Free Speech vs Safe Space: the Great Campus Divide Sep 27, 2017

A bonus episode: Stig Abell hosts a debate at the Brooklyn Literary Festival in which the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb, the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg and Pen America's Suzanne Nossel consider what is going on in American universities and beyond when it comes to debates about race, gender and identity.

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Samuel Beckett's turtle-neck, etc Sep 20, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Would you take fashion advice from Beckett? Was John Updike an early advocate of "norm-core"? We're joined in the studio by Laura Freeman to discuss a new book, Legendary Authors and the Clothes they Wore; addiction represents the height of paradox: the quest for fulfilment of individual desire that embraces the destruction of the individual self. Eric Iannelli considers a clutch of studies and memoirs that seek to describe the causes and consequences of the addict's “self-perpetuating vortex”; Charlottesville, the college city in Virginia, has impinged on the global consciousness in recent weeks, since a rash of neo-Nazi-instigated violence spread from the University of Virginia's campus into the streets. Krishan Kumar, a sociology professor at UVA, reflects on the institution's legacy, and that of its founder Thomas Jefferson

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Matters poetical Sep 13, 2017

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas - we are in the studio with Ian Thomson discussing the unlikely collaboration between a Neo Dadaist and Dante; we talk to Mark Ford about Weldon Kees, the American poet you should have heard of; and Michael Caines delves into the theatrical mind of the great Peter Brook.

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Peter Brook at work Sep 13, 2017

In this bonus episode, visionary director Peter Brook talks about his life in the theatre – and explains why Shakespeare is like a skyscraper

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The world's most mysterious manuscript Sep 05, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The meaning of the 15th-century Voynich manuscript – a strange compendium of undecipherable signs, astrological symbols and pictures of nude bathing women – has long eluded scholars. We're joined by bibliographical sleuth Nicholas Gibbs, who appears to have discovered the manuscript's secret; to mark the double anniversary of one of America's greatest poets, Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Paul Muldoon – himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and Poetry editor at the New Yorker – reads his new poem 'Robert Lowell at Castletown House'; finally, TLS Fiction editor Toby Lichtig discusses the latest releases from established writers (including John le Carré and Salman Rushdie) and debut novelists (Gabriel Tallent and Fiona Mozley)

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Pop science and Punjabi epics Aug 30, 2017

With Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas – Alexander van Tulleken on what makes popular science books – including Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – so popular, and is there a hidden danger in making science the subject of water-cooler conversations?; Clair Wills joins us in the studio to discuss the forgotten stories of Punjabi migrants who came to England in the 1950s and early 60s, and introduces us to the fascinating, genre-blending works they composed and performed in pubs; and finally, the TLS's History editor David Horspool explains how Oliver Cromwell’s embarrassingly messy attempts to conquer the Caribbean in the mid-17th century nonetheless set the stage for modern overseas expansion – as well as giving us an early instance of fake news

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Peak bullshit Aug 16, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – We're joined in the studio by Sam Leith, Literary editor of the Spectator and self-professed rhetoric geek, discusses the problem of fake news in a post-truth world, with recourse to Aristotle and economic theory; we're running an extract, in this week's summer double issue, from My Absolute Darling, the new American novel everyone seems to be talking about – we'll discuss the dark material at its centre with the author himself, Gabriel Tallent; "Walid Jumblatt has the air of quiet dignity which befits a retired warlord with nearly half a million Twitter followers", so begins Alev Scott's essay on her experiences among the Druze of Lebanon, one of the country's eighteen recognised minorities. Alev joins us to describe an enlightening and troubling encounter. The podcast will take a break and return on August 31; keep up with the TLS at the-tls.co.uk

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India's broken legacy Aug 09, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Novelist Neel Mukherjee discusses the vexed state of Modern India and the legacy of Partition 70 years on; Frances Wilson considers a problematic clutch of books that look to describe a "sisterhood" of female writers from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf and beyond

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Ian Nairn, route master Aug 02, 2017

With Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig. The TLS critic David Collard explores the idiosyncratic worlds of Ian Nairn – architectural critic, psychogeographer, “a cross between Anthony Burgess and Tony Hancock” – and describes Nairn’s influence on a generation of authors, including Simon Okotie, whose new novel he’s also reviewed in this week’s TLS. The paper's biography editor Catharine Morris tells the story of Tuco, the African grey parrot, and his influence on the life and work of the novelist Brian Brett. Lisa Hilton explains why the Marquis de Sade is a progressive moral satirist and a “rotten pornographer”.

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Trump and the great car crisis Jul 26, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Former US Government consultant Edward Luttwak explains how the rising cost of cars in the US lies behind Donald Trump's election, and why the Democrats' sustained failure to address the problem may lead to consecutive terms for The Donald and his progeny; Humans are, more or less, logical and rational beings, aren't they? Cecilia Heyes, Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences and Professor of Psychology, discusses the irrationality of human thought and why it's easier to reason together; Michael Hoffman, the German-born poet, translator and, most recently 2018 Man Booker International judge, reads his new translation of a poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, "Female, 33"

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Jane Austen at 200 Jul 19, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – We're joined in the studio by Claire Harman, author of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen conquered the world, to discuss the life and legacy of this perhaps most-loved of all authors: what makes her so special, so alive in the modern world? And will there be no end to (stranger and stranger) adaptations of her work?

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'Let me be clear...' Jul 12, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi: Politicians – Theresa May foremost among them – always begin their obfuscations and delusional self-justifications by pretending to offer clarity. Journalist James O'Brien joins us to discuss the past thirty-odd days in the world of Prime Minister May, from the flunked general election to the travesty of Grenfell Tower, in a quest for that most elusive of things – a clear and concrete plan; TLS Visual Arts editor Anna Vaux brings us a preview of Tate Modern's new exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, an examination of the role of black artists in the Civil Rights movement; historian Roy Foster considers the fraught new relationship between the Conservative Party and the Irish Democratic Unionist Party, finding parallels, and missed warnings, dating back more than 100 years

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Robert Frost's aggression Jul 05, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi: David Bromwich dips into the newly published letters, spanning 1920–8, of Robert Frost, the farmer-cum-teacher-cum-giant of American poetry who believed that a master writer should 'invade' younger writers 'to show them how much more they contain than they can write down'; 'Conversations around race and racism tend not to happen as much in Britain as in America', says Bernardine Evaristo in a discussion of the state of race relations in Britain and the importance of a provocative new book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race Book by Reni Eddo-Lodge

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'Who shall we kill today?' Jun 28, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – 'Few people are aware that every week the White House indulges in Terror Tuesday, where the US President personally approves people for death without any legal process at all' – so says Clive Stafford Smith, who joins us in the studio to chart the global proliferation of modern state-led assassination and the moral, legal and human 'collateral damage'; Lamorna Ash, fresh from a week's research aboard the Cornish deep-sea trawler Crystal Sea, offers insights into the distinct rhythms, language and politics of Britain's beleaguered fishing industry

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What to read this summer: an almost-legendary TLS special edition Jun 21, 2017

Every year we ask a selection of TLS contributors what they'll be reading with those extra hours of daylight. In this episode, we're joined by Fiction editor Toby Lichtig and Arts editor Lucy Dallas to pick through the results and discuss our own selections. Plus, an exclusive interview with 2017 Man Booker International-winner, the Israeli novelist David Grossman, and translator Jessica Cohen

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The summer of shrug Jun 14, 2017

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We discuss the election that nobody won and (almost) nobody predicted; varnishing day at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition; and the dubious merits of 1967's Summer of Love.

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Embarrassing questions Jun 07, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Distinguished social psychologist Carol Tavris discusses whether we are seeing the end of definition by gender and whether there is any benefit in trying to track, physiologically and psychologically, the differences between men and women; Brian Dillon tackles the past, present and future of the essay form, via the indolent and melancholic work of Cyril Connolly, whose book The Unquiet Grave is "one of the strangest, funniest, most formally daring if badly flawed contributions to the literature of depression, disarray and the decay of ambition"; finally, the TLS's Religion Editor Rupert Shortt joins us to consider the true meaning of Islam, a religion so full of contradictions that – according to one critic – “very few Muslims consciously understand what being Islamic truly means”.

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Football and the modern Middle East May 31, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Politics editor Toby Lichtig speaks to Assaf Gavron, author of a fascinating essay on the role of football in the politics of the Middle East, and runs us through a number of pieces from this week’s issue on the legacy of the Six-Day War, 60 years on; "No wild animal plays a more significant or ambivalent role in the imaginings of the British than the fox", so says Tom Holland, who joins us to consider this curiously divisive beast; fresh from a marathon production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, opera critic Guy Dammann explains the importance of this towering work of music and drama

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Is consciousness a thing? May 24, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Philosophy editor Tim Crane grapples with the mind-body problem and "what it means to be the kind of creatures we are", plus the year that brightened Nietzsche's outlook, and Biscuit the dog's self-consciousness; Korean American author Min Jin Lee on how Korean literature approaches the difficult dream of reunification and what a new collection of stories, The Accusation by the pseudonymous author "Bandi", "the first work of fiction written by a North Korean author presumed still to be alive and living in the country”, tells us about life in that deeply mysterious land; finally, the great Alasdair Gray, author of Lanark, reads "From Vers Doré by Gérard de Nerval", a new work first published in this week's TLS.

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How to get rid of your spouse May 17, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Michel Foucault was so fascinated by lettres de cachet – pre-Revolutionary requests made by citizens to the lieutenant of police calling for the imprisonment without trial of a troublesome family member or neighbour – that he co-edited a little-known compendium of them: Biancamaria Fontana joins us to explain; Was the "plunder of black life" the driving force in making America great? Stephanie McCurry weighs in on a recent book, Slavery's Capitalism: A new history of American economic development; finally, in light of the Oxford Companion to Cheese, Paul Levy considers the politics of cheese and makes the case for a good strong Cheddar.

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States of the nations May 10, 2017

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. Sudhir Hazareesingh gives his analysis of the French election and the rise of Macron; Toby Lichtig (sic) helps us tackle genre fiction, including our tips for the greatest ever historical novel; and Hal Jensen celebrates an 8-hour play about American identity.

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#1. If This Is A Man – a live reading of Primo Levi's memoir of Auschwitz May 03, 2017

On April 30, at London's Southbank Centre, an extraordinary cast of readers – including Philippe Sands, Tom Stoppard, Niklas Frank, whose father was Adolf Hitler's lawyer, and Susan Pollack, who survived the camp – gathered to mark 70 years since the publication of this seminal account of humanity at its most brutal. Across five episodes, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre, we bring you the full, live recording of the event, part of the Belief and Beyond Belief festival, exploring what it means to be human. This performance was directed by Nina Brazier with music directed by Tomo Keller and performed by Raphael Wallfisch, Tomo Keller, Robert Smissen, Simon Wallfisch and Lada Valesova; the event was devised by A. L. Kennedy and Philippe Sands, in collaboration with Ted Hodgkinson, Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre. You'll find all episodes on the-tls.co.ukChapters 1–3 read by: human-rights lawyer Philippe Sands QC; author A. L. Kennedy; actors Samuel West...

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Rousseau and the me me me memoir May 03, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Frances Wilson on how Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions of 1789 laid the foundations for the messy modern memoir; TLS commissioning editor Mika Ross-Southall on a strange new exhibition of Picasso's work that examines his career-long engagement with minotaurs and matadors; Lorna Scott Fox rediscovers Leonora Carrington, an almost-forgotten radical artist-thinker for our fragile times.

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How comics got serious Apr 26, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The graphic artist Nicola Streeten discusses two new exhibitions, in Paris and London, linking comics to trauma theory, radical politics and feminism; Alexander van Tulleken on a new book by two "rock star professors" that purports to provide a bold new solution to the refugee crisis; a crackly clip just a few minutes long is all we have left of Virginia Woolf's voice – Emily Kopley fills us in on the fraught context behind "Craftsmanship", a talk broadcast by the BBC 80 years ago

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Primo Levi speaks Apr 19, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Philippe Sands discusses his forthcoming project which assembles an international cast of actors, writers, musicians and politicians to read Primo Levi's seminal account of survival in Auschwitz, seventy years after its publication; as part of our Shakespeare edition this week, TLS Commissioning Editor Michael "The Doctor" Caines considers how protective we should be of the man and the work; Rebecca Spang wades through the murky matter of money, the growth of "off shore" finance and the bewildering sexualization of monetary metaphors.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.

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Beers with James Baldwin Apr 12, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS editor James Campbell, Baldwin's biographer and friend, on the writer's complex presence and legacy on and off screen; Michael Rosen on the "disappearance" of Émile Zola and the long, dappled shadow of the Dreyfus Affair; Jane Yager on a sensational and problematic investigation into mass rapes committed by allied soldiers in Germany in the wake of the Second World War, and how attitudes have – and haven't – changed.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Poets, cannibals and philosophers Apr 05, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Rory Waterman on the "uses" of poetry and Stephen Burt's admirable, if rather vexing, new collection The Poem is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them; Barbara J. King on the cannibals in our midst (note: fragile-stomached listeners and lovers of banana slugs be warned); When did modern philosophy begin? And who is its godfather? – TLS Philosophy Editor Tim Crane tackles a new book by A. C. Grayling which seeks answers to these thorny questions.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.

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Not so still lives Mar 29, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Libby Purves on the stranger-than-fiction life of Aimée Crocker, a nineteenth-century heiress with proto-PC views and an affection for boa constrictors; Gabriel Josipovici on a magisterial but contentious study of two of the greatest figures in European art history, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder; and finally, the novelist and poet Colm Tóibín discusses his forthcoming novel, set in ancient Greece, and reads five new poems, published for the first time in this week's TLS Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.

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Isherwood, from Weimar Berlin to Hollywood Mar 23, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Henry K. Miller on the cinematic progress of Christopher Isherwood, a novelist who wanted nothing more than to be a filmmaker; Lamorna Ash on All This Panic, a dreamy documentary about seven girls stumbling towards womanhood in Brooklyn; Richard Fortey tells the story of the British landscape, a sweeping tale spanning several millennia, from the retreat of the ice caps in 9700 BC to the crowded island of today.

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A new French Revolution? Mar 16, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Sudhir Hazareesingh on the seemingly unstoppable rise of Emmanuel Macron, the only politician now standing between the far-Right Marine Le Pen and the French presidency; Claude Rawson on the complex rage of Jonathan Swift, and why we should resist all attempts to sanitise Gulliver's Travels; Diane Purkiss delves into the murky history of alchemy, a slippery amalgam of science and the make-believe of great importance to our ancestors – and which we would do better than to scoff at.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.

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Fragments of the American Dream Mar 09, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – In these science fictional times, Jonathan Barnes considers the importance of sci-fi, plus a new sequel to H. G. Wells's satirical masterpiece The War of the Worlds; Thea reports from a new exhibition of Pop Art and print work at the British Museum, which showcases six decade's worth of American dreaming; Fiction Editor Toby Lichtig discusses George Saunders's new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, a humorous, moving and formally inventive account of President Lincoln's grief following the death of his son.

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George Saunders on 'Lincoln in the Bardo' Mar 08, 2017

In this bonus programme, TLS fiction editor Toby Lichtig interviews George Saunders about his first novel, 'Lincoln in the Bardo'.

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The Jam's literary credentials Mar 02, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – D. J. Taylor on the bookish sensibilities of Paul Weller's post-punk romanticism (including a bizarre medley of Orwell's 1984 and Wind in the Willows); Stephen Brown considers a clutch of books about practising, playing and listening to music, how to think about Mahler, and the perfect aphorisms of Michael Hampe (“Develop a feeling for greatness. It protects against stupidity”)

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Anthony Burgess at 100 Feb 22, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea LenarduzziPaul Howard brings us an unpublished Burgess essay on an untranslatable poet; J. Michael Lennon links the writing of Joan Didion with Trump's America; and Simon Armitage reads us a brand new poem.

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Writing The Russian Revolution Feb 15, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Caryl Emerson on poetry and prose forged in the immediacy of the Russian Revolution of 1917; Phil Baker considers the strange split legacy of British writer Colin Wilson, a curious and often hateful figure with an extreme superiority complex; finally, Clive James reads his beautiful new poem "Anchorage International"

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Cowgirls, Hockney, and how to write a bestseller Feb 08, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Gerri Kimber on the role of women in the rise of the Western (plus the notorious case of Mrs Clem); as Tate Britain unveils the most extensive David Hockney retrospective yet, one of the show's curators talks us though some key moments, and themes, in a long and eclectic career; what makes a bestseller? Daisy Hildyard considers four new books that purport to tell us why some books succeed while others flop.

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The age of mass incarceration Feb 02, 2017

Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer and campaigner against miscarriages of justice, joins us in the studio to discuss his time defending death-row prisoners in Guantánamo and elsewhere, the "integrity" of the system, why torture doesn't work, and whether the age of mass incarceration might finally be drawing to a close. We end with Helen Mort reading her new poem, "Glasgow".Presented by Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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March on Jan 26, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Paul Collier on the new "hard" pragmatism and the future of capitalism; Michael Chabon discusses his invigorating new novel, Moonglow; Mary Beard on women in academia (the troubles and the triumphs, past and present), and why the Trump inauguration protests were a step in the right direction.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Reboots and reputations Jan 19, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Devoney "Stone Cold Jane Austen" Looser on the slew of Jane Austen reincarnations (and why it's nothing to worry about); David Wheatley on the long-awaited final volume of Samuel Beckett's letters and its "black diamonds of pessimism"; and J. Michael Lennon on the titan of publishing Robert Gottlieb, and the writer-editor relationship. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Bad sex, 'the Malala effect', layers of place Jan 11, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Eimear McBride on the dark side of bad sex writing and why a new anthology is nothing to be snickered at; Diana Darke on the stories of two young women who have fled war in the Middle East and the new pressures they face; and Jenny Hendrix joins us from New York to discuss new works of imaginative cartography that portray that city – indeed any city – in full, kaleidoscopic complexity.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Chilling, glitzy and dark Jan 05, 2017

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Andrew Scull on the deeply unsettling – and surprisingly recent – history of lobotomy, and the sorry tale of Patient H. M.; Lisa Hilton on the sometimes mystifying appeal of the French Riviera and the vapid aristocrats who holidayed there; Kate Symondson on an all but forgotten novel by Joseph Conrad and a clutch of new books that scrutinize his philosophical and political scepticism – a man for our times?

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The many faces of King’s Cross Jan 02, 2017

A recording from the TLS’s 2016 London Lit Weekend at King’s Place, London: Historians Simon Bradley and Rosemary Ashton and the architect Paul Williams (of Stanton Williams Architects) discuss the literary and architectural heritage of King’s Cross, London, an area which has seen tremendous upheaval in the past century.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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A monster success Dec 30, 2016

A recording from the TLS’s 2016 London Lit Weekend at King’s Place, London: 2016 was the 200th anniversary of a dark and stormy night with an extraordinary literary legacy: Frankenstein. Frances Wilson and Benjamin Markovits recount the three days in June, 1816, at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, when a group of young writers – among them Mary Godwin – sheltered from the gloom.Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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From book to box and beyond Dec 26, 2016

A recording from the TLS’s 2016 London Lit Weekend at King’s Place, London: Cinema and television are brimming with literary adaptations. But how does the page translate to the screen? To discuss the ins and outs, successes and failures, we brought together Mary Beard, David Farr (whose screenwriting credits include The Night Manager), and the novelist and literary adaptee Alan Hollinghurst. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Overrated/Underrated Dec 23, 2016

A recording from the TLS’s 2016 London Lit Weekend at King’s Place, London: Overrated/Underrated, a favourite TLS game in which a panel of critics (David Collard, Alex Clark and Michael Caines) select the esteemed writers they would like to build up or knock down a peg or two. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Brexit, bubbles, and the best arts of 2016 Dec 21, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – James O'Brien on Brexit and the battle for Britain's soul; a (rather idiosyncratic) round-up of the best arts of 2016 with Arts editor Lucy Dallas; finally, in honour of the season, Philosophy editor and oenophile Tim Crane on the "champagne phenomenon"; see you in 2017.

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God, sex and the arts / science divide Dec 15, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Rupert Shortt on why Christianity has been more help than hindrance to social and intellectual progress; Fiction editor Toby Lichtig meets Emily Witt to discuss sex, drugs and a new novel by Dana Spiotta; Terri Apter on new essays by Siri Hustvedt, the (narrowing?) gap between art and science, and the persistent gender biases that underpin experience. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Defiance, good death and Mexico Dec 07, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Frances Wilson on the eccentric life of Lady Anne Barnard, loved by men and bad girls alike; Michael Caines on death and women, and indeed, dead women, on the Shakespearean stage; Scott Esposito on Mexico's violence transmogrified into art, including music made using human vertebrae; finally, seven new (and rare) poems from the critic Barbara Everett. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Controlled violence Nov 30, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi: – Jennifer Howard on the threats and thrills of the internet: what price for online freedom?; Rebecca Lemov considers the neurological effects of torture, plus the chilling account of a man who survived Guantanamo; Tom Shippey on the liberated and oppressed societies of Scandinavia, where light meets dark.Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Books of the Year Nov 23, 2016

Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi are joined by Fiction editor Toby Lichtig and Arts editor Lucy Dallas to discuss their favourite books of 2016, plus the titles they guiltily haven't read (yet), old favourites, and a few disappointments; to end the show, Alan Jenkins, TLS Poetry editor, reads "The Song of the Swimmer" by J. A. Symonds, a feverish poem which could never have been shared in the writer's lifetime and which is published for the first time in this week's issue of the TLS.

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Lionel Shriver: "Terror as recreation" Nov 18, 2016

Catharine Morris, at the 2016 Singapore Writers Festival, interviews the American novelist and journalist Lionel Shriver about Trump, Brexit and her unsettling new novel, The Mandibles. Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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The life in the work Nov 16, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Seamus Perry on the difficult, "spiritually dyspeptic" life and work of D. H. Lawrence; Ruth Scurr on two new books by Elena Ferrante, and the struggle over her name; Kathryn Hughes on the knotty, globe-spanning cultural life of hair; and finally, a snippet from our recent interview with the American author Lionel Shriver: can fiction contain the real-life Trump?

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Against nature Nov 09, 2016

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas:Mary Beard shares her experience of election night in America; Mark Bostridge discusses Queen Victoria and the stinginess of the Royal Archive; and Nick Groom makes the case for wondrous nature writing.Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Violence and poetry Nov 03, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – our History editor David Horspool on the (uniquely?) violent English and seven centuries' worth of pacification; Mark Hutchinson on the lesser-known modernist poet Basil Bunting and his love-hate relationship with T. S. Eliot; Fiona Green on a bold new collection of Emily Dickinson poems – does it bring us closer to the reclusive poet herself?; and finally, we have a recording of the late Robert Conquest, a man best known for his groundbreaking work as a historian, reading his poem "The Rokeby Venus" in 1960.

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Halloween story special Oct 28, 2016

With Stig Abell, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines.Three extracts of spooky stories for Halloween. Stig reads from Dracula by Bram Stoker; Thea from Mr Jones by Edith Wharton; and Michael from Two Doctors by MR James.Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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Shades of censorship Oct 26, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Elaine Showalter on how extreme misogyny turned Clinton vs Trump into woman vs man; Jonathan Barnes on the long shadow of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'; Houman Barekat on 250 years of 'Index on Censorship' and the mutable and myriad threats to free speech; Lara Feigel on two books, by the late Sue Lloyd-Roberts and Lara Pawson, about violence and the sufferings of women around the world – how much progress is there?

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Ali Smith on Autumn Oct 21, 2016

Toby Lichtig talks to Ali Smith about her new novel, Autumn; plus, an exclusive extract read by the author. Find out more: the-tls.co.uk

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Life, writing and life-writing Oct 19, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Ruth Scurr on Beryl Bainbridge's life, love and works; Jessica Loudis on two memoirs, of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel; ruthless and high-minded or likeable and good-natured? Dinah Birch on the ever-enigmatic J. M. W. Turner; and finally, we're joined by the TLS's resident Shakespearean Michael Caines to talk us through a new compendium of writing on the playwright. Just don't call him the Bard. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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The mythical Lévi-Strauss Oct 12, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Adam Kuper on French structuralist and hoarder of myths Claude Lévi-Strauss; Joe Paul Kroll on what happened when a slightly belligerent group of eminent German writers visited America; Laura James on the intractable paradox of aid in Africa and different approaches to nation-building; finally, TLS Poetry Editor Alan Jenkins discusses the enigmatic poet Louis Aragon, and reads his new translation "Elsa at the Mirror".Find out more at www.the-tls.co.uk

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A lecture by Terry Eagleton Oct 07, 2016

Terry Eagleton gives the Theos annual lecture, on the not un-problematic, not un-high-stakes, and not un-incendiary twin matters of The Death of God and the War on Terror. Find our more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Duck or Rabbit? Oct 05, 2016

With Stig Abel and Thea Lenarduzzi: Tim Crane guides us through our philosophy special edition (including on how the brain works); Lisa Hilton helps to recover the voices of Parisian wartime women; Anna Katharina Schaffner explains why the Nazis were all high. Plus Andrew Motion reflects on his freedom from the role of Poet Laureate, and reads his poem "Evening Traffic".

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Rose Tremain at the Wimbledon Bookfest Oct 03, 2016

The novelist in conversation, with Michael Caines, about her latest novel, The Gustav Sonata, and forty years as a published author.www.the-tls.co.uk

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Beatrix Potter, marriage, and data Sep 28, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Marcia Zug on marriage in America (plus the pros and cons of mail-order brides); Laura Freeman on Beatrix Potter's naughty charm; Paul Duguid considers the implications of unrestrained information for all – is more necessarily better?; and finally, Robert Potts reads "Gift", a poem by the concrete poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, first published in the TLS in 1960.

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Hardy's London & the modern Middle East Sep 21, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Mark Ford on Thomas Hardy's unlikely London romance; Hirsh Sawhney on Aravind Adiga's captivating new novel and his messy portrait of India; to tie in with a special run of features on the Middle East, TLS editors Robert Irwin and Toby Lichtig discuss the challenges, historical and present, facing the region; and finally, Mark Ford reads Thomas Hardy's poem "Coming Up Oxford Street: Evening", from 1872.

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Ideas of Englishness Sep 14, 2016

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas.Including Ferdinand Mount on what defines England and its inhabitants;David Horspool on responses to Hitler and his ideas; and Mika Ross-Southall on Nick Cave's savagely sad album.

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Beginnings of life and the end of the NHS Sep 07, 2016

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas.Raymond Tallis on the ongoing threat to the NHS; Bee Wilson on descriptions of pregnancy and childbirth; and Marjorie Perloff on seeing O.J. Simpson as Othello.

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Clare Lowdon on Safran Foer's great big dazzling novel Aug 31, 2016

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas: Clare Lowdon on Safran Foer's great big dazzling novel; Mary Beard on what makes Classics relevant; and Can Dundar on being imprisoned by the Turkish state for telling the truth.

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Eimear McBride on The Lesser Bohemians Aug 23, 2016

Toby Lichtig from The TLS chats to author Eimear McBride about her latest novel, The Lesser Bohemians. Find out more: the-tls.co.uk

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Panama Papers, the Nero enigma & women in Hollywood Aug 17, 2016

With Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig – Edward Luttwak on the global unravelling occasioned by the Panama Papers; Mary Beard on the enigmatic Emperor Nero, matricidal monster and lover of music; and Hermione Hoby on the difficult beauties of Hollywood, from Babra Streisand to Meryl Streep; plus, a look ahead to next week's special edition of the show.

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Brazil, Bloomsbury, and Geoff Dyer Aug 10, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Patrick Wilcken brings us the real Brazil, a country at breaking point; Francesca Wade considers the radical interior designs, and desires, of the Bloomsbury Group; Toby Lichtig on the failures and successes of Geoff Dyer; and Rachel Hadas reads her poem, "Raw Jute".

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Edmund White on Nabokov Aug 03, 2016

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Thomas Meaney on death (and what to do with the remains) in the West; Professor Amy Knight on how Putin keeps getting away with murder; Edmund White reconsiders Pale Fire, Nabokov's "great gay comic novel", and reads from the novel's opening.

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Andrew Motion on Housman Jul 27, 2016

This week: Andrew Motion on Housman's hidden corners; Trev Broughton on rediscovering Charlotte Bronte; and DJ Taylor on the myths of the Sixties. Plus Andrew Motion reads from Housman's A Shropshire Lad.

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The view from Istanbul Jul 20, 2016

The TLS podcast, with Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – this week: why eat meat?; how political was Shakespeare, and does it matter?; the ethics of dust at the Houses of Parliament; a report from Taksim Square, as Turkey reels. Discover more: the-tis.co.uk

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Richard Ford on Donald Trump Jul 13, 2016

The TLS podcast, with Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – this week: the complexities of modern Irish history; the ups and downs of historical fiction; Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Richard Ford gets to know Donald Trump; finally, Robert Potts reads a poem by Seamus Heaney.

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Tim Parks on translating Leopardi Jul 06, 2016

The TLS podcast, with Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – this week featuring: Tim Parks on reviving and translating Giacomo Leopardi; Pamela Haag on America's surprisingly modern love affair with guns; Kate Webb on the category defying life and work of Angela Carter; finally, Alan Jenkins reads a poem by the late, great Geoffrey Hill, who died last week.

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Mary Beard on referenda Jun 29, 2016

Books, culture and more from the TLS podcast, with Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – this week featuring: Athelstan – Britain's forgotten king; Mary Beard on the ancient precedent of our very modern referendum; a philosophical look at the ugly; English Country Houses, real and literary; and a poem, "Visiting Europe", by Bill Manhire

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Fiction and the refugee crisis Jun 22, 2016

Books, culture and more from the TLS podcast – this week featuring: responses to the refugee crisis, political and literary; the new Tate in London; Turkey's secular spaces; and a poem by Stephen Knight.

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Svetlana Alexievich and the Russian-Soviet soul Jun 06, 2016

Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, gives the Elliott Lecture at St Antony's College Oxford, taking as her subject "The history of the Russian-Soviet soul".

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Tessa Hadley and Sarah Hall in conversation Jun 01, 2016

Michael Caines talks to two authors who have been shortlisted for the 2016 South Bank Sky Arts Awards.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Utopia – Then and Now (live from Kings Place) May 27, 2016

Matthew Beaumont, Michael Caines, Chloe Houston and Nicole Pohl discuss Thomas More's Utopia, first published 500 years ago in 1516, and utopianism in its many and varied forms.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Gerard Manley Hopkins May 17, 2016

Alan Jenkins introduces and reads a selection of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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Casanova's escape May 16, 2016

Adrian Tahourdin and Mika Ross-Southall dip their toes in Casanova's celebrated memoirs.Find out more: www.the-tis.co.uk

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Thomas De Quincey May 13, 2016

Catharine Morris and Michael Caines take a look at the English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.Find out more at the-tis.co.uk

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Robert Browning's Poetic Characters Apr 28, 2016

Sam Graydon looks at the poet Robert Browning, exploring the major role he played in the development of the dramatic monologue, with a selection of readings from his works.

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Shakespeare and Cervantes, 400 years on Apr 22, 2016

To mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and Cervantes, Mika Ross-Southall introduces a talk on these two giants of world literature.

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Utopia at 500 Apr 20, 2016

Michael Caines and Lucy Dallas take a tour of Thomas More's imaginary commonwealth, where private property has been abolished and reason rules all.

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Being Jewish, being American Apr 15, 2016

Toby Lichtig talks to Morris Dickstein about the ever-evolving relationship between Judaism and American literature.

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Oscar Wilde and the Chatterton myth Mar 07, 2016

Mika Ross-Southall and Michael Caines look at the enduring appeal of Thomas Chatterton, an icon of thwarted Romantic genius, and how he became a figure of especial importance for Oscar Wilde.

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Henry James in the TLS Mar 02, 2016

To mark the centenary of Henry James's death, Catharine Morris and Michael Caines trace the course of his work as it was discussed in his lifetime – and as some of it appeared in the TLS itself.

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Mary Beard Feb 02, 2016

On the 10th anniversary of her blog, A Don's Life, The TLS' Classics Editor Mary Beard joins Rozalind Dineen to discuss its success. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Jane Austen's Emma Jan 21, 2016

Michael Caines and Catharine Morris celebrate the bicentenary of Jane Austen's magnificent novel and its quixotic heroine.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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"Tea at the Midland" by David Constantine Jan 13, 2016

Michael Caines reads a short story about a man and a woman taking tea, watching the surfers at Morecambe Bay – and falling out over art.For more information, head to www.the-tls.co.uk

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Jacob Tonson's poets Jan 11, 2016

A selection of poems by Aphra Behn, John Milton, Alexander Pope and the Earl of Rochester.Read by Michael Caines, Mika Ross-Southall and Alan Jenkins.

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John Donne Dec 11, 2015

John Donne was the greatest English dramatic poet who never wrote a play. Here, Alan Jenkins reads a selection of his works. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Vertigo Dec 09, 2015

Vertigo special: Toby Lichtig of The TLS introduces David Collard who compares Alfred Hitchcock's film interpretation to the original novel.The film was recently voted 'the best of all time' by 846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors. Find out more: www.the-tls.com

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Douglas Oliver: a poetic vision of the body politic Sep 18, 2015

Michael Caines looks back to Douglas Oliver's long poem The Infant and the Pearl, first published in 1985 – a poetic vision of the contemporary political scene, among other things, cast in the mould of a medieval dream poem.Find out more: www.the-tls.com

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J.H. Prynne: an examination of imagery Sep 09, 2015

We discuss a poem by J.H. Prynne called To Pollen, from 2006, which conducts its own examination of the uses and misuses of images and stories of suffering.Read by Robert Potts.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Summer Holidays Aug 12, 2015

“August for the people and their favourite islands”, said W.H. Auden in 1935, with the Isle of Wight in mind. Now people’s favourite islands are more likely to be Majorca or Mykonos, but the lure of the seaside remains. Alan Jenkins reads a selection of holiday poems from the past eighty years.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Cycling: tour de force Jul 23, 2015

David Horspool and Lucy Dallas take an in-depth look at the world of cycling literature. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Tennis: Game, Sex and Match Jul 09, 2015

In the latest episode of TLS Voices, Michael Caines and Mika Ross-Southall look at how tennis has inspired writers over the centuries.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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John Fletcher Jul 03, 2015

In the latest episode of TLS Voices, Mika Ross-Southall and Michael Caines consider Shakespeare's collaborator John Fletcher – a major English dramatist whose work, paradoxically, is largely neglected today.

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Christine Brooke-Rose Jun 26, 2015

In the latest episode of TLS Voices, Michael Caines, Natalie Ferris and Mika Ross-Southall explore the experimental work of Christine Brooke-Rose.

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Waterloo Jun 18, 2015

In the latest episode of TLS Voices, Adrian Tahourdin goes to Waterloo.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Byron May 29, 2015

In the latest episode of TLS Voices, Michael Caines and Roz Dineen celebrate a selection of Byron's Letters and Journals.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Anthony Trollope Apr 22, 2015

200 years since his birth, we discuss the life and work of Anthony Trollope. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Hermione Lee discusses Virginia Woolf Mar 13, 2015

100 years since its publication, Hermione Lee discusses The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf.In discussion with Thea Lenarduzzi from the TLS.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Ruth Scurr discusses John Aubrey and the art of writing biography Feb 25, 2015

Ruth Scurr talks about her unconventional approach to writing a biography of John Aubrey, the seventeenth-century biographer most famous for Brief Lives.In discussion with Mika Ross-Southall from the TLS.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Robert Herrick and John Evelyn Jan 21, 2015

Michael Caines reads a selection of verses by the seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick, as well as a remarkable and little-known elegy by the diarist John Evelyn.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Ariel poems Dec 16, 2014

Alan Jenkins reads a selection of Ariel poems by, among others, Thomas Hardy, Walter de la Mare and T. S. Eliot, from Faber's Christmas pamphlet seriesFind out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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T. E. Hulme Nov 19, 2014

Welcome to TLS Voices Deputy Editor Alan Jenkins considers the work of T. E. Hulme.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Ivor Gurney Nov 05, 2014

TLS VoicesMichael Caines considers the work of the war poet Ivor Gurney, and reads a selection from his work, including the previously unpublished poems "The Women at Work" and "The Vow of Life".Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Gabriel-Ernest by Saki Oct 30, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.The TLS turns to the dark side, finding stories within stories, eyes in the dark, guilty consciences and beasts in the woods – tales from M. R. James, Edith Wharton and Saki, read and introduced by Michael Caines, Mika Ross-Southall and Lucy Dallas.3 of 3Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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The Eyes by Edith Wharton Oct 27, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.The TLS turns to the dark side, finding stories within stories, eyes in the dark, guilty consciences and beasts in the woods – tales from M. R. James, Edith Wharton and Saki, read and introduced by Michael Caines, Mika Ross-Southall and Lucy Dallas.2 of 3Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard by M.R. James Oct 23, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.The TLS turns to the dark side, finding stories within stories, eyes in the dark, guilty consciences and beasts in the woods – tales from M. R. James, Edith Wharton and Saki, read and introduced by Michael Caines, Mika Ross-Southall and Lucy Dallas.1 of 3Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Laurie Lee with Ronald Blythe Sep 18, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Poet, novelist and screenwriter Laurie Lee is discussed with further contribution from fellow writer, Ronald Blythe.Introduced by Michael Caines and Rozalind Dineen from The TLS.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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David Collard discusses Flametti by Hugo Ball Aug 13, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Regular TLS contributor David Collard discusses Hugo Ball's Dadaist novel Flametti.Introduced by Toby LichtigFind out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Clive James Aug 06, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Clive James reads a selection of poems first published in The TLS.Sentenced To LifeRounded With A SleepHolding CourtMy Father Before MeOccupation Housewife Winter PlumsIntroduced by Alan Jenkins.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Mary Beard talks Medea at The National Theatre Jul 30, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Mary Beard discusses the recent production of Medea by Euripides, in a new version by Ben Power, at The National Theatre.Introduced by Rozalind Dineen.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Edward Thomas Jun 25, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Alan Jenkins reads a selection of poems from Edward Thomas.In addition, Rozalind Dineen reads a passage taken from Helen Thomas' memoirs, World Without End. Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Summer Books - Alex Clark on The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector Jun 18, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Alex Clark tells us why she's looking forward to The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector and reads an extract from the book.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Summer Books - Frances Wilson on What You Want by Constantine Phipps Jun 15, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Frances Wilson tells us why she's looking forward to What You Want by Constantine Phipps and reads an extract from the book.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Summer Books - Lidija Haas on The Interior Circuit by Francisco Goldman Jun 13, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Lidija Haas tells us why she's looking forward to The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle by Francisco Goldman and reads an extract from the book.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Summer Books - Mary Beard on Augustus by John Williams Jun 11, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Mary Beard tells us why she's looking forward to Augustus by John Williams and reads an extract from the book.Find out more: www.the-tls.co.uk

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Cavafy May 28, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Alan Jenkins reads a selection of poems from Constantine P. Cavafy.Find out more: http://www.the-tls.co.uk

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Shakespeare's Sonnets Apr 22, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Alan Jenkins reads a selection of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

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Ian Hamilton Apr 02, 2014

The Times Literary Supplement - an occasional series of readings.Alan Jenkins reads a collection of poems written by Ian Hamilton.The StormPretending Not to SleepMid-WinterAdmissionThe VisitNow and ThenCritiqueRoseReturningThe GardenAgainWebsite: http://www.the-tls.co.uk

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