Sarah Lonsdale recounts how writers became enmeshed in national struggles; Jane Yager tells the surprising story of DIY punk in the DDR; we talk to Robert Potts about the pleasures of reading John le Carré ("I was never happier than when I was reading John le Carré")
Cold Warriors: Writers who waged the literary Cold War, by Duncan White
Burning Down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr
Michael Caines reports on an unprecedented gathering of work by William Hogarth, “replete with a bitter exuberance, folly finely observed and sin satirized”; “Sometimes a dark and stormy night calls for nothing more innovative than a classic chilling tale.” Joanna Scutts considers three new compendiums of the spooky and the macabre; Les Green makes a case for changing the UK's constitution (writing it down in one place being a good start...)
Hogarth: Place and progress, at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, until January 5, 2020
A Quaint and Curious Volume: Tales and poems of the gothic
Women’s Weird: Strange stories by women, 1890–1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson
Promethean Horrors: Classic tales of mad science, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes
Having asked a selection of writers to nominate their favourite magazines/journals, for a symposium in this week’s TLS, we pick through the results; as Granta turns forty, Alex Clark dives into the magazine’s archives, recently given to the British Library, and emerges clutching gems and old boots (including meeting minutes and evidence of fantasy commissioning); finally, the novelist and translator Lydia Davis talks us through her Thoreau-inspired approach to gardening
Having been staged in Edinburgh and Melbourne, David Greig's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' is now at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre in London. The TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas asks him about returning to this strange story of contact, consciousness and how to avoid using "fremulators" on stage
As the Nobel in Literature and the Booker Prize break the rules, split opinion, and (probably) boost sales of a few books, a bunch of TLS editors share their thoughts on the whole endeavour of prize-giving (Michael: "you may as well throw a stone..."); Alexander van Tulleken considers 'War Doctor: Surgery on the front line', David Nott's tales from the operating tables, and floors, of war-torn places; as his stage adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' comes to London, David Greig, the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, talks to the TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas
In this bonus edition of the podcast, William Collins have taken over the feed to play a new episode of their podcast, Ideas Matter. In this exclusive extract, science writer Phillip Ball talks to his editor Myles Archibald about the ideas explore in his book, How To Grow A Human.
To subscribe to Ideas Matter and discover more authors by William Collins, click here.
As #PublishingSoWhite continues to shame publishers into diversifying their lists, Colin Grant discusses some of the anxieties and complexities beneath the surface; Andrew Motion on why he keeps returning to William Wordsworth; Kate Miller reads a new poem, "Turned-down"
Wordsworth’s Fun by Matthew Bevis
The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and their year of marvels by Adam Nicolson
Was the 1960s a good decade for Norman Mailer? Thomas Meaney reconsiders the work; Henry Hitchings on Auberon Waugh, anarcho-snob and master of the "vituperative arts"; Toby Lichtig on the vitality of documentary filmmaking
‘Collected Essays of the 1960s’ and ‘Four Books of the 1960s’ by Norman Mailer
A Scribbler in Soho: A celebration of Auberon Waugh, edited by Naim Attallah
Waugh on Wine, by Auberon Waugh
Say What Happened: A story of documentaries, by Nick Fraser
Elaine Showalter on the “avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable” Susan Sontag; Patrice Higonnet goes in search of the real Robespierre; A. N. Wilson cuts through class, aristocracy, family and fantasy in Downton Abbey
Sontag: Her life, by Benjamin Moser
Robespierre: L’homme qui nous divise le plus, by Marcel Gauchet
Downton Abbey (Various cinemas)
Almanach de Gotha 2019, two volumes, edited by John James
"When future historians study these troubled times, they will marvel at the relentless rise of sea levels, strongman politics and Kardashians." So says Irina Dumitrescu, who joins us to discuss the phenomenon of celebrity, from Sarah Bernhardt to the Kardashian-Jenners; Rafia Zakaria on the murder of the Pakistani social media star Qandeel Baloch, aka "How I'm looking?" girl; Lamorna Ash on 'Bait', a new film about a timeless clash between them and us, set in a small Cornish fishing village
The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus
Kardashian Kulture: How celebrities changed life in the 21st century by Ellis Cashmore
Tweenhood: Femininity and celebrity in tween popular culture by Melanie Kennedy
A Woman Like Her: The short life of Qandeel Baloch by Sanam Maher
The future of the planet is in question this week, or at least, humanity's place on it, as Gabrielle Walker discusses possible solutions to climate change and why we don't need to panic - yet - but we do need to act, together. The TLS's fiction editor, Toby Lichtig, talks us through the hype and hoopla around Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - and what the book itself is like. And are you Team Scott or Team Zelda? Joanna Scutts looks at 'the messy intertextuality of a marriage', and the question of influence within the Fitzgerald ménage.
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change byNathaniel Rich
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour
We turn to children's and YA literature in this week's episode, with Rozalind Dineen and Toby Lichtig presenting new releases (as reviewed by a selection of young readers), as well as discussing some of the pros and cons of age-specific reading; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reintroduces J. M. Barrie's classic work Peter Pan, where a wild imagination masks tragic, sometimes disturbing, realities
What kind of son was Philip Larkin? The TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins finds insight in some of the 4,000-odd letters and postcards the poet sent home to his "Mop" and "Pop"; Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, tells us more than we could ever hope to know about pigeons and pigeon fanciers; Norma Clarke considers the internet artist Cold War Steve, whose ‘furious absurdism’ has won him some 192.8K Twitter followers, and ponders connections with the eighteenth-century satires of Hogarth and Gillray
Letters Home, 1936–1977, by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth
Homing: On pigeons, dwellings, and why we return, by Jon Day
Cold War Steve Presents...The Festival of Brexit, by Cold War Steve
The whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi", the most costly artwork in the world, are still uncertain, as is its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. Federico Varese, best known for his studies of the mafia, follows the trail; the TLS's history editor David Horspool considers the inner and outer worlds of Anne Frank’s diary, the actual anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, and a selection of other contributions to this week's special issue; Ladee Hubbard reflects on the late Toni Morrison, who died last week, and considers 'The Pieces I Am', a documentary that highlights Morrison's multifaceted life, work and legacy
The Collected Works, by Anne Frank, translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, Susan Massotty, Mirjam Pressler and Kirsten Warner and edited by Mirjam Pressler
Peterloo: The English uprising by Robert Poole
Legacy: One family, a cup of tea and the company that took on the world, by Thomas Harding
Jill Lepore traces the history of conspiracy theories and the conditions that allow them to thrive; Tim Crane talks us through whether we have free will or not, and why it is still a problem; Michael Caines looks at non-traditional approaches to criticism
Books
CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
CONSPIRACIES OF CONSPIRACIES: How delusions have overrun America, by Thomas Milan Konda
THE STIGMATIZATION OF CONSPIRACY THEORY SINCE THE 1950s: ‘A plot to make us look foolish’, by Katharina Thalmann
THE AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES AND COVER-UPS: JFK, 9/11, the Fed, rigged elections, suppressed cancer cures, and the greatest conspiracies of our time, by Douglas Cirignano
REPUBLIC OF LIES: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, by Anna Merlan
A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING:The new conspiracism and the assault on democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
HARVESTER OF HEARTS: Motherhood under the sign of Frankenstein, by Rachel Feder
THE HUNDREDS, by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart
TUNNEL VISION, by Kevin Breathnach
ON THE LITERARY MEANS OF REPRESENTING THE POWERFUL AS POWERLESS, by Steven Zultanski
The Limits of Free Will: Selected essays by Paul Russell
Aspects of Agency: Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will by Alfred R. Mele
Self-Determination: The ethics of action – Volume One by Thomas Pink
Following the discovery of a strange book, Sarah Green revises the story of the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson, whose legacy was distorted in the 1950s by a criminal with a taste for fancy bedding; in the US, of 70,000 cases that went to disposition in 2016, more than 99 per cent resulted in conviction. What does this tell us? Clive Stafford Smith explains why American justice is a mirage; since 2015, Refugee Tales – part walking pilgrimage, part protest, part collection of narratives about those unjustly treated by Britain’s immigration system – has become an annual event. David Herd tells us what ground remains to be covered
Doing Justice: A prosecutor’s thoughts on crime, punishment, and the rule of law, by Preet Bharara
Nick Groom ponders the fate of the beleaguered British countryside and shares new theories about the economics of the natural world; En Liang Khong takes us through the increasingly global phenomenon of Japanese manga (which translates as “pictures run riot”); Damian Flanagan on Mishima, a writer who yearned to transcend time and identity
Green and Prosperous Land: A blueprint for rescuing the British countryside by Dieter Helm
Who Owns England?: How we lost our green and pleasant land and how to take it back, by Guy Shrubsole
Manga, and exhibition at the British Museum in London
Star, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Sam Bett
The Frolics of the Beasts, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Andrew Clare
"The sociable side of nineteenth-century musical life is not acknowledged as often as it should be..." – Laura Tunbridge discusses the interconnected, complicated and often contradictory myths and realities that link Chopin, Schumann and Brahms; the TLS's music editor Lucy Dallas takes us through a selection of other pieces on music in this week's issue, including new histories of the blues and the poetic pop of Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys; when Irving Sandler wrote his seminal history of abstract expressionism, he neglected to mention Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan and Elaine de Kooning – Jenni Quilter joins us to put these artists back in the frame
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five painters and the movement that changed modern art, by Mary Gabriel
Fryderyk Chopin: A life and times by Alan Walker
Schumann: The faces and masks by Judith Chernaik
Brahms in Context, edited by Natasha Loges and Katy Hamilton
(with Liebeslieder Walzer, Opus 52, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra)
Up Jumped the Devil: The real life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow
The Original Blues: The emergence of the Blues in African American vaudeville, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff
It’s the centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch, the novelist-philosopher who dominated the literary pages for much of the twentieth century. Where do we stand on her now? Michael Caines and Frances Wilson discuss; This was the week that the US women’s football team won the World Cup. Devoney Looser, the roller derby queen of academia, enjoys “a brief opportunity to revel in America’s better strengths”.
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