An end-of-year edition, bringing together some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months: Kathryn Hughes on whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Margaret Drabble reviews the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we marked this year; David Baddiel discusses whether Jewishness is inherently funny; Clare Pettitt revisits the history of the Peterloo massacre of 1819. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all.
Who is Odysseus? Why can't he get home? And will the gods help or hinder his journey? In this special episode, the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard chairs a panel featuring the author and academic Simon Goldhill, the memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn, the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and the novelist Madeline Miller. This is a recording of a live event, staged in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in October 2018.
TLS editors discuss some memorable arts events from the past twelve months; plus, food and drink in literature and a preview of the TLS's Christmas double issue, including how to do German food, M. F. K. Fisher, French food slang, pub stories, and a deconstruction of the traditional British Christmas dinner
Lucy Atkins charts our changing relationship with Orcinus orca, from "demon dolphin" to cuddly icon; Ruth Scurr on the lives and unlikely friendship of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn
Books
Orca: How we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator by Jason M. Colby
John Evelyn: A life of domesticity by John Dixon Hunt
The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes
Michael Caines on the little-known romantic William Gilbert, a “man of fine genius” (according to William Wordsworth) who had “unfortunately received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story”; Daniel Beer tells the tale of the Gulag at Solovki, a converted monastery known as “the Paris of the Northern concentration camps”, a place of brutality but also of resistant culture and ideas; finally, Laurence Scott considers the cultural history of shoeshining, from Dickens to Police Squad
Books
William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism by Paul Cheshire
Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki, 1923–1930: The Paris of the northern concentration camps by Andrea Gullotta
Forty years since the controversial Spanish constitution of 1978, Rupert Shortt, Hispanic editor at the TLS, discusses the painful evolution of democracy in Spain; Siobhan Magee considers our problematic relationship with farmed animals, namely dairy cows, and crops, such as palm oil; Dwight Garner, a literary critic at the New York Times, offers glimpses into his commonplace book, in which four decades of favourite quotations converse with each other
A handful of TLS editors gather for the yearly process of picking through contributors' Books of the Year selections, and nominate their own books to remember; Serhii Plokhy, the winner of this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for 'Chernobyl: The history of a nuclear catastrophe', speaks to the TLS's History editor David Horspool
Selected books
The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey
Charles de Gaulle: A certain idea of France by Julian Jackson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Murmur by Will Eaves
Circe by Madeline Miller
Talking To Women by Nell Dunn
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, edited by Maebh Long
Mary Beard joins us to answer the question: Is it accurate to call Donald Trump a fascist?, while the TLS's fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig discusses how the President is presented, in books and on film; and Julia Bell looks back on her Oxford entrance interview - with no fondness - and wonders: "Was it a trap or a test?"
Books
Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
Nobody hates Trump more than Trump by David Shields
To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, the TLS's History editor David Horspool talks us through books, exhibitions and events that commemorate cataclysmic slaughter and scars that endure to this day; it’s easy to think of privacy invasion as a peculiarly modern phenomenon, but it has its own history dating back to the American Civil War – Sarah Igo tells us more; finally, the food writer Bee Wilson discusses two new cookbooks that capture a “fresh mood of experiment in the kitchen”
Works discussed
Pandora’s Box: A history of the First World War, by Jörn Leonhard (translated by Patrick Camiller)
Robert Graves: From Great War poet to ‘Good-Bye to All That’, 1895–1929 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson
Making a New World (across the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Imperial War Museum North)
Plus reviews and original pieces published in the TLS, including “What did Tommy read: The complex mental worlds of soldiers on the Western Front” by Bill Bell – go to the-TLS.co.uk for details
Sight Smell Touch Taste Sound: A new way to cook by Sybil Kapoor
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
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)
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
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
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
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
In this bonus episode, the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography.
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
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)
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
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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