Podcast
Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith.
Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith.
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Andrew Bayliss, author of Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower. Andrew tells Sam what we know — and don’t know – about these much-mythologised figures from the Ancient world and tells the story of how a tiny city-state punched above its weight, until
Play 43 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the Albanian-born political philosopher Lea Ypi, whose new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined reconstructs the story of her grandmother’s early life amid the turbulence of the early and mid twentieth century. She talks to me about using the techniques of fiction to supply the gaps in the archive,
Play 48 mins
The Book Club
This week’s Book Club podcast marks the 80th anniversary this year of the publication of Brideshead Revisited. This conversation is from the archives, originally recorded in 2020 to mark its 75th anniversary. To discuss Evelyn Waugh’s great novel, Sam Leith is joined by literary critic and author Philip Hensher, and by the novelist’s grandson (and
Play 43 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest for this week’s Book Club podcast is Max Hastings. Max joined Sam earlier this year for a live recording to discuss his new book Sword: D-Day, trial by battle, which tells the story of the individual stories who risked their lives as part of Operation Overlord. The discussion was arranged to mark
Play 32 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest for this week’s Book Club podcast is Joanna Pocock, whose new book Greyhound describes two trips she took across America by Greyhound bus in 2006 and 2023. They talk about the literature of the road, that distinctively American and usually distinctively male genre, and the meaning of travel – and Joanna tells Sam how
Play 36 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Nicola Barker, talking about her new book TonyInterruptor — about how a man who interrupts a free jazz concert becomes a viral sensation on social media. Nicola tells Sam why some of her books are bouts of the flu and some are sneezes, how hard she works on her apparently spontaneous
Play 27 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith is joined for this week’s Book Club podcast by Gary Shteyngart — whose new novel Vera, or Faith is set in a near-future America whose politics seems to be less science-fictional by the day. It tells the unexpectedly tender story of a bright but lonely ten-year-old girl contending with her parents’ failing marriage and navigating
Play 35 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the biographer Frances Wilson, whose new book Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark was recently lauded in these pages as “mesmerising” and “a revolutionary book”. She tells me how she immersed herself in the spooky life and peerless art of the great novelist, and why a conventional
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The Book Club
My guest this week is Irvine Welsh – who, three decades after his era-defining hit Trainspotting, returns with a direct sequel, Men In Love. Irvine tells me what Sick Boy, Renton, Spud and Begbie mean to him, why his new book hopes to encourage a new generation to discover Romantic verse and shagging, and why
Play 34 mins
The Book Club
My guest this week is the writer M. John Harrison, who joins me to talk about the rerelease of his 1992 novel The Course of the Heart – a deeply strange and riddling story of grief, friendship, memory and occult magic. We talk about why this book is so personal to him, what he learned
Play 34 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is one of the most popular living thriller writers. Karin Slaughter has made her native Georgia her fictional territory, and she joins Sam as she launches a new series set in a whole new county, with the book We Are All Guilty Here. They talk ‘planning
Play 36 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is science writer Carl Zimmer, whose new book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe explores the invisible world of the aerobiome – the trillions of microbes and particles we inhale every day. He tells me how Louis Pasteur’s glacier experiments kicked off a forgotten
Play 44 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India’s cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road’ is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra
Play 50 mins
The Book Club
In this week’s Book Club podcast I am joined by Lucy Mangan, author of Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives. She tells me what teenagers did before they had Young Adult books to read, the bizarre demise of the author of Goodnight Moon, and the wisdom of forsaking the busy world for an armchair and
Play 34 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Alice Loxton, whose new book Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives is just out in paperback. In it, she tells the story of the early lives of individuals as disparate as the Venerable Bede and Vivienne Westwood. On the podcast, Alice
Play 40 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Robert Macfarlane. In his new book Is A River Alive? he travels from the cloud forests of Ecuador to the pollution-choked rivers of Chennai and the threatened waterways of eastern Canada. He tells Sam what he learned along the journey – and why we need to reconceptualise
Play 40 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Geoff Dyer, who’s talking about his memoir Homework, in which he describes growing up as an only child in suburban Cheltenham, and how the eleven-plus and the postwar settlement irrevocably changed his life – propelling him away from the timid and unfulfilled world of his working-class parents. Geoff, in
Play 39 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, activist and Spectator contributor Julie Bindel. In her new book Lesbians: Where Are We Now?, Julie asks why lesbian liberation seems – as she sees it – to have taken one step forward and two steps back. She traces the history of lesbian activism, explains why we’re wrong to
Play 48 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Daniel Swift. Daniel’s new book, The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, tells the fascinating story of a theatrical innovation that transformed Elizabethan drama – and set the stage, as it were, for the rise of our greatest playwright.
Play 50 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s podcast is the historian Anne Sebba. In her new book The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival, Anne tells the story of how a ragtag group of women musicians formed in the shadow of Auschwitz’s crematoria. She tells me about the moral trade-offs, the friendships and enmities that formed,
Play 37 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Lamorna Ash, author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion. She describes to me how a magazine piece about some young friends who made a dramatic conversion to Christianity turned into an investigation into the rise in faith among a generation
Play 40 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, whose new book 38 Londres Street describes the legal and diplomatic tussle over the potential extradition of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet. Philippe tells Sam why the case was such an important one in legal history, and presents new evidence suggesting that
Play 58 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Fara Dabhoiwala, whose new book What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea looks not just at the origins of free speech as an idea, but also its uses and misuses. Fara tells me the bizarre story of how he found himself ‘cancelled’, gives
Play 45 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, who is here to talk about his new non-fiction book Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance. In it, he describes how he criss-crossed Europe in search of the truth about his great-grandfather, a Jewish scientist who found himself working on chemical
Play 40 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club is Francesca Simon. Best known for her Horrid Henry series of children’s books, Francesca has just published her first novel for grownups, a haunting reworking of a Welsh folk tale called Salka: Lady of the Lake. She tells me how she came to shift direction, what myths offer in terms of storytelling possibility
Play 32 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist and journalist John Lanchester, one of the contributors to Michael Lewis’s very timely new anthology of reportage on the United States federal government, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service. Can the public learn to love a bureaucrat? John tells me why he thinks the
Play 40 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the publisher Anthony Cheetham, one of the biggest figures in British publishing through the second half of the twentieth century and into this one. In his new book A Life in Fifty Books: A Publisher’s Memoir, he looks back on his career. He tells me why
Play 26 mins
The Book Club
In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m joined by Donald Trump’s outstanding Boswell, the magazine writer Michael Wolff. Michael’s new book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, takes Donald Trump and his colourful cast of hangers-on from the aftermath of the 6 January riots to his triumphal return to the White House. Michael tells me why he thinks
Play 33 mins
The Book Club
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the Assyriologist Selena Wisnom, author of The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History. Selena tells me about the vast and strange world of cuneiform culture, as evidenced by the life and reign of the scholar-king Ashurbanipal and the library – pre-dating that of Alexandria –
Play 45 mins
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist and critic James Bradley whose new book is Deep Water: The World in the Ocean. He tells me how we need to rethink our relationship with the sea and the life it contains, why fish are much more intelligent than we are used to imagining,
Play 49 mins