Podcast
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.
The Book Club
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
The Book Club
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
The Book Club
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
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The Book Club
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
The Book Club
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
The Book Club
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
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
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The Book Club
Sam Leith is joined by Philip Hensher to pick over their books of the year.
Play 35 mins
The Book Club
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
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The Book Club
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
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
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
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The Book Club
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
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
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The Book Club
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
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The Book Club
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.
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The Book Club
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
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The Book Club
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
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
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
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
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The Book Club
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
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The Book Club
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
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
The Book Club
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the Albanian-born political philosopher Lea Ypi, whose new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined reconstructs the story of her grandmother’s early life amid the turbulence of the early and mid twentieth century. She talks to me about using the techniques of fiction to supply the gaps in the archive,
Play 48 mins
The Book Club
This week’s Book Club podcast marks the 80th anniversary this year of the publication of Brideshead Revisited. This conversation is from the archives, originally recorded in 2020 to mark its 75th anniversary. To discuss Evelyn Waugh’s great novel, Sam Leith is joined by literary critic and author Philip Hensher, and by the novelist’s grandson (and
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The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest for this week’s Book Club podcast is Max Hastings. Max joined Sam earlier this year for a live recording to discuss his new book Sword: D-Day, trial by battle, which tells the story of the individual stories who risked their lives as part of Operation Overlord. The discussion was arranged to mark
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The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest for this week’s Book Club podcast is Joanna Pocock, whose new book Greyhound describes two trips she took across America by Greyhound bus in 2006 and 2023. They talk about the literature of the road, that distinctively American and usually distinctively male genre, and the meaning of travel – and Joanna tells Sam how
Play 36 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Nicola Barker, talking about her new book TonyInterruptor — about how a man who interrupts a free jazz concert becomes a viral sensation on social media. Nicola tells Sam why some of her books are bouts of the flu and some are sneezes, how hard she works on her apparently spontaneous
Play 27 mins
The Book Club
Sam Leith is joined for this week’s Book Club podcast by Gary Shteyngart — whose new novel Vera, or Faith is set in a near-future America whose politics seems to be less science-fictional by the day. It tells the unexpectedly tender story of a bright but lonely ten-year-old girl contending with her parents’ failing marriage and navigating
Play 35 mins