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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Aug 22, 2021•18 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Aug 18, 2021•49 min
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 Frie...
Aug 11, 2021•50 min
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/theststyl...
Aug 11, 2021•35 min
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...
Aug 08, 2021•14 min
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 soc...
Aug 04, 2021•49 min
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...
Jul 28, 2021•49 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jul 25, 2021•8 min
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'; p...
Jul 21, 2021•50 min
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 ...
Jul 15, 2021•50 min
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. 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....
Jul 11, 2021•24 min
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 su...
Jul 07, 2021•51 min
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 vari...
Jun 30, 2021•50 min
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...
Jun 23, 2021•50 min
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: ...
Jun 16, 2021•51 min
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 la...
Jun 09, 2021•50 min
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 Wo...
Jun 02, 2021•50 min
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, ...
May 27, 2021•49 min
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 write...
May 20, 2021•49 min
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
