This week the TLS is running an extract from The Mirror & the Light, the long-awaited third and final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels. In 1538 Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, questions Geoffrey Pole, the youngest son of a great family. Pole is accused of conspiring against Henry VIII and attempting to bring back the old religion and reinstate the Pope as head of the Church. (The Mirror & the Light will be published on March 5 by Fourth Estate. The audio book is published by W F Howes and narrated by Ben Miles.)
James Shapiro, the author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, discusses the history of West Side Story, the most popular and successful Shakespeare musical of all time, and Ivo van Hove's flawed Broadway adaptation; Toby Lichtig reviews Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt and talks us through a selection of Jewish-focused pieces in this week's issue of the TLS; David Horspool, the TLS's history editor and a keen consumer of audiobooks, tells us what he has been listening to this month
West Side Story, directed by Ivo van Hove
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard, Wyndham's Theatre, London, until June 13
Rebecca Langlands on lessons learnt in the only known ancient Roman brothel; Caroline Moorehead reviews Elena Ferrante's latest novel; Rory Waterman reads a new poem, "Defences" ("'Crikey!' you say. 'It’s gorgeous!'...")
Books:
The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, class, and gender at the margins of Roman society, by Sarah Levin-Richardson
Is it the best of times or the worst of times to be a satirist? Madeleine Brettingham, a writer on the BBC's News Quiz, joins us to discuss; Toby Lichtig on a new production of Endgame and the constraints imposed on Samuel Beckett adaptations; founded in the 1960s, the Oulipo was – and remains – a group of writers and scientists striving for "potential literature". Anna Aslanyan considers the movement's legacy
March of the Lemmings: Brexit in print and performance 2016–2019, by Stewart Lee
The Joke is On Us: Political comedy in (late) neoliberal times, edited by Julie A. Webber
Endgame / Rough For Theatre II, at the Old Vic theatre, London
The Oulipo and Modern Thought, by Dennis Duncan
All that is Evident is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963–2018, edited and translated by Daniel Levin Becker and Ian Monk
One of Germany's most acclaimed novelists talks to Maren Meinhardt about his new novel, Tyll, a vivid account of a seventeenth-century trickster's journey through a Europe ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War.
Caryl Emerson on Tolstoy’s art, ideas and life, and the extent to which these came together; Benjamin Markovits returns to a treasured childhood book: The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook; Eve Babitz – a “fizzy”, “fabulous” chronicler of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles – is mid revival. Megan Marz fills us in.
Lives and Deaths: Essential stories by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Boris Dralyuk
Leo Tolstoy: A very short introduction by Liza Knapp
Leo Tolstoy by Andrei Zorin
The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook by Gary Gygax
I Used To Be Charming: The rest of Eve Babitz, edited by Sara J. Kramer
Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the secret history of L.A., by Lili Anolik
Lucy Dallas reports on theories, developments and disputes in the world of science fiction; Lawrence Douglas adds crucial historical context – stretching back to the Middle Ages, in fact – to the current US presidential impeachment; the poet Hannah Sullivan emerges from Princeton University Library with fresh insight into T. S. Eliot's love letters
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin
Did Byron have an eating disorder? Mummy issues? Daddy issues? Does it matter? Emily A. Bernhard Jackson joins us to discuss; Stanley Donwood, the artist and designer of Radiohead's record covers, makes the case for this most democratic of artforms; Keith Miller on the work of the designer and architect Charlotte Perriand, a high-minded high modernist whose life spanned the whole of the twentieth century
The Private Life of Lord Byron by Antony Peattie
Charlotte Perriand: Complete works, by Jacques Barsac
Muriel Zagha reviews Marriage Story and considers a few other deserving/undeserving films either lauded or ignored by this year's awards panels; a clip from an interview with Francesca Wade, the author of Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars (you'll find the full interview in your podcast feed); this month marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anne Brontë, the sister whose reputation has been slowest to blossom but who, according to Samantha Ellis, was the most radical and modern of them all
Sanam Maher looks at how Muslim women are viewed in the West; Claire Lowdon finds puzzles and philosophy but no pleasure in J. M. Coetzee's recent work; Alan Jenkins explains the significance of the recently opened archive of T. S. Eliot's letters; Jeffrey Wainwright reads his poem "If all this did begin"
Books
From Victims to Suspects: Muslim women since 9/11 by Shakira Hussein
It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim women on faith, feminism, sexuality and race, edited by Mariam Khan
Sam Graydon grapples with quantum physics and the subatomic world; Elaine Showalter considers the 'startlingly racy, contradictory, emblematic' E. Nesbit, the 'first modern writer for children'; Which out-of-print books should be back in circulation and why? Roz Dineen presents the results of a TLS symposium
Books
Six Impossible Things: The ‘quanta of solace’ and the mysteries of the subatomic world, by John Gribbin
Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The search for what lies beyond the quantum, by Lee Smolin
The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘The Railway Children’, by Eleanor Fitzsimons
The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘Five Children and It’ and ‘The Railway Children’, by Elisabeth Galvin
TLS editors gather to consider some of the decade’s major cultural shifts and events, with specialist insights from Mary Beard on academia, Beejay Silcox on fiction and Zoe Williams on gender
Go to the-tls.co.uk for the full twelve-page retrospective.
A newly discovered, pseudonymously signed mock-letter to the editor of 'The Lady’s Magazine' in 1823 tells the story of a wannabe writer who is visited by the "gentle spirit of Miss Austen". Not only might the letter offer new information on what Austen might actually have been like, says Devoney Looser, it is also the first piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan fiction; Anna Picard discusses the poet Anne Boyer’s memoir of modern illness and considers the intersections of literature and cancer; Jonathan Lynn shares memories of adventures with his cousin Oliver Sacks
Norma Clarke considers the third and final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher; having spent the past twenty years reporting on Russia, Owen Matthews tries to put his finger on why Vladimir Putin may prove to be one of the most successful political leaders of our era
Books
The Code of Putinism by Brian Taylor
Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the rest by Angela Stent
The Putin System: An opposing view by Grigory Yavlinsky
Kremlin Winter: Russia and the second coming of Vladimir Putin by Robert Service
The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev, translated by Stephen Dalziel
We Need To Talk about Putin: How the West gets him wrong by Mark Galeotti
Dealing with the Russians by Andrew Monaghan
Putin v. the People: The perilous politics of a divided Russia by Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson
Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The path from market economy to kleptocracy by Anders Åslund
The author of 'The Five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper', which won the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, speaks to Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi
Just over ten years since introducing readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Oliver Kitteridge, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout reprises the character in a new novel, ‘Olive, Again’. Here, Strout talks to the TLS’s Roz Dineen about the craft of writing, why Olive has returned, and ageing on the page
“Apart from capitalism itself, is there any cultural and economic manifestation in the world today as ubiquitous, powerful and globalized as football?” John Foot assesses two new studies of the game; just over ten years ago, Elizabeth Strout introduced readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Olive Kitteridge. The novelist speaks to Roz Dineen about bringing Olive back onto the scene; the famously over-the-top cookery show ‘Two Fat Ladies’ last graced our television screens twenty years ago. Anna Girling celebrates the legacy of this unlikely union
‘The Age of Football: The global game in the twenty-first century’ by David Goldblatt
‘Ultra: The underworld of Italian football’ by Tobias Jones
Login