The Hatchards Podcast

On this episode, we're joined by author  Kathryn Stockett to discuss her new novel, The Calamity Club , which follows a group of remarkable women as they confront the reactionary social, cultural, and economic forces that defined much of the American South during the Great Depression. It has been 17 years since Stockett published The Help , one of the defining publishing successes of its era, and...

On this episode, we are joined by Edward Chisholm, author of our Non-Fiction  Book of the Month for May,  Murder in Paris ’68 .  This gripping French crime saga uncovers a vast criminal conspiracy surrounding cinema icon Alain Delon, who was once accused of murdering his friend and bodyguard, Stevan Marković. The so-called 'Marković Affair' entangled figures ranging from organised crime to Preside...

On this episode, we’re joined by the author of our Fiction Book of the Month for April, Jean-Noël Orengo, whose novel, intriguingly titled You Are the Führer’s Unrequited Love, is an imagined portrait of the life and lies of Albert Speer, Hitler’s closest confidant and chosen architect for Nazi Germany. Speer, who was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, successfull...

On this episode, we're joined by Sir Antony Beevor, the bestselling military historian behind true classics of the genre like Stalingrad and The Second World War. His new book, Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs , is a deeply researched portrait of Russia’s notorious “mad monk,” and how a barely literate peasant rose to exert extraordinary influence over the Imperial family. In our conversa...

On this episode, we’re joined by Julian Sancton, the investigative journalist and author of Neptune’s Fortune, which brings us into the world of 20th-century treasure hunting and the search for a Spanish galleon containing over a billion pounds’ worth of gold and silver. At the center of this story is Roger Dooley, a larger-than-life Cuban American archaeologist who dedicated his life to finding i...

On this episode, we’re joined by an art world institution –– the American sculptor, Tom Sachs . He joins us to discuss The Tom Sachs Guide ,  a visual retrospective of his work which aims to both contextualise and demystify his unique way of seeing the world, as well as the creative inspirations and working methods that drive his famous studio. What motivates Tom’s work, and indeed this conversati...

On this episode, we’re joined by the novelist Maggie O’Farrell to discuss the new film adaptation of her 2020 novel Hamnet , which she co-wrote with the film’s Oscar-winning director, Chloé Zhao. Maggie speaks with us about what it means to see a book reimagined for the screen without losing any of its tactility or emotional power, and how the collaborative process expanded rather than narrowed he...

On this episode, we were joined by the writer, art historian, and host of The Great Women Artists podcast, Katy Hessel. Katy’s new book How to Live an Artful Life is a collection of 366 inspirations from her favourite artists and writers, designed to motivate readers to find creativity, beauty, and meaning in everyday life. Many of the ideas in the book stem from her acclaimed podcast, where Katy...

On this episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Olivia Laing to discuss their extraordinary new novel, The Silver Book , which has been selected as a Hatchards Book of the Month for November. Set amid the turbulence of Italy’s Years of Lead, the novel is full of rich and deliberate contradictions: it’s a love story coloured by political extremism; a journey through Rome’s legendary film...

On this episode, we were joined by Benjamin Myers, the prize-winning writer and journalist, to discuss his new novel Jesus Christ Kinski . It’s November 1971 in Berlin, and actor Klaus Kinski performs a one-man show that quickly descends into chaos and recrimination. Fifty years later, a writer snowed in during the pandemic winter of 2021 becomes obsessed with the performance and compelled to writ...

On this episode, we had the privilege of sitting down with Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, to discuss her powerful new book  The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan . Now nominated for the Baillie Gifford Prize, this deeply personal work reflects Lyse’s decades of reporting on Afghanistan from the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, during which she forg...

On this episode, we welcome back Roger Lewis , whose deeply researched and gleefully idiosyncratic biographies of British performing artists have come to constitute a genre all their own. Our subject is the book that began it all: his classic  The Life and Death of Peter Sellers , newly reissued in a hardback edition with a foreword by Steve Coogan. In its pages, Lewis makes the case that Sellers...

On this episode, we were joined by Francesca Wade to discuss her groundbreaking new biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife . This book paints a dual portrait of Gertrude Stein by dividing her story into two parts: her life and her afterlife. Doing this not only brings her partner, Alice B. Toklas, into clearer view, but also separates Stein’s work and its lasting impact from her larger-than-life...

On this episode, we're joined by legendary magazine editor Graydon Carter to discuss his memoir, When the Going Was Good , an intoxicating portrait of his 25-year reign as editor of Vanity Fair , and an extraordinary life shaped by curiosity, conflict and impeccable taste. We begin at Spy , the satirical magazine he co-founded, which targeted New York’s cultural establishment with reckless abandon...

On this episode, we're joined by author and international human rights barrister Philippe Sands to talk about his latest book, 38 Londres Street, a gripping exploration of justice, memory, and impunity through the intertwining stories of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Nazi fugitive Walter Rauff who spent decades in Chile avoiding extradition. We consider the groundbreaking legal concept of...

On this episode, we’re joined by writer and fashion critic Charlie Porter to discuss our Fiction Book of the Month, Nova Scotia House —a powerful love story that summons a lost generation, set against the backdrop of the UK AIDS crisis and its aftermath throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Our discussion of the novel’s vivid characters and cultural history offers a fascinating window into queer life in...

On this episode, we were joined by Lola Kirke, the British-American actress and musician known for Mozart in the Jungle , Mistress America , and Gone Girl , who has written Wild West Village —a witty and moving essay collection described by Booklist  as the “ Andy Warhol Diaries  for rich New York City art kids of the new millennium.” The book follows Kirke’s famous family—including her father, Si...

On this episode, we were joined by Laurent Binet, the Prix Goncourt-winning author of HHHH , to discuss his new novel, Perspectives —a murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence, where Giorgio Vasari (possibly the world’s first art critic) is tasked with finding the killer of one of the city’s most prominent painters. Like much of Binet’s previous work, the novel is a historical counterfactual: th...

On this episode, we were joined by Oscar-nominated filmmaker RaMell Ross, director and co-writer of  Nickel Boys , the new screen adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Rated five stars by The Times and The Guardian , hailed as a "masterpiece" by The Independent, and recently named Best Film of 2024 by the National Society of Film Critics, Ross' film is a transformative ada...

On this episode, we were joined by Lili Anolik, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and author of Didion & Babitz, a provocatively entertaining account of the feud between two key countercultural voices of the 1960s and '70s – the iconic Joan Didion and the lesser-known Eve Babitz.   Lili spoke us to about her decade's long obsession with Eve Babitz, her scepticism of the Didion mystique, Paul...

In this episode, we were joined by Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of one of the key literary phenomenons of the 2010s,  My Struggle , to discuss his latest novel,  The Third Realm , the latest instalment in the riveting  Morning Star  series. Karl Ove spoke to us about his journey toward becoming more at ease in literary interviews, his relationship with his work in translation, and how music informs...

On this episode, we were joined by the iconic actor, writer, and filmmaker Richard Ayoade to discuss his latest comic novel, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes , a fictional accounting of his quest to canonise the most significant British playwright of the 20th century (who also happens to be entirely made up).  Richard spoke to us about the figures that influenced the invention of Hughes–among them Ha...

On this episode, we were joined by the legendary British actor, Sir Simon Russell Beale CBE,  to discuss his first memoir from a life on the stage, A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories.  Often described as the "best stage actor of his generation," Simon shares insights into the whopping 18 Shakespeare characters he has played throughout his career with the RSC and the National...

On this episode, we were joined by Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst to discuss his new novel, Our Evenings , releasing 3 October. Immersing us in the revolutionary world of British theatre in the 1960s, the novel follows Dave Winn, an English actor of Burmese descent, through his experiences of success and failure, love and heartbreak, acceptance and hatred, and a final coda that resh...

On this episode, we were joined by Booker Prize-shortlisted author Elif Shafak to discuss There Are Rivers in the Sky , her centuries-spanning new novel that follows three historical characters connected by ancient bodies of water.   We cover matters great and small, from the idea of water as a holder of memory to whether Elif is the type of person who will dispose of a tea mug or article of cloth...