London Review Bookshop Podcast

Lauren Oyler was talking abou her first novel, Fake Accounts, with the writer Olivia Sudjic, who has described it as 'Savage and shrewd, destined to go viral. If the world does end soon I'll be glad that I read it'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

André Aciman talked to Brian Dillon about his latest book, Homo Irrealis (Faber and Faber), a collection of essays on subjects as diverse as Freud, W.G.Sebald, the films of Eric Rohmer and the cityscapes of Alexandria and St Petersburg. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Lark Ascending (Faber) Richard King, author of Original Rockers and How Soon is Now?, explores how Britain's history and identity have been shaped by the mysterious relationship between music and nature. From the far west of Wales to the Thames Estuary and the Suffolk shoreline, taking in Brian Eno, Kate Bush, Boards of Canada, Dylan Thomas, Gavin Bryars, Greenham Common and the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, The Lark Ascending listens to the land and the music that emerged from it, to chart a new and surprising course through a familiar landscape. King was in conversation with Luke Turner, editor of the influential online music publication The Quietus and author of the memoir Out of the Woods. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following on from his bestselling and hugely entertaining Germania and Danubia, Simon Winder continues his idiosyncratic journey through Europe’s past with Lotharingia (Picador). Now almost forgotten, Lotharingia arose from the ashes of the Carolingian Empire and stretched from the North Sea coasts of what is now the Netherlands all the way to the Alps, encompassing myriad languages and nationalities. Despite its disappearance and ensuing obscurity Lotharingia, Winder shows, has exercised a surprising and powerful influence on the history of the continent of Europe, from the Early Middle Ages to the present day. Winder was in conversation about Europe’s lost country with psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his book Conversations About Sculpture (Yale) art historian Hal Foster recapitulates the discussions he has had, over a period of two decades, with the legendary minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. Professor Foster, a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, was in discussion about his book, and about Serra's extraordinary work, with Tate Modern curator Mark Godfrey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From this 2017 event: Bertolt Brecht, poet, playwright, theatre director and refugee, was a passionate critic of fascism and war. During World War Two, already many years into his exile from Nazi Germany, Brecht started creating what he called ‘photo-epigrams’ to create a singular visual and lyrical attack on war under modern capitalism. As his family fled from the Nazis, 'changing countries more often than our shoes,' Brecht took photographs from newspapers and popular magazines and added short lapidary verses to each in a unique attempt to understand the truth of war using mass media. These photo-epigrams are collected in War Primer, a remarkable work first published in 1955 and made newly available in a new edition by Verso.Chair Gareth Evans is joined by Deutsche Borse Prize-winning photographer Oliver Chanarin, Brecht scholar and translator Tom Kuhn and scholar and critic Esther Leslie in a panel discussion about this outstanding literary memorial to World War Two and one of the most spontaneous, revealing and moving of Brecht’s works that is strikingly relevant to the current confluence of war and neo-fascism today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dana Spiotta was reading from her novel Innocents and Others, and talking about her work with with journalist and critic Alex Clark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From this 2017 event, Canadian poet and novelist Anne MIchaels, author of the multi-award winning fiction Fugitive Pieces, 'the most important book I have read for forty years' (John Berger), presents two new titles. Infinite Gradation (House Sparrow Press), her first volume of non-fiction, is an astonishing meditation on the moral, emotional and philosophical implications of language and the creative act. All We Saw (Bloomsbury), Anne's latest collection of poetry, continues her mesmerising and lyrical exploration of love, loss and the mystery at the heart of being. She was in conversation with writer and broadcaster Bidisha. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rich with arguments that speak directly to our moment - a time when more humans live in urban spaces than ever before - Building and Dwelling (Allen Lane) draws on Richard Sennett's deep learning and intimate engagement with city life to form a bold and original vision for the future of cities. Sennett was in conversation with Anna Minton, author of Big Capital (Penguin).  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this event from 2018, Brian Dillon, UK editor of Cabinet magazine and author of several books of essays, fiction, history and art criticism, talked about his first book, In the Dark Room, published by Penguin in 2005 and now available again in a handsome new edition from Fitzcarraldo, with Sophie Ratcliffe, Associate Professor in English, University of Oxford and author of On Sympathy (Oxford, 2008). Exploring the intersections of grief and memory, in his own personal history and beyond, Dillon evokes, in prose of great beauty and lucidity, the pain both of loss, and that of remembering the lost. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.