The TLS Podcast

What style of life did an ancient Roman emperor lead? How did he actually spend his time? Mary Beard fills us in; Frances Wilson on literary couples (and their pet names) and what they can, and can’t, tell us about marriage; Mika Ross-Southall on how gentrification works and who it works for The Emperor in the Roman World by Fergus MillarLiterary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and intimacy by Janine UtellParallel Lives: Five Victorian marriages by Phyllis RoseNewcomers: Gentrification and its discontents by Matthew L. SchuermanUs Versus Them: Race, crime, and gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods by Jan DoeringThe Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change, edited by Lisa Berglund and Siobhan GregoryAlpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich, by Rowland Atkinson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Geoff Dyer on why Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove was one of the most memorable reading experiences of his life (a taster from his essay: “There was no book and no reader. There was just this world, this huge landscape and its magnificently peopled emptiness”); In April 1939, the black contralto Marian Anderson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and performed to a crowd of 75,000 people. Carol J. Oja sheds light on the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. Read more at the-tls.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.