Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.
In this week’s Books Podcast I’m talking to the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin about his new book Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, in which he argues that it’s not only height and weight and skin colour that are heritable, but intelligence, TV-watching habits and likelihood of getting divorced. I asked him about
In this week’s Books Podcast I’m talking to the incomparable Sara Paretsky about her latest V. I. Warshawski novel Shell Game — which pits the original feminist gumshoe against art thieves, Russian mobsters and her fink of an ex-husband. I talk to Sara about keeping Vic young (skincare doesn’t come into it), chiming with MeToo
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking — this time in front of a live audience at Daunt Books — to Andrew Roberts about his new biography of Winston Churchill. Could even as deft a historian as Andrew find anything new to say about this most written-about of politicians? He says yes. We discuss whether
In this week’s books podcast, I’m joined by the political scientist William Davies to talk about his new book Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over The World. Here’s a deep dive into the parlous condition of our public discourse, drawing the line from Descartes and Hobbes to Trump and Generation Snowflake. Can speech be a
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Adam Sisman about More Dashing — his new selection from the remarkable correspondence of one of the 20th-century’s most celebrated adventurers, spongers and men of letters, Paddy Leigh-Fermor. What did Paddy really feel about his most famous act of derring-do, when he kidnapped a Nazi general in
In this week’s books podcast, I talk to the former head honcho of the National Gallery and British Museum, Neil MacGregor, about his new book Living With The Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples. Neil tells the story of the world’s religions through objects — beginning with a 40,000-year-old carving that might be the first human
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Helen Parr about her remarkable new book Our Boys: The Story of A Paratrooper, which blends memoir, social history and military history to tell the story of the paratroopers who fought in the Falklands War and what happened when they came home — or, as in the
In this week’s books podcast, I’m talking to Sebastian Faulks about his brilliant new novel Paris Echo, which describes the twined stories of a Moroccan teenager and an American academic in the French capital – and the way that the ghosts of the past, from the Occupation to the decolonisation of North Africa, still play
In this week’s books podcast, I talk to Sir Ian Kershaw about his new book Rollercoaster: Europe 1950-2017. Here from one of our most distinguished historians, is a history of Europe that goes from the postwar period right up to the present. Is he aiming at a moving target? How can you meaningfully speak about
In this week’s Books Podcast, I’m joined by the economic historian Adam Tooze, author of the new book Crashed: How A Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World. How are the subprime collapse in the US and the Eurozone crisis that came after linked? Why did a cartel of mega-wealthy businessmen do a good job
Among the biggest surprises of this year’s Man Booker Prize longlist was the inclusion, for the first time in the prize’s 50-year history, of a “graphic novel”. Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina — a chillingly claustrophobic account of the aftermath of a murder in post-truth America — is undoubtedly a brilliant example of its form. But does
Adam Smith is the most quoted and misquoted economist of all time. But was he the prophet of devil-take-the-hindmost neoliberalism, or the heroic enemy of cartels, monopolies and stitch-ups? To try to get him in the round, I’m talking in this week’s podcast to Jesse Norman, author of the new Adam Smith: What He Thought
In this week’s Spectator Books, I’m talking to a man who has spent more time on Air Force One than even Piers Morgan: President Obama’s former foreign policy speechwriter and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, author of new memoir The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House. What is it really like
In this week’s Books podcast, we’re moonwalking back to the glory days of Michael Jackson with the brilliant Margo Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson and the memoir Negroland. What was it that made Jackson so captivating? Can his artistic legacy ever be disentangled from the gruesome murk of the last years? And does it
In this week’s Spectator books podcast I’m talking to the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature Jay Rubin, editor of the new Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Many of us in the West know little of Japanese literature beyond, perhaps, Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima and perhaps Banana Yoshimoto and Kenzaburo Oe. Jay fills in the blanks. Did you know
‘There. I said it.’ That phrase, and the attitude it strikes, says something pretty specific. It doesn’t just say: here’s what I think. It says: ‘Here’s what I think, and, you know what? It’s what nobody except me dares to say in public.’ It says: I’m brave. It says: I speak truth to power. It
This week’s books podcast is a family affair: I’m talking to the children’s writer and illustrator Judith Kerr (Mog The Forgetful Cat; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit; and The Tiger Who Came To Tea), and her son the novelist and historian Matthew Kneale, author of English Passengers and Sweet Thames, and most recently, Rome: A
This week’s Spectator Books Podcast asks: is LSD good for you? I’m joined by the author Michael Pollan, who talks about the fascinating lost history of psychedelic drugs, speculates on what they may tell us about the human mind and the universe, recalls his own mind-blowing encounter with toad venom, and reveals that serious scientific
This week in the Spectator Books podcast I’m joined by William Dalrymple, co-author with Anita Anand of Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Famous Diamond (just out in paperback; David Crane reviewed the hardback for us here). He talks us through the blood-soaked history of the diamond, the ongoing controversy over who it really
I know some people are fretting about Brexit, and others about the drive-by violence the President is doing to the US constitution, but what preoccupies me and the nation’s allotment-holders at the moment is news that the RHS is warning of a ‘bumper year for slugs’. The slimy little bastards not only ate every single
