Lit with Charles

Today’s a very special day for this podcast. After three years, and a whole lot of work, we’ve arrived at huge milestone – the 100th episode of the Lit With Charles podcast. After 99 conversations where I’m the one asking the questions about what four books have influenced our guests’ lives and work, I thought I’d try a little plot twist. In this conversation, I’m going to be talking about the four books that have most shaped my life and work. We cover the origins of Lit With Charles, my relationship with reading and how it’s evolved over the years, and my hopes for a collective literary future. Enjoy!

My four books were:

• The Dead Zone, by Stephen King (1979)
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (1902)
• The Magus, by John Fowles (1965)
• Christie Malry’s Own Double‑Entry, by B. S. Johnson (1973)

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

In this episode of Lit With Charles, I speak with writer, translator, and Chekhov expert Rosamund Bartlett about her new translation of Anton Chekhov’s Early Stories. We talk about how Anton Chekhov - the Russian doctor who transformed short fiction - first found his voice, and why his quiet, compassionate storytelling still feels so modern.

Rosamund also shares insights from her other acclaimed works, including About Love and Other Stories (Oxford World’s Classics, 2004/8), her celebrated translation of Anna Karenina (Oxford World’s Classics, 2014), and The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer’s Diary (Notting Hill Books, 2017). It’s a fascinating conversation about literature, translation, and the enduring power of small moments — and I hope you enjoy listening to it!

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Rosamund Bartlett’s four books were:

• 
  
• The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin (1834)
• 
  
• The Student, by Anton Chekhov (1894)
• 
  
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1878)
• A Writer’s Diary, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1873–1881)

On Lit with Charles, we usually dive into novels, short stories, and poetry - but in this episode, we’re doing something a little radical. From the longest literary forms to one of the shortest: the aphorism.

An aphorism is a short, striking statement - often just a line or two - that captures a deep universal truth. It’s a form beloved by some of history’s greatest minds: Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Friedrich Nietzsche, to name a few.

Today’s guest, James Geary, is an American writer and lifelong devotee of this deceptively simple art. From his early fascination with language to his career as an editor at Time magazine and later as a lecturer at Harvard, James has explored the timeless power of the aphorism - those brief sentences that linger far longer than they last. His works include The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism and Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It.

We talk about what makes an aphorism work, why brevity can sometimes reveal more than verbosity, and how these tiny truths continue to shape how we think and write.

I loved this conversation - it’s a thoughtful, witty, and illuminating dive into the distilled essence of language. I hope you enjoy it too.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review — it really helps others discover the podcast. You can also follow me on Instagram @litwithcharles for more book recommendations and literary discussions.

Let’s get more people listening — and reading!

James Geary’s four books were:

• Reader's Digest

• Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1854)

• I Ching (c. 1000 – 750 BCE)

• Ulysses, James Joyce (1920)

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Bolivian author Liliana Colanzi, one of the most exciting new voices in Latin American horror. Her latest short story collection, You Glow in the Dark (2022), recently translated into English, blends science fiction, myth, and social commentary with a distinctly eerie beauty. We talk about the four books that shaped her imagination, the rise of female Latin American horror, and how she crafts stories that blur the boundaries between the cosmic and the intimate. A must-listen for fans of speculative fiction, contemporary horror, and global literature.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Liliana Colanzi’s four books were:

• Being Dead, by Jim Crace (1999)

• The Houseguest and Other Stories, by Amparo Dávila (2018)

• The Colour out of Space, by H. P. Lovecraft (1927)

• Women Talking, by Miriam Toews (2018)

This week I’m speaking with award-winning British author Tessa Hadley about her newest novella, The Party. Set in postwar Bristol, it follows two sisters over a single weekend as they move through a series of gatherings that reveal the class divisions and shifting gender roles of mid-century Britain — that fascinating era between the war and the Beatles.

In our conversation, we discuss Hadley’s approach to memory, social change, and everyday life, as well as the literary influences that shaped her work. Known for novels like The Past and Free Love, and for her regular stories in The New Yorker, Hadley offers sharp insights into British society and storytelling. It was a great chat, and I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Tessa Hadley’s four books were:

• Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce (1958)
• The Rainbow, by D H Lawrence (1915)
• Guest of Honour, by Nadine Gordimer (1970)
• Open Secrets, by Alice Munro (1994)

As we approach Halloween, I figured it was time to get a little gothic on the Lit With Charles podcast. My guest today is writer and literary champion Mairi Kidd, whose new novel Poor Creatures imagines the world of Mary Shelley before she wrote Frankenstein - the people around her, the ideas she was grappling with, and the forces that shaped one of the most enduring stories in literature.

Our conversation ranges from the radical literary circles of the early 19th century to the power of Scottish folklore and those places where the veil between worlds feels thin. It was such a pleasure to speak with Mairi, and learn a little bit more about a fascinating writer’s history.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Mairi Kidd’s four books were:

• Possession, A. S. Byatt (1990)
• The Owl Service, Alan Garner (1967)
• Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932)
• The Sea Road, Margaret Elphinstone (2000)

We don’t have enough poetry on this show, and it’s time to change that. My guest today is Richard Scott, a contemporary British poet known for his bold, lyrical explorations of queer identity, desire, shame, and the politics of the body. He trained as an opera singer before turning to poetry, and has released two collections, Soho (2018) and That Broke into Shining Crystals (2025). In our conversation, Richard and I go through 4 poems that have inspired his journey as a poet and I was so grateful to have such a fun yet deep conversation with him about poetry, and to learn a little more about this beautiful craft.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Richard Scott’s four poems were:

• Clair de Lune by Paul Verlaine (1869)

• Flowers by Arthur Rimbaud (written in the early 1870s and first published posthumously in 1886)

• A Part Song by Denise Riley (2012)

• Singing by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (2020)

We’re revisiting one of our most popular episodes: a 2023 conversation with rare bookseller Tom Ayling. Tom shares insights into the world of rare and antiquarian books — from the thrill of uncovering forgotten first editions to the evolving market for collectors.

Now running his own business in Oxfordshire, Tom offers a behind-the-scenes look at book collecting, the history of the trade, and the enduring appeal of physical books. Perfect for anyone curious about rare books, literary history, and the stories hidden on library shelves.

Find Jonkers Rare Books: https://www.jonkers.co.uk/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Today I’m joined by acclaimed novelist and critic Tom McCarthy to talk about his latest book, The Threshold and the Ledger, a fascinating exploration of Ingeborg Bachmann — one of the most important writers of postwar European literature.

We discuss Bachmann’s major works, including Malina and Salt and Bread, and the recurring themes of trauma, memory, history, and hospitality in her writing. Tom also shares the writers and books that shaped his own work, and we explore the connections between Bachmann, Derrida, and the wider world of modernist literature.

If you’re interested in literary history, feminist writing, or the politics of language, this episode is full of ideas and inspiration.

Follow @litwithcharles for more author interviews, book conversations, and literary deep dives — and leave a review if you enjoy the show.

In this episode of Lit with Charles, I speak with Alexander Starritt, author of the novels We Germans (2020) and Drayton and Mackenzie (2024).

We Germans is a devastatingly humane wartime confession: an elderly German writes a long letter to his British grandson about serving on the Eastern Front, with the grandson’s present-day interjections sharpening the moral contrasts between war and ordinary life. Drayton and Mackenzie is a rare, gripping business novel that follows two friends from graduation into the high-stakes world of building a clean-energy company, where private choices collide with macro forces - finance cycles, technology, and industrial realities.

We talk about structure (letters, interjections, and the occasional omniscient lens), how fiction can engage with the “big stuff” shaping our lives (economics, climate, technology), why industrial solutions - not apps - sit at the core of decarbonisation, and how character is revealed gradually, the way real people change. We also explore Alexander’s rural upbringing, German heritage, and the literary influences that inform his work - from Larkin’s melancholy clarity to Tolstoy’s vast social canvas.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and follow me on Instagram @litwithcharles.

Alexander Starritt’s four picks were:

• “Dockery and Son,” by Philip Larkin (1964)

• The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx (1993)

• Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford (2010)

• War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (1869)