The TLS Podcast

This week, to mark 100 years since the publication of ‘Ulysses’, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the novelist Audrey Magee to discuss how James Joyce wrestled with the demands, political and personal, of the Irish language; the anthropologist and science writer Barbara J. King reviews Andrea Arnold’s film ‘Cow’, which attempts to show life from an animal’s perspective; plus, Mary Bea...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Benjamin Markovits, the novelist, critic and teacher of creative writing, to discuss 100 American essays spanning 300-odd years (‘have we got any better at it?’); the sinologist Rana Mitter discusses the supremely difficult, and controversial, job of adapting the Chinese script for the modern age; plus, ‘Edelweiss’, a poignant new poem by Fi...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and broadcaster Muriel Zagha to discuss 'Nightmare Alley', an unsettling vision of delight and deceit from the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro; the historian Abigail Green explores the untold stories of the women behind Europe’s premier banking dynasty, the Rothschilds; plus, a dinosaur poem of note 'Nightmare Alley', various...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the poet A. E. Stallings to reconsider the ground-breaking work of Edna St Vincent Millay, a modern but not modernist poet, once judged 'the most glamorous, sexually-dangerous since Byron'; Thomas Morris, the author of medical and crime histories, delves into the often-troubling history of medical transplants; plus, a new poem by Ben Wilkins...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the writer and translator Chiara Marchelli to revisit the work of Antonio Tabucchi, a master of the uncanny, ten years after his death; and the multilingual critic Irina Dumitrescu discusses a poignant study of bilingualism that considers how mother tongues are lost and found and at what cost ‘Little Misunderstandings of No Importance:...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back at this year’s podcasts. We hear from Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Drabble, Mary Beard and Paul Muldoon, among others, covering literature, film, art, poetry and much more. Produced by Sophia Franklin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas look back at this year’s podcasts. We hear from Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Drabble, Mary Beard and Paul Muldoon, among others, covering literature, film, art, poetry and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A conversation between the novelists Sarah Hall and Sarah Moss, both of whose most recent novels confront life in the middle of a pandemic, chaired by the TLS’s fiction editor Toby Lichtig. (This event was recorded in November at Hay Festival’s Winter Weekend) 'Burntcoat' by Sarah Hall 'The Fell' by Sarah Moss Produced by Sophia Franklin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Emer Nolan, Professor of English at Maynooth University, to discuss the letters of John McGahern, one of Ireland’s most accomplished writers of fiction; How did Napoleon get his hands on Veronese’s enormous masterpiece “The Wedding Feast at Cana”, once safely housed in a Venetian monastery? Does it matter and should we do...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Francesca Wade, at work on a book about Gertrude Stein’s afterlife, to discuss Stein’s ‘lost’ notebooks – and the magnificent amount of research conducted by Leon Katz, who discovered them some seventy years ago – and shed new light on the writer’s process and personal life; and the musician and critic Wesley Stace takes us back to a stormy...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark discuss roses, Orwell and rhizomatic thinking with Margaret Drabble; Kathryn Hughes is our guide through histories of self-improvement; plus, what log-rolling really means. 'Orwell's Roses' by Rebecca Solnit 'The Art of Self-Improvement' by Anna Katharina Schaffner The Log Driver's Waltz:  https://www.nfb.ca/film/log_drivers_waltz Produced by Sophia Frank...

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by TLS editors to look through twelve months of intriguing books, as nominated by contributors including Mary Beard, the poet Paul Muldoon and the writer and critic Marina Warner, covering a range of genres and subjects, from ancient Greek swear words to fictional messiahs For the full round-up, go to  the-tls.co.uk/   Produced by Sop...

This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are guided by Mark Ford through Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Emerson, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists; we talk to Susan Owens about the mystery and melancholy of lighted windows seen from outside; plus, new work from Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith 'The Transcendentalists and their world' by Robert A. Gross 'The Every' by Dave Eggers 'The Wife of...

This week, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig speaks to 2021’s Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut, whose recent novel ‘The Promise’ follows one family through three decades of life and death in South Africa; Douglas Smith, whose books include a biography of Rasputin, turns to Russia in the 1830s to try to understand the Russia we face today; plus, the lyrics of Paul McCartney, explained by the ma...

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. Well...

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 a...

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 th...

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 Trevel...

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 Hun...

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 TL...

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....

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 'Rigol...

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...

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...

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 th...