The TLS Podcast

Latest Episodes:

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

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

Jane Austen and Abolition May 20, 2021

Show notes

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.

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

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

Show notes

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

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

Pirandello’s Controlled Chaos May 05, 2021

Show notes

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

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

Violence Upon the Roads Apr 28, 2021

Show notes

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)

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.

Underground and on the Run Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

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

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.

Getting Shakespeare’s Measure Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

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

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.

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

Show notes

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

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

Dreams of America Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

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

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