Sam Leith

Sam Leith

Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.

Books Podcast: Charlotte Rampling

A few years ago, Charlotte Rampling signed a contract to write her autobiography – and then, the project not long underway, called the whole thing off. But this month she publishes something quite out of the usual run of celebrity memoirs. Who I Am, co-written with the French man of letters Christophe Bataille, is a

Books Podcast: Machiavelli’s lifelong quest for freedom

In this week’s Books Podcast I talk to Erica Benner about her new Life of Machiavelli, Be Like The Fox. Professor Benner, a Yale expert in political science, offers a new and intriguing reading of the great theorist of statecraft — arguing that in the violent and unstable Florence of his time, he learned to

Books Podcast: Michael Morpurgo

In this week’s books podcast we have an interview with the former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo in which he talks for the first time about his new project. Michael, in town for the London Book Fair, announces that he’s rewriting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the point of view of Toto. He also talks about

Books podcast: Resisting the self-improvement craze

Think positive. Listen to your inner voice. Strive to become the best version of yourself. The only way out is through. Don’t look back. That sort of go-getting mantra underpins a multi-million-pound industry in life-coaching and self-help. And it’s all horse-manure, says the Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann. His bracing new book Stand Firm: Resisting The Self-Improvement Craze asks

Books podcast: The story of pain

My guest in this week’s books podcast is the scholar Joanna Bourke, who’s talking about her new book on something we all have in common: suffering. In The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers she turns much of what we think we know about pain on its head. Here’s an experience that’s common to

Books podcast: Daniel Dennett and the evolution of minds

In this week’s podcast I’m talking to the philosopher Daniel Dennett — whose new book takes on one of the biggest and most intriguing problems of all: consciousness itself. In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Prof Dennett makes the case that consciousness itself is a sort of illusion — and that the same evolutionary

Sam Leith

The game of life

In the introduction to his new book Steven Johnson starts out by describing the ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices and its successor, the 13th-century Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanisms by the Arab engineer al-Jazari. Here were books of extraordinarily advanced technology. The latter contained sketches of float valves that prefigure the design of

Books podcast: Rory Stewart’s The Marches

In this week’s podcast, I sit down with the Conservative MP, sometime diplomat and writer Rory Stewart to talk about his remarkable new book The Marches. Rory’s first book The Places In Between described a huge journey he took on foot across Afghanistan in the early noughties. His latest work sees him lace on his

Émile Zola: The Upper Norwood Years

Imagine if Dostoyevsky had spent a year or two knocking around Penge. Or if Balzac had sojourned in Stoke Poges. If those great European novelists seem out of place in a provincial English setting, you’ll get a flavour of the comedy and poignancy of Émile Zola: The Upper Norwood Years, as Michael Rosen’s new book

Books podcast: Michael Rosen on The Disappearance of Émile Zola

Imagine if Dostoyevsky had spent a year or two knocking around Penge. Or if Balzac had sojourned in Stoke Poges. If those great European novelists seem out of place in a provincial English setting, you’ll get a flavour of the comedy and poignancy of Émile Zola: The Upper Norwood Years, as Michael Rosen’s new book

Did Darwin get it wrong?

This week in the books podcast, we’re taking on some big issues. John Hands, the author of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution From The Origin of the Universe, is in the grand tradition of ambitious gentleman amateurs. His book attempts to answer the fundamental human questions – who are we, why are we here, and where are

Books podcast: Cosmosapiens

This week in the books podcast, we’re taking on some big issues. John Hands, the author of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution From The Origin of the Universe, is in the grand tradition of ambitious gentleman amateurs. His book attempts to answer the fundamental human questions – who are we, why are we here, and where are

Exploring Israel and Jewishness with Harold Pinter

In this week’s Books Podcast, I talk to Lady Antonia Fraser about her new book. Our Israeli Diary, 1978 is a little time capsule: a day-by-day diary she compiled of a fortnight spent with her late husband Harold Pinter visiting Israel nearly four decades ago, and had thought lost until it more or less tumbled

Books podcast: Antonia Fraser’s Israeli diary

In this week’s Books Podcast, I talk to Lady Antonia Fraser about her new book. Our Israeli Diary, 1978 is a little time capsule: a day-by-day diary she compiled of a fortnight spent with her late husband Harold Pinter visiting Israel nearly four decades ago, and had thought lost until it more or less tumbled

Is there a war on the old?

What’s it like being old? Rotten, says Professor John Sutherland in his latest book The War On The Old — and it’s made worse by what he sees as a systematic and malevolent conspiracy to airbrush the elderly and their problems out of public life. He’s not just complaining about the NHS’s niggardly rationing of

Why do people hate poetry?

Why do so many people think poetry is important, and so few of them read it? And why does what might pass unnoticed as a minority activity, like — say — tiddliwinks or sniffing bicycle seats, arouse such strong views in the public at large? The award-winning American writer Ben Lerner has a theory. In

The great Roald Dahl debate

In the year of Roald Dahl’s centenary, the Spectator Books Podcast decided to debate this sacred cow. Lucy Mangan, author of Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, drapes garlands of flowers; while the critic James McConnachie readies the captive bolt gun… Who will you agree with? Find out by listening here: And if you enjoyed this week’s episode

Books podcast: Michael Lewis and The Undoing Project

The latest books podcast sees us sitting down with Michael Lewis – the author of Liar’s Poker, The Big Short, Flashboys and Moneyball — to ask how his latest book, The Undoing Project, comes to tell the story of the “intellectual bromance” between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; a friendship that completely reshaped the disciplines

Books podcast: Treasure palaces

In this week’s books podcast I talk about Treasure Palaces with its editor Maggie Fergusson. This is a remarkable collection of essays by writers on revisiting museums that have meant something special to them. The book has a stellar cast-list — Alice Oswald, Julian Barnes, Andrew Motion, Margaret Drabble, Roddy Doyle, William Boyd and Ali