Sam Leith

In this week's Book Club, Sam Leith is joined by Marina Litvinenko, widow of former Russian FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, to discuss her new book, A Life in Fragments: Our Love, His Murder, My Resistance.In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London, in an assassination executed by the Russian state. Marina recounts their life together, from meeting in post-Soviet Russia and Sasha's growing disillusionment with the FSB, to their dramatic escape from Russia and his eventual murder.How did an officer who once served the Russian security services become one of Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics? Why was he targeted, and what does his killing reveal about the Kremlin's reach?

Who was the real Sherlock Holmes? In this episode Sam Leith is joined by medical historian and author Lindsey Fitzharris to discuss her new book, Sleuth Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes.   Fitzharris tells the extraordinary story of Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon whose powers of observation inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective. How did Bell learn to read the human body like a crime scene, and what role did he play in the emergence of modern forensic science? From Victorian murder cases to the Ripper investigations, Bell’s work helped bring medical evidence into the courtroom – while his real-life achievements were often overshadowed by his fictional counterpart.

For this week’s Book Club, Sam Leith, the Spectator’s literary editor, is joined by Shaun Bythell, proprietor of The Book Shop in Wigtown, Scotland, and author of The Diary of a Bookseller series, to discuss the fourth instalment, The Return of the Bookseller’s Diary. They discuss the strange characters who wander into second-hand bookshops, the customers who haggle over £2 books, and how Bythell’s shop helped turn Wigtown into Scotland’s unlikely book town. They also explore the changing world of bookselling, from the rise of online marketplaces to the 18th-century bookseller James Lackington, whose ‘buy cheap, sell cheap’ philosophy has more than a little in common with Amazon.

In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by philosopher John Sellars to discuss his new book, Stoicism Is Not What You Think. Sellars explores the ancient philosophy of Stoicism and challenges some of its most common misconceptions – from the idea that Stoics repress their emotions to the belief that they are cold, indifferent and detached from the world. From its origins in ancient Athens to its modern revival online, Sellars explains what the Stoics actually believed and counter Stoicism’s reputation beyond its ‘stiff upper lip’ image. Sam and John also discuss Marcus Aurelius, the role of women in the history of Stoicism, and the growing body of psychological research asking whether putting Stoic ideas into practice can actually improve our lives.

In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by bestselling novelist Hannah Richell to discuss her new memoir, An Ocean and a Day. When Hannah’s husband died in a surfing accident, her life in Australia was shattered. Suddenly, she was a single mother to two young children, navigating a grief she could never have imagined. Her memoir traces that journey from the moment of the accident, but, more uniquely, looks beyond those first years of loss – to what grief looks like with the benefit of time, distance and reflection. Sam and Hannah discuss the shame and embarrassment that can accompany grief, the physical effects of loss, how her experience has shaped her fiction, and what makes memoirs so powerful - to both writer and reader.