Lit with Charles

In this episode, I highlight the top 5 five books that I read last year. It’s a great way to remember what I’ve read and what I value in my reading experiences. I dive deeper than I usually would into what makes these books especially great and what they meant to me. Sometimes I’ll enjoy something quite linear and - gasp! - commercial whilst, at other times, I’ll prefer something quite experimenta...

My guest today is Nandini Das, a Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture at Exeter College at Oxford University, and author of the book “Courting India” which is an account of England’s first ambassador to the Mughal court, Sir Thomas Roe, who was tasked with building a relationship with the emperor Jahangir in order to build English trade with India.  It’s a fascinating book because it...

Today I had the pleasure of speaking to Lauren Easum, co-founder of the Parisian bookplate company Ex-Libris. Along with her business partner, Igor Telinge, Lauren has opened Ex-Libris Paris with the intention of bringing tradition back to life, and offering bibliophiles a way to imprint their books with their names & heritage. In today’s episode, Lauren and I cover a wide range of topics – th...

Today I spoke to Blindboy Boatclub – a multi-disciplinary Irish artist and author of the recently published short story collection Topographia Hibernica, a tongue-in-cheek update to the original. Blindboy exploded onto the international scene in late 2010 with his band The Rubberbandits and segued into a weekly podcast which is a cultural phenomenon, with over 1.2 million monthly listeners. He has...

Part of what I try to do on this channel is to, in some small way, examine the history of literature. But for today’s guest, Spanish writer and Philologist Irene Vallejo, it’s the history of the book itself – from early beginnings as delicate cuneiform tablets, scrolls, and reeds on the banks of the Nile – that truly excites. Papyrus is a stunning introduction to (and explanation of!) philology, a...

Famously undefinable, in many ways art is an ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ kind of thing. It’s a giant sociological concept whose tendrils snake into all our lives. In today’s episode, I speak to Farah Nayeri: journalist and author of Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age , a fascinating overview of some of the most difficult questions currently being asked in the contemporary art world. What...

It’s the age-old question: was the book really better than the movie? For the last however many millennia, the book has been the unrivalled compendium of human knowledge. However, since the turn of the last century, there’s been a new kid on the proverbial block: the movie. Today I got to speak to Tom Williams, a film producer based out of LA, whose 25 year film industry tenure has given us a brie...

At first glance, the book I’m talking about today seems like the ultimate odd-couple pairing – a insightful analysis of the condition & economic prospects of women in India, combined with the adoration of a national movie icon. However, as it turns out, these two subjects might not be so disparate after all. Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Shrayana Bhattacharya, an Indian economist a...

In today’s episode, I speak to the writer Avery Carpenter Forrey, who wrote the fun & enjoyable debut novel “Social Engagement”. It’s a young woman’s journey to getting married that is full of obstacles & revelations. At first glance, this may seem like standard chick-lit fare but I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a darker undertone to this work that gave it an interesting...

There are classic books from a few centuries ago, and then there are classic classic books from distant and remote regions covering events that are long-lost to the sands of time. Today’s episode is about this kind of book: the Icelandic sagas written in the 1300s and covering events from the start of the second millennium. The saga I read for this week’s episode is called Njal’s Saga and it is wr...

One of the best propulsive forces in literature, the force that keeps me turning pages as I read a novel is the question “Where on earth is this going?” And that question kept coming back to me as I read a very exciting debut novel called “How To Be A French Girl” by Rose Cleary, a young British writer. In the book, a twentysomething young girl who’s given up on a promising art education to work a...

Sometimes a single act can resonate across the ages, its impact felt through generations, both politically and personally. In 1914, the feminist suffragette Mary Richardson slashed a painting called “The Rokeby Venus” by Diego Velasquez in the National Gallery in London, to raise awareness for the feminist cause. This event is the central trauma driving the great novel “Asunder”, written by my gue...

The impact of war on art - specifically on literature - is a subject that I find pretty fascinating. The First World War is maybe one of the first conflicts to incubate some brilliant writers. Some of the most prominent literary figures of the First World War were two British war poets called Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. I didn’t know much about their story until I read an excellent book ca...

We live in a changing world with geopolitical forces and academic ideas that are challenging our democratic norms. Extreme politics, both on the right and the left, are very much on the rise in many different countries. Both of these extreme forms of politics are undermining our classic democratic norms of universalism, principles that originated with and were enshrined by the American and French...

Today’s episode follows an interesting literary path. The first stop in that path is a book written in 1974 by Robert Caro, called The Power Broker. It’s one of the most brilliant biographies of all time. If you’re looking for a magnificently researched, and totally gripping book on the life of one of the most influential men of the 20th century, then this the one. It’s the story of Robert Moses. ...

If ever there was a need for a single definition of the novel’s function, it may well be to establish an architecture around characters that leads them directly to unique moral quandaries. These shorts of choices are ultimately what drives some of the greatest novels.  And what better framework than war to create situations that lead characters towards real perplexity? After all, it consists of tw...

How do we, as readers, detect new and emerging talent in writing? We can look at book sales or book prizes but young writers don’t necessarily gain huge commercial success or awards early on in their careers. One list that has proved almost oracular in the last 40 years has been established by the venerable literary magazine Granta and that's the list of Best Young British Novelists. My guest...

On May 25th 2020, in Minneapolis, a black man named George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer named Derek Chauvin who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, thus asphyxiating him. That tragic event had an immediate global impact, sparking off demonstrations and riots, not just in the US but across the world. But who was George Floyd? Where did he come from? Wha...

The British writer LP Hartley opened his novel “The Go-Between” with an unforgettable line “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” There’s a long-standing idea of literature being a vehicle to explore these “foreign countries”, be they temporal or geographical or cultural.  My guest today has been one of the most innovative voices with regard to the immigrant experience,...

Today's guest is a poet named Iona Lee, who I was lucky enough to meet at Glastonbury a few months ago. One night I was in a queue for an event, and Iona mentioned that she was about to publish her first collection of poems. Obviously, that peaked my interest and when I asked her if she would be willing to recite a poem, she delivered a really authentic, amazing performance, right there in the...

Evoking the past and how it shapes the present has been the hallmark of some of the greatest writers in history. This year’s winner of the International Booker Prize is “Time Shelter” by the Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov and it’s been hugely successful not just in its Bulgarian homeland but also abroad. The character at the center of the book is a mysterious crypto-philosophical doctor who...

My guest today is the latest recipient of the prestigious Fauve d’Or award for a graphic novel whose innovative instincts will likely impact the publishing industry for years to come. Martin Panchaud is a Swiss graphic novelist, which is an interesting coincidence given the origins of the form I mentioned earlier, and his latest work is called “La Couleur des Choses” (The Color of Things). It’s a...

Joseph O’Neill published a beautiful novel “Netherland” in 2008 which was rapidly applauded for capturing the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 world, not in a figurative or literal way, but, as its title suggests, in an ethereal, otherworldly way. It is an excellent novel which, if you haven’t read yet, I strongly suggest adding to your reading list.  In 2014, Joseph O’Neill followed up with an equally ab...

My guest today is one the leading academics on the life and work of Victor Hugo and his work. Marva Barnett is a Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia, where she taught French and drama. Her great passion and academic specialty is Victor Hugo on whom she’s written extensively, including two books "To Love Is to Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo's Vision for Leading Lives of Co...

I received a book from this week’s guest, the London-based American artist Orfeo Tagiuri called “Little Passing Thoughts”. It reminded me of that fine tradition of cartoons, mixed with a dose of surreal humour, and a dash of poetic perspective, and above all, a very profound, touching, sincerity.  In today’s episode, Orfeo and I talk about what it takes to come up with great ideas, where they come...