Carla Kaplan

Wednesday

Daisy Dunn

The problem with books podcasts

From our UK edition

The Rest Is History has a new spin-off podcast called The Book Club. If you listen to the former, you’ll know Dominic Sandbrook but perhaps not his producer Tabby Syrett, who has joined him as co-host for the new venture. Tom Holland had presumably nipped off early to feed the cats. The release follows, slightly unfortunately, on the heels of a Sunday Times article in which the current crisis in sales of non-fiction is attributed in part to the boom in factual podcasts. If people are no longer buying history books because they’re ‘getting their history’ from Spotify for free, then ought we to be wary of a podcast about novels, lest we stop buying those as well?

Wednesday

Clare McHugh

Mitfordmania in Carla Kaplan’s Troublemaker

I won’t attempt to explain Mitfordmania; we’d be here all night. Suffice it to say that fascination with the British sisters – Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah, born to the 2nd Baron Redesdale between 1904 and 1920 – shows no sign of waning. This year alone, the six have inspired Outrageous, a lavish (and fatuous) multi-episode television drama available on BritBox; The Party Girls, a play by Amy Rosenthal; and Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me, a graphic novel by cartoonist and fangirl Mimi Pond. Now comes biographer Carla Kaplan’s Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. I did wonder if there was anything left to say. Famous for the muckraking classic The American Way of Death, Jessica also wrote two well-received autobiographies.

mitfordmania troublemaker