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 So...
Feb 24, 2022•49 min
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 ‘...
Feb 17, 2022•52 min
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: Poetr...
Feb 10, 2022•58 min
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 Frank...
Feb 03, 2022•59 min
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’, edi...
Jan 27, 2022•1 hr 3 min
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 L...
Jan 20, 2022•54 min
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 '...
Jan 13, 2022•55 min
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 Ant...
Jan 06, 2022•58 min
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back at this 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 30, 2021•37 min
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back at this 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.
Dec 30, 2021•37 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Dec 23, 2021•51 min
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 N...
Dec 16, 20210
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,...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Dec 02, 2021•52 min
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 25, 2021•59 min
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 So...
Nov 18, 2021•53 min
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 Lyri...
Nov 11, 2021•56 min
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 Extincti...
Nov 04, 2021•55 min
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 Re...
Oct 27, 2021•51 min
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...
Oct 20, 2021•56 min
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: So...
Oct 13, 2021•56 min
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 Chari...
Oct 07, 2021•48 min
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 infor...
Oct 03, 2021•26 min
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 A...
Sep 29, 2021•49 min
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 s...
Sep 23, 2021•49 min
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....
Sep 20, 2021•12 min
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 min...
Sep 16, 2021•49 min
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-grandf...
Sep 08, 2021•49 min
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....
Sep 01, 2021•50 min
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, dedicate...
Aug 25, 2021•50 min
