This episode is lifted from a live recording that took place at The Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 in Westminster on Saturday 18th October.

Jack draws together a panel of three speakers carefully selected to provide a modern perspective on the lasting significance of Franz Kafka's The Trial, which turns 100 this year.

The panel featured Maxie Allen, radio producer for Times Radio, Nick Wallis, journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal, and John Yorke, narrative expert, author of Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines.

From Nick's relentless coverage of one of the biggest state-facilitated corporate assaults on working people ever recorded in British history, to Maxie's own brush with the absurdity of modern British policing earlier this year, to John's revivifying appraisal of the text, this discussion will make you wish you'd read the The Trial sooner.

A big thank to the Academy of Ideas, and to our excellent audience on the day.

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A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven.

As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle – “Lord Doyle” to his fellow players – descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking refuge in a series of louche and dimly lit hotels, he watches his fortune rise and fall as the cards decide his fate.

In a moment of crisis he meets Dao-Ming, an enigmatic Chinese woman who appears to be a denizen of the casinos just like himself, and seems to offer him salvation in the form of both money and love. But as Doyle attempts to make a rare and true connection, all that he accepts as reality seems to be slipping from his grasp. 

Resonant of classics by Dostoevsky and Graham Greene, The Ballad of a Small Player is a timeless tale steeped in eerie suspense and rich atmosphere.

NOW ON NETFLIX: the adaptation of Ballad of a Small Player, starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, and Tilda Swinton.

Lawrence meets Jack at Defune in Marylebone, London.

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Adapted from the major television series created by Mark Gatiss – out now!

London, 1946. Gabriel Book is an erudite and unconventional London bookseller married to Trottie, the owner of the wallpaper shop next door. He is also a sleuth who uses the chaotic riches of his stock to crack the puzzling cases that come his way.

He does not work alone. Book’s shop is a magnet for waifs and strays – some of whom bring mysteries of their own to his door. There’s Nora, sometime bookseller and true crime enthusiast; Dog, connoisseur of ginger biscuits and then Jack, whose arrival at the shop forces Book to confront a loose end from his own past.

Clever, endearing and entertaining, Bookish by Matthew Sweet is a warm-hearted and unexpected mystery, about books, murder and the secrets we all keep.

Follow the trail of the investigation in Matthew's brilliant adaptation.

Matthew meets Jack at Gurkha's in Sydenham, South London.

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Catch-22 on speed and set in the Middle East, Vulture is a fast-paced, brilliant satire of the war news industry and its moral blind spots.

An ambitious young journalist, Sara is sent to cover a war from the Beach Hotel in Gaza. The four-star hotel is a global media hub, promising safety and generator-powered internet, with hotel staff catering tirelessly to the needs of the world’s media, even as their homes and families are under threat.

Sara is determined to launch herself as a star correspondent. So, when her fixer Nasser refuses to set up the dangerous story she thinks will win her a front page, she turns instead to Fadi, the youngest member of a powerful militant family. Driven by demons and disappointments, Sara will stop at nothing to prove herself in this war, even if it means bringing disaster upon those around her.

Phoebe Greenwood’s debut novel brings readers into the heart of the maelstrom, and with audacity and humour depicts the media’s complicity in the ongoing tragedy. (Europa Editions)

Phoebe meets Jack at Hiba Express, on High Holborn in Central London.

Please feel free to donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians: www.map.org.uk

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On Wednesday 16 July this year, The Booking Club in collaboration with Conduit Books launched Fiction First, an event dedicated to the experience and status of the modern novel and novelist.

At 21Soho, we heard from a panel of 2025's most exciting debut writers about what led them to produce their first works of fiction.

Guests discussed their journeys to publication, their literary influences, and what drew them to writing fiction in the first place, as well as how they got their first break. 

Central to the discussion was the subject of how class, race, sexuality and gender made an impact on their fiction and individual writer's journey, and what the future holds for the novel in a world saturated with seductive visual media.

The six authors were:

📚 Nicolas Padamsee, author of England is Mine

📚 Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, author of Shibboleth

📚 Lisa Smith, author of Jamaica Road

📚 Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds and Bodies

📚 William Rayfet Hunter, author of Sunstruck

📚 Rowe Irvin, author of Life Cycle of a Moth

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In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth – no, sixth? – child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla ready to drive his wife and baby home. Jada is a hustling, small-time criminal who is already planning how to separate Dan from some of the luxuries Jada has never been able to enjoy in his tiny flat in a Brutalist sixties council block.

Both men find that the birth of their sons has fired their ambitions. Dan plans to walk away from his saccharine TV success and finally knuckle down to writing that novel he always felt he had in him. While, for Jada, it’s the opportunity for one last get-rich-quick scheme – ripping off a local airport. When a tragedy occurs, their worlds are brought closer than either could ever have imagined – close enough that it could mean destruction for both of them … (Canongate Books)

Born in 1966, John Niven is a Scottish author and screenwriter. His books include Kill Your Friends, The Amateurs, The Fuck-It List and The Second Coming.

John meets Jack at Scott's in Mayfair

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An astonishing undercover investigation into the paranoid and misogynistic subcultures of the manosphere, by the Orwell Prize-longlisted author of Hired James Bloodworth.

Rarely has there seemed a more confusing time to be a man. This uncertainty has spawned an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the 'manosphere', as men search for new forms of belonging.

In Lost Boys, acclaimed journalist James delves into these worlds and asks: what does their emergence say about Western society? Why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs these groups promote? And what can we do about their pernicious encroachment upon our social and political spheres?

Along the way, he enlists in a bootcamp for 'alpha males', dissects cultural figures including Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and accompanies modern day Hugh Hefners as they broadcast their jet-set lifestyles to millions of followers.

Combining compulsive memoir with powerful reporting, Lost Boys is an essential guide to the contradictions in contemporary masculinity. (Atlantic Books)

James meets Jack at Palm Court Brasserie in Covent Garden.

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London, 2012. Johnny Voghel is stuck. He has a dead-end job at a small university and a wilting relationship and is grieving the death of his parents. When his half-brother Lawrence returns to the old family home from Chicago after a period of estrangement, Johnny decides to do everything he can to win back his affection. It’s a quest he pursues with the help of Lawrence’s childhood sweetheart and a pair of mysterious and seductive students adrift in the city during the height of Olympics fever.

A generational saga that takes place over a fortnight, and a comedy about confusion and loss, The Boys follows Johnny as he revisits old grievances, cultivates new friendships – and tries to take control of his fate.

Leo meets Jack at Jincheng Alley on New Oxford Street.

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Our society tells us over and over that if we're going to achieve anything, we'd better do it while we're young. We fixate on stories of prodigies; we put our children in piano lessons or language classes as toddlers, hoping to give them the best shot at success we can.

As for ourselves, too many people feel it's too late to change the course of their own lives. Whether we are at the start of our careers and sense we're on the wrong path, or feeling unsettled in our late or middle years, we all wonder how we can reinvent ourselves? Is it too late? This book by Henry Oliver has answers. Late bloomers - individuals who experience significant success later in life - offer lessons for people who feel frustrated.

This book encourages people to think about themselves as potential late bloomers and to discover and encourage and advocate for late blooming in others. After all, it's never too late to discover our hidden talents and our accomplish our goals - the road to success is never as straightforward as we are lead to believe. Julia Child didn't discover that she loved to cook until she was thirty-seven. Vera Wang started her design business at forty.

And Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment in his sixties. This inspiring, passionate book combines wonderful story-telling with fascinating new research, to shift expectations around our life trajectories. You'll discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, pairing the newest insights from psychology and neuroscience with late bloomers' remarkable life stories.

Henry meets Jack at Ye Olde Chesire Cheese on Fleet Street.

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When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Noel Gallagher in 1995, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news. This fascinating pop history, exploring the mid-90s moment when British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, Uncommon People takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, Trainspotting was a global hit, fire-starting seemed like a good night out - and it felt as though the revolution was happening.

Initially a music press nickname, Britpop became an unexpected musical movement centred around outsiders and misfits, drop-outs and weirdos who refused to compromise on their ideas, even when they were thrust into the international spotlight. Not just a scene for white guys with guitars, but something wilder and more interesting, with songs that have proved timeless. Exploring the era's key artists - Oasis, Blur, Tricky, Pulp, Underworld, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy, Suede, Chemical Brothers, Garbage, Supergrass, Radiohead, PJ Harvey and more - through their definitive anthems, Miranda Sawyer transports us back to the beating heart of the nineties.

Uncommon People re-lives the mad exhilaration of what it was like to hear these songs for the very first time - and what it was like to make them. With amazing new interviews, and I-was-there insights, this book offers a backstage pass to all the most interesting bits of Britpop's Greatest Hits.

Forget New Labour, forget earnest trend theories, this book is all about the music, the people and being right there, right now. (John Murray Press)

Miranda meets Jack at Goodfare Italian in Camden, London

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