The TLS Podcast

The critic and novelist Elizabeth Lowry joins Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig to discuss the Italian Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London, a painter whose Life is as dramatic and moving as her art; and Toby reviews new fiction steeped in dread, paranoia and failure, including a short work by Don DeLillo and the debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman  Artemisia – National Gallery, London, until January 24, 2021  The Silence by Don DeLillo Antkind by Charlie Kaufman Reality: And other stories by John Lanchester Why Visit America by Matthew Baker  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From a ballet stream to Homer's wine-dark sea. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the historian and critic Judith Flanders to review the return of dance with new offerings from the Akram Khan Company and the Royal Ballet, and the novelist and poet Will Eaves returns to the Odyssey to explore the nature of memory.  Back on Stage – The Royal Ballet, available online until November 8th The Silent Burn Project – Akram Khan Company Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer – Barbican, until January 2021, then at the V&A Dundee  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From a carvery lunch in Howards End to emotional Eurocrats. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Norma Clarke to discuss the role in literary creation of food and its increasingly fraught means of production, and Russell Williams reports on the bookshops of Paris during lockdown and reviews the new novel by a totemic figure in French literature, Jean-Philippe Toussaint. The Literature of Food: An introduction from 1830 to present by Nicola Humble Farm to Form: Modernist literature and ecologies of food in the British Empire by Jessica Martell Read My Plate: The literature of food by Deborah R. Geis The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food, edited by J. Michelle Coghlan Les Émotions by Jean-Philippe Toussaint  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From Ovid to the "Black Spartacus". Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's classics editor Mary Beard to pick apart the story of "seduction", ancient and modern, the poet Fiona Benson reads her latest work, and the TLS's history editor David Horspool explores two accounts of America's domestic slave trade and a new biography of Toussaint Louverture. Strange Antics: A history of seduction by Clement Knox Williams’ Gang: A notorious slave trader and his cargo of Black convicts by Jeff Forret  Sweet Taste of Liberty: A true story of slavery and restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel Black Spartacus: The epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From Poirot on the River Nile to Verdi's take on the infamous Scottish play. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas talk to writer Laura Thompson about the work of Agatha Christie and how she managed to move with the times, and Professor Larry Wolff joins us from Florence to discuss the tentative return of live opera in Italy with Verdi's Macbeth at the Parma Verdi Festival.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Toby Lichtig talks us through this year's Booker shortlisted novels, plus a couple of others, and Lucy Dallas reports on the French scene (where real life and fiction blur...); finally, we explore the situation in Israel and Palestine from three rather different perspectives. An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces made a nation by Haim Bresheeth-Zabner  The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine campus debate by Kenneth S. Stern The new peace? – Israel’s unexpected ray of light by Ari Shavit – www.the-TLS.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In 1405, Christine de Pisan took up the pen in defense of her maligned sex, imagining a 'City of Ladies' in which the most virtuous female leaders of history might be preserved from the distortions of misogyny. Six hundred years later, with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great as her guides, the novelist and historian Lisa Hilton revisits the City to shake the foundations of the way we write about power  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, and today we’re returning to last year’s suggestions. In 2019, our contributor Diana Darke said in the paper: "A lot of things need saving this summer – tangible things like bees, Notre-Dame, water … and intangible things like democracy, humanitarian ideals, community". Among the many subjects under discussion here are Oulipo, impeachment, and climate change. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on books you might have missed. Today we are sauntering back to the summer of 2018, and an episode in which we learnt which books our contributors – including Bernardine Evaristo, Claire Lowdon and Carlo Rovelli – were looking forward to. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance once again to hear recommendations from our writers and editors, on subjects like Marcel Proust’s letters, tech-ensnared science fiction and Euripides. In this episode, from 2017, there is also an interview with that year’s Man Booker International Prize Winner, David Grossman, and his translator Jessica Cohen. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on all that good stuff. Today we’re skipping back to 2016’s books of the year recommendations. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gabrielle Walker talks us through three unhelpful attitudes to global warming, as exemplified in the Michael Moore-produced film Planet of the Humans; Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses the complex relationship between charisma and celebrity in the age of Revolution (spoiler: it helps to have a horse) Planet of the Humans - YouTube Men on Horseback by David Bell  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What style of life did an ancient Roman emperor lead? How did he actually spend his time? Mary Beard fills us in; Frances Wilson on literary couples (and their pet names) and what they can, and can’t, tell us about marriage; Mika Ross-Southall on how gentrification works and who it works for   The Emperor in the Roman World by Fergus Millar Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and intimacy by Janine Utell Parallel Lives: Five Victorian marriages by Phyllis Rose Newcomers: Gentrification and its discontents by Matthew L. Schuerman Us Versus Them: Race, crime, and gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods by Jan Doering The Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change, edited by Lisa Berglund and Siobhan Gregory Alpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich, by Rowland Atkinson  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Geoff Dyer on why Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove was one of the most memorable reading experiences of his life (a taster from his essay: “There was no book and no reader. There was just this world, this huge landscape and its magnificently peopled emptiness”); In April 1939, the black contralto Marian Anderson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and performed to a crowd of 75,000 people. Carol J. Oja sheds light on the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. Read more at the-tls.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Min Wild on recent attempts to get to grips with that most slippery of beasts, the history of the novel (expect a lively cast, including Frances Burney, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne and Jane Porter); Declan Ryan on where writing overlaps with boxing and the story of the eighteenth-century boxer Daniel Mendoza, known as The Fighting Jew, who made of the sport an art form  Books Without the Novel: Romance and the history of prose fiction by Scott Black Revising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from manuscript to print by Hilary Havens Public Vows: Fictions of marriage in the English Enlightenment by Melissa J. Ganz Born Yesterday: Inexperience and the early realist novel by Stephanie Insley Hershinow Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe, edited by Manushag Powell Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, edited by Judith Hawley Thaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter, edited by Thomas McLean and Ruth Knezevich  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.