Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.
45 min listen
In this week’s books podcast, I’m joined by the philosopher Toby Ord to talk about the cheering subject of planetary catastrophe. In his book The Precipice, new in paperback, Toby argues that we’re at a crucial point in human history – and that if we don’t start thinking seriously about extinction risks our species may
41 min listen
In this week’s Book Club podcast I am joined by one of the funniest writers working today. Shalom Auslander’s new novel is Mother For Dinner, which is set in perhaps the most oppressed minority community in the world. He talks to me about cannibalism, identity politics, his beef with tragedy… and an extremely high-risk prayer
20 min listen
On this week’s episode, Kate Andrews says the challenges of Joe Biden’s administration go beyond governing. (00:35) Plus, Liam Kennedy explains the history of Irish-American identity. (09:25) Finally, Jeremy Clarke wonders why everyone is a log expert (18:20)
Doc Martens are one of those quintessentially British things that, like the royal family and lorries queuing on the M20, turn out actually to be Germany’s doing. The ancestor of what became the ‘Air Wair’ sole was designed in 1945 by a German army doctor with a sore foot. Amid the postwar hurly-burly, he ‘salvaged’
43 min listen
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer Simon Winchester, whose new book takes on one of the biggest subjects on earth: earth. Land: How The Hunger For Ownership Made The Modern World starts from the author’s own little corner of New England – what he proudly calculates at a bit more
43 min listen
My guests on this week’s Book Club podcast are the writer and Women’s Equality Party co-founder Catherine Mayer, and her mother, the arts publicist Anne Mayer Bird. They are mother and daughter — but a year ago they became ‘sister widows’, as both lost their husbands within a few weeks of one another. Their new
If nothing else, the nation’s latest online book club will be its poshest. The Duchess of Cornwall has thrown her feathered fascinator into the ring with Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Richard and Judy to found — as she announced on her Instagram feed — an online book club called The Reading Room, in which
43 min listen
In the first Book Club podcast of the year, we’re marking the moment that George Orwell comes out of copyright. I’m joined by two distinguished Orwellians — D. J. Taylor and Dorian Lynskey — to talk about how the left’s favourite Old Etonian speaks to us now, and how his reputation has weathered. Was he
39 min listen
This week’s Book Club podcast celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of Nancy Mitford’s breakthrough novel The Pursuit of Love. Laura Thompson, author of the biography Life In A Cold Climate, joins me to talk about the way the book was written, how it helped create the Mitford myth – and how it shaped
49 min listen
How will the UK’s economy recover from Covid-19, and what has the pandemic revealed about the West? (01:20) Was 2020 the year we dealt a mortal blow to future viruses? (15:05) And finally, what makes Mary Gaitskill a brilliant writer, and why does Elif Shafak work to heavy metal music? (29:25) With The Spectator‘s political
In the early 1990s, the American novelist Mary Gaitskill suffered an abrupt awakening. ‘I lived in New York, I didn’t have a television, I didn’t listen to the radio. I didn’t even read magazines or newspapers very often. I was really too preoccupied with my own existence, which was hand to mouth a lot of
36 min listen
In this week’s Book Club podcast, we remember the great John Le Carre. I’m joined by one of the late writer’s longest standing friends, the novelist Nicholas Shakespeare. He tells me about Le Carre’s disdain for – and debt to – Ian Fleming, his intensely secretive and controlling personality, his magnetic charm, his thwarted hopes
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
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 —
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
35 min listen
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Douglas Stuart. His first novel, Shuggie Bain, tells the story of a boy growing up in poverty in 1980s Glasgow with an alcoholic single mother. It’s a story close to the author’s own. He joins me from the States
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
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
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
Well thank goodness for that, eh? Just as we reached our darkest hour and resigned ourselves to an endless series of lockdowns and the ruination of everything we once took for granted, we heard that help might be at hand. With the announcement of a Covid vaccine, what the Prime Minister called the ‘distant bugle