Sam Leith

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Fara Dabhoiwala, whose new book What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea looks not just at the origins of free speech as an idea, but also its uses and misuses. Fara tells me the bizarre story of how he found himself ‘cancelled’, gives us the scoop on who actually invented free speech and explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question – by tracing how we got into our current predicaments.

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, who is here to talk about his new non-fiction book Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance. In it, he describes how he criss-crossed Europe in search of the truth about his great-grandfather, a Jewish scientist who found himself working on chemical weapons for the Nazis. Joe talks to me about historical guilt, the accidents of fate and human psychology – and making comedy out of tragedy.

My guest in this week’s Book Club is Francesca Simon. Best known for her Horrid Henry series of children’s books, Francesca has just published her first novel for grownups, a haunting reworking of a Welsh folk tale called Salka: Lady of the Lake. She tells me how she came to shift direction, what myths offer in terms of storytelling possibility – and why she never tired of her best-known creation.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the novelist and journalist John Lanchester, one of the contributors to Michael Lewis’s very timely new anthology of reportage on the United States federal government, Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service. Can the public learn to love a bureaucrat? John tells me why he thinks the workings of government are misunderstood and under appreciated, why we should marvel at the making of the consumer price index, and why he thinks Elon Musk has ‘the wrong handle of the shopping bag’.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the publisher Anthony Cheetham, one of the biggest figures in British publishing through the second half of the twentieth century and into this one. In his new book A Life in Fifty Books: A Publisher's Memoir, he looks back on his career. He tells me why he had a soft spot for Robert Maxwell; how he launched Ken Follett's career on the top deck of a bus; how losing a press-up competition changed the landscape of publishing (and upset his then wife); how publishing has changed – and how it hasn't; and why Confessions of a Window-Cleaner has a special place in his heart.

In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by Donald Trump's outstanding Boswell, the magazine writer Michael Wolff. Michael’s new book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, takes Donald Trump and his colourful cast of hangers-on from the aftermath of the 6 January riots to his triumphal return to the White House. Michael tells me why he thinks people in Trumpworld are still talking to him, how the Donald has changed over the decade he has been reporting on him, why he’s confident American democracy will survive a second Trump presidency – and how world leaders, such as Keir Starmer, are best advised to handle this volatile and unpredictable character.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the Assyriologist Selena Wisnom, author of The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History. Selena tells me about the vast and strange world of cuneiform culture, as evidenced by the life and reign of the scholar-king Ashurbanipal and the library – pre-dating that of Alexandria – that he left to the world. She describes the cruelty and brilliance of the Ancient Near East, the uses of lamentation, the capricious Babylonian gods, the ways in which we can recognise ourselves in our ancestors there – plus, what The Exorcist got wrong about Sumerian demons.

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist and critic James Bradley whose new book is Deep Water: The World in the Ocean. He tells me how we need to rethink our relationship with the sea and the life it contains, why fish are much more intelligent than we are used to imagining, and why – amid planetary doom – there’s still room for hope.

Sam's guest on today’s Book Club podcast is the musician, writer and photographer Colin Greenwood, who joins me to discuss his new book of photographs and memoir How To Disappear: A Portrait of Radiohead. Colin tells me about the band’s Mr Benn journey, photographing what you want to see… and what it takes to make Radiohead open a gig with 'Creep'. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Philip Marsden, whose new book Under A Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder looks in thrilling and surprising detail at the wonders that are to be found beneath our feet. On the podcast he takes me through the meanings that rocks and metals have had through human history, from the bronze age, via the alchemist's quest for the philosopher's stone, to the present day.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the novelist Lissa Evans, talking about her previous life as the producer of the sitcom Father Ted – as described in her new book Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted. She tells me about the collaborative genius of Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, the unusual experience of having to cut laughter out of episodes because there was simply too much of it, and sending a sheep to make-up.

In this week’s Book Club podcast, we’re contemplating the astounding achievement of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in its 100th year. My guest is Professor Sarah Churchwell, author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Making of The Great Gatsby, as well as the introduction to Cambridge University Press’s new edition of the novel. Sarah tells me what we get wrong about this Jazz Age classic, why Fitzgerald’s antisemitism shouldn’t necessarily get him cancelled, and how Fitzgerald’s great novel traces the arc that leads from 1925 to Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Orlando Reade, whose book What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost describes the life and afterlife of one of the greatest poems in the language. Orlando tells me how Milton’s epic has been read with – and against – the grain over the centuries; how it went from being a totem of English exceptionalism to being an encouragement to postcolonial revolutionaries and political thinkers from Malcolm X to C. L. R. James; how the modernists wrestled with Milton… and how Jordan Peterson gets it wrong.

In this week’s Books podcast, I am joined by Rachel Cooke, who edits the new book The Virago Book of Friendship. Rachel unpacks the intense, often enigmatic dynamics of female friendships in a spry and very dip-in-and-out-able anthology of writing about female friendship in an exhilaratingly wide array of forms, from high culture to low. There are many gems to cackle over, including: an incomparably tender and exact description of Hannah Arendt by Mary McCarthy; a wonderful, worm-turning character assassination of the ghastly Susan Sontag by her former disciple, Terry Castle; and the revelation that Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore were boon companions for two whole years before they stopped calling each other ‘Miss Bishop’ and ‘Miss Moore’.

In this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by the Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk to talk about the publication of Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks. Right up to early adulthood, Orhan had imagined he was destined to be a painter, but then his life took another turn. In these illustrated notebooks he marries words and images in an elliptical sort-of diary. He tells me about what he puts in and what he leaves out, how his imagination works, the artists and writers he admires, what fame has given him, and why he wishes he didn't have to talk about politics.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Chris Ware — author of Jimmy Corrigan, Building Stories and Rusty Brown, and a man widely regarded as one of the greatest living cartoonists. Chris's new book, The Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three, opens his sketchbooks for public consumption: a potentially painful move for an artist as self-conscious and perfectionist as Ware. He tells me a bit about the relationship between cartooning and architecture, what he's trying to do with his graphic novels, the importance of R Crumb and Art Spiegelman to his work, and what gave him the confidence to turn his back on fine art.

In this week’s Books podcast, I am joined by the writer Daniel Tammet, whose new book Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum is a pen portrait of nine lives of people on the autism spectrum. On the podcast, he tells me how he happened upon these nine lives, whether ‘spectrum’ is a helpful term when understanding autism and Asperger’s syndrome, and how popular culture’s most famous depiction of autism – Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man – is based on an individual who wasn’t autistic at all.

In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is Jonathan Coe, talking about cosy crime, the tug of nostalgia, the joys of satire, and his brilliant new novel, The Proof of My Innocence.