The Book Club

The Book Club episodes:

• 05.29.2024

  The legacy of Franz Kafka

  June 3rd marks the centenary of Franz Kafka's death. To talk about this great writer's peculiar style and lasting legacy, I'm joined by two of the world's foremost Kafka scholars. Mark Harman has just translated, edited and annotated a new...

  
• 05.22.2024

  Conn Iggulden: Nero

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Conn Iggulden, probably the best selling author of historical fiction of our day. This week Conn publishes Nero, the first in a new trilogy about the notorious Roman emperor. He tells...

  
• 05.15.2024

  Olivia Laing: The Garden Against Time

  A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! On this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by Olivia Laing to talk about her new book The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. Olivia explores what it is...

  
• 05.08.2024

  Jackie Kay: May Day

  This week, my guest on the Book Club podcast is the poet Jackie Kay, whose magnificent new book May Day combines elegy and celebration. She tells me about her adoptive parents – a communist trade unionist and a leading figure...

  
• 05.01.2024

  Ariane Bankes: The Quality of Love

  On this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by Ariane Bankes, whose mother Celia was one of the great beauties of the early twentieth century. Ariane's new book The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century...

  
• 04.24.2024

  Kathryn Hughes: Catland

  My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the author and historian Kathryn Hughes, whose new book Catland tells the story of how we learned to love pusskins. Content warning: contains Kipling, Edward Lear, some stinking carts of offal,...

  
• 04.17.2024

  Percival Everett: James

  On this week’s Book Club podcast I’m joined by Percival Everett, who has followed up his Booker-shortlisted The Trees with James, a novel that reimagines the story of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the...

  
• 04.10.2024

  Dorian Lynskey: Everything Must Go

  In this week’s Book Club podcast my guest is Dorian Lynskey. In his new book Everything Must Go, Dorian looks at the way humans have imagined the end of the world from the Book of Revelations to the present day....

  
• 04.03.2024

  Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen, whose hair-raising new book Nuclear War: A Scenario imagines – minute by minute – what would unfold if the nuclear balloon went up. But rather than...

  
• 03.27.2024

  Viet Thanh Nguyen: A Man of Two Faces

  In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is the Pulitzer prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose new book is the memoir A Man of Two Faces. He tells me about the value of trauma to literature, learning about...

  
• 03.20.2024

  Joel Morris: Be Funny Or Die

  My guest in this week's Book Club is Joel Morris, an award-winning comedy writer whose credits run from co-creating Philomena Cunk to writing gags for Viz and punching up the script for Paddington 2. In his new book Be Funny...

  
• 03.13.2024

  Lauren Oyler: No Judgement

  This week's Book Club podcast sees me speaking to the critic and novelist Lauren Oyler about her first collection of essays, No Judgment: On Being Critical. Lauren and I talked about the freedoms and affordances of the essay form; about...

  
• 03.06.2024

  Peter Pomerantsev: How To Win An Information War

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Peter Pomerantsev. Peter's new book How To Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler tells the story of Sefton Delmer, the great genius of twentieth-century propaganda. Peter tells me...

  
• 02.28.2024

  Colum McCann: American Mother

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the award-winning novelist Colum McCann, whose new book takes him out of the territory of fiction and into something slightly different. American Mother is written in collaboration with Diane Foley, mother...

  
• 02.21.2024

  Tom Chatfield: Wise Animals

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Tom Chatfield, whose new book is Wise Animals: How Technology Has Made Us What We Are. He tells me what we get wrong about technology, what Douglas Adams got right, and...

  
• 02.14.2024

  Chris Bryant: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Chris Bryant, who tells me about his new book James and John: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder. In it, he seeks to tell what can be known of the...

  
• 02.07.2024

  Paula Byrne: Hardy Women

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Paula Byrne. In her new book Hardy Women: Mothers, Sisters, Wives, Muses, she investigates the women in the life and work of the great poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. She talks...

  
• 01.31.2024

  Sathnam Sanghera: Empireworld

  In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is Sathnam Sanghera, author of the new book Empireworld about the effect of British imperialism around the globe. He tells me why he's trying to get beyond the 'balance-sheet' view of imperial...

  
• 01.24.2024

  Adam Phillips: On Giving Up

  On this week’s Book Club my guest is the writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, whose new book is On Giving Up. He tells me how literature relates to psychoanalysis, why censorship makes life possible, and what Freud got wrong. 

  
• 01.17.2024

  Rebecca Boyle: Our Moon

  In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m joined by Rebecca Boyle to talk about her new book Our Moon: A Human History. She tells me how we know that the moon is more than just an inert lump of rock...

  
• 01.10.2024

  From The Archives: Hadley Freeman

  The Book Club will return next week! In the meantime we are revisiting Sam’s conversation from 2020 with Hadley Freeman whose book House of Glass tells the story of 20th century jewry through the hidden history of her own family....

  
• 01.03.2024

  From The Archives: Anne Applebaum

  The Book Club is taking a brief Christmas break, so we have gone back through the archives to spotlight some of our favourite episodes. This week we are revisiting Sam's conversation from 2017 with the Pulitzer Prize winning historian (and...

  
• 12.27.2023

  From The Archives: Robert Webb

  The Book Club is taking a brief Christmas break, so we have gone back through the archives to spotlight some of our favourite episodes. This week we are revisiting Sam's conversation from 2017 with Robert Webb. His moving and funny book...

  
• 12.20.2023

  From The Archives: Speeches that shape the world

  The Book Club is taking a brief Christmas break, so we have gone back through the archives to spotlight some of our favourite episodes. This week we are revisiting Sam's conversation from 2017 with Philip Collins, former speech writer to...

  
• 12.13.2023

  Pen Vogler: Stuffed

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the food historian Pen Vogler, author of the new Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain. Pen tells me how crises have affected British food culture from...

  
• 12.06.2023

  Andrew Lycett: The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Arthur Conan Doyle's biographer (and historical consultant to the new BBC TV programme Killing Sherlock) Andrew Lycett. Introducing his new book The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes: The Inspiration Behind the World's...

  
• 11.29.2023

  Guy Kennaway: Good Scammer

  On this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is Guy Kennaway, whose new novel Good Scammer sprinkles a protective dusting of fiction over the true story of the real-life king of Jamaica's phone scammers. Guy tells me why telephone fraud...

  
• 11.22.2023

  Jonathan Jones: Earthly Delights

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the art critic Jonathan Jones. The term 'renaissance' is out of fashion among scholars these days, but in his new book Earthly Delights: A History of the Renaissance Jonathan argues that...

  
• 11.15.2023

  Terry Hayes: The Year of the Locust

  In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is Terry Hayes, author of the squillion-selling thriller I Am Pilgrim. He tells me about invisible submarines, taking advice on crucifixion from Mel Gibson, and why it took him ten years to...

  
• 11.08.2023

  Jonathan Lethem: Brooklyn Crime Novel

  In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by the novelist Jonathan Lethem. Two decades after his breakthrough book The Fortress of Solitude crowned Lethem the literary laureate of Brooklyn, he returns to the borough's never-quite-gentrified streets with the new...

  
• 11.01.2023

  Nicholas Shakespeare: The Complete Man

  In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Ian Fleming: The Complete Man. He tells me about the astonishing secret life of a writer whose adventures in espionage were more than the equal of his...

  
• 10.25.2023

  Peter Biskind: Pandora's Box

  My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the film writer Peter Biskind. In his new book Pandora’s Box, he tells the story of what’s sometimes called “Peak TV” – and how a change in business model (from network...

  
• 10.18.2023

  Sandra Newman: Julia

  My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist Sandra Newman, whose new book Julia retells George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from Julia’s point of view. We discuss the spaces Orwell’s classic left for her own novelistic imagination, what...

  
• 10.11.2023

  Celebrating Watership Down

  In this week's Book Club podcast, we're celebrating 50 years of a unique classic – Richard Adams's Watership Down – and its forthcoming adaptation in graphic novel form. I'm joined by Richard Adams's two daughters Juliet and Rosamund, who tell me...

  
• 10.04.2023

  Caspar Henderson: A Book of Noises

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Caspar Henderson, whose new book A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous really is a journey into sound. He tells me why the music of the spheres – at least...

  
• 09.27.2023

  Mary Beard: Emperor of Rome

  My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, broadcaster and academic Mary Beard. In her new book, Emperor of Rome, she explores what we can and can’t know about the men who ruled the Roman Empire, and...

  
• 09.20.2023

  Sarah Ogilvie: The Dictionary People

  In this week's Book Club podcast I'm talking to Sarah Ogilvie about the extraordinary story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, as told in her new The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary....

  
• 09.13.2023

  Francesca Peacock: Pure Wit

  In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by Francesca Peacock to talk about the remarkable life and extraordinary work of Margaret Cavendish, the 17th-century Duchess of Newcastle. Famous in her own day for her bizarre public appearances and nicknamed...

  
• 09.06.2023

  From The Archives: Masha Gessen

  The Book Club podcast returns next week. In the meantime, here's another from the archives, and one which looks more timely now even than it was when we recorded it in 2017. Here's perhaps Russia's most prominent dissident writer, Masha...

  
• 08.30.2023

  From The Archives: Tom Holland

  As Sam is still away, we've dug out one our favourite podcasts from the archives. Back in 2019 Sam spoke to the historian Tom Holland, about his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. The book, though as Tom...

  
• 08.09.2023

  Celia Brayfield: Writing Black Beauty

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the journalist and author Celia Brayfield whose new book Writing Black Beauty: Anna Sewell and the story of animal rights, takes us back to the 19th century. Celia describes how Anna...

  
• 08.02.2023

  Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: The Wolf Hunt

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the novelist and psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, whose gripping new book The Wolf Hunt tells the story of an Israeli-American mother who finds herself wondering whether her teenage son Adam could have...

  
• 07.26.2023

  James Ball: The Other Pandemic

  My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the investigative and tech writer James Ball, to talk about his new book The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World. In it, James traces the rise and disturbing metastasis of...

  
• 07.19.2023

  Ferdinand Mount: Big Caesars and Little Caesars

  In this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by Ferdinand Mount who in his long career has been literary and political editor of this very magazine, as well as editor of the TLS and head of Margaret Thatcher's Number Ten...

  
• 07.12.2023

  Caitlin Moran: What about men?

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Caitlin Moran. Having written one of the bestselling works of popular feminism of the last 20 years – How To Be A Woman – she has turned her attention to the other...

  
• 07.05.2023

  Tom Whipple: The Battle of the Beams

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Tom Whipple, science editor of the Times and author of the gripping new book The Battle of the Beams: The secret science of radar that turned the tide of the Second World...

  
• 06.28.2023

  Laura Cumming: Thunderclap

  My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the art critic Laura Cumming. Her new book Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death talks about her fascination for the paintings of the Dutch 17th-century Golden Age,...

  
• 06.21.2023

  Andrew Pontzen: The Universe In A Box

  My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the cosmologist Andrew Pontzen. His The Universe In A Box: A New Cosmic History describes how we have learned to simulate first the weather, and then the universe itself – and...

  
• 06.14.2023

  James Comey: Central Park West

  My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the former FBI director James Comey, who is making his debut as a thriller writer with an engrossing police procedural, Central Park West. Jim tells me how he mined his own...

  
• 06.07.2023

  Peter Turchin: End Times

  In this week's Book Club podcast I talk to Peter Turchin about his new book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration. He proposes a scientific theory of history, mapping the underlying forces that have led to...