David Coward celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, whose radical thought has long been obscured by his protuberant nose; Muriel Zagha on Molière, France’s most famous playwright, and a bold new adaptation of Tartuffe; finally, a poem by Stephen Knight: “Rail Replacement Bus Service” (sigh)
Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’, a new version by John Donnelly, at the National Theatre, London
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With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas
Toby Lichtig comes in to talk the wide scope of Jewish culture, the “lachrymose” theory of history and why it is Arthur Miller time once more. Roz Dineen deals with porn, pile-ons and goop podcasts. And we call Thea when she is “working from home” to check in on her new dog.
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The writer and comedian Charlie Higson, half of the team behind The Fast Show, on the curious history of comedy written and performed by pairs; the novelist Margaret Drabble considers the dizzying new releases from the estate of Anthony Burgess, the man Philip Larkin once called “the Batman of contemporary letters”
Texts
Stan & Ollie, directed by Jon S. Baird
Morecambe & Wise: 50 years of sunshine, by Gary Morecambe
The Double Act: A history of British comedy duos, by Andrew Roberts
Soupy Twists!: The full, official story of the sophisticated silliness of Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, by Jem Roberts
Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess, edited by Graham Foster
Puma by Anthony Burgess, edited by Paul Wake
The Black Prince by Adam Roberts
Obscenity and the Arts, a talk by Anthony Burgess, edited by Johnny Walsh
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As the MeToo movement continues to focus our attentions on questions around abuse, consent and justice, Rebecca Watson joins us to discuss the various and prolonged impacts of sexual assault, and the warping effect of trauma on narrative; the TLS’s French editor Adrian Tahourdin considers the inexorable rise of “le globish” (by which English words supplant, or pervert, French ones), and presents the diverse and challenging books in contention for this year’s Society of Author’s Translation Prizes
Books
Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture, edited by Roxane Gay
A False Report: A true story by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong
On Rape by Germaine Greer
The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli, translated by Luke Leafgren
Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell
Kruso by Lutz Seiler, translated by Tess Lewis
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Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction
Books
The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter
Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson
Section 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode)
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Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done"
Books
White Feather by Catherine and David MacPhail
The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay
An Anty-War Story by Tony Ross
Only One of Me by Lisa Wells and Michelle Robinson (illustrated by Tim Budgen and Catalina Echeverri)
The Afterwards by A. F. Harrold and Emily Gravett
We Are the Nerds: The birth and tumultuous life of Reddit, the internet's culture laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
The Travellers Club: A bicentennial history (1819–2019) by John Martin Robinson
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Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs...
Books
Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank Wynne
The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment by Gina Perry
The Hope Circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism by Martin Seligman
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With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas
Lara Pawson drops in to tell the tale of David Wojnarowicz, the New York artist whose time has come. Elaine Showalter examines a new biography of Germaine Greer. Kim Addonizio, winner of the Mick Imlah Prize for Poetry, reads her victorious poem. Plus, Lucy admits to having an allotment, and Stig learns he has been introducing the show all wrong.
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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
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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
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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
Books
The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie
Palma Africana by Michael Taussig
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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
Grant by Ron Chernow
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