BooksPodcast

Paul Davies – Quantum 2.0: The Past, Present and Future of Quantum Physics

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reality doesn’t exist … probably … “Quantum physics is, without doubt, the most disruptive technological transformation in history.” “Real...

Peter Doggett – Surf’s Up – Brian Wilson And The Beach Boys

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“There are dozens of Beach Boys!” Jack Reiley (Beach Boys manager 1970 to 1973) said: “The Beatles were focussed, strategic, professionally and ...

Nicholas Wright – Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

War. Huh! (Dum dum dum!) What’s our brain good for? “Human brains were not built for comfortable lives”, writes Nicholas Wright. Which rather ra...

Tom Doyle – Ringo: A Fab Life

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the 70’s, he was a happy drunk … by the 80’s, he was just miserable! It is 1962. Ritchie Starkey – better known by his stage name of Ringo ...

Mark Blake – Shine On – The Definitive Oral History Of Pink Floyd

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Syd Barrett was probably not really an acid casualty! Peter Jenner (Floyd’s first manager): “Syd’s behaviour was avant-garde and I thought avant...

Thomas Levenson – So Very Small: How humans discovered germs, uncovered infectious diseases, and deluded themselves that we had conquered them

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“A gentleman’s hands are [always] clean” Infectious diseases caused by bacteria have killed well over half of all humans who have ever lived on ...

Mike Jay – Free Radicals – How A Group of Romantic Experimenters Gave Birth to Psychedelic Science

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I mean, you’ve got’a laugh, aintcha! Nitrous Oxide made “a picaresque journey from laboratory to lecture hall, variety palace to dentist’s cha...

Peter Hogan – Resident Alien

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

They walk among us … possibly. When a book is turned into a film or, in this case, a comic into a television series, there are usually disagreements...

John Cassidy – Capitalism and Its Critics: A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalism and government go hand in hand – one feeding the other Some people think of economic history as a trifle dry, but how can you resist a bo...

Eleni Kyriacou – A Beautiful Way To Die

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Would you kill to be famous? If we want impossible glamour and corruption we could do worse then 1950’s Hollywood. A Beautiful Way To Die is a romp ...

John Higgs – Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wot, no Daleks?!? If you had a time machine and could return to 1963 you would be surprised at the haphazard genesis of Dr Who. We think of it today a...

Ian Leslie – John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

They created each other Does the world actually need another Beatles book? There are Mongolian peasants in one-yak villages far outside Ulan Bator who...

Simon Hart – Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Strap in, this is going to be quite a ride! 31 October 2023. “Amongst today’s HR joys is the report from Emma that a departmental SpAd (Special Ad...

Joanne Harris – Moonlight Market

18 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you can’t see it … is it real? “What does real mean? Is love real? Or magic, or hope, or joy, or the quest for enlightenment? Are any of thos...

Jerry Brotton – Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Where are we?!? Why deep South but far North? Why do some maps orient East or South, but never West? When did direction change from being where things...

Robin Choudhury – The Beating Heart: The Art and Science of Our Most Vital Organ

09 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What lies within? Every culture places the heart at the centre of personhood. It beats independently of our volition and when it stops we are dead. Bu...

Evie Wyld – The Echoes

08 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The sins of the mother are visited upon the children The Echoes is many things in Evie Wyld’s new novel. It is the rural backwater in Australia wher...

Marcus Chown – A Crack In Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Black holes aren’t black! If there is one thing everybody knows about black holes it is that they are so dense that even light can’t escape. And y...

Scarlett Thomas – The Sleepwalkers

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You tell yourself “It’s OK, it’s OK … ” but it’s really not! Scarlett Thomas is a tricky novelist to categorise. She has a playful, restle...

Adrian Mackinder – Death and the Victorians

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The origins of modern death Let’s face it – nobody did death like the Victorians. From Highgate Cemetery to the high drama of seances, from Jack t...

Alwyn Turner – Little Englanders – Britain in the Edwardian Era

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

End of Empire History sometimes provides us with neat dividing lines. Queen Victoria helpfully died just weeks into the new century, making way for a ...

Howard Jacobson – What Will Survive of Us

11 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Being in love is an act of carelessness of your own safety. It’s risk! Sam and Lily are middle-aged lovers in Howard Jacobson’s new novel and, in ...

Philip Norman: George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Was George Harrison really the “Economy Beatle”? Philip Norman wrote Shout!, the first grown-up biography of The Beatles, shortly before John Lenn...

Sarah Ogilvie – The Dictionary People  –  The Unsung Heroes Who Created The Oxford English Dictionary

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A goldmine of nutters, obsessives, murderers, vicars and, above all, readers! In a time before the internet, the compilation of the Oxford English Dic...

Mike Jay – Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it! 😉 We are familiar with some of the names: William Burroughs in the 1950’s. Timothy Leary in the ‘60...

Neil Jordan – The Well Of Saint Nobody

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have you never forgotten someone you’ve slept with? Neil Jordan is best known as an internationally famous film director, of course – The Crying G...

Cathi Unsworth – Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Margaret Thatcher and Goth Culture It was the Age of Thatcher, and beyond the playgrounds of the red-braces wide boys and the Sloane Square privileged...

Lawrence Krauss – The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lawrence Krauss – Head Of Zeus – £20.00 Professor Lawrence Krauss has made major contributions to the field of theoretical physics and is one of ...

Barry Forshaw – Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films: A 21st Century Guide

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Barry Forshaw – Oldcastle Books – £12.99 Is there any man or woman in England who knows more about crime writing than Barry Forshaw? Here at The ...

Joanne Harris – Broken Light

15 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joanne Harris – Broken Light – Orion £20.00 If every piece about Joanne Harris starts by reminding us that she is the author of Chocolat, she can...

Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success And Failure From Butler to Corbyn

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steve Richards – Atlantic Books – £10.99 Steve Richards’ last book was an entertaining and penetrating discussion of the last ten Prime Ministe...

Joel Meadows – Tripwire 30th Anniversary

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joel Meadows     Heavy Metal Entertainment               £35.99 Tripwire is thirty, and we were intrigued when this beautiful anniv...

David Hepworth – Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio 

22 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

David Hepworth – Bantam Press – £25 The world has many holy places – Mecca, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the W...

Louise Willder – Blurb Your Enthusiasm – an A-Z of Literary Persuasion

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Louise Willder – OneWorld – £14.99 Quick review of Louise’s checklist of adjectives not to be used in a blurb: breathtaking, spellbinding, dazz...

Nick Wallis – The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Wallis – Bath Publishing – £25 It is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Hundreds of innocent people prosecuted, ru...

Rachel Gross – Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage

13 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Gross – W W Norton – £19.99 There comes a time in every woman’s life when her body bumps up against the limits of human knowledge. In th...

Howard Jacobson – Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Howard Jacobson – Jonathan Cape – £18.99 It is striking that one of our finest novelists didn’t publish his first novel until he was nearly for...

Simon Mason – A Killing In November

20 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Simon Mason – Riverrun – £14.99 A beautiful girl is strangled in the Provost’s lodge in an Oxford College while the college is shmoozing a bill...

Dr Thomas Halliday – Otherlands: A World in the Making

30 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Thomas Halliday – Allen Lane – £20 Otherlands is a kind of travel book, traveling in time and across the globe, pushing back through the last ...

Robert J Lloyd – The Bloodless Boy

06 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Robert J Lloyd – Melville House Press – £18.99 In 1678 London was rebuilding after the Great Fire of London, just twelve years earlier. Among the...

Prof Francesca Stavrakopoulou – God An Anatomy

05 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou – Picador – £25 “Once upon a time, in the book of Genesis, humans were made in the visual image and likeness...

Nicholas Wapshott – Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market

15 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Wapshott – W. w. Norton – £22.95 Not many academic economists are household names. But when I was young, Milton Friedman was. The high-p...

Robb Johnson – The People’s Republic of Neverland: The Child Versus The State

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Robb Johnson – PM Books – £17.99

Alwyn Turner – All In It Together: England in the Early 21st Century

27 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alwyn Turner – Profile Books – £20

Adrian MacKinder – Stan Lee – How Marvel Changed The World!

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Adrian MacKinder – Pen & Sword White Owl    £19.99        $29.99 Face Front, True Believers! This is the story of the man who gave the wo...

Paul Theroux from the archives – Chicago Loop

07 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Theroux – Hamish Hamilton – £20.95 Long before he was the father of Louis Theroux, Paul Theroux was a distinguished and prolific travel writ...

Philip Norman – Wild Thing: The short, spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Norman – Weidenfeld and Nicolson – £20 It is generally accepted that Jimi Hendrix is the most important guitarist in the history of rock m...

Larry Watson – The Lives Of Edie Pritchard

15 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Larry Watson – Algonquin Books  £21.99   $27.95 The Lives of Edie Pritchard is Larry Watson’s eleventh novel, and he is at the height of his p...

Liz Williams – Miracles of Our Own Making: A History of Paganism

14 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Liz Williams – Reaktion Books – £15.95 In her discussion of Stonehenge, Liz Williams writes: “There is a legend that Merlin simply flew the ent...

Chris Kirkham - Decoherence

30 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Kirkham – Wallace Publishing – £8.99 You have to salute a debut novel that swaggers its ambition. Boasting the subtitle “A quantum whodun...

Stephen Tow – London, Reign Over Me: How England’s Capital Built Classic Rock

12 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Tow – Rowman and Littlefield £15.99 To have been young in London in the 1960’s must have been very heaven. At least if you had a yen to s...

Helen Lewis – Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

23 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Lewis – Jonathan Cape £13.59 Well-behaved women don’t make history, and we need to be a bit grown up about our approach to feminism. That i...

Barry Forshaw – Crime Fiction – A Reader’s Guide

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Barry Forshaw – Oldcastle Books    £12.99 Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction. Writer, commentator, editor, broa...

Steve Richards - The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Harold Wilson to Theresa May

19 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Steve Richards – Atlantic Books £20 You have to wonder why the office of Prime Minister is so coveted. While many politicians aspire to Number Ten,...

Graeme Garrard – How To Think Politically

27 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Professor James Bernard Murphy and Graeme Garrard – Bloomsbury: £10.49 In an overview of the great political thinkers of the ages, comprising thirt...

Mike Isaac - Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber

07 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Isaac – Norton: £19.99 It is not unusual in Silicon Valley for head office to lay on dinner for the employees. The cost is nugatory in these f...

Ray Connolly - Sorry Boys, You Failed The Audition

03 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ray Connolly – Malignon £7.95 “I’d like to say Thank You on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” John L...

Ross Barnett – The Missing Lynx – The Past And Future Of Britain’s Lost Mammals

20 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ross Barnett – Bloomsbury £16.99 15,000 years ago, Britain was a very different place. The ice age was ending, and the country was lush and untamed...

Robert Elliott Smith – Rage Inside The Machine – The Prejudice of Algorithms and How to Stop The Internet Making Bigots of us All

02 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Elliott Smith – Bloomsbury    £20.00   In the privacy of my complacency, I am pleased to count myself moderately bright – not Stephen...

Ben Burgis – Give Them An Argument: Logic For The Left

15 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What is the purpose of debate? Is it to convince somebody, somewhere of something, or is it merely to undermine the other side and bolster your own pr...

Joel Meadows – Masters Of Comics

29 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We all have our guilty pleasures. Mine include horror films, prog rock and, for the purposes of this interview, comic books. For me it was American su...

Randy Ross - God Bless Cambodia

21 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A man can travel well and he can travel badly*. The hero of Randy Ross’s God Bless Cambodia is on the ‘badly’ end of the scale. At 48 Randy Burn...

Julian Baggini – How The World Thinks

04 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When we use the word ‘philosophy’ what we usually mean is “western philosophy’. But as the philosopher and bestselling author Julian Baggini p...

Ray Connolly – Being John Lennon

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? We will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From...

Tom Kirkham – Pop Life

16 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

2016 was a bad year. Globally, it was the year of Brexit and was rounded off with a Trump!  It was bad for pop music too: David Bowie had died in Jan...

Robert Kuttner – Can Democracy Survive Globalisation?

14 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

John Maynard Keynes said, “Above all, let finance be primarily national.” Keynes understood the dangers of unfettered finance, and if he’d had h...

Toby Litt – Wrestliana

29 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When we visit Toby Litt in his office at Birkbeck University of London he tells us that all the books in the building have had to be removed because t...

Grady Hendrix – Paperbacks From Hell

14 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

You might think it eccentric to speak of a golden age of satanic possession, murderous infants, flesh-eating crustaceans and Nazi leprechauns, but f...

Christopher Fowler – The Book of Forgotten Authors

20 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Fowler is a good friend of this site, having appeared with us three times already. But then, he will keep writing books that we find irres...

Ben Aaronovich – The Furthest Station

15 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

You might think a man who had a couple of Dr Who serials under his belt (1980’s – the Sylvester McCoy era), might rest on his laurels, but like th...

Steve Richards – The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost its Way

11 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Steve Richards has presented a series of half hour broadcasts for the BBC about British prime ministers, which he delivers as live and without a scri...

Robert Newman – Neuropolis: A Brain Science Survival Guide

07 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Since his Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution, Robert Newman’s entirely iconoclastic re-examination of the evidence has excited readers and...

Tim Haigh – Z is for Zeugma

30 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

“Since his death in 1960, Timothy J Haigh has been widely recognised as the least gifted of the great mystery novelists of the golden age of travel ...

Philip Norman - Paul McCartney

10 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When Philip Norman published “Shout” in 1980, it quickly became and long remained the standard Beatles biography. It was noted at the time that th...

Lawrence Block – The Girl With The Deep Blue Eyes

02 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

We last spoke to the great American crime writer, Lawrence Block, nearly two years ago. Although Larry is one of the world’s great travelers – he ...

Jamie Cawley - Beliefs And The World They Created

14 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It goes without saying that there is a difference in kind between what you “believe” and what I “know to be true”. Whether it is the True Re...

Mike Ripley about Angels And Others

21 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

I first met Mike Ripley at a beano in 1990 to celebrate Collins Crime Club, for which occasion a special collection of stories was published. I can pr...

Mike Jay – High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture

15 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Our noble species has a fraught relationship with intoxicants, narcotics, stimulants and hallucinogens. We crave their mind-altering powers, but once ...

Armin Navabi – Why There Is No God – Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God

18 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

As a youth in Iran, Armin Navabi was advised that if a Muslim boy died before the age of fifteen, God, in his infinite benevolence, would ensure that ...

Nicholas Wapshott – The Sphinx – Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II

29 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Senator Burton K Wheeler put the question best: If the war in Europe was America’s war, why was she not fighting it? It was the vital question of it...

Toby Litt – Lifelike

22 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

If your taste runs to the dead-pan, you could do worse than read Toby Litt. By turns funny, scabrous, touching, serious, playful and obsessive, his tw...

Alwyn W turner – The Last Post

11 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

No Man’s Land is already littered with books on the Great War, and there will be many more hurled into the fray, but not many of them will be as ori...

Christopher Fowler – Nyctophobia

11 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Callie is a young woman with a bit of a past (and a mild case of nyctophobia), an adoring husband and a home filled with light … but where there is ...

Anne McCaffrey from the archive – Renegades of Pern

28 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Anne McCaffrey was the first woman to win the prestigious Hugo award for science fiction, and also the first woman to win a Nebula award. In her Drago...

Mike Ripley – Margery Allingham’s Mr Campion’s Farewell: the Return of Albert Campion Completed by Mike Ripley

08 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In Albert Campion, Margery Allingham created one of the timeless golden age detectives, often spoken of in the same breath as Lord Peter Wimsey and In...

George Cooper – Money, Blood and Revolution

13 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Who would you turn to if the discipline of economics was in a crisis and you were looking for a solution: Mr Spock or Captain Kirk? Mr Spock would wor...

Humaira Shahid – Devotion and Defiance

28 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Humaira Shahid might have had a gilded life, and no-one would have blamed her. She was born into the privileged classes of Pakistan, enjoyed a happy a...

Lawrence Block – The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons

05 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Bernie Rhodenbarr is the owner of an antiquarian bookshop in New York City. He is best friends with a lesbian who owns the nearby dog grooming parlour...

Larry Watson – Let Him Go

04 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

“I’d follow you anywhere. If you don’t know that, what do you know?”. So says George to his wife Margaret as they journey, at her behest, to t...

Iain Banks from the Archives

09 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Yesterday, we heard the sad news of the death of Iain Banks at the unacceptably young age of 59. Iain was never the darling of the literary establishm...

Christopher Fowler – Film Freak

19 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

There was a time when film publicity consisted of having a poster painted, and sending the posters with the reels of film in the van when they were de...

Martin Amis from the Archive – London Fields

11 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

London Fields is in many ways the quintessential Martin Amis novel. At the end of the Twentieth century – ten years in the future when Tim intervi...

Gore Vidal from the archive – Palimpsest

26 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

After half a century as a great novelist and America’s finest essayist, in 1995 Gore Vidal got round to writing… well, not an autobiography, but a...

John Mortimer from the archive – Rumpole And The Angel Of Death

10 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

John Mortimer occupied positions at the very top of not one but two professions. He was a great writer – we need think no further than A Voyage Arou...

Salman Rushdie from the archive – The Moor’s Last Sigh

24 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Salman Rushdie is one of our most distinguished writers, having made a shattering entrance with Midnight’s Children (now coming out as a film). He a...

Terry Pratchett from the archive – Maskerade

09 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Terry Pratchett is a legend. The Discworld series set the gold standard for comic fantasy. Tim has been a fan since the very first book, and in th...

Philip Norman – Mick Jagger

09 Nov 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Fifty years a star. Gracefulness incarnate. Irresistable to women. Vain and arrogant, perhaps, but with so much to boast of. But enough about Tim. Mic...

Iain M Banks – The Hydrogen Sonata

17 Oct 2012

Contributed by Lukas

The Gzilt came close to being one of the founding civilisations of the Culture, but they have come to the point where they are ready to Sublime to the...

Christopher Fowler – Bryant and May and the Invisible Code

21 Sep 2012

Contributed by Lukas

A woman dies for no apparent reason in a church in Fleet Street. A pair of children were playing Witch-Hunter nearby and they placed a curse on her. T...

Alom Shaha – The Young Atheist’s Handbook

13 Aug 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Dawkins has said that there is no such thing as a Muslim child, only the child of Muslim parents. Saint Richard’s admirers are wont to chara...