Today

10 Dec 2020
Sam Leith
Sam Leith

The serious business of graphic novels

One of the running jokes about ‘serious’ graphic novels is that so many seem to consist, one way and another, of comics about how lonely, miserable and socially inept comic book creators are. Adrian Tomine leans into the trend, but with great charm, in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Faber, £16.99). Here is an autobiographical anthology of humiliation in chronological order — a series of wan vignettes taking the artist from inadequate-feeling schoolboy comics nerd to... inadequate-feeling New Yorker-published middle-aged comics superstar. Every time he feels he’s arrived, there’s something to remind him he hasn’t: a stinking review; a disobliging comparison to Neil Gaiman or Dan Clowes; Frank Miller not being able to pronounce his name; hopes dashed at an awards ceremony; a couple at the next table in a restaurant discussing the badness of his books.

Yesterday

9 Dec 2020
The Book Club

One man’s failed attempt to climb Everest

36 min listen

In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is the journalist Ed Caesar, whose new book The Moth and the Mountain tells the story of a now forgotten solo assault on Everest that ended in disaster. But as Ed argues, the heroic failure can be a richer and more resonant story than any triumph -- and as he painstakingly excavated the story of Maurice Wilson, it was just such a rich and resonant story he discovered: of a character who became fixated on the mountain as a means of redeeming wartime trauma and a chequered and at times disgraceful romantic history, of getting his own back on hated authority figures, and -- just possibly -- of finding a safe space for his darkest secret of all.

One man’s failed attempt to climb Everest

Thursday

3 Dec 2020
Sam Leith
Sam Leith

The texture of our country is changing before our eyes

On Saturday night we sat around the kitchen table, my family and I, and had a takeaway from the Turkish restaurant on our high street. We opened box after box: chunky tzatziki; calamari in crisp batter; salty ovals of sucuk; flatbread studded with black and yellow sesame seeds; hot homemade falafels, crunchy outside and yielding within, smeared with cool hummus. And, which I’d been missing since lockdown began, lamb ribs: skin salty and crisp from the grill, the meat underneath sweet and chewy, tarring their bed of rice. God it was bliss. But it made me feel melancholy, too. Meze & Shish only opened in the past couple of years — a well-appointed, tableclothy sort of local restaurant, well priced and serving first-rate grub.

The texture of our country is changing before our eyes

Wednesday

2 Dec 2020

Thursday

26 Nov 2020
Sam Leith
Sam Leith

Barack Obama was decidedly a man of action as well as words

Well, it’s quite the title, isn’t it? It tends to invite comparisons. The first one that occurred to me, though, was that the original Promised Land guy managed to get all the important stuff down on two stone tablets. His would-be successor doesn’t have quite that gift for compression. As he semi-apologises in the opening pages (he feels bad about it, but not bad enough to do a ruthless edit), this memoir was originally envisioned as a 500-pager. A Promised Land is just north of 700 pages, and there’s another volume to come. That speaks of a certain self-regard. Then again, Barack Obama has a good bit to be self-regarding about. He overcame a modest background, a Muslim-sounding middle name and the melanin thing to win the presidency, in large part thanks to an unsurpassed gift for oratory.

Barack Obama was decidedly a man of action as well as words

Wednesday

25 Nov 2020
The Book Club

Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC

51 min listen

On this week's Book Club podcast, we're talking about a subject that never ceases to arouse strong feelings: Auntie Beeb. My guests, Patrick Barwise and Peter York, say - in their new book The War Against The BBC: How an unprecedented combination of hostile forces is destroying Britain's greatest cultural institution... And why you should care - that if we lose the BBC we will miss it. But isn't it a soft-left Establishment mouthpiece, riddled with groupthink and funded by an anachronistic and unjustifiable tax? Isn't it a market-distorting, bureaucratic, top-heavy behemoth that we're better off without? They make the case, here, for why not.

Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC

Thursday

19 Nov 2020
The Edition

Boris in a spin: can the PM find his way again?

36 min listen

After two of Boris Johnson's most influential advisers left Downing Street last week, can the PM reset his relationship with the Tory party and find his way again? (00:58) Lara is joined by the Spectator's deputy political editor, Katy Balls, and former director of communications for David Cameron, Craig Oliver.A coronavirus vaccine seems to be the only way out of continued lockdowns, so should everyone be forced to have the jab? (13:49) The Spectator's literary editor, Sam Leith, joins the podcast with Professor Mona Siddiqui, who sits on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.And finally, should we start referring to people by their surnames again? (25:30) Historian Guy Walters thinks so, and he's joined by the Spectator's etiquette expert, Mary Killen.

Boris in a spin: can the PM find his way again?

Wednesday

18 Nov 2020

Wednesday

11 Nov 2020
The Book Club

Antony Gormley & Martin Gayford: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now

38 min listen

In this week's books podcast, I'm joined by the sculptor Antony Gormley and the art critic Martin Gayford to talk about their new book Shaping The World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now. They talk about the special place sculpture occupies in the arts, the lines of connection between its ancient origins and the avant-garde, and their views on the new fashion for tearing down statues. Plus, Antony talks about his own work from Field to the Angel of the North — and why he and Martin can't see eye-to-eye on the Baroque.

Antony Gormley & Martin Gayford: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now

Wednesday

4 Nov 2020
The Book Club

Carmen Callil: Oh Happy Day

32 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the publisher and historian Carmen Callil, whose new book Oh Happy Day: Those Times and These Times, tells the story of how her 18th-century ancestors were transported to Australia. She uses their story as a window into a densely imagined account of English and Aussie social history, and of the darker side of empire. She tells me why the Industrial Revolution wasn’t always a good thing, why it isn’t over the top to compare the British state apparatus to the Nazis - but also about her own childhood in Melbourne and why as a fervent anti-imperialist she accepted a Damehood.

Carmen Callil: Oh Happy Day

Friday

30 Oct 2020
Sam Leith
Sam Leith

In defence of ‘virtue signalling’

Of all the stupid things the BBC has done lately, their latest diktat must be the stupidest: a global warning to staff that they are subject to disciplinary action if they’re caught ‘virtue signalling’. Here is poor old Aunty, wetting her bloomers at the prospect of another roughing up from the mean girls in Downing Street – and in the process adopting a fatuous culture-wars catchphrase as if it were some gold standard of political neutrality. As I’ve argued here recently about ‘woke’, the term ‘virtue signalling’ is not an argument but a sneer. When you say somebody is ‘virtue signalling’, you’re not bothering to commit yourself to an argument about whether the position they are taking is right or wrong. (Perhaps, indeed, you feel on sticky ground entering that argument.

In defence of ‘virtue signalling’

Wednesday

28 Oct 2020
The Book Club

Natalie Haynes: Women in the Greek Myths

44 min listen

In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes, whose new book Pandora's Jar: Women In The Greek Myths investigates how the myths portrayed women from Pandora to Medea, and how those images have been repurposed in the retellings of subsequent generations. She tells me why Theseus isn't quite the hero we imagine him, how Erasmus's mistranslation of a single word crocked Pandora's reputation for good, why Euripides was a feminist avant la lettre, and how the Gorgon got her body. Tell us your thoughts on our podcasts and be in for a chance to win a bottle of Pol Roger champagne by filling out our podcast survey. Visit spectator.co.uk/podcastsurvey.

Natalie Haynes: Women in the Greek Myths

Thursday

22 Oct 2020
Sam Leith
Sam Leith

The Hay has become the Starbucks of literary festivals

The Hay Festival, memorably described by Bill Clinton as ‘the Woodstock of the mind’, has, over the past couple of decades, transformed into something more like the Starbucks of literary festivals. Like a bookish spider plant, it has sent out runners from its home in the rain-sodden Welsh marches to grow festivals all over the world. This spring it went to Abu Dhabi — where its chief point of contact was 69-year-old Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, a scion of the wealthy ruling dynasty who enjoys the title of ‘minister for tolerance’ in that illiberal regime. Should it have been there? This is a perennial ethical problem. Remember that species of diplomacy that in the Blair years was called ‘constructive engagement’? The idea is that you make nice with regimes whose values don’t align with your own — blood-soaked dictatorships, people who see the virtue in keeping their womenfolk indoors, or hanging homosexuals from cranes and so forth — in the hope that they will see the error of their ways and join the great family of civilised nations.

The Hay has become the Starbucks of literary festivals

Wednesday

21 Oct 2020

Wednesday

14 Oct 2020

Wednesday

7 Oct 2020
The Book Club

Hugh Aldersey-Williams: The Making of Science in Europe

34 min listen

If you know the name of Christiaan Huygens at all, it'll probably be as the man who gave his name to a space probe. But Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Dutch Light: Christaan Huygens and the Making of Science in Europe, joins this week's Book Club podcast to argues that this half-forgotten figure was the most important scientist between Galileo and Newton. He tells a remarkable story of advances in optics, geometry, probability, mathematics, astronomy - as well as the invention of the pendulum clock and the discovery of the rings of Saturn - against the backdrop of a turbulent post-Reformation Europe and the beginnings of an international scientific community. Plus, we identify an early-modern prototype for Dominic Cummings in the court of Louis XIV.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams: The Making of Science in Europe

Saturday

3 Oct 2020

Thursday

1 Oct 2020
The Edition

American meltdown: November’s democratic disaster

40 min listen

Is this week's presidential debate a taste of the chaos to come? (00:55) In defence of 'wokeness' (15:10) and are male-only spaces immoral? (30:25)With Matt Purple, Senior Editor at the American Conservative; Karin Robinson, host of the Primarily: 2020 podcast; Sam Leith, The Spectator's Literary Editor; Andrew Doyle, the writer behind Titania McGrath; and Emily Bendell, the entrepreneur who is bring a lawsuit against the Garrick Club.Presented by Cindy Yu.Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.

American meltdown: November’s democratic disaster

Wednesday

30 Sep 2020

Wednesday

23 Sep 2020

Wednesday

16 Sep 2020
The Book Club

Ysenda Maxtone Graham: British Summer Time Begins

30 min listen

In this week's books podcast my guest is the writer Ysenda Maxtone Graham, whose new book casts a rosy look back at the way children used to spend their summer holidays. British Summer Time Begins: The School Summer Holidays 1930-1980 is a work of oral history that covers everything from damp sandwiches and cruelty to animals to tree-climbing, messing about in boats or endless games of Monopoly; intimidating fathers, frustrated mothers and grandparents who, if you weren't careful, would eat your pet rabbit. The good old days, in other words. Ysenda tells me why she sees 'spiritual danger' in iPads, how she longed to visit a motorway service station on the M2 - and how a childhood of constant hunger and warmed-through digestive biscuits may have shaped the psychology of our current Prime Minister.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham: British Summer Time Begins

Wednesday

9 Sep 2020
The Book Club

Former Australian PM Julia Gillard on sexism in politics

38 min listen

My guest in this week's books podcast is the former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Along with the economist and former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Julia has written a new book called Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons, which includes interviews with women who've reached the top roles in global institutions, from Christine Lagarde and Joyce Banda to Michelle Bachelet and Theresa May. I asked her about her own time in politics, what she'd have done differently, whether Australia is more sexist than the UK, and her notorious 'misogyny' speech - plus, what she thinks her old sparring partner Tony Abbott has to offer the UK as a trade adviser.

Former Australian PM Julia Gillard on sexism in politics

Wednesday

2 Sep 2020
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