The TLS Podcast

Min Wild on recent attempts to get to grips with that most slippery of beasts, the history of the novel (expect a lively cast, including Frances Burney, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne and Jane Porter); Declan Ryan on where writing overlaps with boxing and the story of the eighteenth-century boxer Daniel Mendoza, known as The Fighting Jew, who made of the sport an art form BooksWithout the Novel: Romance and the history of prose fiction by Scott BlackRevising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from manuscript to print by Hilary HavensPublic Vows: Fictions of marriage in the English Enlightenment by Melissa J. GanzBorn Yesterday: Inexperience and the early realist novel by Stephanie Insley HershinowCaptain Singleton by Daniel Defoe, edited by Manushag PowellTristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, edited by Judith HawleyThaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter, edited by Thomas McLean and Ruth Knezevich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lynsey Hanley on the Pet Shop Boys and how a music duo that has always refused to play the pop game just keeps winning; The TLS’s history editor David Horspool talks us through a selection of articles on medieval history, including a compelling account of Henry III, a pious and peculiar king, who, against the odds, reigned for more than half a century ‘Pet Shop Boys, Literally’ and ‘Pet Shop Boys Versus America’, both by Chris Heath Blood Royal: Dynastic politics in medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett Henry III 1207–1258: The rise to power and personal rule by David Carpenter Westminster Abbey: A church in history, edited by David Cannadine Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When, last year the writer and activist Bernardine Evaristo, won the Booker Prize for fiction – becoming in fact, the first black British person to do so – we at the TLS were not surprised. Evaristo has written for us for some years now, and ‘Girl, Woman, Other’, the novel for which the prize was awarded, was only the latest in a run of novels full of life and questions and challenges. And the recognition keeps coming. This week brought two more prizes at the British Book Awards; 'Girl, Woman, Other' won in the Fiction category and Evaristo was named Author of the Year. In this reissued episode of the TLS podcast, recorded just after winning the Booker Prize, the author speaks to our fiction editor Toby Lichtig Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TLS editors pick through the books some of our writers will be reading this summer, and share their own selections.Visit the-TLS.co.uk to read the 'Summer Books' feature in full   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The death row lawyer Clive Stafford Smith certainly can’t, especially as this week should have seen Edward Earl Johnson turn sixty. Instead, in 1987, he was executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary for a crime nobody thinks he committed; Harry Sidebottom considers the ancients’ view on the plague, a serious outbreak of which occurred somewhere around the Mediterranean every ten to twenty years; “If oil is the blood of the global economy, shipping is the circulatory system”, say Tom Stevenson, who describes how the world’s economic and diplomatic relationships play out at sea Fourteen Days in May – BBC Storyville, on BBC iPlayerSinews of War and Trade: Shipping and capitalism in the Arabian peninsula by Laleh Khalili Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What art have we been enjoying in lockdown? What are we most missing? And what is the future of art institutions? The TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas joins us to discuss; Edith Hall tells us about Artemidorus, the author of an ancient dream manual now finally available in English; David Bromwich on democracy and the rise of the strongman A symposium on art in lockdown by the TLS , plus commentary by Nicholas KenyonThe Interpretation of Dreams by Artemidorus, translated by Martin HammondAn Ancient Dream Manual – Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams, by Peter ThonemannSee David Bromich’s round-up of books on the TLS website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Colin Grant on several hundred years of Jamaican excellence and dysfunction; fifty years since the death of E. M. Forster, Michael Caines considers Forster’s legacy as a novelist and critic; the poet A. E. Stallings on an Athens slowly emerging from lockdown The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the postcolonial predicament by Orlando Patterson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The poet and novelist Adam Foulds on the evolution of loneliness and its traditionally privileged cousin, solitude; Sam Leith on thrills, spills and racism in Willard Price’s children’s Adventure series; Molly Guinness dips into 300-odd years of children’s books and finds leaden instruction, radical ideas and pure nonsenseA History of Solitude by David VincentA Biography of Loneliness: The history of an emotion by Fay Bound AlbertiDiscovering Children’s Books, the British Library onlineBritish Literature Catalogue, Peter Harrington Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hirsh Sawhney files a lockdown dispatch from New Haven, Connecticut, the uneasy home of Yale University; Arin Keeble talks us through the tricksy, rewarding and under-known work of Percival Everett; Lauren Kassel on the history of astrology, one of the oldest, most complex, intellectually powerful – and controversial – sciences Telephone by Percival EverettA Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the birth of science by Alexander Boxer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through a selection of reviews and essays from this week’s issue, including on the future of AI and what Thomas Hobbes, Susan Sontag, Montaigne and the trolley problem can tell us about our present predicament; the novelist Will Eaves re-reads Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, “a caravan of episodes, made up of people going through the same horror in different ways”, and ponders a big-screen adaptation…  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.