This week, Alex Clark and Michael Caines discuss the turbulent history of the Tour de France and wander through London’s richest enclaves 

‘Le Fric: Family, Power and Money: The Business of the Tour de France’ by Alex Duff

‘Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London’ by Caroline Knowles

‘A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich’ by Matt Knott

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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This week, Lucy and Alex are joined by fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig to reveal what’s hot in summer reading, with recommendations from TLS contributors; and Henry Hitchings takes a stroll through the complex world of cryptocurrency and one of its most charismatic characters.

‘The Missing Cryptoqueen’ by Jamie Bartlett.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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This week, Alex Clark and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Muldoon to celebrate Bloomsday with a close reading of the very first few words of Ulysses; there’s news from the world of Ukrainian literature; and Toby Lichtig catches up with Tessa Hadley at the Hay Festival.

‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce 

‘The Orphanage’ by Sergiy Zhadan

‘Free Love’ by Tessa Hadley

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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

Join Alex Clark, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig as they chat to the BBC correspondents Lyse Doucet and Sana Safi, and to the legendary documentarian Norma Percy, in a special conversation recorded live at the Hay Festival.

‘My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women’, compiled by Lucy Hannah, with an introduction by Lyse Doucet

‘Afghanistan and Me: A Female Perspective’, an audio documentary by Sana Safi

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Lucy Hughes-Hallett to discuss two books about Mussolini’s Italy, and train buff extraordinaire Andrew Martin gets on board with a history of British Rail.

‘Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism’ by John Foot

’Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good: The Spread of Historical Amnesia’ by Francesco Filippi

‘British Rail: A New History’ by Christian Wolmar

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Tom Seymour Evans to head for the beaches of Fire Island, and the TLS’s French editor Russell Williams surveys the country’s philosophical and political landscape, past and present.

‘Fire Island: Love, loss and liberation in an American paradise’ by Jack Parlett

’The French Mind: 400 years of romance, revolution and renewal’ by Peter Watson

‘France: An adventure history’ by Graham Robb

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by TLS classics editor Mary Beard to find out what the Romans brought back from their holidays, and novelist Edward Docx is roused to righteous fury over the parlous state of the House of Commons.

‘Destinations in Mind: Portraying Places on the Roman empire’s souvenirs’ by Kimberly Cassibry

’Souvenirs and the Experience of Empire in Ancient Rome’ by Maggie L. Popkin

‘Held in Contempt: What’s wrong with the House of Commons?’ by Hannah White

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas is joined by Kathryn Sutherland to tuck into the three o'clock dinners of Joseph Johnson, publisher and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestley, Henry Fuseli, Williams Blake and Wordsworth, and many more great minds of that era. And Boyd Tonkin explains that Napoleon's conqueror, the "Iron Duke" of Wellington, had a great and unexpected gift for friendship - with women.

'Dinner with Joseph Johnson' by Daisy Hay

'Wellington, women and friendship' at Apsley House, London, until October 30

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Joe Moran to explore the strange world of precognition, and Elizabeth Lowry is bowled over by the iconoclastic work of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. Plus great news for Terry Pratchett fans, as an all-star cast records his much-loved Discworld series.

'The Premonitions Bureau’ by Sam Knight

‘SYBIL’ by William Kentridge

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark are joined by Carol Tavris to discuss two wide-ranging works of biology that cast fascinating light on our understanding of sexual behaviour and gender identity throughout the animal and human world. And James Waddell explores a “bibliobiography” by a Shakespeare scholar that digs deep into centuries of books and their readers - from “shelfies” to book burning to the historical precedent for Jilly Cooper’s Riders.

'Different: Gender through the eyes of a primatologist’ by Frans de Waal

‘Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution and the female animal’ by Lucy Cooke

‘Portable Magic: A history of books and their readers’ by Emma Smith

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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