The TLS Podcast

Between 1916 and 1940, Mecklenburgh Square was home to the poet and novelist HD, the detective novelist Dorothy Sayers, the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, the historian and activist Eileen Power, and, finally, Virginia Woolf, who saw it reduced to rubble. Francesca Wade, the author of 'Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars', talks to Thea Lenarduzzi about what drew the women to this small pocket of Bloomsbury. Read an exclusive extract from 'Square Haunting' in this week's TLS, in print and online. 'Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on how to read' is available to purchase via the TLS website.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sanam Maher looks at how Muslim women are viewed in the West; Claire Lowdon finds puzzles and philosophy but no pleasure in J. M. Coetzee's recent work; Alan Jenkins explains the significance of the recently opened archive of T. S. Eliot's letters; Jeffrey Wainwright reads his poem "If all this did begin" Books From Victims to Suspects: Muslim women since 9/11 by Shakira Hussein It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim women on faith, feminism, sexuality and race, edited by Mariam Khan The Death of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam Graydon grapples with quantum physics and the subatomic world; Elaine Showalter considers the 'startlingly racy, contradictory, emblematic' E. Nesbit, the 'first modern writer for children'; Which out-of-print books should be back in circulation and why? Roz Dineen presents the results of a TLS symposium  Books Six Impossible Things: The ‘quanta of solace’ and the mysteries of the subatomic world, by John Gribbin Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The search for what lies beyond the quantum, by Lee Smolin The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘The Railway Children’, by Eleanor Fitzsimons The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit: Author of ‘Five Children and It’ and ‘The Railway Children’, by Elisabeth Galvin  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TLS editors gather to consider some of the decade’s major cultural shifts and events, with specialist insights from Mary Beard on academia, Beejay Silcox on fiction and Zoe Williams on gender    Go to the-tls.co.uk for the full twelve-page retrospective. For the competition, Barbican membership Terms and Conditions can be found here: https://www.barbican.org.uk/join-support/membership#faqs. The competition closes December 31, 2019. Good luck.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A newly discovered, pseudonymously signed mock-letter to the editor of 'The Lady’s Magazine' in 1823 tells the story of a wannabe writer who is visited by the "gentle spirit of Miss Austen". Not only might the letter offer new information on what Austen might actually have been like, says Devoney Looser, it is also the first piece of Jane Austen-inspired fan fiction; Anna Picard discusses the poet Anne Boyer’s memoir of modern illness and considers the intersections of literature and cancer; Jonathan Lynn shares memories of adventures with his cousin Oliver Sacks For more on the Jane Austen story, go to www.the-tls.co.uk 'The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care' by Anne Boyer  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Norma Clarke considers the third and final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher; having spent the past twenty years reporting on Russia, Owen Matthews tries to put his finger on why Vladimir Putin may prove to be one of the most successful political leaders of our era Books The Code of Putinism by Brian Taylor  Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the rest by Angela Stent  The Putin System: An opposing view by Grigory Yavlinsky Kremlin Winter: Russia and the second coming of Vladimir Putin by Robert Service The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev, translated by Stephen Dalziel We Need To Talk about Putin: How the West gets him wrong by Mark Galeotti Dealing with the Russians by Andrew Monaghan Putin v. the People: The perilous politics of a divided Russia by Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The path from market economy to kleptocracy by Anders Åslund  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's that time again... TLS contributors and editors share recommendations from a year of reading  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The author of 'The Five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper', which won the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, speaks to Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Apart from capitalism itself, is there any cultural and economic manifestation in the world today as ubiquitous, powerful and globalized as football?” John Foot assesses two new studies of the game; just over ten years ago, Elizabeth Strout introduced readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Olive Kitteridge. The novelist speaks to Roz Dineen about bringing Olive back onto the scene; the famously over-the-top cookery show ‘Two Fat Ladies’ last graced our television screens twenty years ago. Anna Girling celebrates the legacy of this unlikely union   ‘The Age of Football: The global game in the twenty-first century’ by David Goldblatt ‘Ultra: The underworld of Italian football’ by Tobias Jones ‘Olive, Again’ by Elizabeth Strout  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Just over ten years since introducing readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Oliver Kitteridge, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout reprises the character in a new novel, ‘Olive, Again’. Here, Strout talks to the TLS’s Roz Dineen about the craft of writing, why Olive has returned, and ageing on the page  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TLS editors talk about Virginia Woolf's writing for the TLS, as we publish a collection of the reviews she wrote for us over a period of thirty years; on the eve of George Eliot's bicentennial, Rosemary Ashton talks about how she came to conclusions, moral and otherwise, in her novels; Caryn Rose sees Bruce Springsteen's new film and looks over his 'storied fifty-year career'  Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read by Virginia Woolf Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen, edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and June Skinner Sawyers Western Stars by Bruce Springsteen  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sarah Lonsdale recounts how writers became enmeshed in national struggles; Jane Yager tells the surprising story of DIY punk in the DDR; we talk to Robert Potts about the pleasures of reading John le Carré ("I was never happier than when I was reading John le Carré") Cold Warriors: Writers who waged the literary Cold War, by Duncan White  Burning Down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr    Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Caines reports on an unprecedented gathering of work by William Hogarth, “replete with a bitter exuberance, folly finely observed and sin satirized”; “Sometimes a dark and stormy night calls for nothing more innovative than a classic chilling tale.” Joanna Scutts considers three new compendiums of the spooky and the macabre; Les Green makes a case for changing the UK's constitution (writing it down in one place being a good start...) Hogarth: Place and progress, at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, until January 5, 2020 A Quaint and Curious Volume: Tales and poems of the gothic Women’s Weird: Strange stories by women, 1890–1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson Promethean Horrors: Classic tales of mad science, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Having asked a selection of writers to nominate their favourite magazines/journals, for a symposium in this week’s TLS, we pick through the results; as Granta turns forty, Alex Clark dives into the magazine’s archives, recently given to the British Library, and emerges clutching gems and old boots (including meeting minutes and evidence of fantasy commissioning); finally, the novelist and translator Lydia Davis talks us through her Thoreau-inspired approach to gardening  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bernardine Evaristo speaks to the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig about her novel 'Girl, Woman, Other'  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.