Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.
What do you think of when you think of Sweden? If, like me, the very name conjures fuzzy ideas of an enlightened and harmonious vision of social democracy, sexual liberation and ABBA tunes, the journalist Kajsa Norman has some news for you. In her gripping new book about her native land, Sweden’s Dark Soul: The
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PRINCIPAL PARTNERS OF SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE’S 2019 SUMMER SEASON One of the things about Shakespeare that always makes you marvel is how insistently he speaks to the present moment — any present moment you choose. Academic literary critics wince when you start bandying around phrases like ‘eternal truths’, so let’s
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PRINCIPAL PARTNERS OF SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE The Globe was the occasion of drama before the first line was even spoken from its stage. In the snowy winter of 1598, three days after Christmas, Shakespeare and his colleague Burbage resolved a falling-out with the landlord of their then Shoreditch theatre in the
In this week’s book’s podcast my guest is Jonathan Ames, a writer who has produced everything from memoir (Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer) to TV writing (Bored To Death), graphic novels (The Alcoholic), pitch-black noir (You Were Never Really Here), Wodehouse hommage (Wake Up, Sir!) and now, in The Extra Man, a comic
In this week’s books podcast we’re going to the wars. My guest is Ed Vulliamy, the veteran war correspondent who has written a fascinating memoir called When Words Fail: A Life With Music, War and Peace. In it, Ed talks about how his lifelong love of music — he saw Hendrix at the Isle of
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Chris Kraus — author of the semi-autobiographical cult novel I Love Dick and the new essay collection Social Practices — about her strange and interesting life in the New York and LA art worlds, about taking Baudrillard to a “happening” in the desert, about ambition and fame,
In this week’s books podcast I talk to the great trivia expert Mark Mason about his new The Book of Seconds: The Incredible Stories of the Ones Who Didn’t (Quite) Win. Here’s the Christmas present for all the Tory frontbenchers in your life. Who remembers the Christmas number two in the pop charts? Who got
‘A is for Amy who fell down the stairs/ B is for Basil, assaulted by bears…’ The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an alphabet in dactylic couplets of the surreal fates visited on a succession of blameless tots, is probably Edward Gorey’s best-known work — and that work forms a pretty coherent whole. Dozens and dozens of tiny
In this week’s books podcast, I’m speaking to the Pulitzer-prizewinning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about her new book Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times — in which she describes what Lincoln, two Roosevelts and LBJ had in common, and didn’t. Obviously, we talk a bit about that nice Mr Trump — as well as
I got the sack the other day from the London Evening Standard, where I’ve been a weekly columnist for about a decade. ‘Belt-tightening’, I was told: Osbornean austerity claims another victim. As Fleet Street sinks giggling into the sea, a mini-tradition is emerging for long-serving hacks to grumble in the Spectator diary about losing regular
According to which bit of hype you read, there’s a copy of one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers sold somewhere in the world every four seconds, or every seven, or every nine. It’s a cute statistic and (as Child wryly notes), there’s an element of Barnum & Bailey hucksterism to it. But suffice to
“I wondered what would happen if you made Goliath the hero…” In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to the thriller writer Lee Child about the latest in his phenomenally successful Jack Reacher series, Past Tense. Lee tells me why you can’t have a knight-errant in Europe any more, about writing without knowing what happens
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Oxford’s Professor of Global History Peter Frankopan about his follow-up to his bestselling history The Silk Roads. In The New Silk Roads, Peter brings his story up to date, and argues that with our Trump and Brexit obsessions, and a divided and fissiparous West still obsessed with
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Nora Krug about her remarkable graphic work Heimat – in which this German born writer and artist discusses how it has felt to grow up in Germany and later the US with the shadow of her homeland’s war guilt, how that has issued in art, literature and
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Geoff Dyer, one of our most wayward and wittiest writers, about his new book Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, a frame-by-frame discussion of the classic war movie Where Eagles Dare. Learn from Geoff about the importance of squinting in Clint Eastwood’s thespian toolbox, about the joy of snow-patrol
In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Ben Schott. The author of Schott’s Miscellany, Ben’s literary productions have taken an unexpected turn with the publication this week of his first novel. Jeeves and the King of Clubs is a tribute or companion piece to P G Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster novels, published with the
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
