Podcast

The Book Club

Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith.

Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith.

Mason Currey: Making Art and Making a Living

The Book Club

Mason Currey: Making Art and Making a Living

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Mason Currey, author of the new book Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life. He tells me how artists, writers and composers have wrangled through history with the challenge of scraping by, and how that has affected their art, from Baudelaire’s lifelong

Play 42 mins
Mason Currey: Making Art and Making a Living

The Book Club

Yann Martel: Son of Nobody

Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Yann Martel, talking about coming late to Homer, definitely not being influenced by Pale Fire, why he can’t resist a silly animal, and his new book Son of Nobody.

Play 30 mins
Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble

The Book Club

Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Stefan Fatsis, whose classic Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble is 25 years old this year. Stefan tells me how a journalistic project turned into a quarter-century obsession, how dramatically tournament Scrabble differs from the living-room game, why we’re

Play 49 mins
Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble
Howard Jacobson: Howl

The Book Club

Howard Jacobson: Howl

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson, whose new novel Howl emerges from his rage and despair at the response to the 7 October massacre. He tells me what the novel can do that journalism can’t, why being funny is essential even in the darkest times, and

Play 38 mins
Howard Jacobson: Howl

The Book Club

Lionel Shriver: A Better Life

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Lionel Shriver, whose new novel A Better Life offers among other things a savage send-up of liberal pieties on immigration. I asked Lionel what she was trying to do with the book (why make the argument, for instance, in a novel rather than an op-ed?), whether New York’s

Play 38 mins
Jane Rogoyska: Hotel Exile – Paris in the Shadow of War

The Book Club

Jane Rogoyska: Hotel Exile – Paris in the Shadow of War

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Jane Rogoyska, whose new book Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War tells the bloody story of the Second World War through the lens of Paris’s Hotel Lutetia – following a cast of exiled intellectuals through the febrile 1930s, the increasing horrors of the war and occupation,

Play 45 mins
Jane Rogoyska: Hotel Exile – Paris in the Shadow of War
Francis Spufford: Nonesuch

The Book Club

Francis Spufford: Nonesuch

My guest this week is Francis Spufford, whose fabulous new novel Nonesuch is a fantasy adventure set during the Blitz containing magical Nazis, nerdy TV techs and honest-to-goodness angels. He tells me about fantasy world-building and historical research, the pleasures and pitfalls of writing a female protagonist, why C S Lewis is as influential as Tolkien — and

Play 32 mins
Francis Spufford: Nonesuch
What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?

The Book Club

What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the philosophy professor Hanna Pickard, whose new book is What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. She tells me why we need a new approach to ‘the puzzle of addiction’. She says the idea that addicts are helplessly in thrall to

Play 45 mins
What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?
Eric Schlosser: Fast Food Nation – revisited

The Book Club

Eric Schlosser: Fast Food Nation – revisited

In this week’s Book Club podcast my guest is Eric Schlosser, the investigative journalist whose Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is being reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic 25 years after its first publication. He tells me what’s changed and what hasn’t since he first published this groundbreaking exposé of fast food’s effects on

Play
Eric Schlosser: Fast Food Nation – revisited
Caroline Morehead: The Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul

The Book Club

Caroline Moorehead: The Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Caroline Moorehead, whose new book A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul tells the remarkable story of one of Italy’s best-known writers – who used the pulp detective novel to shine a light on the social and

Play 40 mins
Caroline Morehead: The Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul
How big tech companies steal your attention

The Book Club

How big tech companies steal your attention

This week’s Book Club podcast deals with attention: what it is, why it is in crisis, how it came to be the biggest business in the world, and how we can resist the tech juggernaut that is destroying it. I am joined by two co-authors of the new book Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention

Play 41 mins
How big tech companies steal your attention

The Book Club

Joanna Kavenna: How To Play A Game Without Rules

My guest in this week’s Book Club is Joanna Kavenna, who talks about her witty, philosophically riddling new novel Seven: Or, How To Play A Game Without Rules. She tells me about taking her bearings from Italo Calvino, making up a board game and then being the world’s worst player at it, how AI challenges

Play 35 mins

The Book Club

C. Thi Nguyen: How To Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game

In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen, whose new book The Score: How To Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game asks why rules and scores and metrics are so liberating in games, yet so deadening in real life. He tells me about the societal perils of our growing

Play 45 mins

The Book Club

Books of the Year | Sam Leith & Philip Hensher

Sam Leith is joined by Philip Hensher to pick over their books of the year.

Play 35 mins

The Book Club

Speaker series: Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe’s Storm

The Spectator’s associate editor Toby Young sits down with master storyteller Bernard Cornwell, author of more than 50 international bestselling novels, including The Last Kingdom and much-loved Sharpe series. They delve into Cornwell’s life and career, discuss the real history behind his riveting tales of war and heroism and explore the enduring appeal of historical fiction. This event marks

Play 35 mins

The Book Club

Jonathan C. Slaght: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Jonathan C. Slaght, whose new book is Tigers Between Empires: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction. He tells me about these remarkable animals, the remarkable people who studied them, and how their fates have been entwined with the shifting politics of post-Soviet Russia.

Play 49 mins

The Book Club

James Geary: A Brief History of the Aphorism

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is James Geary, talking about the new edition of his classic The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism. He tells me about what separates an aphorism from a proverb, a maxim or a quip; about the long history of the form and his

Play 43 mins

The Book Club

Leon Craig: The Decadence

On this week’s Book Club podcast I’m joined by debut author Leon Craig to talk about her novel The Decadence – a story of millennial debauchery in a haunted house which uses a knowing patchwork of literary influences from Boccaccio and Shirley Jackson to Martin Amis and Mark Z. Danielewski to make an old form

Play 29 mins

The Book Club

Benjamin Myers: Jesus Christ Kinski

Ben Myers joins Sam Leith to discuss his book Jesus Christ Kinski, which he describes as a ‘novel about a film about a performance about Jesus’. Klaus Kinski was one of Germany’s biggest actors of the 20th Century – but he was also one of the most controversial, and Ben questions if he was one of

Play 36 mins

The Book Club

Wikipedia founder on his ‘friend’ Elon Musk & finding truth online

Sam Leith’s guest this week is Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and author of The Seven Rules of Trust. They discuss why trust is such an important value for public debate, and how it can address polarisation in society. Jimmy addresses the challenge Elon Musk has posed to Wikipedia after the entrepreneur branded the

Play 35 mins

The Book Club

Graham Robb: The Discovery of Britain

Sam Leith’s guest this week is Graham Robb. In his new book The Discovery of Britain: An Accidental History, Graham takes us on a time-travelling bicycle tour of the island’s history. They discuss how Graham weaves together personal memories with geography and history, his ‘major cartographic scoop’ which unlocks Iron Age Britain and contemporary debates about

Play 40 mins

The Book Club

Nat Jansz: Comet in Moominland turns 80

Nat Jansz joins Sam Leith to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Moomin novels. The first of these, Comet in Moominland, was revised by author Tove Jansson a decade after the original publication date. To celebrate the anniversary Sort of Books, co-run by Jansz, is publishing this revised edition for the first time in English.

Play 36 mins

The Book Club

Peter James: Jack Higgins’s The Eagle Has Landed

Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the crime writer Peter James. Peter has contributed the introduction to a new edition of the classic thriller The Eagle Has Landed, which is 50 years old this month. He tells Sam what it was that made Jack Higgins’s novel so groundbreaking, about what it takes to

Play 40 mins

The Book Club

Luke Kemp: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Luke Kemp. In his new book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Luke seeks lessons from prehistory to understand how societies grow and flourish, what kills them, and where we are now. He tells me what Hobbes got wrong, why ‘civilisation’ isn’t always

Play 48 mins

The Book Club

Ben Schott: An Unexpectedly Essential Guide to Language

This week’s Book Club podcast is Ben Schott. The author of the world- (or downstairs-loo-) conquering Schott’s Original Miscellany returns with Schott’s Significa, a deeply reported and constantly surprising book in which he uses the private languages of various communities – from gondoliers to graffiti writers and from Swifties to sommeliers – as a way

Play 38 mins

The Book Club

Speaker series: Jeffrey Archer – End Game

Michael Gove speaks to Jeffrey Archer about his life, career and his new novel End Game, which marks the gripping finale of the William Warwick series. This discussion was part of the Spectator’s speaker series. To see more on our upcoming events – including with Charles Moore and with Bernard Cornwell – go to events.spectator.co.uk

Play 51 mins

The Book Club

Philippa Gregory: Boleyn Traitor

Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historical novelist Philippa Gregory. In her gripping new book Boleyn Traitor, Philippa seeks to rescue Jane Boleyn from the vast condescension of history. She tells Sam how fiction allows her to make plausible speculations about the gaps in the record, how she works to make the

Play 40 mins

The Book Club

Sudhir Hazareesingh: Daring to be Free

Sam’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Sudhir Hazareesingh, whose new book Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World reframes the story of Atlantic slavery. He explains why the familiar tale of enlightened Europeans bringing about abolition leaves out the most important voices of

Play 43 mins

The Book Club

Roger Lewis: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Roger Lewis, whose book The Life and Death of Peter Sellers has been republished to mark 100 years since the comedian’s birth. Roger tells Sam about the difference between Sellers’s public persona and private life, plus his influence on comedy today. They also discuss how

Play 38 mins

The Book Club

Andrew Bayliss: Sparta – The Rise and Fall of An Ancient Superpower

Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Andrew Bayliss, author of Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower. Andrew tells Sam what we know — and don’t know – about these much-mythologised figures from the Ancient world and tells the story of how a tiny city-state punched above its weight, until

Play 43 mins