The TLS Podcast

This week, Roy Foster introduces us to a Devonshire debutante turned IRA terrorist, and Emile Chabal explains how Marine Le Pen created the phenomenon of ‘cat-washing'. 'Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale' by Sean O’Driscoll 'Qu’est-ce que L’actualité Politique?: Événements et Opinions au XXIe Siècle' by Luc Boltanksi and Arnaud Esquerre 'Marginal Men and Mic...

This week, we go in search of the woman who created William Brown, beloved outlaw of the suburbs; and take a look at the sporting scene in the Middle East ahead of this winter’s men’s Fifa World Cup. ‘Richmal Crompton, author of Just William: A Literary Life’ by Jane McVeigh 'Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East', edited by Danyel Reiche and Paul Michael Brannagan 'The Business of the Fi...

This week, Jonathan Bate leads us a merry dance in search of fresh woods and pastures new; and Philip Ball explains the importance of the mysterious Higgs Boson. ‘A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature: Volume 1: Earlier Renaissance; Volume 2: Later Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassicism’ by Paul Holberton ‘Elusive: How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass’ by Frank Close. Produced by Charlo...

Alex Clark and Toby Lichtig are joined by Devoney Looser, who scrutinises the naval career of Charles Austen, Jane’s youngest brother, in the dying days of the slave trade; and Jeremy Allen talks us through the art of waiting tables in Paris. Produced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alex Clark and Michael Caines discuss the turbulent history of the Tour de France and wander through London’s richest enclaves  ‘Le Fric: Family, Power and Money: The Business of the Tour de France’ by Alex Duff ‘Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London’ by Caroline Knowles ‘A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich’ by Matt Knott Produced by Charlotte Pardy Host...

This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig to reveal what’s hot in summer reading, with recommendations from TLS contributors; and Henry Hitchings takes a stroll through the complex world of cryptocurrency and one of its most charismatic characters. ‘The Missing Cryptoqueen’ by Jamie Bartlett. Produced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...

This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Muldoon to celebrate Bloomsday with a close reading of the very first few words of Ulysses; there’s news from the world of Ukrainian literature; and Toby Lichtig catches up with Tessa Hadley at the Hay Festival. ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce  ‘The Orphanage’ by Sergiy Zhadan ‘Free Love’ by Tessa Hadley Produced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on A...

Join Alex Clark, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig as they chat to the BBC correspondents Lyse Doucet and Sana Safi, and to the legendary documentarian Norma Percy, in a special conversation recorded live at the Hay Festival. ‘My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women’, compiled by Lucy Hannah, with an introduction by Lyse Doucet ‘Afghanistan and Me: A Female Perspective’, an audio docu...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Lucy Hughes-Hallett to discuss two books about Mussolini’s Italy, and train buff extraordinaire Andrew Martin gets on board with a history of British Rail. ‘Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism’ by John Foot ’Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good: The Spread of Historical Amnesia’ by Francesco Filippi ‘British Rail: A New History’ by...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Tom Seymour Evans to head for the beaches of Fire Island, and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams surveys the country’s philosophical and political landscape, past and present. ‘Fire Island: Love, loss and liberation in an American paradise’ by Jack Parlett ’The French Mind: 400 years of romance, revolution and renewal’ by Peter Watson ‘Fran...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by TLS classics editor Mary Beard to find out what the Romans brought back from their holidays, and novelist Edward Docx is roused to righteous fury over the parlous state of the House of Commons. ‘Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman empire’s souvenirs’ by Kimberly Cassibry ’Souvenirs and the Experience of Empire in Ancient Rom...

This week, Lucy Dallas is joined by Kathryn Sutherland to tuck into the three o'clock dinners of Joseph Johnson, publisher and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestley, Henry Fuseli, Williams Blake and Wordsworth, and many more great minds of that era. And Boyd Tonkin explains that Napoleon's conqueror, the "Iron Duke" of Wellington, had a great and unexpected gift for friendship - with wom...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Joe Moran to explore the strange world of precognition, and Elizabeth Lowry is bowled over by the iconoclastic work of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. Plus great news for Terry Pratchett fans, as an all-star cast records his much-loved Discworld series. 'The Premonitions Bureau’ by Sam Knight ‘SYBIL’ by William Kentridge P...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Carol Tavris to discuss two wide-ranging works of biology that cast fascinating light on our understanding of sexual behaviour and gender identity throughout the animal and human world. And James Waddell explores a “bibliobiography” by a Shakespeare scholar that digs deep into centuries of books and their readers - from “shelfies” to book burning...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Nat Segnit to discuss the long reach of the gambling industry and the music of chance, and Kevin Brazil brings to life a dystopian novel from 1977. ‘Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain’ by Rob Davies ‘Might Bite: The Secret Life of a Gambling Addict’ by Patrick Foster, with Will Macpherson ‘Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk’ b...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Dinah Birch to discuss Elizabeth Finch, the new novel by Julian Barnes, and find themselves in a world of charismatic teachers and forgotten Roman emperors. Also, the sports historian David Goldblatt explores a global survey of sport through the ages from the ancient Chinese game of cuju to the glories of Bristol Rovers. ‘Elizabeth Finch’ by...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Emma Clery, specialist in 18th and 19th-century literature and author of Jane Austen: The Banker’s Sister, to discuss what Austen’s juvenilia and unpublished works tell us about the writer - will we find, as some critics have suggested, a far less restrained and irreverent novelist than we might expect? And Catherine Taylor, who is writing a memo...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Cal Flyn, the author of 'Islands of Abandonment: Life in the post-human landscape’, to venture into the 'extreme north' – part place, part concept – where sparsely populated landscapes have long offered a blank canvas on which to project hopes, dreams and neuroses; the critic En Liang Khong considers Ai Weiwei’s artistic rebel...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Miranda France, the TLS’s Hispanic editor, to discuss the Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor and two new works that approach brutal and brutalized lives in innovative ways; Michael Caines, also of the TLS, considers a collection of essays that sets out to complicate stereotypes of East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain; and...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Nelly Kaprièlian and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams to discuss ‘Anéantir’, the latest novel by France’s best-known and maybe most controversial writer, Michel Houellebecq; the TLS’s Toby Lichtig talks us through a new memoir by the ‘pre-eminent author of British Jewish novels’, Howard Jacobson, and we consider a mastercl...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and critic Mary Norris to discuss the phenomenon that is Margaret Atwood – surely her kind of success requires a method? A new collection of essays and talks sheds some light; Sujit Sivasundaram, the author of ‘Waves Across the South: A new history of revolution and empire’, considers a work of non-fiction by the novelist Amitav G...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to discuss a new play by Florian Zeller, ‘the most successful representative of contemporary French theatre’; Kathryn Hughes, the author of ‘Victorians Undone: Tales of the flesh in the age of decorum’ ,  explores the cultural significance of passing out, from ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Jeremy Mynott, the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ and ‘Birds in the Ancient World’, to ponder 12,000 years of human–bird relations. ‘How is it that, despite a historically deep-rooted veneration, we could also have predated, exploited and depleted bird populations to the point where more than one in ten speci...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Alex Clark are joined by Ann Hallamore Caesar, Professor Emerita in Italian Literature at the University of Warwick, to discuss the birth and legacy of Pinocchio, the world’s most famous (and most insolent) puppet – is his story really only for children? And do we need another English translation?; George Berridge, a TLS editor and restaurant-kitchen survivor, consid...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Sara Hudston to talk about how to write about our environment, who gets to write about it, why it is so crucial - and "horsey" books; and James McConnachie, himself a keen player, discusses the future of strategy games, given that the computers are increasingly beating the humans Women on Nature, edited by Katherine Norbury Wild Isles, edite...