Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.
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‘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
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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
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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
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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
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“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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
