The TLS Podcast

By The TLSSociety & Culture Arts Fiction

The TLS Podcast episodes

September 26, 2018 Diarmaid MacCulloch on Thomas Cromwell
In this bonus episode, the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography.
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31 min
September 26, 2018 Mexico's great disgrace
Lorna Scott Fox joins us to discuss the fiftieth anniversary of Mexico's Tlatelolco of 1968, a travesty still shrouded in obfuscation; the TLS's History editor David Horspool discusses Thomas Cromwell with Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of a new, definitive biography; and finally, Rozalind Dineen offers a round-up of interesting new podcasts

Books and podcasts discussed
México 68: The students, the President and the CIA by Sergio Aguayo
Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Teachers Pet (The Australian)
West Cork (Audible)
The Ratline (BBC)
In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
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53 min
September 19, 2018 Henry James in LA
Philip Horne and Frances Wilson join us to discuss Henry James, the not-always masterly Master who gave us novels as apparently divergent as Washington Square, with its clear, tight prose, The Ambassadors (prone to accidents of publication) and The Golden Bowl, which spills pleasures of an altogether more sinuous nature; plus, details of a little-known trip James took to California, which – unexpectedly, perhaps –“completely bowled” him over

Books
Generous Mistakes: Incidents of error in Henry James by Michael Anesko
The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James: The Ambassadors; Edited by Nicola Bradbury. The Portrait of a Lady; Edited by Michael Anesko. The Jolly Corner and Other Tales, 1903–1910; Edited by N. H. Reeve (Michael Anesko, Tamara L. Follini, Philip Horne and Adrian Poole, general editors)
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41 min
September 12, 2018 On booze and art
Roz Dineen on the time-stained image of the artist-addict, The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, and whether “stories about getting better [can] ever be as compelling as stories about falling apart"; "David Foster Wallace would send me letters and I wouldn’t answer them. He would send works in progress with forlorn notes. 'You’re under no obligation to read or to pretend you’ve read the enclosed,' he wrote on one piece. I didn’t." – David Streitfeld recalls being David Foster Wallace's "worst friend"

Books
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close encounters with addiction by Gabor Maté
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38 min
September 05, 2018 Philip Larkin, beyond the grave
Andrew Motion discusses the life, work and curious afterlife of his friend and "subject" Philip Larkin; Imogen Russell Williams has written an essay on diversity (or the lack of it) in children's books and offers some recommendations; Zoe Williams gives her verdict on the very British political tradition that is Prime Minister’s Questions

Books

Philip Larkin: A writer's life by Andrew Motion (1993; reissued September 2018)
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Square by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
I Am Thunder by Muhammad Khan
Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent
You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry
Knights and Bikes by Gabrielle Kent
You’re Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry

(For all the books discussed by Imogen Russell Williams, go to the-tls.co.uk)
Punch and Judy Politics: An insider’s guide to Prime Minister’s questions by Tom Hamilton and Ayesha Hazarika
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54 min
August 22, 2018 Too smart for our own good
Carl Miller, the author of The Death of the Gods, which deals with how power works and who holds it in the digital age, sheds light on how algorithms, originally devised as simple problem-solving devices, have become so complicated that no one, not even their creators, can control them; Kristen Roupenian points out the problem with an “unfailingly enthusiastic” compendium of twentieth-century female intellectuals (including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion): who is left out and why?; eighty-odd years ago, Zora Neale Hurston, now best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, interviewed Kossola O-Lo-Loo-Ay, the last known survivor of the Atlantic Slave Trade. As her book is finally published, Colin Grant joins us to tell us more

Books
The Death of the Gods: The new global power grab by Carl Miller
Sharp: The women who made an art of having an opinion by Michelle Dean
Barracoon: The story of the last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale
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41 min
August 15, 2018 Same old gags
In the course of his long literary career, Samuel Johnson reviewed only one novel. Who was it by? None other than the "preposterously confident” Charlotte Lennox, a force in eighteenth-century prose and a model for Jane Austen – Min Wild tells us more; What happens if you ask a literary critic to watch top-grossing (pun intended) Hollywood comedies from the past three decades? Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explains how comedy reflects broader culture and anxieties; How are women treated in film and television? Is there cause for celebration? Alice Wadsworth joins us in the studio to discuss.

Books
Charlotte Lennox: An independent mind by Susan Carlile
Stealing the Show: How women are revolutionizing television by Joy Press
Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive portrayals in speculative film and TV by Diana Adesola Mafe

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46 min
August 08, 2018 Turn on, tune in, drop out?
Are we entering a new age for LSD, full of medical potential? Can it shed its heavily tie-dyed cultural baggage? And who has written the finest prose about psychedelics? Toby Lichtig joins us to discuss; Eri Hotta (re)introduces us to Natsume Sōseki, "the greatest novelist of modern Japan"; Kate Chisholm considers the chequered history of Virago, founded in 1973 as a "feminist press", plus 40 years of Modern Classics, a series conceived to challenge the established male dominated literary canon and rescue and rehabilitate forgotten works by women
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44 min
August 01, 2018 Mind and memory
With Stig Abell and Roz Dineen. Steven Nadler drops in to tell us all we need to know about the much-misunderstood Descartes; and En Liang Khong visits the Foundling museum to see an installation about how to commemorate loss.
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31 min
July 25, 2018 Emily Brontë's wuthering wilds
To mark 200 years since Emily Brontë’s birth, we are joined by Robert Potts and Jacqueline Banerjee to look back at Brontë’s life and most famous work Wuthering Heights – with a nod to Kate Bush’s memorable track, as well as to other, more recent tributes; Mika Ross-Southall shares the story of Tommy Nutter, the "rebel tailor of 1960s Savile Row", who, from humble origins, pulled himself up by the force of his wild imagination to dress anyone who was anyone

Books, etc

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (new edition by HQ; with a foreword by Michael Stewart)
Ill Will: The untold story of Heathcliff by Michael Stewart
Emily Brontë: A life in twenty poems by Nick Holland
Emily Brontë Reappraised: A view from the twenty-first century by Claire O’Callaghan
Emily Jane Brontë and Her Music by John Hennessy
The Brontë Stones project - https://bit.ly/2LOgEiQ
House of Nutter: The rebel tailor of Savile Row by Lance Richardson
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38 min