This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau, to discuss William Blake, who saw wonders everywhere (including a tree on Peckham Rye), and communicated them urgently in art and poetry – what does he have to tell us now?; the critic and writer Michael Kerrigan guides us through the ‘improbably enthralling mundanities’ of the Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero; plus, a dazzling history of Sicily, the demise of local journalism, and ‘bald’ philosophy.

William Blake Vs the World by John Higgs

The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott

Panic as Man Burns Crumpets: The vanishing world of the local journalist by Roger Lytollis

Bald: 35 philosophical short cuts by Simon Critchley

The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean history by Jamie Mackay

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Joan C. Williams discusses how Amazon’s business practices harm America.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/fulfillment-alec-macgillis-review-joan-c-williams-amazon

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas as joined by Keith Hopper, a critic of film and literature, to revisit the film ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (1969), a 'dark, difficult masterpiece' starring Jon Voight as an aspirant sex worker and Dustin Hoffman as his friend, an ailing con man; before it’s available in English, the journalist Henri Astier delves into the 'secret' diary of Michel Barnier, the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, who the British tabloids named 'the most dangerous man in Europe'; plus, what does Brexit mean for books?

‘Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, sex, loneliness, liberation, and the making of a dark classic’ by Glenn Frankel

‘La Grande Illusion: Journal secret du Brexit (2016-2020)’ by Michel Barnier

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Noo Saro-Wiwa, the author of ‘Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria’, to discuss developments in travel writing; Alice Kelly, the author of ‘Commemorative Modernisms: Women writers, death and the First World War’, considers how conflict permeates American culture; plus, a new poem by André Naffis-Sahely, ‘At the Graves of Labour’s Fallen’

‘The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in search of a genre’ by Tim Hannigan

‘War and American Literature’, edited by Jennifer Haytock

‘A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War’, edited by Tim Dayton and Mark W. Van Wienen

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In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Joyce Carol Oates explores the quintessential American minimalism of Walker Evans.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/walker-evans-svetlana-alpers-review-joyce-carol-oates

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Adam Watt, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, to mark 150 years since the birth of Marcel Proust, whose legacy seems stronger than ever; Sarah Lonsdale, the author of 'Rebel Women Between the Wars', re-considers ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’, a funny novel about interwar life in deepest Devon whose darker tones tend to be overlooked; plus, Mary Beard on new developments at the Colosseum.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the novelist Margaret Drabble to consider the ‘curiously free-floating reputation’ of Russell Hoban, whose adult novels, including ‘Riddley Walker’, now appear as Penguin Modern Classics; as twin exhibitions mark the centenary of the birth of the English sculptor, painter, writer, designer and illustrator Michael Ayrton, the critic Boyd Tonkin delves into the myth-laden maze of the artist’s thought

‘From Oprah to Medusa: The endlessly various world of Russell Hoban’ by Margaret Drabble: www.the-tls.co.uk

‘Michael Ayrton: A singular obsession’, Fry Art Gallery Too, Saffron Walden, until October 31st

‘Michael Ayrton Centenary: Ideas, images, reflections’, edited by Justine Hopkins

‘Celebrating Michael Ayrton: A centenary exhibition’, the Lightbox, Woking, until August 8th

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week: How far off is a world in which robots do most of our jobs? Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Schneider, a DPhil Candidate in Economic and Social History at Merton College, Oxford, to explore Artificial Intelligence, societal change, real and imagined, and the future of work; what will our writers, from Andrew Motion to Joyce Carol Oates, be reading this summer?; plus, it’s Independent Bookshop Week and the nominations came thick and fast… 

'Summer books 2021 – Our contributors provide their seasonal reading lists' www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/summer-books-2021

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by Paul Griffiths to discuss the beauty and grace of Mozart, the untortured genius; David Edgerton talks us through the decline and fall of British coal mining and its relationship with the Labour Party; plus, new discoveries about Locke and Leviathan, obituary codes and the Buddha's wife

'La Clemenza di Tito' by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

'Mozart in Prague' by Daniel E. Freeman

'Mozart: The reign of love' by Jan Swafford

'The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the end of industrial Britain' by Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson

'Yasodhara and the Buddha' by Vanessa R. Sasson

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rosinka Chaudhuri, the author of ‘The Literary Thing: History, poetry and the making of a modern cultural sphere’, to discuss Rabindranath Tagore, who, in 1913, became the first non-white and non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – since which he has been largely overlooked; Kate Kennedy, the author of ‘Dweller in the Shadows’, a new Life of the war poet Ivor Gurney, considers the “peculiarly direct, urgent intensity” of the later work, composed while confined in an asylum; plus, let’s hear it for independent bookshops

'Rabindranath Tagore' by Bashabi Fraser 

'The Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore', edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines are joined by the critic and literary scholar Marjorie Perloff to discuss an encyclopedic work that sets out to tackle ‘Art and thought in the Cold War’, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Elvis Presley; the English professor and literary critic Rohan Maitzen explores the meticulously observed world of Olivia Manning’s Balkan novels; plus, the unhappy story of a youthful romance between Eric Arthur Blair and Jacintha Buddicom, played out in poetry

‘The Free World: Art and thought in the Cold War’ by Louis Menand

‘The Balkan Trilogy’ by Olivia Manning

‘“Dracula’s Daughter”: The rediscovery of a love poem for George Orwell’, by Eileen M. Hunt, and ‘Annotating George Orwell’, by D. J. Taylor ­– both in this week’s TLS: the-tls.co.uk

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Gerri Kimber to discuss a bold new biography of D. H. Lawrence, 'the most judged writer of his age'; twenty-odd writers share their formative encounters with nature, including the novelists Maaza Mengiste and Ali Smith; plus, reviews of the television adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Harm', a new play about loneliness and social media addiction

Burning Man: The ascent of D. H. Lawrence, by Frances Wilson

'Sinister, sublime, exhausting, hungry – formative encounters with the natural world', see the-tls.co.uk

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, BBC iPlayer

'Harm' by Phoebe Eclair-Powell, the Bush Theatre, London

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and the author of ‘The Making of Jane Austen’, to discuss new research into the Austen family’s ties with slavery; Colin Grant, critic and writer, introduces Writers Mosaic, a new platform for writing and recordings; and Mary Beard considers the Roman love of temple-building and Euripides as reimagined by a poet and a comic-book illustrator.

Jane Austen & Co

writersmosaic.org.uk/

The Trojan Women: A comic book by Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses. Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Dinah Birch, Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, to consider the work of Angela Thirkell, a kind of (but not really...) Anthony Trollope for the twentieth-century; the writer and audio documentarist Maria Margaronis considers the transformation of London’s Royal Court Theatre into a radical and moving “living newspaper”; plus, a library of the world’s literature that no censor can get to

‘Angela Thirkell: A writer’s life’ by Anne Hall

‘Living Newspaper’, Editions 6 and 7, Royal Court Theatre and royalcourttheatre.com

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses.

Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Ann Hallamore Caesar to mark 100 years since the première of the modernist masterpiece ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, considering it in the context of Luigi Pirandello’s life and work; Alexander Leissle reviews ‘Promises’, an intoxicating intergenerational collaboration between a jazz saxophonist and an electro producer; plus, a new poem by Andrew Motion, “At Low Tharston”, written in memory of the late Anthony Thwaite.

'Stories for the Years' by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Virginia Jewiss

'The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio' by Luigi Pirandello, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

'Promises' by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra 

This episode of The TLS podcast is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative. Go to www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk to find out more about their creative writing courses.

Use code YOURWRITINGSUMMER for £20 off any six-week course.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Patricia Craig, a writer and critic from Northern Ireland, who relates a sad and murky case of accidental killings, which took place during the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s; the TLS’s politics editor Toby Lichtig reviews a handful of recent films – works of documentary and fiction – with political stories, mostly atrocities, at their hearts; plus, a lost Proust manuscript finally sees the light of day.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head, BBC iPlayer

The Mauritanian, Amazon Prime

The Dissident, Amazon Prime

Quo Vadis, Aida?, Curzon Home Cinema

Les Soixante-quinze feuillets et autres manuscrits inédits, by Marcel Proust, edited by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer, with a preface by Jean-Yves Tadié (Gallimard) 

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Patricia J. Williams to discuss ‘Giving a Damn: Racism, romance and Gone with the Wind’, Williams’s deeply researched, and deeply felt, essay on the roots and legacy of racial injustice in the United States; Douglas Field considers a novel about a 'human mole' by Richard Wright, the African American writer best known for 'Native Son', which now sees the light of day, eighty years after it was written; plus Sylvia Plath’s domestic embellishments and the greatest novels of the twenty-first century to date (cont.)

Giving a Damn: Racism, romance and 'Gone with the Wind' by Patricia J. Williams, published next week by TLS Books 

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, to discuss the new Arden 3 edition of ‘Measure for Measure’, one of the "problem plays" (word-bothers, en garde); the poet and translator Beverley Bie Brahic marks 200 years since the birth of Charles Baudelaire, whose extraordinary work seems bizarrely neglected; plus, Charlotte Mew, and the dangers of ancient Greek medicine.

Measure for Measure, edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Robert N. Watson (Arden Shakespeare)

The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates, by Robin Lane Fox

This Rare Spirit: A Life of Charlotte Mew, by Julia Copus

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Elaine Showalter, Professor Emerita of English at Princeton University, to discuss Blake Bailey’s keenly anticipated ‘Philip Roth: The biography’; and Alexandra Harris, the author of ‘Weatherland: Artist and writers under English skies’, considers a twenty-first century perspective on Joseph Wright of Derby, an eighteenth-century painter who is perhaps more darkness than light, more magic than science, and who deserves to be ranked among Europe’s greats.

Philip Roth: The biography by Blake Bailey

Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of darkness by Matthew Craske

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by Mary Norris, a New Yorker and editor at - what else? - the New Yorker magazine, to discuss the changing life of the city and its inhabitants; Yoojin Grace Wuertz talks us through a film garlanded with Oscar nominations, Minari, which casts a new light on the immigrant story and the American Dream; plus, the week's fiction reviews

New Yorkers: A city and its people in our time by Craig Taylor 

Pretend It's A City: Netflix

The Barbizon: The New York hotel that set women free by Paulina Bren

Minari: Amazon Prime, Apple TV, etc

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.