This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig are joined by Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London, to discuss two important biographies of Joseph Stalin, covering the opposite ends of the dictator’s life; the debate around the official Home Office history of Britain, a document full of omissions and riddled with errors, rolls on; and can a book make you a better person? Can even the high modernists be mined for lessons in life? Joanna Scutts considers the relationship between 'serious' literature and self-help.

Stalin: Passage to revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny

Late Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. Savage

The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth Blum

Reading for Life by Philip Davis

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Griffiths, the author most recently of the novel Mr Beethoven, to discuss the heroic oeuvre of the great composer, 250 years after his birth; Joseph Farrell takes us through the life and work of Gianni Rodari, a kind of Italian George Orwell transplanted to Neverland.

Selected books:

Beethoven's Conversation Books, translated and edited by Theodore Albrecht

Beethoven's Lives by Lewis Lockwood

Beethoven: A Life by Jan Caeyers

Beethoven: A life in nine pieces, by Laura Tunbridge

– read the full piece here 

Telephone Tales, by Gianni Rodari, translated by Antony Shugaar

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In this special bonus episode, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart about his 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Colin Grant, the author of Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush generation, to discuss Small Axe, a series of films by Steve McQueen that centres on Black British life between the 1960s and 80s; and the author and musician Wesley Stace tells the story of the “real” James Bond, a celebrated ornithologist whose "dull" name was poached by Ian Fleming. 

Plus, the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart, the winner of this year’s Booker Prize for fiction

Small Axe, BBC One, BBC iPlayer

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

The Real James Bond: A true story of identity theft, avian intrigue and Ian Fleming, by Jim Wright

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Mark Glanville to mark the centenary of the birth of Paul Celan, probably the most important post-war German-language poet, by revisiting the early poems in light of his later transformation; and Margaret Drabble considers the literature of urban walking, via the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells and other metropolitan ramblers.

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The collected earlier poetry: A bilingual edition, translated by Pierre Joris

Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous prose, translated by Pierre Joris

Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan, by Jean Daive, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

The Walker: On finding and losing yourself in the modern city, by Matthew Beaumont

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by two TLS editors, David Horspool and Toby Lichtig, to discuss books that have sustained and stimulated over the past twelve months, as selected by sixty-five writers from around the world; and we discuss the controversy surrounding a long-awaited statue of – or "for" – Mary Wollstonecraft.

Read the TLS's Books of the Year feature here [https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2020/] 

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As Remembrance Day approaches, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Éadaoín Lynch to remember fully and truthfully the relationship between the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; and the TLS's sports editor David Horspool talks us through a couple of books on professional game playing, including a football memoir of obsession and crucial omissions by Arsène Wenger.

My Life in Red and White by Arsène Wenger

This Sporting Life: Sport and liberty in England, 1760–1960 by Robert Colls

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Lucy Scholes to revisit the work of the master of terror Shirley Jackson and review the new film Shirley (“about as far from a traditional biopic as you can get”); and Jane Darcy grapples with the neither quite Romantic nor quite Victorian Thomas De Quincey, whose life-writing paved the way for the autobiografiction to come

 

Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker (various cinemas / Hulu)

Thomas De Quincey: Selected writings, edited by Robert Morrison 

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In a special bonus podcast we bring you an episode of Stories of our times that we think you might enjoy.

The Times's chief music critic, Richard Morrison muses over whether a combination of the coronavirus, environmental concerns and the MeToo movement will be the end of the 'maestro' - the classical music conductor - as we know it. 

Guest: Richard Morrison, Times chief culture critic and music writer. 

Host: David Aaronovitch.

Clips used: Metropolitan Opera, Aurora Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Hendon Band YouTube Channel, ABC News, Washington Post, NBC News.

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The critic and novelist Elizabeth Lowry joins Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig to discuss the Italian Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London, a painter whose Life is as dramatic and moving as her art; and Toby reviews new fiction steeped in dread, paranoia and failure, including a short work by Don DeLillo and the debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman 

Artemisia – National Gallery, London, until January 24, 2021 

The Silence by Don DeLillo

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

Reality: And other stories by John Lanchester

Why Visit America by Matthew Baker

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From a ballet stream to Homer's wine-dark sea. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the historian and critic Judith Flanders to review the return of dance with new offerings from the Akram Khan Company and the Royal Ballet, and the novelist and poet Will Eaves returns to the Odyssey to explore the nature of memory. 

Back on Stage – The Royal Ballet, available online until November 8th

The Silent Burn Project – Akram Khan Company

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer – Barbican, until January 2021, then at the V&A Dundee

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From a carvery lunch in Howards End to emotional Eurocrats. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Norma Clarke to discuss the role in literary creation of food and its increasingly fraught means of production, and Russell Williams reports on the bookshops of Paris during lockdown and reviews the new novel by a totemic figure in French literature, Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

The Literature of Food: An introduction from 1830 to present by Nicola Humble

Farm to Form: Modernist literature and ecologies of food in the British Empire by Jessica Martell

Read My Plate: The literature of food by Deborah R. Geis

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food, edited by J. Michelle Coghlan

Les Émotions by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

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From Ovid to the "Black Spartacus". Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's classics editor Mary Beard to pick apart the story of "seduction", ancient and modern, the poet Fiona Benson reads her latest work, and the TLS's history editor David Horspool explores two accounts of America's domestic slave trade and a new biography of Toussaint Louverture.

Strange Antics: A history of seduction by Clement Knox

Williams’ Gang: A notorious slave trader and his cargo of Black convicts by Jeff Forret 

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A true story of slavery and restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel

Black Spartacus: The epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh

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From Poirot on the River Nile to Verdi's take on the infamous Scottish play. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas talk to writer Laura Thompson about the work of Agatha Christie and how she managed to move with the times, and Professor Larry Wolff joins us from Florence to discuss the tentative return of live opera in Italy with Verdi's Macbeth at the Parma Verdi Festival.

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Toby Lichtig talks us through this year's Booker shortlisted novels, plus a couple of others, and Lucy Dallas reports on the French scene (where real life and fiction blur...); finally, we explore the situation in Israel and Palestine from three rather different perspectives.

An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces made a nation by Haim Bresheeth-Zabner 

The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine campus debate by Kenneth S. Stern

The new peace? – Israel’s unexpected ray of light by Ari Shavit – www.the-TLS.co.uk

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In 1405, Christine de Pisan took up the pen in defense of her maligned sex, imagining a 'City of Ladies' in which the most virtuous female leaders of history might be preserved from the distortions of misogyny. Six hundred years later, with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great as her guides, the novelist and historian Lisa Hilton revisits the City to shake the foundations of the way we write about power

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Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, and today we’re returning to last year’s suggestions. In 2019, our contributor Diana Darke said in the paper: "A lot of things need saving this summer – tangible things like bees, Notre-Dame, water … and intangible things like democracy, humanitarian ideals, community". Among the many subjects under discussion here are Oulipo, impeachment, and climate change.

We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.   

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Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on books you might have missed. Today we are sauntering back to the summer of 2018, and an episode in which we learnt which books our contributors – including Bernardine Evaristo, Claire Lowdon and Carlo Rovelli – were looking forward to. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine. 

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Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance once again to hear recommendations from our writers and editors, on subjects like Marcel Proust’s letters, tech-ensnared science fiction and Euripides. In this episode, from 2017, there is also an interview with that year’s Man Booker International Prize Winner, David Grossman, and his translator Jessica Cohen. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.

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Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on all that good stuff. Today we’re skipping back to 2016’s books of the year recommendations. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine. 

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