Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator.
Back in October, I spoke to Hisham Matar — who has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography — about his book The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between. When Hisham was 19, his Libyan dissident father was abducted from exile by the Gadaffi regime and disappeared into Tripoli’s most notorious jail. The writer spent 20
On this week’s Books Podcast, I’m joined by the scholar Dennis Duncan to talk about a subject that’s very dear to both of our hearts: that neglected few pages at the back of any book — the Index. In the wake of last week’s National Indexing Day, we talk about the ancient history of indexes
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
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
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
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
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
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
This week in the books podcast, I’m talking to Louise Doughty — the author of the novel behind the hit BBC thriller Apple Tree Yard. Louise talks about the slightly dizzying experience of seeing her work adapted for the screen, about being swarmed by crazed Sherlock fans, about why writers are like dancing badgers —
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
