The Booking Club

Andy Clarke, Sky Sports' lead boxing commentator and one of the nation's most respected boxing pundits, goes in search of the knockout: the most dramatic and devastating moment in sport.

How does it feel to land that ultimate blow? How does it feel to suffer it? The Knockout assesses the impact it has on the fighters and the people close to it and asks what it takes mentally, physically and emotionally for a person to enter into an arena where the stakes are so unimaginably high.

Agony and ecstasy, triumph and disaster, hope and despair, self-belief and doubt, The Knockout embraces it all.

Part macro, part micro exploration, the narrative will move across the physical, psychological, social and even philosophical aspects of the knockout. With insights from renowned commentators, as well as fighters, their coaches, doctors and family members, this is a complete look at the finishing blow that brings any match to a sudden close, and the repercussions that follow. (Quarto Publishing PLC)

Andy met Jack at Fiore Truck in Forest Gate, East London.

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The stories we read as children are indelible in our memories; reaching far beyond our childhoods, they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past – collective and individual, remembered and imagined – and invite us to dream up different futures.

In a pioneering history of the children’s literary canon, The Haunted Wood reveals the magic of childhood reading, from the ancient tales of Aesop, through the Victorian and Edwardian golden age to new classics.

Excavating the complex lives of our most beloved writers, Sam Leith offers a humane portrait of a genre and celebrates the power of books to inspire and console entire generations.

Sam met Jack at Pizza Express in Euston, London

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Technology has delivered a world that we expect to revolve around us, our needs and preferences, and our unique personalities. We willingly hand over intimate information about ourselves in return for a world that’s easier to navigate.

We live in the Personalised Century, where we view ourselves in terms of what rather than who we are – the objects of others’ recognition, rather than the subjects and authors of our own lives. Is this a sign of our shrinking sense of self?

Interrogating the historical currents that have brought us here, Timandra Harkness envisages a messier, riskier and less comfortable world than the one into which we’re sliding. Challenging readers to look at what’s missing from their personalised menus, Technology is not the Problem encourages us to look afresh at the familiar: not just the technology we use every day, how we relate to the world and those around us. (Harper Collins)

Timandra and Jack met at Jamaica Wine House in the City of London.

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On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all.

Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.

Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive. (HarperCollins)

David and Jack met at Dar's in Hampstead, North London.

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Rory Sutherland is the vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK and the co-founder of its Behavioural Science Practice. He is the author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense, writes The Spectator’s Wiki Man column, presents several series for Radio 4, serves on the advisory board of the Evolution Institute and is former president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. His TED talks have been viewed more than 7 million times.

Now, he joins Jack Aldane on The Booking Club days before the 2024 General Election to discuss the myriad reasons Great Britain needs more alchemists in positions of power, why listeners should subscribe to the political and economic theory of Henry George, and what is fundamentally at fault with the UK tax system.

Rory and Jack met at Sea Containers in London, which houses Ogilvy and its in-house restaurant and bar Cucumber.

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What does it mean to live a good, whole and fulfilling life? And if the world really is ending, or at least expecting turbulent change, what kind of people will we need when it happens?

In Fully Alive, Elizabeth Oldfield explores how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age.

Drawing on the ancient wisdom of faith and stories from her own life, Oldfield writes about her quest to live a meaningful, fulfilling life, and the niggling questions that bother all of us below the surface, such as:

How can I focus on what really matters and stop getting so distracted by trivialities?

How do I become a depolarising person in a culture of outrage, tribalism, and division?

Can I find my highs in expansive, life-giving ways, rather than in a bottle of wine or a tub of ice cream?

And what kind of world am I leaving for the next generation?

Fully Alive is for readers looking for an honest conversation about the deepest questions in our ordinary lives, and practical, meaningful ideas to help us pay attention to the people we are becoming. For ourselves, our communities and the world.

Elizabeth and Jack meet at The Anchor and Hope in Southwark

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What does it mean to live a good, whole and fulfilling life? And if the world really is ending, or at least expecting turbulent change, what kind of people will we need when it happens?

In Fully Alive, Elizabeth Oldfield explores how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age.

Drawing on the ancient wisdom of faith and stories from her own life, Oldfield writes about her quest to live a meaningful, fulfilling life, and the niggling questions that bother all of us below the surface, such as:

How can I focus on what really matters and stop getting so distracted by trivialities?

How do I become a depolarising person in a culture of outrage, tribalism, and division?

Can I find my highs in expansive, life-giving ways, rather than in a bottle of wine or a tub of ice cream?

And what kind of world am I leaving for the next generation?

Fully Alive is for readers looking for an honest conversation about the deepest questions in our ordinary lives, and practical, meaningful ideas to help us pay attention to the people we are becoming. For ourselves, our communities and the world.

Elizabeth and Jack meet at The Anchor and Hope in Southwark

Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:

YouTube: @bookingclubpod

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.

From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health – and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It’s an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides.

But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it’s taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the ‘culture wars’ of today?

On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others – and how you see yourself (Harper Collins).

Jack met Will at Parrillan in Borough Yards, London.

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In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we're stuffed too. How have people in the British Isles shared the riches from our fields, dairies, kitchens and seas, as well as those from around the world? And when the cupboard is bare, who steps up to the plate to feed the nation's hungry children, soldiers at war or families in crisis?

Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the celebratory roast goose; the Victorian chemist searching for unadulterated mustard; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Drawing on cookbooks, literature and social records, Pen Vogler reveals how these turning points have led to today's extremes of plenty and want: roast beef and food banks; allotment, fresh vegetables and ultra-processed fillers.

It is a tale of feast and famine, and of the traditions, the ideas and the laws which have fed - or starved - the nation, but also of the yeasty magic of bread and ale, the thrill of sugary treats, the pies and puddings that punctuate the year, and why the British would give anything - even North America - for a nice cup of tea.

Pen met Jack Aldane at Brunswick House in Vauxhall, London.

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For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.

From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health – and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It’s an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides.

But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it’s taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the ‘culture wars’ of today?

On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others – and how you see yourself (Harper Collins).

Jack met Will at Parrillan in Borough Yards, London.

Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:

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