Sam Leith

Among the biggest surprises of this year’s Man Booker Prize longlist was the inclusion, for the first time in the prize’s 50-year history, of a “graphic novel”. Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina — a chillingly claustrophobic account of the aftermath of a murder in post-truth America — is undoubtedly a brilliant example of its form. But does a comic belong in contention for a fiction prize? I didn’t think so (and wrote as much in the FT). In this week’s Books Podcast the Man Booker Prize’s Literary Director, Gaby Wood, argues otherwise — and raises in the process the possibility that, one day, the Man Booker prize could be won by a book that doesn’t contain any words at all.

Adam Smith is the most quoted and misquoted economist of all time. But was he the prophet of devil-take-the-hindmost neoliberalism, or the heroic enemy of cartels, monopolies and stitch-ups? To try to get him in the round, I’m talking in this week’s podcast to Jesse Norman, author of the new Adam Smith: What He Thought and Why It Matters (reviewed in last week’s Spectator by Simon Heffer). Norman argues that we can only understand Smith in the round by reading his Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as the Wealth of Nations; and by putting him in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment and the thinkers such as Hume who surrounded and influenced him. But he also says that a proper appreciation of Smith’s thought has relevance for us right to the present day.

In this week’s Books podcast, we’re moonwalking back to the glory days of Michael Jackson with the brilliant Margo Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson and the memoir Negroland. What was it that made Jackson so captivating? Can his artistic legacy ever be disentangled from the gruesome murk of the last years? And does it really matter if you’re black or white? We consider all these questions and more.

This week’s books podcast is a family affair: I’m talking to the children’s writer and illustrator Judith Kerr (Mog The Forgetful Cat; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit; and The Tiger Who Came To Tea), and her son the novelist and historian Matthew Kneale, author of English Passengers and Sweet Thames, and most recently, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings. We talk about fiction and nonfiction, hereditary writers, whether what we’re seeing now answers the definition of fascism — and the bit that Judith’s publisher wanted taken out of The Tiger Who Came To Tea on the grounds of it "not being realistic”.

This week’s Spectator Books Podcast asks: is LSD good for you? I’m joined by the author Michael Pollan, who talks about the fascinating lost history of psychedelic drugs, speculates on what they may tell us about the human mind and the universe, recalls his own mind-blowing encounter with toad venom, and reveals that serious scientific research is even now being done into whether the “machine elves” that DMT users meet are hallucinations or visitors from another dimension.

This week in the Spectator Books podcast I’m joined by William Dalrymple, co-author with Anita Anand of Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Famous Diamond (just out in paperback; David Crane reviewed the hardback for us here). He talks us through the blood-soaked history of the diamond, the ongoing controversy over who it really belongs to, and explains why in the Tower of London to this day you can see angry Indian protestors moonwalking backwards down a conveyor belt shouting slogans at the wrong stone. Listen to more episodes of Spectator Books and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

The Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft last night won the £50,000 Man Booker International Prize for the novel Flights (published here by the excellent and discriminating small press Fitzcarraldo Editions). The judging panel was chaired by Lisa Appignanesi and consisted of Michael Hofmann, Hari Kunzru, Tim Martin and Helen Oyeyemi. Ms Appignanesi said of the result: ‘Our deliberations were hardly easy, since our shortlist was such a strong one. But I’m very pleased to say that we decided on the great Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk as our winner: Tokarczuk is a writer of wonderful wit, imagination and literary panache.

In this week’s Spectator Books, I talk to the military historian Antony Beevor about his latest book, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. Beevor’s special brilliance as a writer is the way that — as General Sir Mike Jackson writes in this week’s magazine — he captures the "human factor” in armed conflict. This book about Operation Market Garden — the disastrous attempt by airborne troops to capture the bridges over the Ruhr — shows that quality in spades. He brings us not only the high command version of the operation’s failure, but gets us closer than ever to the bravery and terror and wild humour of the men on the ground, and the Dutch civilians whom they encountered.