The Booking Club

In Do Not Go Gentle , acclaimed writer and philosopher Kathleen Stock tackles one of the great debates of our time: should we set up a system of assisted death? With her trademark sharp thinking and dry wit, the bestselling author of Material Girls argues that despite what some progressives might tell you, assisted death will not give a person more "freedom" or "control" over their lives. Whether...

This episode was the novelist and essayist Will Self ’s first live interview celebrating the publication of his new novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality . We hosted Will alongside our events collaborators for the evening, Special Rider Books and Records at Shepherd's Bush Market, on 23rd April. Will did not hold back on this one (did he ever?), and the longer you listen, the more apparent it is...

Megan Nolan is an Irish author and journalist. She gained critical prominence after releasing her debut novel,  Acts of Desperation , which received a  Betty Trask Award  in 2022. Her second novel,  Ordinary Human Failings , was shortlisted for a number of awards. Nolan also writes essays, fiction and reviews, with a new collection of essays due as of spring 2026. She met with...

Ross Barkan is a born and raised New Yorker, journalist and author of four novels. He is the co-founder of The Metropolitan Review , New York's youngest books and culture magazine. His latest work of fiction, Colossus , is summarised as follows: "A stark and unsettling portrait of success, in the vein of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen , that revives the long-established intersection between ambi...

The eagerly anticipated final volume of Jay McInerney 's stunningly accomplished and profoundly affecting fictional tetralogy:  Brightness Falls ,  The Good Life ,  Bright Precious Days , and now  See You on the Other Side It's early 2020 in New York, and the looming threat of a global pandemic begins to unsettle the gilded lives of Manhattan's literary and social elite. Now in...

To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency? John Yorke ’s groundbreaking bestseller,  Into the Woods , revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world.  Trip to the Moon  takes us on a jour...

Joel Foster is a hapless twenty-something. His girlfriend, Beth Lewis, would likely have been a hapless twenty-something, too, had she not been obliterated by a very large cement truck. Some time after Beth’s tragic death, Joel is still trying to juggle grief with the world of modern dating. And while he still feels like a widower, he has to find a new love before three years is up. The catch? Jus...

Who Will Remain by Kasim Ali is a powerful new novel following a young man as he weighs up the life of safety that his parents want for him and another path on the streets outside his door, from the acclaimed author of  Good Intentions. Amir has grown up in Alum Rock, Birmingham, under the care of his sensible older brother, Bilal, and his cousin Saqib, born just a few days before Amir. Alum...

This episode is lifted from a live recording that took place at The Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 in Westminster on Saturday 18th October. Jack draws together a panel of three speakers carefully selected to provide a modern perspective on the lasting significance of Franz Kafka's The Trial , which turns 100 this year. The panel featured Maxie Allen , radio producer for Times Radio, Nick Wallis , j...

A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven .   As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle – “Lord Doyle” to his fellow players – descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence....

Adapted from the major television series created by Mark Gatiss – out now! London, 1946. Gabriel Book is an erudite and unconventional London bookseller married to Trottie, the owner of the wallpaper shop next door. He is also a sleuth who uses the chaotic riches of his stock to crack the puzzling cases that come his way. He does not work alone. Book’s shop is a magnet for waifs and strays – some...

Catch-22  on speed and set in the Middle East,  Vulture   is a fast-paced, brilliant satire of the war news industry and its moral blind spots. An ambitious young journalist, Sara is sent to cover a war from the Beach Hotel in Gaza. The four-star hotel is a global media hub, promising safety and generator-powered internet, with hotel staff catering tirelessly to the needs of the wor...

On Wednesday 16 July this year, The Booking Club in collaboration with Conduit Books launched Fiction First, an event dedicated to the experience and status of the modern novel and novelist. At 21Soho, we heard from a panel of 2025's most exciting debut writers about what led them to produce their first works of fiction. Guests discussed their journeys to publication, their literary influences, an...

In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth – no, sixth? – child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla ready to drive his wife and baby home. Jada is a hustling, small-time criminal who is already planning how to separate Dan from s...

An astonishing undercover investigation into the paranoid and misogynistic subcultures of the manosphere, by the Orwell Prize-longlisted author of  Hired James Bloodworth . Rarely has there seemed a more confusing time to be a man. This uncertainty has spawned an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the 'manosphere', as men search for new forms of belong...

London, 2012. Johnny Voghel is stuck. He has a dead-end job at a small university and a wilting relationship and is grieving the death of his parents. When his half-brother Lawrence returns to the old family home from Chicago after a period of estrangement, Johnny decides to do everything he can to win back his affection. It’s a quest he pursues with the help of Lawrence’s childhood sweetheart and...

Our society tells us over and over that if we're going to achieve anything, we'd better do it while we're young. We fixate on stories of prodigies; we put our children in piano lessons or language classes as toddlers, hoping to give them the best shot at success we can. As for ourselves, too many people feel it's too late to change the course of their own lives. Whether we are at the start of our...

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Noel Gallagher in 1995, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news. This fascinating pop history, exploring the mid-90s moment when British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators,  Uncommon People  takes us back to wh...

Donald McRae has been immersed in boxing for fifty years. He has followed fighters around the world and won multiple awards for his writing. But, in recent years, McRae’s love has waned, as criminality and corruption consume the soul of boxing.    In 2018, grieving the death of his sister and with his parents terminally ill, he sought refuge in boxing again – just as Tyson Fury completed...

The British empire was built on slavery, but it also pioneered abolition. It spread democracy, but it also seeded geopolitical instability. It devastated nature but it also gave birth to modern notions of environmentalism. In this urgent sequel to Empireland , award-winning author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera extends his examination of British imperial legacies beyond Britain to the wider world...

How we live is shaped by how we eat. You can see this in the vastly different approaches to growing, preparing and eating food around the world, such as the hunter-gatherer Hadza in Tanzania whose sustainable lifestyle is under threat in a crowded planet, or Western societies whose food is farmed or bred in vast intensive enterprises. And most of us now rely on a complex global food web of product...

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in...

From famous wordsmith Tom Read Wilson comes another breathtaking adventure through the English language. Discover the fascinating origin stories behind the words we use in this delightful follow-up to  Every Word Tells a Story , Wonderful Words That Tell A Tale , illustrated by Ian Morris . Unlock a whole new side to language in this abundant literary adventure. The etymological route, d...

The Battle of Ideas festival 2024 , which took place at Church House in Westminster on 19 & 20 October, was a sell-out success.  As part of the event, Jack Aldane hosted English comedian Geoff Norcott live for a lunchtime recording of The Booking Club in front of a packed room to discuss Geoff's latest book: The British Bloke Decoded . Laughing from beginning to end, they dissect what mak...

People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are sha...