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 documentarist Maria 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 writ...
May 12, 2021•51 min
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 ...
May 05, 2021•51 min
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, B...
Apr 28, 2021•50 min
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 embellish...
Apr 21, 2021•50 min
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. Bra...
Apr 14, 2021•50 min
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 E...
Apr 07, 2021•50 min
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 ...
Mar 31, 2021•50 min
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 Plea...
Mar 25, 2021•50 min
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...
Mar 18, 2021•50 min
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 ...
Mar 11, 2021•49 min
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...
Mar 04, 2021•50 min
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 No...
Feb 25, 2021•49 min
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 Dant...
Feb 18, 2021•50 min
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...
Feb 11, 2021•49 min
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, in...
Feb 04, 2021•49 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 29, 2021•31 min
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...
Jan 28, 2021•50 min
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 ...
Jan 21, 2021•50 min
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 Catherin...
Jan 14, 2021•49 min
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...
Jan 07, 2021•49 min
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 Ca...
Dec 17, 2020•48 min
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 relationshi...
Dec 10, 2020•49 min
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...
Dec 03, 2020•49 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 27, 2020•30 min
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...
Nov 26, 2020•49 min
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 Mic...
Nov 19, 2020•49 min
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/ ] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informa...
Nov 12, 2020•49 min
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 Coll...
Nov 05, 2020•49 min
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 H...
Oct 29, 2020•49 min
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...
Oct 27, 2020•27 min
