On April 30, at London's Southbank Centre, an extraordinary cast of readers – including Philippe Sands, Tom Stoppard, Niklas Frank, whose father was Adolf Hitler's lawyer, and Susan Pollack, who survived the camp – gathered to mark 70 years since the publication of this seminal account of humanity at its most brutal. Across five episodes, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre, we bring you the full, live recording of the event, part of the Belief and Beyond Belief festival, exploring what it means to be human. This performance was directed by Nina Brazier with music directed by Tomo Keller and performed by Raphael Wallfisch, Tomo Keller, Robert Smissen, Simon Wallfisch and Lada Valesova; the event was devised by A. L. Kennedy and Philippe Sands, in collaboration with Ted Hodgkinson, Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre. You'll find all episodes on the-tls.co.ukChapters 1–3 read by: human-rights lawyer Philippe Sands QC; author A. L. Kennedy; actors Samuel West...
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Frances Wilson on how Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions of 1789 laid the foundations for the messy modern memoir; TLS commissioning editor Mika Ross-Southall on a strange new exhibition of Picasso's work that examines his career-long engagement with minotaurs and matadors; Lorna Scott Fox rediscovers Leonora Carrington, an almost-forgotten radical artist-thinker for our fragile times.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The graphic artist Nicola Streeten discusses two new exhibitions, in Paris and London, linking comics to trauma theory, radical politics and feminism; Alexander van Tulleken on a new book by two "rock star professors" that purports to provide a bold new solution to the refugee crisis; a crackly clip just a few minutes long is all we have left of Virginia Woolf's voice – Emily Kopley fills us in on the fraught context behind "Craftsmanship", a talk broadcast by the BBC 80 years ago
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Philippe Sands discusses his forthcoming project which assembles an international cast of actors, writers, musicians and politicians to read Primo Levi's seminal account of survival in Auschwitz, seventy years after its publication; as part of our Shakespeare edition this week, TLS Commissioning Editor Michael "The Doctor" Caines considers how protective we should be of the man and the work; Rebecca Spang wades through the murky matter of money, the growth of "off shore" finance and the bewildering sexualization of monetary metaphors.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS editor James Campbell, Baldwin's biographer and friend, on the writer's complex presence and legacy on and off screen; Michael Rosen on the "disappearance" of Émile Zola and the long, dappled shadow of the Dreyfus Affair; Jane Yager on a sensational and problematic investigation into mass rapes committed by allied soldiers in Germany in the wake of the Second World War, and how attitudes have – and haven't – changed.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Rory Waterman on the "uses" of poetry and Stephen Burt's admirable, if rather vexing, new collection The Poem is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them; Barbara J. King on the cannibals in our midst (note: fragile-stomached listeners and lovers of banana slugs be warned); When did modern philosophy begin? And who is its godfather? – TLS Philosophy Editor Tim Crane tackles a new book by A. C. Grayling which seeks answers to these thorny questions.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Libby Purves on the stranger-than-fiction life of Aimée Crocker, a nineteenth-century heiress with proto-PC views and an affection for boa constrictors; Gabriel Josipovici on a magisterial but contentious study of two of the greatest figures in European art history, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder; and finally, the novelist and poet Colm Tóibín discusses his forthcoming novel, set in ancient Greece, and reads five new poems, published for the first time in this week's TLS Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Henry K. Miller on the cinematic progress of Christopher Isherwood, a novelist who wanted nothing more than to be a filmmaker; Lamorna Ash on All This Panic, a dreamy documentary about seven girls stumbling towards womanhood in Brooklyn; Richard Fortey tells the story of the British landscape, a sweeping tale spanning several millennia, from the retreat of the ice caps in 9700 BC to the crowded island of today.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Sudhir Hazareesingh on the seemingly unstoppable rise of Emmanuel Macron, the only politician now standing between the far-Right Marine Le Pen and the French presidency; Claude Rawson on the complex rage of Jonathan Swift, and why we should resist all attempts to sanitise Gulliver's Travels; Diane Purkiss delves into the murky history of alchemy, a slippery amalgam of science and the make-believe of great importance to our ancestors – and which we would do better than to scoff at.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – In these science fictional times, Jonathan Barnes considers the importance of sci-fi, plus a new sequel to H. G. Wells's satirical masterpiece The War of the Worlds; Thea reports from a new exhibition of Pop Art and print work at the British Museum, which showcases six decade's worth of American dreaming; Fiction Editor Toby Lichtig discusses George Saunders's new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, a humorous, moving and formally inventive account of President Lincoln's grief following the death of his son.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – D. J. Taylor on the bookish sensibilities of Paul Weller's post-punk romanticism (including a bizarre medley of Orwell's 1984 and Wind in the Willows); Stephen Brown considers a clutch of books about practising, playing and listening to music, how to think about Mahler, and the perfect aphorisms of Michael Hampe (“Develop a feeling for greatness. It protects against stupidity”)
With Stig Abell and Thea LenarduzziPaul Howard brings us an unpublished Burgess essay on an untranslatable poet; J. Michael Lennon links the writing of Joan Didion with Trump's America; and Simon Armitage reads us a brand new poem.
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Caryl Emerson on poetry and prose forged in the immediacy of the Russian Revolution of 1917; Phil Baker considers the strange split legacy of British writer Colin Wilson, a curious and often hateful figure with an extreme superiority complex; finally, Clive James reads his beautiful new poem "Anchorage International"
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Gerri Kimber on the role of women in the rise of the Western (plus the notorious case of Mrs Clem); as Tate Britain unveils the most extensive David Hockney retrospective yet, one of the show's curators talks us though some key moments, and themes, in a long and eclectic career; what makes a bestseller? Daisy Hildyard considers four new books that purport to tell us why some books succeed while others flop.
Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer and campaigner against miscarriages of justice, joins us in the studio to discuss his time defending death-row prisoners in Guantánamo and elsewhere, the "integrity" of the system, why torture doesn't work, and whether the age of mass incarceration might finally be drawing to a close. We end with Helen Mort reading her new poem, "Glasgow".Presented by Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Paul Collier on the new "hard" pragmatism and the future of capitalism; Michael Chabon discusses his invigorating new novel, Moonglow; Mary Beard on women in academia (the troubles and the triumphs, past and present), and why the Trump inauguration protests were a step in the right direction.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Devoney "Stone Cold Jane Austen" Looser on the slew of Jane Austen reincarnations (and why it's nothing to worry about); David Wheatley on the long-awaited final volume of Samuel Beckett's letters and its "black diamonds of pessimism"; and J. Michael Lennon on the titan of publishing Robert Gottlieb, and the writer-editor relationship. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Eimear McBride on the dark side of bad sex writing and why a new anthology is nothing to be snickered at; Diana Darke on the stories of two young women who have fled war in the Middle East and the new pressures they face; and Jenny Hendrix joins us from New York to discuss new works of imaginative cartography that portray that city – indeed any city – in full, kaleidoscopic complexity.Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk
With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Andrew Scull on the deeply unsettling – and surprisingly recent – history of lobotomy, and the sorry tale of Patient H. M.; Lisa Hilton on the sometimes mystifying appeal of the French Riviera and the vapid aristocrats who holidayed there; Kate Symondson on an all but forgotten novel by Joseph Conrad and a clutch of new books that scrutinize his philosophical and political scepticism – a man for our times?
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