When Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher sends a huge flotilla on an 8000-mile rescue mission – to save a forgotten remnant of the empire, and her premiership. Onboard the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror, Lieutenant Narendra Sethia starts to keep a diary.

This is an extract from the first episode. To listen to the rest of it, and the full series, find 'The Belgrano Diary' in:

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

Archive:

‘Good Morning Britain’/ITV/TV-Am, ‘Newsnight’/BBC/BBC News, ‘Falkands War – The Untold Story’/ITV/Yorkshire Television, ‘Leach, Henry Conyers (Oral history)’/Imperial War Museum, ‘President Regan’s Press Briefing in the Oval Office on April 5, 1982’/White House Television Office, ‘Diary’/James M. Rentschler, TV Publica/Radio y Televisión Argentina S.E, The Falklands War: Recordings from the Archive/BBC Worldwide, Parliamentary Recording Unit

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Rosemary Hill, reviewing Steven Brindle’s Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530-1830, celebrates his approach to architecture as a social, collaborative endeavour, where human need (and human greed) stymies starchitectural vision. Rosemary takes Tom on a tour of British and Irish architecture, from the Reformation through industrialisation, featuring big egos, unexpected outcomes and at least one architect she thinks it’s ‘completely fair’ to call a villain. 

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/brindlepod

Listen to Rosemary on the design of Bath: lrb.me/stonehengepod

And on Salisbury Cathedral: lrb.me/salisburypod

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On 2 May 1982, the British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentinian warship, the General Belgrano, killing 323 men. It was the bloodiest event of the Falklands War – and the most controversial.

The account of the sinking given by Thatcher's government was inaccurate in every crucial detail – and the truth would only emerge from the pages of a private diary, written by an officer onboard the submarine.

The Belgrano Diary is a story of war in the South Atlantic, iron leadership, cover-ups and conspiracies, crusading politicians and competing journalists, and an unlikely whistleblower.

A new six-part series from the Documentary Team at the London Review of Books, hosted by Andrew O’Hagan.

Episode One coming 28 March. Find it wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Archive:

‘Good Morning Britain’/ITV/TV-Am

Parliamentary Recording Unit

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Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss his recent LRB Winter Lecture, in which he explores Israel’s instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. He expands on his readings of Jean Améry and Primo Levi, the crisis as understood by the Global South and Zionism’s appeal for Hindu nationalists.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/aftergazapod

Watch the lecture on YouTube: lrb.me/mishrayt

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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Between 1988 and 1994, the UK scrambled to make sense of acid house, with its radical new sounds, new drugs and new ways of partying. In a recent piece for the paper, Chal Ravens considers a reappraisal of the origins and political ramifications of the Second Summer of Love. She joins Tom to unpack the social currents channelled through the free party scene and the long history of countercultural ‘collective festivity’ in England.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: lrb.me/acidhousepod

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When is giving up not failure, but a way of succeeding at something else? In his new book, which began as a piece for the LRB, the psychoanalyst and critic Adam Phillips explores the ways in which knowing our limitations can be an act of heroism. This episode was recorded at the London Review Bookshop, where Phillips was joined by the biographer and critic Hermione Lee in a conversation about giving up and On Giving Up, his approach to writing and the purpose of psychoanalysis.

Find Phillips’s 2022 piece On Giving Up and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/ongivingup

Find future events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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

When Deborah Friedell and Adam Thirlwell met twenty years ago, they started a discussion about Jewish identity they are still puzzling over today. Revisiting Philip Roth’s The Counterlife (1986), an American take on British antisemitism and the escapist allure of aliyah, Adam and Deborah discuss the nuances of Jewish experience and novel-writing across the Atlantic.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/jewishnovelpod

Watch Judith Butler’s 2011 Winter Lecture: ‘Who owns Kafka?’

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Gerontologist, pacifist, novelist, medical doctor and mollusc expert – Alex Comfort was far more than just the author of the staggeringly popular Joy of Sex. In her review of a new biography, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite navigates the convictions and contradictions of this bewilderingly polymathic thinker. She joins Tom to trace Comfort’s life from evangelical child prodigy to the anarchist free love advocate who became emblematic of the sexual liberation movement.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/comfortpod

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Enheduana was a Sumerian princess who lived around 2300 BCE and composed what is now regarded as the earliest poetry by a known author. Her father, Sargon of Akkad, is said to have created the world’s first empire, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and as part of his imperial mission he installed his daughter as the high priestess of the temple of the moon god, Nanna, in the city of Ur. In that capacity, Enheduana composed hymns of remarkable beauty, often governed by a powerful authorial voice.

Anna Della Subin joins Tom to discuss a new translation of Enheduana’s complete poems, read some of them in the original Sumerian, and consider the ways in which they challenge our ideas of authorship and literary history.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/enheduanapod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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From the Egyptian Revolution to Extinction Rebellion, the 2010s were marked by a global wave of spontaneous and largely structureless mass protests. Despite overwhelming numbers and popular support, most of these movements failed to achieve their aims, and in many cases led to worse conditions. James Butler joins Tom to make sense of the ‘mass protest decade’, sharing historical examples, theoretical approaches and first-hand experiences that help explain the defeats of the 2010s.

Find further reading and listen ad free on the episode page: lrb.me/protestdecade

Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'.

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