This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Joe Moran to explore the strange world of precognition, and Elizabeth Lowry is bowled over by the iconoclastic work of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. Plus great news for Terry Pratchett fans, as an all-star cast records his much-loved Discworld series.
This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Carol Tavris to discuss two wide-ranging works of biology that cast fascinating light on our understanding of sexual behaviour and gender identity throughout the animal and human world. And James Waddell explores a “bibliobiography” by a Shakespeare scholar that digs deep into centuries of books and their readers - from “shelfies” to book burning to the historical precedent for Jilly Cooper’s Riders.
'Different: Gender through the eyes of a primatologist’ by Frans de Waal
‘Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution and the female animal’ by Lucy Cooke
‘Portable Magic: A history of books and their readers’ by Emma Smith
This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Nat Segnit to discuss the long reach of the gambling industry and the music of chance, and Kevin Brazil brings to life a dystopian novel from 1977.
‘Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain’ by Rob Davies
‘Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict’ by Patrick Foster, with Will Macpherson
‘Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk’ by DBC Pierre
This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Dinah Birch to discuss Elizabeth Finch, the new novel by Julian Barnes, and find themselves in a world of charismatic teachers and forgotten Roman emperors. Also, the sports historian David Goldblatt explores a global survey of sport through the ages from the ancient Chinese game of cuju to the glories of Bristol Rovers.
‘Elizabeth Finch’ by Julian Barnes
‘Games People Played: A Global History of Sport’ by Wray Vamplew
This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Emma Clery, specialist in 18th and 19th-century literature and author of Jane Austen: The Banker’s Sister, to discuss what Austen’s juvenilia and unpublished works tell us about the writer - will we find, as some critics have suggested, a far less restrained and irreverent novelist than we might expect? And Catherine Taylor, who is writing a memoir of her Sheffield upbringing, explores two accounts of growing up in the north of England.
‘Jane Austen, Early and Late’ by Freya Johnston
‘Lady Susan, Sanditon and The Watsons: Unfinished Fictions and Other Writings by Jane Austen' edited by Kathryn Sutherland
‘My Own Worst Enemy: Scenes of a Childhood’ by Robert Edric
‘No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader’ by Mark Hodkinson
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Cal Flyn, the author of 'Islands of Abandonment: Life in the post-human landscape’, to venture into the 'extreme north' – part place, part concept – where sparsely populated landscapes have long offered a blank canvas on which to project hopes, dreams and neuroses; the critic En Liang Khong considers Ai Weiwei’s artistic rebellion against the Chinese state, situating its roots in the artist's early years and relationship with his father
'Extreme North: A cultural history' by Bernd Brunner, translated by Jefferson Chase
‘1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny’ by Ai WeiWei
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Miranda France, the TLS’s Hispanic editor, to discuss the Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor and two new works that approach brutal and brutalized lives in innovative ways; Michael Caines, also of the TLS, considers a collection of essays that sets out to complicate stereotypes of East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain; and there’s focus on film, including Nosferatu at 100, unsung heroines of the big screen, and a fresh look at Marilyn Monroe’s difficult stay in London.
‘Paradais’ by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
‘Aquí no es Miami’ by Fernanda Melchor
‘East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain’, edited by Helena Lee
‘When Marilyn Met the Queen: Marilyn Monroe’s life in England’ by Michelle Morgan
‘The Performer’s Tale: Nine lives of Patience Collier’ By Vanessa Morton
‘Forever Young: A memoir’ by Hayley Mills
‘The Great Peace: A memoir’ by Mena Suvari
‘Movie Workers: The women who made British cinema’ by Melanie Bell
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Nelly Kaprièlian and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams to discuss ‘Anéantir’, the latest novel by France’s best-known and maybe most controversial writer, Michel Houellebecq; the TLS’s Toby Lichtig talks us through a new memoir by the ‘pre-eminent author of British Jewish novels’, Howard Jacobson, and we consider a masterclass in sympathy from Anne Tyler, a tale of revenge by Japan’s ‘Queen of mysteries’, and a wartime reckoning in Finland.
‘Anéantir’ by Michel Houellebecq
‘Mother’s Boy: A writer’s beginnings’ by Howard Jacobson
‘French Braid’ by Anne Tyler
‘Lady Joker: Volume one’ by Kaoru Takamura, translated by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell
‘Land of Snow & Ashes’ by Petra Rautiainen, translated by David Hackston
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and critic Mary Norris to discuss the phenomenon that is Margaret Atwood – surely her kind of success requires a method? A new collection of essays and talks sheds some light; Sujit Sivasundaram, the author of ‘Waves Across the South: A new history of revolution and empire’, considers a work of non-fiction by the novelist Amitav Ghosh which paints a compelling picture of how the trade in nutmeg prefigured today’s environmental crisis
‘Burning Questions: Essays and occasional pieces 2004–2021’ by Margaret Atwood
‘The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a planet in crisis’ by Amitav Ghosh
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to discuss a new play by Florian Zeller, ‘the most successful representative of contemporary French theatre’; Kathryn Hughes, the author of ‘Victorians Undone: Tales of the flesh in the age of decorum’, explores the cultural significance of passing out, from ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, via Shakespeare and Bram Stoker; plus, a poem by Ange Mlinko, ‘Storm Windows’
‘The Forest’ by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton, Hampstead Theatre, until March 12
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Jeremy Mynott, the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ and ‘Birds in the Ancient World’, to ponder 12,000 years of human–bird relations. ‘How is it that, despite a historically deep-rooted veneration, we could also have predated, exploited and depleted bird populations to the point where more than one in ten species is now threatened with extinction?’; and Janet Montefiore, Chair of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, asks whether this vivid and varied satirical novelist might finally take her place alongside Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen among the canon of accepted classics? Plus, a Life of the poet Valentine Ackland, still best known as Warner’s partner
‘Flight From Grace: A cultural history of humans and birds’ by Richard Pope
‘Avian Illuminations: A cultural history of birds’ by Boria Sax
‘Birds and Us: A 12,000-year history: from cave art to conservation’ by Tim Birkhead
‘Valentine Ackland: A transgressive life’ by Frances Bingham
‘Lolly Willowes’, ‘Mr Fortune’s Maggot’, ‘ The True Heart’, ‘Summer Will Show’, etc, by Sylvia Townsend Warner – for other books by Warner, find Janet Montefiore’s article at the-tls.co.uk.
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Alex Clark are joined by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Professor Emerita in Italian Literature at the University of Warwick, to discuss the birth and legacy of Pinocchio, the world’s most famous (and most insolent) puppet – is his story really only for children? And do we need another English translation?; George Berridge, a TLS editor and restaurant-kitchen survivor, considers two close-ups on the troubled life of the chef, restaurateur and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain
‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ by Carlo Collodi, translated and edited by John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna
‘Bourdain: In stories’ by Laurie Woolever
'In the Weeds: Around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain’ by Tom Vitale
This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Sara Hudston to talk about how to write about our environment, who gets to write about it, why it is so crucial - and "horsey" books; and James McConnachie, himself a keen player, discusses the future of strategy games, given that the computers are increasingly beating the humans
Women on Nature, edited by Katherine Norbury
Wild Isles, edited by Patrick Barkham
Gifts of Gravity and Light, edited by Anita Roy and Pippa Marland
Out of Time: Poetry from the climate emergency, edited by Kate Simpson
This week, to mark 100 years since the publication of ‘Ulysses’, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the novelist Audrey Magee to discuss how James Joyce wrestled with the demands, political and personal, of the Irish language; the anthropologist and science writer Barbara J. King reviews Andrea Arnold’s film ‘Cow’, which attempts to show life from an animal’s perspective; plus, Mary Beard shares a few thoughts on Roman kissing.
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Markovits, the novelist, critic and teacher of creative writing, to discuss 100 American essays spanning 300-odd years (‘have we got any better at it?’); the sinologist Rana Mitter discusses the supremely difficult, and controversial, job of adapting the Chinese script for the modern age; plus, ‘Edelweiss’, a poignant new poem by Fiona Benson
‘The Glorious American Essay: One hundred essays from colonial times to the present’, edited by Phillip Lopate
‘Kingdom of Characters: A tale of language, obsession, and genius in modern China’ by Jing Tsu
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and broadcaster Muriel Zagha to discuss 'Nightmare Alley', an unsettling vision of delight and deceit from the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro; the historian Abigail Green explores the untold stories of the women behind Europe’s premier banking dynasty, the Rothschilds; plus, a dinosaur poem of note
'Nightmare Alley', various cinemas
'The Women of Rothschild: The untold story of the world’s most famous dynasty' by Natalie Livingstone
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the poet A. E. Stallings to reconsider the ground-breaking work of Edna St Vincent Millay, a modern but not modernist poet, once judged 'the most glamorous, sexually-dangerous since Byron'; Thomas Morris, the author of medical and crime histories, delves into the often-troubling history of medical transplants; plus, a new poem by Ben Wilkinson, ‘What We Were’
'Poems and Satires' by Edna St Vincent Millay, edited by Tristram Fane Saunders
'Spare Parts: A surprising history of transplants' by Paul Craddock
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and translator Chiara Marchelli to revisit the work of Antonio Tabucchi, a master of the uncanny, ten years after his death; and the multilingual critic Irina Dumitrescu discusses a poignant study of bilingualism that considers how mother tongues are lost and found and at what cost
‘Little Misunderstandings of No Importance: And other stories’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Frances Frenaye
‘Requiem: A hallucination’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
‘Pereira Maintains: A testimony’, by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Patrick Creagh
‘Memory Speaks: On losing and reclaiming language and self’ by Julie Sedivy
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