As Mike Leigh's film of the Peterloo massacre of 1819 is released, Clare Pettitt revisits the history; Marina Benjamin offers a personal and literary account of the threshold between sleep and wakefulness; following the publication of a second volume of Sylvia Plath's letters, Hannah Sullivan looks for fresh insights into the poet's work, life and death; finally, Sam Riviere reads his new poem, "Sushi Tuesday"

Works discussed

Peterloo, directed by Mike Leigh

Insomnia by Marina Benjamin

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I (1940-1956) and Volume II (1956-1963), edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil

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Are authors, reviewers and publicists wasting their time on book coverage? The contemporary conversation about books and ideas goes way beyond traditional features and interviews. Book groups, academic seminars, Amazon user reviews, Goodreads, the press, radio, podcasts, and sometimes even TV: the form, tone and quality of coverage has infinite variety. But how much does any of it help the books business – if it can be measured at all? Do authors, reviewers, and publicists feel their efforts are worthwhile? Michael Caines, an editor at the TLS, chairs an eclectic panel for a crucial conversation about the conversation around books. (This a live recording of an event, in collaboration with BookMachine, which took place on October 3, 2018, at the Driver, Kings Cross, London)

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Elaine Showalter on a history of obscenity and censorship and the largely futile efforts of a US Postal Inspector; Ladee Hubbard on five years of Black Lives Matter and the myth of an egalitarian, post-racial America; Kassia St Clair on women, weaving and the rewriting of history

Books

Lust on Trial: Censorship and the rise of obscenity in the age of Anthony Comstock by Amy Werbel 

The Fire This Time: A new generation speaks about race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

My Brother Moochie: Regaining dignity in the face of crime, poverty and racism in the American South by Isaac J. Bailey  

The Golden Thread: How fabric changed history by Kassia St Clair  

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Keith Miller joins us to discuss everybody's favourite Renaissance man; the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig meets Anna Burns, the winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman; this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, meanwhile, remains suspended following charges of serious sexual misconduct and cronyism – Richard Orange reports on the mess that has engulfed the Swedish Academy

Books

Living with Leonardo: Fifty years of sanity and insanity in the art world and beyond by Martin Kemp

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Mary Beard reflects on the peculiarities of Homer's best-loved, many-sided epic; Neel Mukherjee on the scandalous survival of the Indian caste system; following the recent party conferences, James O'Brien offers a wry overview of Britain's political mess

Books: 

The Measure of Homer: The ancient reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Richard Hunter

Ants Among Elephants: An untouchable family and the making of modern India by Sujatha Gidla

How To Be Right ... in a World Gone Wrong by James O'Brien

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Michael Caines joins us to discuss female liberation in genteel Cheltenham; we look ahead to an Odyssey extravaganza, with Ted Hodgkinson from the Southbank centre; Paul Muldoon brings a salutary note of optimism to US politics and history with his new poem "With Joseph Brant in Canajoharie"

Books

Votes for Women: Cheltenham and the Cotswolds by Sue Jones

The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Selected Poems 1968-2014 by Paul Muldoon

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In this bonus episode, the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography.

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Lorna Scott Fox joins us to discuss the fiftieth anniversary of Mexico's Tlatelolco of 1968, a travesty still shrouded in obfuscation; the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography; and finally, Rozalind Dineen offers a round-up of interesting new podcasts

Books and podcasts discussed

México 68: The students, the President and the CIA by Sergio Aguayo

Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Teachers Pet (The Australian)

West Cork (Audible)

The Ratline (BBC)

In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

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Philip Horne and Frances Wilson join us to discuss Henry James, the not-always masterly Master who gave us novels as apparently divergent as Washington Square, with its clear, tight prose, The Ambassadors (prone to accidents of publication) and The Golden Bowl, which spills pleasures of an altogether more sinuous nature; plus, details of a little-known trip James took to California, which – unexpectedly, perhaps –“completely bowled” him over  

Books

Generous Mistakes: Incidents of error in Henry James by Michael Anesko 

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James: The Ambassadors; Edited by Nicola Bradbury. The Portrait of a Lady; Edited by Michael Anesko. The Jolly Corner and Other Tales, 1903–1910; Edited by N. H. Reeve (Michael Anesko, Tamara L. Follini, Philip Horne and Adrian Poole, general editors)

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Roz Dineen on the time-stained image of the artist-addict, The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, and whether “stories about getting better [can] ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart"; "David Foster Wallace would send me letters and I wouldn’t answer them. He would send works in progress with forlorn notes. 'You’re under no obligation to read or to pretend you’ve read the enclosed,' he wrote on one piece. I didn’t." – David Streitfeld recalls being David Foster Wallace's "worst friend"

Books

The Recovering by Leslie Jamison

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close encounters with addiction by Gabor Maté  

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Andrew Motion discusses the life, work and curious afterlife of his friend and "subject" Philip Larkin; Imogen Russell Williams has written an essay on diversity (or the lack of it) in children's books and offers some recommendations; Zoe Williams gives her verdict on the very British political tradition that is Prime Minister’s Questions

Books

Philip Larkin: A writer's life by Andrew Motion (1993; reissued September 2018)  

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo  

Square by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen  

I Am Thunder by Muhammad Khan

Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent

You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry

Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent

You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry

(For all the books discussed by Imogen Russell Williams, go to the-tls.co.uk)

Punch and Judy Politics: An insider’s guide to Prime Minister’s questions by Tom Hamilton and Ayesha Hazarika

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Carl Miller, the author of The Death of the Gods, which deals with how power works and who holds it in the digital age, sheds light on how algorithms, originally devised as simple problem-solving devices, have become so complicated that no one, not even their creators, can control them; Kristen Roupenian points out the problem with an “unfailingly enthusiastic” compendium of twentieth-century female intellectuals (including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion): who is left out and why?; eighty-odd years ago, Zora Neale Hurston, now best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, interviewed Kossola O-Lo-Loo-Ay, the last known survivor of the Atlantic Slave Trade. As her book is finally published, Colin Grant joins us to tell us more 

Books 

The Death of the Gods: The new global power grab by Carl Miller 

Sharp: The women who made an art of having an opinion by Michelle Dean 

Barracoon: The story of the last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale

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In the course of his long literary career, Samuel Johnson reviewed only one novel. Who was it by? None other than the "preposterously confident” Charlotte Lennox, a force in eighteenth-century prose and a model for Jane Austen – Min Wild tells us more; What happens if you ask a literary critic to watch top-grossing (pun intended) Hollywood comedies from the past three decades? Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explains how comedy reflects broader culture and anxieties; How are women treated in film and television? Is there cause for celebration? Alice Wadsworth joins us in the studio to discuss.

Books

Charlotte Lennox: An independent mind by Susan Carlile 

Stealing the Show: How women are revolutionizing television by Joy Press 

Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive portrayals in speculative film and TV by Diana Adesola Mafe 

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Are we entering a new age for LSD, full of medical potential? Can it shed its heavily tie-dyed cultural baggage? And who has written the finest prose about psychedelics? Toby Lichtig joins us to discuss; Eri Hotta (re)introduces us to Natsume Sōseki, "the greatest novelist of modern Japan"; Kate Chisholm considers the chequered history of Virago, founded in 1973 as a "feminist press", plus 40 years of Modern Classics, a series conceived to challenge the established male dominated literary canon and rescue and rehabilitate forgotten works by women

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With Stig Abell and Roz Dineen. Steven Nadler drops in to tell us all we need to know about the much-misunderstood Descartes; and En Liang Khong visits the Foundling museum to see an installation about how to commemorate loss.

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To mark 200 years since Emily Brontë’s birth, we are joined by Robert Potts and Jacqueline Banerjee to look back at Brontë’s life and most famous work Wuthering Heights – with a nod to Kate Bush’s memorable track, as well as to other, more recent tributes; Mika Ross-Southall shares the story of Tommy Nutter, the "rebel tailor of 1960s Savile Row", who, from humble origins, pulled himself up by the force of his wild imagination to dress anyone who was anyone

Books, etc 

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (new edition by HQ; with a foreword by Michael Stewart)

Ill Will: The untold story of Heathcliff by Michael Stewart 

Emily Brontë: A life in twenty poems by Nick Holland 

Emily Brontë Reappraised: A view from the twenty-first century by Claire O’Callaghan

Emily Jane Brontë and Her Music by John Hennessy

The Brontë Stones project - https://bit.ly/2LOgEiQ

House of Nutter: The rebel tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson

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“How much do you make things happen or let them happen to you?” “Can women be happy alone?” – questions such as these form the basis of a series of interviews with women, from heiresses to factory workers, conducted in the 1960s by the British writer Nell Dunn; as a reissue of Talking To Women appears Kate Webb introduces us to this seminal feminist text. And Patricia J. Williams discusses the role and lingering influence of the  Progressive Era's 'American Plan' to stamp out immorality through policies including compulsory STD tests and government-endorsed sterilization

Books

Talking To Women by Nell Dunn

Fixing the Poor: Eugenic sterilization and child welfare in the twentieth century by Molly Ladd-Taylor 

The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, surveillance, and the decades-long government plan to imprison 'promiscuous' women by  Scott W. Stern 

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We’re joined in the studio by TLS editors for arts, features and fiction, respectively, Lucy Dallas, Roz Dineen and Toby Lichtig, to pick through a selection of TLS writers’ summer reading choices – from reworked Classical myths to Deadpool comics – before offering a taste of our own, including books by Sally Rooney, Bruno Latour and an account of witchcraft and agrarian cults in early modern Italy. Go to the-TLS.co.uk to read our summer books feature in full.

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Sam Leith, the books editor of the Spectator, and Stig Abell discuss their mutual appreciation of the crime novels of Lee Child.

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This year marks half a century since the establishment of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The TLS’s Fiction editor Toby Lichtig joins us to debate the point of literary prizes and discuss the most under- (or over-) rated winners; Joan C. Williams, the author of last year’s White Working Class: Overcoming class cluelessness in America, considers the political consequences of class divides in the US and Britain

Books

The White Working Class: What everyone needs to know by Justin Gest

Making Sense of the Alt-Right by George Hawley

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