This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Edmund Gordon to review 'Klara and the Sun', Kazuo Ishiguro’s surprisingly hopeful new novel about an Artificial Friend; the world’s first poem about Superman (perhaps) was written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1942 but not published until now, in this week’s TLS – we discuss; and the medievalist Hetta Howes reviews two new translations of 'Beowulf', taking us back to the rich and troubling ambiguities of the original.

Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro

“The Man of To-morrow’s Lament”, a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, with commentary by Andrei Babikov

Beowulf: A new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

Beowulf: In blank verse by Richard Hamer 

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Joyce Carol Oates to talk about the minimalist beauty in the photographs of Walker Evans, and his austere approach to his art. Colin Grant discusses the new film Nomadland, a blend of fact and fiction about US citizens who take to the road when they realize they cannot afford to grow old...and we look through a science fiction dictionary and check up on the latest writing by robots.

Walker Evans: Starting from scratch by Svetlana Alpers

Nomadland, on Hulu - UK release April 2021

www.the-tls.co.uk

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, to discuss the rise of Bellingcat, an investigative body, started in one man’s bedroom in 2014, now able to get to the bottom of even the murkiest global events; Dante, Dante, Dante…. and Anne Weber’s epic of Annette Beaumanoir; and who was Keats’s mysterious Mrs Jones? The biographer Jonathan Bate shares a theory.

We Are Bellingcat: An intelligence agency for the people by Eliot Higgins

Dante by John Took

Annette, Ein Heldinnen Epos / Epic Annette by Anne Weber

‘Cherchez la femme’ – Keats and Mrs Jones, by Jonathan Bate in the TLS

www.the-tls.co.uk

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Cal Revely-Calder, who finds that, in Samuel Beckett Studies, jargon and certainty too often crowd out impressions of the work and the importance of ‘knowing what you don’t know’; Alice Wadsworth brings snippets of interest from this week’s TLS, including ‘women who wouldn’t wait’ and Borges in Inverness; and Ruth Scurr on the history of the secretive, ritual-loving Freemasons.

Beckett’s Political Imagination by Emilie Morin

Samuel Beckett and the Visual Arts by Conor Carville

The Craft: How the Freemasons made the modern world, by John Dickie

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Avril Horner, author of a biography of Barbara Comyns whose quirky, menace-laced novels, long championed by Graham Greene, are finding their way back to us; a new poem by John Kinsella, 'Villanelle of Star-Picket-Hopping Red-Capped Robin'; and En Liang Khong describes the powerful pull – particularly difficult to resist during lockdown – of the fantasy urban landscapes portrayed in video games and anime

Several novels by Barbara Comyns, including: 'Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead', 'Mr Fox', 'Sisters by a River', 'The House of Dolls' and 'The Vet's Daughter'

'The legend and the crazy novelist: Graham Greene’s role in Barbara Comyns’s writing career' by Avril Horner

Virtual Cities: An atlas and exploration of video game cities, by Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Anime Architecture: Imagined worlds and endless megacities, by Stefan Riekeles

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The writer and comedian David Baddiel has written a book called 'Jews Don't Count', which explores the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism. Here, he talks to Toby Lichtig about how and why one of the most persecuted minorities in history continues to be overlooked

'Jews Don't Count' by David Baddiel

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by David Gallagher to discuss two new books about Jorge Luis Borges – one a collection of essays and remembrances by the great Latin American writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the other a more curious offering by the American writer and critic Jay Parini; David Baddiel on the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism; Alice Wadsworth and Lucy Dallas on food podcasts and the French comedy-drama Call My Agent!

Medio siglo con Borges, by Mario Vargas Llosa (published in Spain by Alfaguara)

Borges and Me: An encounter, by Jay Parini 

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel 

'The Sporkful' and 'Off Menu' available on podcast platforms

Call My Agent!, Netflix

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Clifford Thompson to discuss One Night in Miami, a film by Regina King, which sees Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay gather for heated debate; from exclusivity and luxury in imperial China to cheap ubiquity in modern day Europe, Norma Clarke considers the rise and fall of porcelain; plus, a new poem by Anne Carson, “Sure, I Was Loved”

One Night in Miami, dir. Regina King

The City of Blue and White: Chinese porcelain and the early modern world by Anne Gerritsen

Porcelain: A history from the heart of Europe by Suzanne L . Marchand

“Sure, I Was Loved” by Anne Carson, in this week’s TLS

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard, who, via an old exam paper, emphasizes the importance of teaching Classics in context (Q1: "Dryads, Hyads, Naiads, Oreads, Pleiads … Does 'Classical influence' in modern poetry always come down to snobbery and elitism?”); Zachary Leader reports on the latest offerings from the Joyce Industry; and Jane O'Grady considers how the Enlightenment undid itself.

James Joyce and the Matter Of Paris, by Catherine Flynn

James Joyce and the Jesuits, by Michael Mayo

Panepiphanal World: James Joyce’s epiphanies, by Sangam Macduff

The Enlightenment: The pursuit of happiness 1680–1790, by Ritchie Robertson

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the Karachi-based journalist Sanam Maher to discuss cliché and originality in foreign correspondents' writing on Pakistan; a whistle-stop tour through (some) of the books of 2021; Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in the British Library's Women Writers series, dedicated to once-popular writers

The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a divided nation, by Declan Walsh

O, the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair 

Chatterton Square by E. H. Young

Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim 

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to marvel at a five-volume, “definitive” study of the iconic French filmmaker Jacques Tati, every aspect of whose apparently chaotic cinematic universe was controlled to the nth degree; Calum Mechie considers some new approaches to the life and legacy of George Orwell; and – “Can we take it? Can Dickens take it?” – ’tis the season for adaptations of A Christmas Carol…

The Definitive Jacques Tati, edited by Alison Castle

On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A biography by D. J. Taylor

Orwell: A man of our time by Richard Bradford

Becoming George Orwell: Life and letters, legend and legacy, by John Rodden

Eileen: The making of George Orwell, by Sylvia Topp 

Subscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/ 

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig are joined by Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London, to discuss two important biographies of Joseph Stalin, covering the opposite ends of the dictator’s life; the debate around the official Home Office history of Britain, a document full of omissions and riddled with errors, rolls on; and can a book make you a better person? Can even the high modernists be mined for lessons in life? Joanna Scutts considers the relationship between 'serious' literature and self-help.

Stalin: Passage to revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny

Late Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. Savage

The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth Blum

Reading for Life by Philip Davis

Subscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/ 

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Griffiths, the author most recently of the novel Mr Beethoven, to discuss the heroic oeuvre of the great composer, 250 years after his birth; Joseph Farrell takes us through the life and work of Gianni Rodari, a kind of Italian George Orwell transplanted to Neverland.

Selected books:

Beethoven's Conversation Books, translated and edited by Theodore Albrecht

Beethoven's Lives by Lewis Lockwood

Beethoven: A Life by Jan Caeyers

Beethoven: A life in nine pieces, by Laura Tunbridge

– read the full piece here 

Telephone Tales, by Gianni Rodari, translated by Antony Shugaar

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In this special bonus episode, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart about his 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Colin Grant, the author of Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush generation, to discuss Small Axe, a series of films by Steve McQueen that centres on Black British life between the 1960s and 80s; and the author and musician Wesley Stace tells the story of the “real” James Bond, a celebrated ornithologist whose "dull" name was poached by Ian Fleming. 

Plus, the TLS's Fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart, the winner of this year’s Booker Prize for fiction

Small Axe, BBC One, BBC iPlayer

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

The Real James Bond: A true story of identity theft, avian intrigue and Ian Fleming, by Jim Wright

Subscribe to The TLS at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/ 

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Mark Glanville to mark the centenary of the birth of Paul Celan, probably the most important post-war German-language poet, by revisiting the early poems in light of his later transformation; and Margaret Drabble considers the literature of urban walking, via the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells and other metropolitan ramblers.

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The collected earlier poetry: A bilingual edition, translated by Pierre Joris

Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous prose, translated by Pierre Joris

Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan, by Jean Daive, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

The Walker: On finding and losing yourself in the modern city, by Matthew Beaumont

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by two TLS editors, David Horspool and Toby Lichtig, to discuss books that have sustained and stimulated over the past twelve months, as selected by sixty-five writers from around the world; and we discuss the controversy surrounding a long-awaited statue of – or "for" – Mary Wollstonecraft.

Read the TLS's Books of the Year feature here [https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2020/] 

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As Remembrance Day approaches, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Éadaoín Lynch to remember fully and truthfully the relationship between the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; and the TLS's sports editor David Horspool talks us through a couple of books on professional game playing, including a football memoir of obsession and crucial omissions by Arsène Wenger.

My Life in Red and White by Arsène Wenger

This Sporting Life: Sport and liberty in England, 1760–1960 by Robert Colls

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Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Lucy Scholes to revisit the work of the master of terror Shirley Jackson and review the new film Shirley (“about as far from a traditional biopic as you can get”); and Jane Darcy grapples with the neither quite Romantic nor quite Victorian Thomas De Quincey, whose life-writing paved the way for the autobiografiction to come

 

Shirley, directed by Josephine Decker (various cinemas / Hulu)

Thomas De Quincey: Selected writings, edited by Robert Morrison 

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In a special bonus podcast we bring you an episode of Stories of our times that we think you might enjoy.

The Times's chief music critic, Richard Morrison muses over whether a combination of the coronavirus, environmental concerns and the MeToo movement will be the end of the 'maestro' - the classical music conductor - as we know it. 

Guest: Richard Morrison, Times chief culture critic and music writer. 

Host: David Aaronovitch.

Clips used: Metropolitan Opera, Aurora Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, The Hendon Band YouTube Channel, ABC News, Washington Post, NBC News.

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