The TLS Podcast

Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction BooksThe Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid FerriterHotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava ÓlafsdóttirWoman at War, directed by Benedikt ErlingssonSection 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done" BooksWhite Feather by Catherine and David MacPhailThe Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKayAn Anty-War Story by Tony RossOnly One of Me by Lisa Wells and Michelle Robinson (illustrated by Tim Budgen and Catalina Echeverri)The Afterwards by A. F. Harrold and Emily GravettWe Are the Nerds: The birth and tumultuous life of Reddit, the internet's culture laboratory by Christine Lagorio-ChafkinThe Travellers Club: A bicentennial history (1819–2019) by John Martin Robinson  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs... Books Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank WynneThe Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment by Gina Perry The Hope Circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism by Martin Seligman  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Stevenson offers a recent history of political assassination, from a CIA manual of 1953 to the Jamal Khashoggi affair; The literary achievements of Nancy Cunard have long been eclipsed by her image as the archetypal flapper-muse of the roaring 1920s – as Anna Girling reveals a previously unknown short story (published for the first time in this week's TLS), we reassess Cunard's legacy; Who killed Edwin Drood? In 1914, faced with Dickens's final, unfinished novel, prominent literary types gathered to stage the trial of Drood's alleged killer – Pete Orford tells us more... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Stig Abell and Lucy DallasLara Pawson drops in to tell the tale of David Wojnarowicz, the New York artist whose time has come. Elaine Showalter examines a new biography of Germaine Greer. Kim Addonizio, winner of the Mick Imlah Prize for Poetry, reads her victorious poem. Plus, Lucy admits to having an allotment, and Stig learns he has been introducing the show all wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An end-of-year edition, bringing together some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months: Kathryn Hughes on whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Margaret Drabble reviews the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we marked this year; David Baddiel discusses whether Jewishness is inherently funny; Clare Pettitt revisits the history of the Peterloo massacre of 1819. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who is Odysseus? Why can't he get home? And will the gods help or hinder his journey? In this special episode, the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard chairs a panel featuring the author and academic Simon Goldhill, the memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn, the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and the novelist Madeline Miller. This is a recording of a live event, staged in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in October 2018. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TLS editors discuss some memorable arts events from the past twelve months; plus, food and drink in literature and a preview of the TLS's Christmas double issue, including how to do German food, M. F. K. Fisher, French food slang, pub stories, and a deconstruction of the traditional British Christmas dinner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucy Atkins charts our changing relationship with Orcinus orca, from "demon dolphin" to cuddly icon; Ruth Scurr on the lives and unlikely friendship of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn BooksOrca: How we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator by Jason M. ColbyJohn Evelyn: A life of domesticity by John Dixon Hunt The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Caines on the little-known romantic William Gilbert, a “man of fine genius” (according to William Wordsworth) who had “unfortunately received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story”; Daniel Beer tells the tale of the Gulag at Solovki, a converted monastery known as “the Paris of the Northern concentration camps”, a place of brutality but also of resistant culture and ideas; finally, Laurence Scott considers the cultural history of shoeshining, from Dickens to Police Squad BooksWilliam Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism by Paul CheshireIntellectual Life and Literature at Solovki, 1923–1930: The Paris of the northern concentration camps by Andrea Gullotta Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.