Sam Leith

Sam Leith

Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.

Is anti-Etonian prejudice really OK?

Don’t you wish Angela Rayner would come off the fence, just once in a while, and tell us what she really thinks? In a meeting of delegates to the Labour Conference, the heiress presumptive to the Labour leadership is reported to have said of the governing party: ‘We cannot get any worse than a bunch

Keir Starmer’s essay is a cliché-ridden disaster

Many years ago, a tabloid newspaper played an unkind prank on the author of a very long and much talked-about literary novel. They sent a reporter to various bookshops to place a slip of paper into copies of the book 50 pages or so from the end. The slip said that if you phoned a

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen: Freud’s Patients

37 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast I’m joined by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, a historian of psychoanalysis whose latest book is Freud’s Patients: A Book of Lives. Mikkel has sifted through the archives to discover the real stories anonymised in the case studies on which Sigmund Freud based his theories, and the lives of the patients who

Oliver Burkeman: 4,000 Weeks

40 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer Oliver Burkeman. His new book 4,000 Weeks offers some bracing reflections on time: how much we have of it, how best to use it, and why ‘time management’ and productivity gurus have the whole thing upside down.

Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard, A Life

41 min listen

My guest on this week’s podcast is the biographer and critic Hermione Lee. Her biography of Tom Stoppard is newly out in paperback, and she tells me about the decade of work behind Sir Tom’s overnight success, his unexpected influences, and the challenge to a biographer of getting to the heart of this elusive genius.

Michael Bracewell: Souvenir

31 min listen

Michael Bracewell’s new book Souvenir is a vivid and poetic evocation of London on the brink of the digital era – the neglected in-between times between 1979 and 1986. He joins me to talk about fine art and post-punk, T S Eliot and William Burroughs – and the dangerous lure of nostalgia.

Michael Pye: Antwerp

35 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast I’m talking to Michael Pye about his new book Antwerp: The Glory Years. For most of the 16th century, as he tells me, Antwerp was the most important town in the western world – a city in which, as never before, ideas, information, goods and money circulated free of

Sam Leith

Tom Tugendhat’s speech was a masterclass in oratory

An ounce of emotion, it has been said, is worth a ton of fact. Tom Tugendhat’s remarkable speech to the Commons today was delivered with a current of emotion – pathos, as scholars of oratory call it – that was all the more electric for its restraint. His jaw clenched and trembled; his voice, now

Iain MacGregor: Checkpoint Charlie

53 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast we anticipate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Wall going up by talking to Iain MacGregor about his book Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall And The Most Dangerous Place On Earth. He tells me how, and why, the Russians cut a city in half overnight; and

Mary Ann Sieghart: The Authority Gap

36 min listen

My guest in this week’s books podcast is Mary Ann Sieghart, whose new book The Authority Gap accumulates data to show that so-called ‘mansplaining’ isn’t a minor irritation but the manifestation of something that goes all the way through society: women are taken less seriously than men, even by other women. She says it’s not

The true cost of the convenience economy

‘Where’s the car?’ said my wife Alice, interrupting my Zoom meeting on Saturday morning. ‘It’s where you left it,’ I said perhaps more pointedly than was kind. ‘When you drove it home last night. On the drive.’ ‘No it isn’t,’ she said. I left my Zoom meeting, shambled to the front of the house and

Marie Le Conte: Honourable Misfits

28 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the political journalist Marie Le Conte, whose new book isHonourable Misfits: A Brief History of Britain’s Weirdest, Unluckiest and Most Outrageous MPs. She introduces us to some of the dishonourable members of the past, and explains why – despite what we may think – in terms

Frederick Forsyth: The Day of the Jackal at 50

30 min listen

My guest in this week’s book club podcast is Frederick Forsyth, whose classic thriller The Day of the Jackal has been in print for 50 years this summer. He tells me about banging it out in a few weeks on a typewriter with a bullet hole in it, the shady characters who informed his research

The misery of watching England beat Denmark on ITV Hub

The tension in last night’s semi-final against Denmark was unbearable, wasn’t it? The early Danish goal – the thrilling equaliser – that penalty rebound! Every true Englishman had their hearts in their mouths. Even Priti Patel, I fancy, found herself reaching for a toothpick. But to those who were watching the show over the internet,

Adam Roberts & Lisa Duggan on Ayn Rand

43 min listen

Who is John Galt? This week’s Book Club podcast looks at the life, work and personality of Ayn Rand, probably the most influential writer you’ve never read. A favourite of our new Health Secretary, the author of Atlas Shrugged — and the most strident advocate of the idea that “greed is good” — continues to

Anne Sebba: A Cold War Tragedy

47 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast my guest is Anne Sebba – whose Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy tells the story of the first woman in US history to be executed for a crime other than murder. She tells me how attitudes to this notorious espionage case changed over the years; and why, while

Richard Ovenden: Burning The Books

50 min listen

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the chief librarian of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Richard Ovenden. In Burning The Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack, shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, he explores the long history and vital importance of libraries and archives — and the equally long history of their destruction in

Charles Spencer: The White Ship

35 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Charles Spencer, whose book The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s Dream is new out in paperback. He tells me why his story is like “Game of Thrones meets Titanic“, about the piety and the startling cruelty of medieval kings, the tantalising

Lawrence Wright: The Plague Year

36 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is one of America’s foremost magazine journalists, the New Yorker‘s Lawrence Wright. His new book is The Plague Year: America In The Time of Covid. He tells me what a book brings to recent history that week-to-week journalism can’t, about the extraordinary happenstance that put him in