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London Review Bookshop Podcast
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Listen to the latest literary events recorded at the London Review Bookshop, covering fiction, poetry, politics, music and much more.
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88episodes
Episodes
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Martha Sprackland & James Butler: John of the Cross
2d ago00:43:54Tap to summarizeThe poetry of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, has inspired and consoled for hundreds of years, influencing writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill to T.S. Eliot. Dark Night (Penguin Classics) gathers all of John’s poetry, together with a selection of his prose. The book’s translator, poet Martha Sprackland, joined LRB contributing editor James Butler for a discussion of the life and work of John of the Cross, and his abiding influence. You can buy a copy of Dark Night from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Olivia Laing & Jack Parlett: The Silver Book
4d ago01:00:45Tap to summarizeVenice, September 1974. A chance meeting between a young English artist and Danilo Donati, production manager for Fellini and Pasolini, leads us into a tale of queer love, political intrigue and brutal murder. Emily Watlington wrote in Art in America ‘In our own era of rising fascism, of increasing violence and conservatism, Laing's novel feels eerily timely.’ To mark the paperback publication of The Silver Book Olivia Laing was reading from their work, and in conversation with Jack Parlett, author of Flamboyance, Fire Island and The Poetics of Cruising. You can buy a copy of The Silver Book from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Lauren Elkin & Shahidha Bari: Vocal Break
6d ago00:59:09Tap to summarizeIn Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power Lauren Elkin uses her own experience of training as a young soprano in the 1990s as a springboard for a powerful investigation of the female voice, from Maria Callas to Beyoncé and beyond. Part manifesto, part cultural history and all full-throated celebration, Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms and hymn of praise. Lauren Elkin was in conversation with writer, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari. You can buy a copy of Vocal Break from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Doireann Ní Ghríofa & Rachael Allen: Said the Dead
2w ago01:04:28Tap to summarizeDoireann Ní Ghríofa’s new book Said the Dead is part history, part ghost story and part unreliable memoir, exploring the lives, presences and forgotten voices of a derelict Victorian mental asylum in Cork. Ní Ghríofa, whose previous book A Ghost in the Throat won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was in conversation with Rachael Allen, author of the poetry collections Kingdomland and God Complex. You can buy a copy of Said the Dead from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Daniel Trilling & William Davies: If We Tolerate This
2w ago01:05:24Tap to summarizeRegular LRB contributor Daniel Trilling has been researching and writing about the far right in Britain and beyond for more than a decade. His latest book If We Tolerate This (Picador), published ahead of the momentous English local, Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections on May 7, is a short and powerful polemic examining how far right ideas have come to dominate the political agenda, and outlining a strategy for how we might combat them. Pankaj Mishra writes ‘Combining forensic enquiry with moral passion, Daniel Trilling has emerged as one of our most intrepid and resourceful reporters.’ He was in conversation about his work with William Davies, Professor of Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of This Is Not Normal and Nervous States. You can buy a copy of If We Tolerate This from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →M. John Harrison & Julia Armfield: The End of Everything
2w ago00:53:11Tap to summarizeThe great M. John Harrison – ‘The closest thing we have to a present-day Wyndham or Ballard’ according to the New Statesman – returns to the shop to present his latest novel The End of Everything. In a post-apocalyptic Britain a beachcomber makes his living collecting artefacts washed up on the Channel shore. But when he comes across a strange, shape-shifting creature he realises he must take it inland, before it destroys everything he knows. The author was in conversation with Julia Armfield, author of Private Rites, Our Wives Under the Sea and Salt Slow. You can buy a copy of The End of Everything from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Brian Dillon & Olivia Laing: Ambivalence
2w ago01:09:04Tap to summarizeIn Ambivalence (Fitzcarraldo) Brian Dillon explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It's at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life. Dillon was in conversation with writer Olivia Laing, author of The Silver Book. You can buy a copy of Ambivalence from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Brian Dillon & Olivia Laing: Ambivalence
3w ago01:06:26Tap to summarizeIn Ambivalence (Fitzcarraldo) Brian Dillon explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It's at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life. Dillon was in conversation with writer Olivia Laing, author of The Silver Book. You can buy a copy of Ambivalence from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →David Keenan & Andrew O’Hagan: Boyhood
3w ago01:05:26Tap to summarizeDavid Keenan’s Boyhood (White Rabbit) opens in 1979 with the abduction of a young boy outside a Glasgow football ground. Nine years later, the boy’s brother, blessed with the power to see into the past and future by a perhaps imaginary angel, leads us on a journey from wartime Paris to the Troubles in the 1970s, Mexico City in the 1980s to – of course – Glasgow, as the novel builds to an extraordinary, intense, climactic moment of redemption. ‘A complete triumph’ writes Irvine Welsh. ‘It slaps our dull, sterile culture hard across the face with a studded, uncompromising literary glove.’ David Keenan read from Boyhood, and talked about its themes, with LRB contributing editor Andrew O’Hagan. You can buy a copy of Boyhood from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Andrew Durbin & Tash Aw: The Wonderful World That Almost Was
3w ago00:58:02Tap to summarizeAndrew Durbin’s The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists, Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbin’s book is an ode to a lost but still-living world—and two men who defined it. You can buy a copy of The Wonderful World That Almost Was from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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