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 ...
Oct 24, 2018•45 min
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...
Oct 17, 2018•46 min
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'Br...
Oct 10, 2018•47 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 03, 2018•31 min
In this bonus episode, the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 26, 2018•30 min
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 Teacher...
Sep 26, 2018•53 min
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 J...
Sep 19, 2018•40 min
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...
Sep 12, 2018•37 min
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 A...
Sep 05, 2018•53 min
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 ye...
Aug 22, 2018•41 min
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 t...
Aug 15, 2018•45 min
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 ...
Aug 08, 2018•44 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 01, 2018•30 min
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 ...
Jul 25, 2018•37 min
“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 p...
Jul 18, 2018•39 min
Sam Leith, the books editor of the Spectator, and Stig Abell discuss their mutual appreciation of the crime novels of Lee Child. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 11, 2018•28 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priv...
Jul 11, 2018•38 min
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 Sens...
Jul 04, 2018•37 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 27, 2018•25 min
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...
Jun 27, 2018•52 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 20, 2018•33 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 13, 2018•23 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 13, 2018•42 min
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 rac...
Jun 07, 2018•32 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 06, 2018•32 min
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 ...
May 30, 2018•53 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 25, 2018•32 min
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 moder...
May 16, 2018•45 min
Lucy Dallas is joined by Madeline Miller to discuss her new book, Circe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 09, 2018•28 min
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
May 09, 2018•40 min
