This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig to reveal what’s hot in summer reading, with recommendations from TLS contributors; and Henry Hitchings takes a stroll through the complex world of cryptocurrency and one of its most charismatic characters.

‘The Missing Cryptoqueen’ by Jamie Bartlett.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Muldoon to celebrate Bloomsday with a close reading of the very first few words of Ulysses; there’s news from the world of Ukrainian literature; and Toby Lichtig catches up with Tessa Hadley at the Hay Festival.

‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce 

‘The Orphanage’ by Sergiy Zhadan

‘Free Love’ by Tessa Hadley

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Join Alex Clark, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig as they chat to the BBC correspondents Lyse Doucet and Sana Safi, and to the legendary documentarian Norma Percy, in a special conversation recorded live at the Hay Festival.

‘My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women’, compiled by Lucy Hannah, with an introduction by Lyse Doucet

‘Afghanistan and Me: A Female Perspective’, an audio documentary by Sana Safi

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Lucy Hughes-Hallett to discuss two books about Mussolini’s Italy, and train buff extraordinaire Andrew Martin gets on board with a history of British Rail.

‘Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism’ by John Foot

’Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good: The Spread of Historical Amnesia’ by Francesco Filippi

‘British Rail: A New History’ by Christian Wolmar

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Tom Seymour Evans to head for the beaches of Fire Island, and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams surveys the country’s philosophical and political landscape, past and present.

‘Fire Island: Love, loss and liberation in an American paradise’ by Jack Parlett

’The French Mind: 400 years of romance, revolution and renewal’ by Peter Watson

‘France: An adventure history’ by Graham Robb

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by TLS classics editor Mary Beard to find out what the Romans brought back from their holidays, and novelist Edward Docx is roused to righteous fury over the parlous state of the House of Commons.

‘Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman empire’s souvenirs’ by Kimberly Cassibry

’Souvenirs and the Experience of Empire in Ancient Rome’ by Maggie L. Popkin

‘Held in Contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons?’ by Hannah White

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas is joined by Kathryn Sutherland to tuck into the three o'clock dinners of Joseph Johnson, publisher and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestley, Henry Fuseli, Williams Blake and Wordsworth, and many more great minds of that era. And Boyd Tonkin explains that Napoleon's conqueror, the "Iron Duke" of Wellington, had a great and unexpected gift for friendship - with women.

'Dinner with Joseph Johnson' by Daisy Hay

'Wellington, women and friendship' at Apsley House, London, until October 30

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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.

'The Premonitions Bureau’ by Sam Knight

‘SYBIL’ by William Kentridge

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

’They’ by Kay Dick

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

‘Swoon: A poetics of passing out’ by Naomi Booth

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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.

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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

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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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

Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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