Sam Leith

This week’s books podcast was recorded live at a special Spectator subscriber event in London, where I was talking to the Harvard scientist and leading public intellectual Steven Pinker about his new book Enlightenment Now. Steven argues that - despite what the news tells us by every measure human well-being now is greater than at any previous point in history. And he attributes this to the values of the Enlightenment. I asked him: which Enlightenment? Can morality really be based on reason alone? And what’s a professor of cognitive science and linguistics doing in this subject area anyway? You can hear his answers below. And if you enjoyed that, please do subscribe on iTunes.

My guest in this week’s podcast is the incomparable spy writer Mick Herron - these days, happily, a less and less well kept secret. He’s the author of the Slough House stories - funny and gripping novels about an awkward squad of failed James Bonds under the aegis of the wonderfully unspeakable Jackson Lamb. The latest is London Rules, and Mick joins me to talk about crap spies, finding a voice, the necessity of killing off the odd main character, and the real life Slough House. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every Thursday.

In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to the award-festooned writer Mohsin Hamid about his latest novel Exit West — touching on the effects of technology, the migrant crisis, political writing and why his eight-year-old daughter is shaping up to be an emo kid. You can listen to our conversation here: And do subscribe on iTunes for more like this, every week.

This week’s books podcast celebrates the centenary of Muriel Spark. I’m joined by Alan Taylor (author of a new memoir of his friendship with Spark, Appointment in Arezzo) and the critic Philip Hensher to talk about Spark’s life, legacy, special strengths as a novelist — and the mystique that continues to surround the Scottish-born, Tuscan-dwelling author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. You can listen to our conversation below: And do subscribe on iTunes for more like that every week.

It LIVES! This week’s books podcast honours the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein. To cut through all those high camp, bolt-through-the-neck film versions clouding our collective memory, I’m joined by the poet and critic Fiona Sampson, whose fine new book In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein (reviewed in this week’s magazine by Elaine Showalter) tries to bring the monster, and his creator, and his creator’s creator, back to life as they originally were. Mary Shelley’s fascinating, brave and unconventional life — and the literary excellence of her most famous novel — are our subjects today.

This week in the books podcast I’m talking to Richard Flanagan, the Man Booker prize winning author of Gould’s Book of Fish and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about his new novel First Person.Drawing on Richard’s own experience of working as the ghostwriter for a celebrated con-man, First Person tells the story of a struggling young literary writer brought in to help write the memoir of a man who scammed Australia’s banks and public institutions out of millions. I talk to Richard about fiction and lies, what it means to be an Aussie writer now, post-Booker madness, Flaubert’s despair… and why North American writing really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

My guest this week is the comedienne and writer Viv Groskop, and our subject is the greats of 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature. In her new book The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature, Viv tells us (among other things) how Dostoyevsky can calm you down, how Anna Akhmatova can cheer you up and how Alexander Solzhenitsyn can keep you going when things look grim. Can Russia's gallery of madmen, drunks, suicides and exiles — with their canon of work about madmen, drunks, suicides and exiles — really be corralled into the self-help genre? If anyone can make the case, it’s Viv — who offers an enlightening, funny and quietly erudite tour of Russian literary history.

In this week’s Books Podcast I’m talking to Melvyn Bragg about his fascinating book on William Tyndale — which makes a case for the greatness of this dissenting British preacher who lived his life in exile and met his end on a bonfire, but whose translation of the Bible into English laid the foundations for the King James Version and seeped everywhere into the language of Shakespeare. Melvyn talks about why Tyndale never quite got his due — and why Thomas More wasn’t nearly as nice a chap as posterity tends to think. You can listen to our conversation here: And do subscribe on iTunes for more like this every Thursday.

In this week’s Books Podcast I’m talking to Anthony Powell’s biographer Hilary Spurling about why A Dance to the Music of Time, far from being a museum piece, is a subtly avant-garde work. We talk about the rise and fall of literary reputations, why Powell wasn’t a snob, his rivalry with Evelyn Waugh, and — unexpectedly — how her biography of Matisse bears on her work on Powell. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every Thursday.

In this week’s Books podcast I talk to Philip Pullman about his captivating new novel La Belle Sauvage — in which he returns to the world of His Dark Materials — and Daemon Voices, his new collection of essays on storytelling. He talks here about his magpie habits, why he thinks realism is better than fantasy, the uses of Spenser, why he isn’t a literary outrider of New Atheism, and why first-person narrators — everywhere now — really turn him off. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every Thursday.