The TLS Podcast

Was the 1960s a good decade for Norman Mailer? Thomas Meaney reconsiders the work; Henry Hitchings on Auberon Waugh, anarcho-snob and master of the "vituperative arts"; Toby Lichtig on the vitality of documentary filmmaking

‘Collected Essays of the 1960s’ and ‘Four Books of the 1960s’ by Norman Mailer

A Scribbler in Soho: A celebration of Auberon Waugh, edited by Naim Attallah

Waugh on Wine, by Auberon Waugh

Say What Happened: A story of documentaries, by Nick Fraser

Open City Documentary Festival – opencitylondon.com

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Elaine Showalter on the “avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable” Susan Sontag; Patrice Higonnet goes in search of the real Robespierre; A. N. Wilson cuts through class, aristocracy, family and fantasy in Downton Abbey

Sontag: Her life, by Benjamin Moser

Robespierre: L’homme qui nous divise le plus, by Marcel Gauchet

Downton Abbey (Various cinemas)

Almanach de Gotha 2019, two volumes, edited by John James

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"When future historians study these troubled times, they will marvel at the relentless rise of sea levels, strongman politics and Kardashians." So says Irina Dumitrescu, who joins us to discuss the phenomenon of celebrity, from Sarah Bernhardt to the Kardashian-Jenners; Rafia Zakaria on the murder of the Pakistani social media star Qandeel Baloch, aka "How I'm looking?" girl; Lamorna Ash on 'Bait', a new film about a timeless clash between them and us, set in a small Cornish fishing village

The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus

Kardashian Kulture: How celebrities changed life in the 21st century by Ellis Cashmore

Tweenhood: Femininity and celebrity in tween popular culture by Melanie Kennedy

A Woman Like Her: The short life of Qandeel Baloch by Sanam Maher

Bait by Mark Jenkin, in various cinemas 

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The future of the planet is in question this week, or at least, humanity's place on it, as Gabrielle Walker discusses possible solutions to climate change and why we don't need to panic - yet - but we do need to act, together. The TLS's fiction editor, Toby Lichtig, talks us through the hype and hoopla around Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - and what the book itself is like. And are you Team Scott or Team Zelda? Joanna Scutts looks at 'the messy intertextuality of a marriage', and the question of influence within the Fitzgerald ménage. 

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change by Nathaniel Rich

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

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We turn to children's and YA literature in this week's episode, with Rozalind Dineen and Toby Lichtig presenting new releases (as reviewed by a selection of young readers), as well as discussing some of the pros and cons of age-specific reading; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reintroduces J. M. Barrie's classic work Peter Pan, where a wild imagination masks tragic, sometimes disturbing, realities

Alfie On Holiday by Shirley Hughes

The Fate of Fausto: A painted fable by Oliver

The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell

The Burning by Laura Bates

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What kind of son was Philip Larkin? The TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins finds insight in some of the 4,000-odd letters and postcards the poet sent home to his "Mop" and "Pop"; Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, tells us more than we could ever hope to know about pigeons and pigeon fanciers; Norma Clarke considers the internet artist Cold War Steve, whose ‘furious absurdism’ has won him some 192.8K Twitter followers, and ponders connections with the eighteenth-century satires of Hogarth and Gillray

Letters Home, 1936–1977, by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth

Homing: On pigeons, dwellings, and why we return, by Jon Day 

Cold War Steve Presents...The Festival of Brexit, by Cold War Steve

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The whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi", the most costly artwork in the world, are still uncertain, as is its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. Federico Varese, best known for his studies of the mafia, follows the trail; the TLS's history editor David Horspool considers the inner and outer worlds of Anne Frank’s diary, the actual anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, and a selection of other contributions to this week's special issue; Ladee Hubbard reflects on the late Toni Morrison, who died last week, and considers 'The Pieces I Am', a documentary that highlights Morrison's multifaceted life, work and legacy

The Collected Works, by Anne Frank, translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, Susan Massotty, Mirjam Pressler and Kirsten Warner and edited by Mirjam Pressler

Peterloo: The English uprising by Robert Poole

Legacy: One family, a cup of tea and the company that took on the world, by Thomas Harding

The Pieces I Am, by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

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Jill Lepore traces the history of conspiracy theories and the conditions that allow them to thrive; Tim Crane talks us through whether we have free will or not, and why it is still a problem; Michael Caines looks at non-traditional approaches to criticism

Books

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski 

CONSPIRACIES OF CONSPIRACIES: How delusions have overrun America, by Thomas Milan Konda  

THE STIGMATIZATION OF CONSPIRACY THEORY SINCE THE 1950s:  ‘A plot to make us look foolish’, by Katharina Thalmann

THE AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES AND COVER-UPS: JFK, 9/11, the Fed, rigged elections, suppressed cancer cures, and the greatest conspiracies of our time, by Douglas Cirignano  

REPUBLIC OF LIES: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, by Anna Merlan  

A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING:The new conspiracism and the assault on democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum  

HARVESTER OF HEARTS: Motherhood under the sign of Frankenstein, by Rachel Feder  

THE HUNDREDS, by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart  

TUNNEL VISION, by Kevin Breathnach  

ON THE LITERARY MEANS OF REPRESENTING THE POWERFUL AS POWERLESS, by Steven Zultanski  

The Limits of Free Will: Selected essays by Paul Russell 

Aspects of Agency: Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will by Alfred R. Mele 

Self-Determination: The ethics of action – Volume One by Thomas Pink

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Following the discovery of a strange book, Sarah Green revises the story of the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson, whose legacy was distorted in the 1950s by a criminal with a taste for fancy bedding; in the US, of 70,000 cases that went to disposition in 2016, more than 99 per cent resulted in conviction. What does this tell us? Clive Stafford Smith explains why American justice is a mirage; since 2015, Refugee Tales – part walking pilgrimage, part protest, part collection of narratives about those unjustly treated by Britain’s immigration system – has become an annual event. David Herd tells us what ground remains to be covered

Doing Justice: A prosecutor’s thoughts on crime, punishment, and the rule of law, by Preet Bharara

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Nick Groom ponders the fate of the beleaguered British countryside and shares new theories about the economics of the natural world; En Liang Khong takes us through the increasingly global phenomenon of Japanese manga (which translates as “pictures run riot”); Damian Flanagan on Mishima, a writer who yearned to transcend time and identity

Green and Prosperous Land: A blueprint for rescuing the British countryside by Dieter Helm

Who Owns England?: How we lost our green and pleasant land and how to take it back, by Guy Shrubsole

Manga, and exhibition at the British Museum in London

Star, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Sam Bett

The Frolics of the Beasts, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Andrew Clare

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