Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction

 

Books

The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter

Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson

Section 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode)

---

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

💾

Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done" 

Books

White Feather by Catherine and David MacPhail

The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay

An Anty-War Story by Tony Ross

Only One of Me by Lisa Wells and Michelle Robinson (illustrated by Tim Budgen and Catalina Echeverri)

The Afterwards by A. F. Harrold and Emily Gravett

We Are the Nerds: The birth and tumultuous life of Reddit, the internet's culture laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

The Travellers Club: A bicentennial history (1819–2019) by John Martin Robinson 

---

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

💾

Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs... 

Books 

Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank Wynne

The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment by Gina Perry 

The Hope Circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism by Martin Seligman 

---

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

💾

Tom Stevenson offers a recent history of political assassination, from a CIA manual of 1953 to the Jamal Khashoggi affair; The literary achievements of Nancy Cunard have long been eclipsed by her image as the archetypal flapper-muse of the roaring 1920s – as Anna Girling reveals a previously unknown short story (published for the first time in this week's TLS), we reassess Cunard's legacy; Who killed Edwin Drood? In 1914, faced with Dickens's final, unfinished novel, prominent literary types gathered to stage the trial of Drood's alleged killer – Pete Orford tells us more...

---

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

💾

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas

Lara Pawson drops in to tell the tale of David Wojnarowicz, the New York artist whose time has come. Elaine Showalter examines a new biography of Germaine Greer. Kim Addonizio, winner of the Mick Imlah Prize for Poetry, reads her victorious poem. Plus, Lucy admits to having an allotment, and Stig learns he has been introducing the show all wrong.

---

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

💾

An end-of-year edition, bringing together some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months: Kathryn Hughes on whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Margaret Drabble reviews the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we marked this year; David Baddiel discusses whether Jewishness is inherently funny; Clare Pettitt revisits the history of the Peterloo massacre of 1819. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all.

---

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

💾

Who is Odysseus? Why can't he get home? And will the gods help or hinder his journey? In this special episode, the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard chairs a panel featuring the author and academic Simon Goldhill, the memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn, the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and the novelist Madeline Miller. This is a recording of a live event, staged in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in October 2018.

---

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

💾

TLS editors discuss some memorable arts events from the past twelve months; plus, food and drink in literature and a preview of the TLS's Christmas double issue, including how to do German food, M. F. K. Fisher, French food slang, pub stories, and a deconstruction of the traditional British Christmas dinner 

---

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

💾

Lucy Atkins charts our changing relationship with Orcinus orca, from "demon dolphin" to cuddly icon; Ruth Scurr on the lives and unlikely friendship of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn 

Books

Orca: How we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator by Jason M. Colby

John Evelyn: A life of domesticity by John Dixon Hunt 

The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes

---

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

💾

Michael Caines on the little-known romantic William Gilbert, a “man of fine genius” (according to William Wordsworth) who had “unfortunately received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story”; Daniel Beer tells the tale of the Gulag at Solovki, a converted monastery known as “the Paris of the Northern concentration camps”, a place of brutality but also of resistant culture and ideas; finally, Laurence Scott considers the cultural history of shoeshining, from Dickens to Police Squad 

Books

William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism by Paul Cheshire

Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki, 1923–1930: The Paris of the northern concentration camps by Andrea Gullotta

---

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

💾

Forty years since the controversial Spanish constitution of 1978, Rupert Shortt, Hispanic editor at the TLS, discusses the painful evolution of democracy in Spain; Siobhan Magee considers our problematic relationship with farmed animals, namely dairy cows, and crops, such as palm oil; Dwight Garner, a literary critic at the New York Times, offers glimpses into his commonplace book, in which four decades of favourite quotations converse with each other

Books

The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie

Palma Africana by Michael Taussig

---

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

💾

A handful of TLS editors gather for the yearly process of picking through contributors' Books of the Year selections, and nominate their own books to remember; Serhii Plokhy, the winner of this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for 'Chernobyl: The history of a nuclear catastrophe', speaks to the TLS's History editor David Horspool

Selected books

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

Charles de Gaulle: A certain idea of France by Julian Jackson

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Murmur by Will Eaves

Circe by Madeline Miller

Talking To Women by Nell Dunn

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, edited by Maebh Long

Grant by Ron Chernow 

---

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

💾

Mary Beard joins us to answer the question: Is it accurate to call Donald Trump a fascist?, while the TLS's fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig discusses how the President is presented, in books and on film; and Julia Bell looks back on her Oxford entrance interview - with no fondness - and wonders: "Was it a trap or a test?"

Books

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Nobody hates Trump more than Trump by David Shields 

---

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

💾

To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, the TLS's History editor David Horspool talks us through books, exhibitions and events that commemorate cataclysmic slaughter and scars that endure to this day; it’s easy to think of privacy invasion as a peculiarly modern phenomenon, but it has its own history dating back to the American Civil War – Sarah Igo tells us more; finally, the food writer Bee Wilson discusses two new cookbooks that capture a “fresh mood of experiment in the kitchen”

Works discussed

Pandora’s Box: A history of the First World War, by Jörn Leonhard (translated by Patrick Camiller)

Robert Graves: From Great War poet to ‘Good-Bye to All That’, 1895–1929 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Making a New World (across the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Imperial War Museum North)

Plus reviews and original pieces published in the TLS, including “What did Tommy read: The complex mental worlds of soldiers on the Western Front” by Bill Bell – go to the-TLS.co.uk for details

Sight Smell Touch Taste Sound:  A new way to cook by Sybil Kapoor

Lateral Cooking by Niki Segnit

---

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

💾

As Mike Leigh's film of the Peterloo massacre of 1819 is released, Clare Pettitt revisits the history; Marina Benjamin offers a personal and literary account of the threshold between sleep and wakefulness; following the publication of a second volume of Sylvia Plath's letters, Hannah Sullivan looks for fresh insights into the poet's work, life and death; finally, Sam Riviere reads his new poem, "Sushi Tuesday"

Works discussed

Peterloo, directed by Mike Leigh

Insomnia by Marina Benjamin

The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I (1940-1956) and Volume II (1956-1963), edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil

---

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

💾

Are authors, reviewers and publicists wasting their time on book coverage? The contemporary conversation about books and ideas goes way beyond traditional features and interviews. Book groups, academic seminars, Amazon user reviews, Goodreads, the press, radio, podcasts, and sometimes even TV: the form, tone and quality of coverage has infinite variety. But how much does any of it help the books business – if it can be measured at all? Do authors, reviewers, and publicists feel their efforts are worthwhile? Michael Caines, an editor at the TLS, chairs an eclectic panel for a crucial conversation about the conversation around books. (This a live recording of an event, in collaboration with BookMachine, which took place on October 3, 2018, at the Driver, Kings Cross, London)

---

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

💾

Elaine Showalter on a history of obscenity and censorship and the largely futile efforts of a US Postal Inspector; Ladee Hubbard on five years of Black Lives Matter and the myth of an egalitarian, post-racial America; Kassia St Clair on women, weaving and the rewriting of history

Books

Lust on Trial: Censorship and the rise of obscenity in the age of Anthony Comstock by Amy Werbel 

The Fire This Time: A new generation speaks about race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

My Brother Moochie: Regaining dignity in the face of crime, poverty and racism in the American South by Isaac J. Bailey  

The Golden Thread: How fabric changed history by Kassia St Clair  

---

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

💾

Keith Miller joins us to discuss everybody's favourite Renaissance man; the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig meets Anna Burns, the winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman; this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, meanwhile, remains suspended following charges of serious sexual misconduct and cronyism – Richard Orange reports on the mess that has engulfed the Swedish Academy

Books

Living with Leonardo: Fifty years of sanity and insanity in the art world and beyond by Martin Kemp

---

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

💾

Mary Beard reflects on the peculiarities of Homer's best-loved, many-sided epic; Neel Mukherjee on the scandalous survival of the Indian caste system; following the recent party conferences, James O'Brien offers a wry overview of Britain's political mess

Books: 

The Measure of Homer: The ancient reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Richard Hunter

Ants Among Elephants: An untouchable family and the making of modern India by Sujatha Gidla

How To Be Right ... in a World Gone Wrong by James O'Brien

---

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

💾

Michael Caines joins us to discuss female liberation in genteel Cheltenham; we look ahead to an Odyssey extravaganza, with Ted Hodgkinson from the Southbank centre; Paul Muldoon brings a salutary note of optimism to US politics and history with his new poem "With Joseph Brant in Canajoharie"

Books

Votes for Women: Cheltenham and the Cotswolds by Sue Jones

The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Selected Poems 1968-2014 by Paul Muldoon

---

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

💾