This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Michael Sherborne to consider a master of science fiction, H. G. Wells, whose life was a runaway spaceship… until it ran out of steam; Niki Segnit, the author of ‘The Flavour Thesaurus’, explores some of the world’s rarest and most endangered foods; plus how sustainable – ecologically and economically – is book selling?

‘The Young H. G. Wells: Changing the world’ by Claire Tomalin

‘The City of Dr Moreau’ by J. S. Barnes

‘Eating To Extinction: The world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them’ by Dan Saladino

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, ahead of COP26, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by David Wallace-Wells, the author of ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’, to discuss a flurry of new books on climate change and what to do about it, from quiet reflection to radical, explosive action; and the biographer of royals A. N. Wilson considers a lively new Life of King George V that suggests the monarch wasn’t that dull after all

‘Deep Adaptation: Navigating the realities of climate chaos’, edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

‘How To Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire’ by Andreas Malm

‘Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world’ by Katharine Hayhoe

‘Geopolitics For the End Time: From the pandemic to the climate crisis’ by Bruno Maçães

'George V: Never a dull moment’ by Jane Ridley

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines are joined by Jenni Quilter, the author of ‘New York School Painters and Poets: Neon in daylight’, to discuss the colourful and ceaselessly experimental work of the American artist Helen Frankenthaler; and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, reviews a radical (and watery) new production of ‘Macbeth’ that redeems the fallen world of this overfamiliar tragedy.

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’, Almeida Theatre, London; also streaming

‘Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York’ by Alexander Nemerov

‘Helen Frankenthaler: Radical beauty’, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; until April 18, 2022

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Russell Williams, to talk through the uniquely French phenomenon of the rentrée littéraire - the politics, the scandals, the big beasts and the new voices; and Michele Pridmore-Brown considers a recent book that offers a cultural history of breast milk and the rise of the bottle.

‘White Blood: A history of human milk’ by Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver  

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Peter Parker, the biographer of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood among others, to reconsider the gestation and legacy of E. M. Forster’s final novel, ‘Maurice’, a love story between men across the class divide, published fifty years ago; ‘Keep up, watch out: Or why the people next door have always mattered’ – the historian Arnold Hunt reviews two studies of neighbourly love, and hate, in early modern Britain.

‘Faith, Hope and Charity: English neighbourhoods, 1500–1640’ by Andy Wood

‘Caritas: Neighbourly love and the early modern self’ by Katie Barclay

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In this bonus TLS long read, the former politician Rory Stewart discusses to power of modern politics, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and the corrosion of morals.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/long-players-tom-gatti-book-review-paul-genders

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the scholars Janet Todd and Derek Hughes to revisit the life and work of Restoration England’s first woman of letters, the playwright Aphra Behn, who “seems formed for our noisy, sex-obsessed times”; the translator, poet and critic Sasha Dugdale considers Russian protest poetry and the rise of Galina Rymbu; plus, literary festivals rebooted.

‘The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn: Volume IV: Plays, 1682–1696’, edited by Rachel Adcock, et al

‘F Letter: New Russian feminist poetry’, edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky and Ainsley Morse; translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, Ainsley Morse, Alex Karsavin, Helena Kernan, Kit Eginton, Valzhyna Mort and Kevin M. F. Platt

‘Life In Space’ by Galina Rymbu; translated by Joan Brooks

Valzhyna Mort’s translation of the poem ’Summer’, read by Sasha Dugdale, also appears at - www.granta.com/summer-gates-of-the-body

‘The Scar We Know’, a bi-lingual edition of Lida Yusupova's poetry with introductions by Oksana Vasyakina and Ainsley Morse, has just been published by Cicada Books

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Skye C. Cleary to discuss Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘lost’ novel, ‘The Inseparables’, published almost seventy years after it was written; Anna Picard reviews a very dark production of ‘Rigoletto’ at the Royal Opera House; plus, buying and selling (and maybe stealing) Emily Dickinson’s hair (maybe).

'The Inseparables' by Simone de Beauvoir

'Rigoletto' by Giuseppe Verdi, at the Royal Opera House, until September 29, then February–March, 2022 

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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In this bonus TLS long read, the writer Paul Genders discusses the influence of pop music on literature.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/long-players-tom-gatti-book-review-paul-genders

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by the critic and gym-sceptic Irina Dumitrescu to consider a clutch of books about fitness – how it came to be the industry it is, what it means to us, even what the smell of sweat does; Alex Clark, a regular contributor to the TLS’s fiction pages, runs through this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, just announced, before turning to a real-life story that reads like a mystery novel: the “Stonehouse affair”, the tale of the MP and former Cabinet minister John Stonehouse, who disappeared while swimming from a private beach in Miami

The Age of Fitness: How the body came to symbolize success and achievement by Jürgen Martschukat

Exercised: The science of physical activity, rest and health by Daniel Lieberman

The Joy of Sweat: The strange science of perspiration by Sarah Everts

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

John Stonehouse, My Father: The true story of the runaway MP, by Julia Stonehouse

Stonehouse: Cabinet minister, fraudster, spy by Julian Hayes

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Lucy Dallas and Michael Caines are joined by Dennis Duncan, the author of ‘Index, A History of the’, to discuss how we navigate the contents between books' covers, taking in alphabets, concordances, ancient search engines and much more; What is Substack: a publishing start-up or a reboot of a nineteenth-century literary idea?; and the writer and translator Miranda France discusses a new book by the famed psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, which takes us to Peru, in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, who made a fascinating and, to us, troubling expedition to the Upper Amazon region in 1891.

‘Index, A History of the’ by Dennis Duncan

‘The Gold Machine: In the tracks of the mule dancers’ by Iain Sinclair

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Throughout the summer, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode - it's movie week; the author Colin Grant discusses Steve McQueen's Small Axe and the Academy Award-winning Nomadland starring Frances McDormand, Yoojin Grace Wuertz talks us through the Korean American Dream film Minari, and Clifford Thompson reviews Regina King's directorial debut One Night in Miami - which sees Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay gather for a heated debate.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the comedian David Baddiel joins Toby Lichtig to talk about his book 'Jews Don't Count' which explores the insidious, pervasive, exclusionary nature of ‘progressive’ antisemitism, Éadaoín Lynch remembers fully and truthfully the relationship between the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in the British Library's Women Writers series, dedicated to once-popular writers.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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In this bonus TLS long read, the writer and author of Mind the Gap, Ferdinand Mount, asks - how much is too much meritocracy?

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-aristocracy-of-talent-adrian-wooldridge-book-review-ferdinand-mount

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard emphasizes the importance of teaching Classics in context, the medievalist Hetta Howes reviews a female take on 'Beowulf', and Ruth Scurr reveals the true history of the secretive Freemasons.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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Throughout August, we are revisiting the very best of the podcast during the last year.

In this episode; the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig talks to Douglas Stuart about his 2020 Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain, the writer Laura Thompson joins Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas to discuss the work of Agatha Christie and how she has managed to move with the times, and Edmund Gordon to reviews 'Klara and the Sun' - Kazuo Ishiguro’s new Booker Prize longlisted novel about an Artificial Friend.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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In a special bonus podcast we bring you an episode of Secrets of the Side Hustle that we think you might enjoy.

Host Laura Jackson speaks with Alighieri Jewellery founder, Rosh Mahtani, about her business journey, the importance of connecting with your customers and why a 14th century epic poem makes the perfect inspiration for a 21st century business...

Visit the Alighieri Jewellery website

Follow Alighieri Jewellery on Instagram

Follow The Sunday Times Style

https://www.instagram.com/theststyle/

https://twitter.com/TheSTStyle

To get more of The Times and The Sunday Times, visit thetimes.co.uk/secretsofthesidehustle

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In this bonus TLS long read, Michele Pridmore-Brown, researcher at The University of California - Berkeley, discusses what science can tell us about manliness.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-better-half-sharon-moalem-are-men-animals-matthew-guttmann-guynecology-rene-almeling-review-michelle-pridmore-brown

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Thomas Morris, the author of 'The Matter of the Heart: A history of the heart in eleven operations', to discuss the extraordinary life and influence of the Nobel prize-winning Jewish biochemist Otto Warburg, whose research into cancer, as well as his audacious character, helped him to survive Nazi Germany; the art critic and historian Frances Spalding celebrates the energetic and sophisticated paintings of Nina Hamnett, whose colourful social life has tended to eclipse her talents. Plus, Shakespeare in the open air.

Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the search for the cancer-diet connection, by Sam Apple

Nina Hamnett, Charleston, Sussex, until August 30th

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau, to discuss William Blake, who saw wonders everywhere (including a tree on Peckham Rye), and communicated them urgently in art and poetry – what does he have to tell us now?; the critic and writer Michael Kerrigan guides us through the ‘improbably enthralling mundanities’ of the Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero; plus, a dazzling history of Sicily, the demise of local journalism, and ‘bald’ philosophy.

William Blake Vs the World by John Higgs

The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott

Panic as Man Burns Crumpets: The vanishing world of the local journalist by Roger Lytollis

Bald: 35 philosophical short cuts by Simon Critchley

The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean history by Jamie Mackay

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Ben Mitchell

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