The TLS Podcast

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by TLS editors to look through twelve months of intriguing books, as nominated by contributors including Mary Beard, the poet Paul Muldoon and the writer and critic Marina Warner, covering a range of genres and subjects, from ancient Greek swear words to fictional messiahs

For the full round-up, go to the-tls.co.uk/ 

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are guided by Mark Ford through Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Emerson, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists; we talk to Susan Owens about the mystery and melancholy of lighted windows seen from outside; plus, new work from Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith

'The Transcendentalists and their world' by Robert A. Gross

'The Every' by Dave Eggers

'The Wife of Willesden' by Zadie Smith

'The Lighted Window: Evening walks remembered' by Peter Davidson

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig speaks to 2021’s Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut, whose recent novel ‘The Promise’ follows one family through three decades of life and death in South Africa; Douglas Smith, whose books include a biography of Rasputin, turns to Russia in the 1830s to try to understand the Russia we face today; plus, the lyrics of Paul McCartney, explained by the man himself

'The Promise' by Damon Galgut

'1837: Russia’s quiet revolution' by Paul W. Werth

'The Lyrics: 1956 to the present' by Paul McCartney, edited by Paul Muldoon – discussed at an event at the Royal Festival Hall, London on November 5; available to stream until November 12

Stream link: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/literature-poetry/lyrics-paul-mccartney-conversation-live-stream

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Michael Sherborne to consider a master of science fiction, H. G. Wells, whose life was a runaway spaceship… until it ran out of steam; Niki Segnit, the author of ‘The Flavour Thesaurus’, explores some of the world’s rarest and most endangered foods; plus how sustainable – ecologically and economically – is book selling?

‘The Young H. G. Wells: Changing the world’ by Claire Tomalin

‘The City of Dr Moreau’ by J. S. Barnes

‘Eating To Extinction: The world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them’ by Dan Saladino

Produced by Sophia Franklin

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This week, ahead of COP26, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by David Wallace-Wells, the author of ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’, to discuss a flurry of new books on climate change and what to do about it, from quiet reflection to radical, explosive action; and the biographer of royals A. N. Wilson considers a lively new Life of King George V that suggests the monarch wasn’t that dull after all

‘Deep Adaptation: Navigating the realities of climate chaos’, edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

‘How To Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire’ by Andreas Malm

‘Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world’ by Katharine Hayhoe

‘Geopolitics For the End Time: From the pandemic to the climate crisis’ by Bruno Maçães

'George V: Never a dull moment’ by Jane Ridley

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Michael Caines are joined by Jenni Quilter, the author of ‘New York School Painters and Poets: Neon in daylight’, to discuss the colourful and ceaselessly experimental work of the American artist Helen Frankenthaler; and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, reviews a radical (and watery) new production of ‘Macbeth’ that redeems the fallen world of this overfamiliar tragedy.

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’, Almeida Theatre, London; also streaming

‘Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York’ by Alexander Nemerov

‘Helen Frankenthaler: Radical beauty’, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; until April 18, 2022

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Russell Williams, to talk through the uniquely French phenomenon of the rentrée littéraire - the politics, the scandals, the big beasts and the new voices; and Michele Pridmore-Brown considers a recent book that offers a cultural history of breast milk and the rise of the bottle.

‘White Blood: A history of human milk’ by Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver  

A special subscription offer for TLS podcast listeners: www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/pod

Producer: Sophia Franklin

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Peter Parker, the biographer of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood among others, to reconsider the gestation and legacy of E. M. Forster’s final novel, ‘Maurice’, a love story between men across the class divide, published fifty years ago; ‘Keep up, watch out: Or why the people next door have always mattered’ – the historian Arnold Hunt reviews two studies of neighbourly love, and hate, in early modern Britain.

‘Faith, Hope and Charity: English neighbourhoods, 1500–1640’ by Andy Wood

‘Caritas: Neighbourly love and the early modern self’ by Katie Barclay

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In this bonus TLS long read, the former politician Rory Stewart discusses to power of modern politics, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and the corrosion of morals.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/long-players-tom-gatti-book-review-paul-genders

If you would like to listen to more audio articles from The TLS, you can do so on The TLS website or the News Over Audio app.

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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the scholars Janet Todd and Derek Hughes to revisit the life and work of Restoration England’s first woman of letters, the playwright Aphra Behn, who “seems formed for our noisy, sex-obsessed times”; the translator, poet and critic Sasha Dugdale considers Russian protest poetry and the rise of Galina Rymbu; plus, literary festivals rebooted.

‘The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn: Volume IV: Plays, 1682–1696’, edited by Rachel Adcock, et al

‘F Letter: New Russian feminist poetry’, edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky and Ainsley Morse; translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, Ainsley Morse, Alex Karsavin, Helena Kernan, Kit Eginton, Valzhyna Mort and Kevin M. F. Platt

‘Life In Space’ by Galina Rymbu; translated by Joan Brooks

Valzhyna Mort’s translation of the poem ’Summer’, read by Sasha Dugdale, also appears at - www.granta.com/summer-gates-of-the-body

‘The Scar We Know’, a bi-lingual edition of Lida Yusupova's poetry with introductions by Oksana Vasyakina and Ainsley Morse, has just been published by Cicada Books

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Producer: Ben Mitchell

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