The TLS Podcast

A newly discovered, pseudonymously signed mock-letter to the editor of 'The Lady’s Magazine' in 1823 tells the story of a wannabe writer who is visited by the "gentle spirit of Miss Austen". Not only might the letter offer new information on what Austen might actually have been like, says Devoney Looser, it is also the first piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan fiction; Anna Picard discusses the...

Norma Clarke considers the third and final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher; having spent the past twenty years reporting on Russia, Owen Matthews tries to put his finger on why Vladimir Putin may prove to be one of the most successful political leaders of our era Books The Code of Putinism by Brian Taylor  Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the rest by An...

The author of 'The Five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper', which won the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, speaks to Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's that time again... TLS contributors and editors share recommendations from a year of reading Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Apart from capitalism itself, is there any cultural and economic manifestation in the world today as ubiquitous, powerful and globalized as football?” John Foot assesses two new studies of the game; just over ten years ago, Elizabeth Strout introduced readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Olive Kitteridge. The novelist speaks to Roz Dineen about bringing Olive back onto the scene; the...

Just over ten years since introducing readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Oliver Kitteridge, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout reprises the character in a new novel, ‘Olive, Again’. Here, Strout talks to the TLS’s Roz Dineen about the craft of writing, why Olive has returned, and ageing on the page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TLS editors talk about Virginia Woolf's writing for the TLS, as we publish a collection of the reviews she wrote for us over a period of thirty years; on the eve of George Eliot's bicentennial, Rosemary Ashton talks about how she came to conclusions, moral and otherwise, in her novels; Caryn Rose sees Bruce Springsteen's new film and looks over his 'storied fifty-year career'  Geniu...

Sarah Lonsdale recounts how writers became enmeshed in national struggles; Jane Yager tells the surprising story of DIY punk in the DDR; we talk to Robert Potts about the pleasures of reading John le Carré ("I was never happier than when I was reading John le Carré") Cold Warriors: Writers who waged the literary Cold War, by Duncan White  Burning Down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution and...

Michael Caines reports on an unprecedented gathering of work by William Hogarth, “replete with a bitter exuberance, folly finely observed and sin satirized”; “Sometimes a dark and stormy night calls for nothing more innovative than a classic chilling tale.” Joanna Scutts considers three new compendiums of the spooky and the macabre; Les Green makes a case for changing the UK's constituti...

Having asked a selection of writers to nominate their favourite magazines/journals, for a symposium in this week’s TLS, we pick through the results; as Granta turns forty, Alex Clark dives into the magazine’s archives, recently given to the British Library, and emerges clutching gems and old boots (including meeting minutes and evidence of fantasy commissioning); finally, the novelist and tra...

Bernardine Evaristo speaks to the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig about her novel 'Girl, Woman, Other' Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having been staged in Edinburgh and Melbourne, David Greig's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' is now at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre in London. The TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas asks him about returning to this strange story of contact, consciousness and how to avoid using "fremulators" on stage Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the Nobel in Literature and the Booker Prize break the rules, split opinion, and (probably) boost sales of a few books, a bunch of TLS editors share their thoughts on the whole endeavour of prize-giving (Michael: "you may as well throw a stone..."); Alexander van Tulleken considers 'War Doctor: Surgery on the front line', David Nott's tales from the operating tables, and floors, of war-torn pla...

As #PublishingSoWhite continues to shame publishers into diversifying their lists, Colin Grant discusses some of the anxieties and complexities beneath the surface; Andrew Motion on why he keeps returning to William Wordsworth; Kate Miller reads a new poem, "Turned-down" Wordsworth’s Fun by Matthew Bevis The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and their year of marvels by Adam Nicolson Wo...

In this bonus edition of the podcast, William Collins have taken over the feed to play a new episode of their podcast, Ideas Matter. In this exclusive extract, science writer Phillip Ball talks to his editor Myles Archibald about the ideas explore in his book, How To Grow A Human. To subscribe to Ideas Matter and discover more authors by William Collins, click here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/...

Was the 1960s a good decade for Norman Mailer? Thomas Meaney reconsiders the work; Henry Hitchings on Auberon Waugh, anarcho-snob and master of the "vituperative arts"; Toby Lichtig on the vitality of documentary filmmaking ‘Collected Essays of the 1960s’ and ‘Four Books of the 1960s’ by Norman Mailer   A Scribbler in Soho: A celebration of Auberon Waugh, edited by Naim Attalla...

Elaine Showalter on the “avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable” Susan Sontag; Patrice Higonnet goes in search of the real Robespierre; A. N. Wilson cuts through class, aristocracy, family and fantasy in Downton Abbey Sontag: Her life, by Benjamin Moser Robespierre: L’homme qui nous divise le plus, by Marcel Gauchet...

"When future historians study these troubled times, they will marvel at the relentless rise of sea levels, strongman politics and Kardashians." So says Irina Dumitrescu, who joins us to discuss the phenomenon of celebrity, from Sarah Bernhardt to the Kardashian-Jenners; Rafia Zakaria on the murder of the Pakistani social media star Qandeel Baloch, aka "How I'm looking?" girl; Lamorna Ash on '...

The future of the planet is in question this week, or at least, humanity's place on it, as Gabrielle Walker discusses possible solutions to climate change and why we don't need to panic - yet - but we do need to act, together. The TLS's fiction editor, Toby Lichtig, talks us through the hype and hoopla around Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - and what the book itself is like....

We turn to children's and YA literature in this week's episode, with Rozalind Dineen and Toby Lichtig presenting new releases (as reviewed by a selection of young readers), as well as discussing some of the pros and cons of age-specific reading; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reintroduces J. M. Barrie's classic work Peter Pan, where a wild imagination masks tragic, sometimes disturbing, realities Alfie...

What kind of son was Philip Larkin? The TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins finds insight in some of the 4,000-odd letters and postcards the poet sent home to his "Mop" and "Pop"; Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, tells us more than we could ever hope to know about pigeons and pigeon fanciers; Norma Clarke considers the internet artist Cold War Steve, whose ‘furious ab...

The whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi", the most costly artwork in the world, are still uncertain, as is its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. Federico Varese, best known for his studies of the mafia, follows the trail; the TLS's history editor David Horspool considers the inner and outer worlds of Anne Frank’s diary, the actual anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, and a selection of other contr...

Jill Lepore traces the history of conspiracy theories and the conditions that allow them to thrive; Tim Crane talks us through whether we have free will or not, and why it is still a problem; Michael Caines looks at non-traditional approaches to criticism Books CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski  CONSPIRACIES OF CONSPIRACIES: How delusions h...

Following the discovery of a strange book, Sarah Green revises the story of the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson, whose legacy was distorted in the 1950s by a criminal with a taste for fancy bedding; in the US, of 70,000 cases that went to disposition in 2016, more than 99 per cent resulted in conviction. What does this tell us? Clive Stafford Smith explains why American justice is a mi...

Nick Groom ponders the fate of the beleaguered British countryside and shares new theories about the economics of the natural world; En Liang Khong takes us through the increasingly global phenomenon of Japanese manga (which translates as “pictures run riot”); Damian Flanagan on Mishima, a writer who yearned to transcend time and identity   Green and Prosperous Land: A blueprint for rescuing...