London Review Bookshop Podcast

Hannah Regel & Emily LaBarge: The Last Sane Woman

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her first novel The Last Sane Woman (Verso) poet Hannah Regel investigates the pains and pleasures of artistic practice carried out against the o...

Will Burns & Ella Frears

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Poets Ella Frears and Will Burns were at the shop to read from and talk about their new collections. Ella’s Goodlord, from Rough Trade Books, takes ...

Constance Debré & Alice Blackhurst: Playboy

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her latest semi-autobiographical novel Playboy (Tuskar Rock, translated by Holly James), leading French writer Constance Debré describes how a w...

Leah Cowan & Lola Olufemi: Why Would Feminists Trust the Police?

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout its history feminism has had a troubled relationship with policing, torn between seeking its protection and attacking its ingrained sexist ...

Lauren Elkin & Octavia Bright: Scaffolding

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her debut novel Scaffolding (Chatto) Lauren Elkin – ‘The Susan Sontag of her generation’, according to Deborah Levy – presents two couple...

James Shapiro & Sarah Churchwell: The Playbook

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Federal Theatre Project, established as part of the New Deal in 1935 to provide employment opportunities for theatre professionals affected by the...

Anne Serre & Lucie Elven: A Leopard-Skin Hat

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Serre’s latest novel to appear in English, brilliantly translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, was written in the aftermath of the death...

Kate Young & Nicola Dinan: Experienced

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her debut novel Experienced (4th Estate) writer and cook Kate Young delves into the world of queer dating following, reluctant Bette on an odyssey ...

Lucy Sante & Juliet Jacques: I Heard Her Call My Name

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Born in Belgium in 1954 to conservative, Catholic parents, Lucy Sante migrated to New York in the 1960s, where she became associated with the Bohemian...

London Feeds Itself: Jonathan Nunn & Owen Hatherley

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Born in the pandemic lockdown of 2020, when Britain’s restaurants had closed their doors, Jonathan Nunn founded the online newsletter Vittles, whic...

Iain Sinclair & Xiaolu Guo: Pariah Genius

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

During the Covid lockdown Iain Sinclair took delivery of two large yellow boxes containing fresh prints of photographs by the master-chronicler of Soh...

CAConrad & Luke Roberts: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

CAConrad is one of the most productive and inventive poets of their generation. Writing in the New York Times, Tracey K. Smith described how Conrad’...

Olivia Laing & Jon Day: The Garden Against Time

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on her own experience restoring a walled garden in Suffolk, and moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to J...

Sarah Perry & Helen Macdonald: Enlightenment

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At a Bethesda Baptist chapel two worshippers, separated in age by three decades, are drawn together by common interests, driven apart by divergent lov...

Anne Michaels & Stephen Dillane: Held

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Held is Anne Michaels’ long-awaited new novel – following on from the 1996 classic Fugitive Pieces and 2009’s The Winter Vault – explorin...

Dean Atta & Michael Rosen: Person Unlimited

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Choirboy, drag act, grandson, mentor, poet, lover, activist, performer: Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In his explosive, candid and cour...

Kristin Hersh & Jennifer Hodgson: The Future of Songwriting

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Future of Songwriting, lead singer with Throwing Muses, solo artist and songwriter Kristin Hersh reflects on the status and future of her chos...

Saraid de Silva & Nina Mingya Powles: Amma

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her debut novel Amma (Weatherglass), a multi-generational saga set in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and London, Saraid de S...

Siblings: Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris & Nisha Ramayya

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Siblings (Monitor Books) is a unique round-table discussion / poetry collection, convened by Will Harris, between Harris, Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan...

Love’s Work: James Butler, Rebekah Howes & Rowan Williams

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work was published shortly before the author’s death in 1995, Marina Warner wrote in the LRB: ‘This small book ...

Harriet Baker & Lauren Elkin: Rural Hours

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

1917: Virginia Woolf arrives at Asheham, on the Sussex Downs, immobilized by nervous exhaustion and creative block. 1930: Feeling jittery about her wr...

Lauren Oyler & Leo Robson: No Judgement

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Oyler is one of our rowdiest and sharpest literary critics, twice causing the LRB website to crash from too much traffic, and author of the nov...

Joe Dunthorne, Hanan Issa & Manon Steffan Ros: Wales in Words

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Three of Wales' best contemporary writers in an early St David's Day celebration of Wales in words. Novelist Joe Dunthorne, National Poet of Wales Han...

Fernanda Eberstadt & Olivia Laing: Bite Your Friends

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fernanda Eberstadt’s Bite Your Friends is both a history of the body as a site of resistance to power, and a subversive memoir, drawing on a cast ...

Clair Wills & Alice Spawls: Missing Persons, or My Grandmother's Secrets

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets is a detecti...

Alexandra Harris & Laurence Scott: The Rising Down

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Alexandra Harris has previously cast her probing critical eye over poetic and artistic responses to English weather (in Weatherland), and English art ...

Adam Shatz & Kevin Okoth: The Rebel's Clinic

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Frantz Fanon was only 36 when he died in 1961, but his books and ideas – from White Skin, Black Masks to The Wretched of the Earth – have prov...

Rosemary Hill & Rowan Moore: Interwar

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the time of his death in 2017, the architectural critic and historian Gavin Stamp (Private Eye’s ‘Piloti’) had nearly completed his monumenta...

Jason Okundaye & Mendez: Revolutionary Acts

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Revolutionary Acts (Faber), Jason Okundaye meets an elder generation of Black gay men and listens as they share intimate memories and reflect upon ...

Aniefiok Ekpoudom & Gary Younge: Where We Come From

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Within the British music scene, recent years have borne witness to underground genres emerging from the inner cities, going on to become some of the m...

Laleh Khalili & James Butler: The Corporeal Life of Seafaring

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Laleh Khalili’s new book The Corporeal Life of Seafaring (Mack) draws on her own experiences to describe with care and imagination the material and ...

Fleur Adcock: Collected Poems

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fleur Adcock’s sly, laconic poems have been delighting audiences since her 1964 debut The Eye of the Hurricane. Her Collected Poems draws togethe...

Holly Pester & Nathalie Olah: The Lodgers

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Holly Pester discusses her debut novel, The Lodgers, with Nathalie Olah. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachael Allen & Lucy Mercer: God Complex

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

‘Here is a wasteland / of parched aesthetics / patched up with modern tubes’ – Rachael Allen’s long-awaited second collection, God Complex, i...

Lara Pawson & Jennifer Hodgson: Spent Light

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lara Pawson discusses her new book Spent Light with Jennifer Hodgson. Find out more about London Review Bookshop events: www.londonreviewbookshop.co.u...

Paul Muldoon: Howdie-Skelp

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Muldoon reads from and talks about his collection Howdie-Skelp. Find out more about London Review Bookshop events: www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk...

Adam Phillips & Hermione Lee: On Giving Up

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

‘Our history of giving up – that is to say, our attitude towards it, our obsession with it, our disavowal of its significance – may be a clue to...

Lavinia Greenlaw & Jennifer Higgie: The Vast Extent

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lavinia Greenlaw’s new book The Vast Extent is a collection of ‘exploded essays’, about light and image, sight and the unseen, covering wide ter...

Seán Hewitt & Sarah Perry: Rapture’s Road

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Seán Hewitt’s new poetry collection Rapture’s Road follows hard on the heels of Tongues of Fire – the winner of the 2021 Laurel Prize – and t...

Emily Wilson, Edith Hall, Juliet Stevenson & Tobias Menzies: The Iliad

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, published in 2017, the first into English by a woman, was hailed as a ‘revelation’ by the New York Ti...

Mary Jean Chan & Andrew McMillan: Bright Fear

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Jean Chan reads from their new collection, Bright Fear, and discuss it with Andrew McMillan. Chan’s debut, Fleche, won the Costa Book Award for...

Ella Risbridger & Kate Young: The Dinner Table

07 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who would you invite to a dinner party? In The Dinner Table, a delicious collection of great food writing from past and present, talented writer-chefs...

Ed Atkins & Steven Zultanski: Sorcerer

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Part script, part novel, part manual, Sorcerer (Prototype) is the latest unclassifiable book written in collaboration between the artist and writer Ed...

Lynne Segal & Amelia Horgan: Lean on Me

24 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care, Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studi...

Tom Stevenson & Tariq Ali: Someone Else's Empire

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Someone Else's Empire Tom Stevenson, a contributing editor at the LRB, dispels the potent myth of Britain as a global player punching above its wei...

Mathias Enard & Chris Power: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild

10 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mathias Enard’s latest novel, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild takes us to the marshlands of South West France in a Rabelaisian celebra...

McKenzie Wark & Lauren John Joseph: Love and Money, Sex and Death

03 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her most personal book to date, Love and Money, Sex and Death (Verso) McKenzie Wark writes with her characteristic acuity about gender transition, ...

Isabel Waidner and Diarmuid Hester: Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

27 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

‘Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas’ wrote Jude Cook in the Guardian, praising Isabel Waidner’s Ster...

Amy Acre & Joelle Taylor: Mothersong

20 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Poet and editor of Bad Betty Press Amy Acre reads from and talks about her debut collection Mothersong (Bloomsbury). Poignant and powerful, her work e...

Zadie Smith & Adam Thirlwell: The Fraud/The Future Future

13 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historical fiction is having a moment, and at the forefront are two of 2023’s most hotly anticipated novels: Zadie Smith’s The Fraud and Adam Thi...

Danny Dorling & Leo Hollis: Shattered Nation

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Shattered Nation, Oxford Professor of Geography Danny Dorling meticulously documents how Britain over the last 40 years has been transformed by inc...

Kehinde Andrews & Afua Hirsch: The Psychosis of Whiteness

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kehinde Andrews continues the work he began in The New Age of Empire with The Psychosis of Whiteness (Allen Lane), a wry and piercing guide to retaini...

Terrance Hayes and Nick Laird

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Terrance Hayes and Nick Laird read from and talk about their recent books So to Speak (Penguin) and Up Late (Faber). Hayes, describing Laird, praises ...

Ian Nairn: Modern Buildings in London

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Nairn’s Modern Buildings in London was first published in 1964 and now appears, 40 years after his death, in a new edition from Notting Hill wit...

Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché & Isabel Waidner: Prophet

08 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk) has collaborated with musician and writer Sin Blaché to write a dazzling science fiction debut. Author Paraic O’Don...

Adam Mars-Jones & Leo Robson: Caret

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Caret continues the adventures of the irrepressible John Cromer, begun in Pilcrow (2008) and continued in Cedilla (2011) – part of Adam Mars-Jones’...

Lauren Elkin & Vanessa Peterson: Art Monsters

25 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racia...

Jeremy Deller & Michael Bracewell: Art is Magic

18 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A holistic and revealing account of the inspirations, passions and practices of one of the country’s foremost contemporary artists, Art is Magic fin...

Tessa Hadley & Geoff Dyer: After the Funeral

11 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Tessa Hadley’s new collection, After the Funeral (Jonathan Cape), small events have huge consequences. As psychologically astute as they are emot...

New Faber Poetry

04 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Four Faber poets will join us to read from their recent collections. Describing Declan Ryan's long-awaited debut, Crisis Actor, Liz Berry called it...

Olivia Laing, Ken Worpole & Jon Day: The Allotment

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Olivia Laing, Ken Worpole and Jon Day discuss Colin Ward and David Crouch's 1988 classic of social and oral history The Allotment, long out of print ...

Scratch Books Presents: Saba Sams & Jem Calder

20 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two of Britain’s most exciting short story writers joined in conversation to celebrate the release of their highly-acclaimed debuts in paperback. Fa...

Amber Husain & Rebecca May Johnson: Meat Love

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Meat Love, the latest book-length essay by Amber Husain (following on from 2021’s Replace Me), explores how meat-eating has become irretrievably enm...

Ian Penman & Adam Mars-Jones: Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – ​Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s...

K Patrick & Amelia Abraham: Mrs S

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

K Patrick’s Mrs. S is one of the most eagerly awaited debuts of the year, having already secured for its author a spot on the Granta Best of Young B...

M. John Harrison & Jennifer Hodgson: Wish I Was Here

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fanta...

Jacqueline Rose & James Butler: The Plague

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Plague (Fitzcarraldo) Jacqueline Rose who has, in the words of Edward Said ‘no peer among critics of her generation’ uses the recent experi...

Octavia Bright & Olivia Laing: This Ragged Grace

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia Bright’s journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father’s desc...

Maureen McLane & Will Harris

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Maureen McLane’s poetry has been praised for its deftness, intelligence and grace under extreme pressure. Her new collection, the aptly named What Y...

Deborah Levy & Stephen Grosz: August Blue

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy read from and spoke about her novel August Blue, a mesmerising story of how identities, coalesce, col...

Devorah Baum & Hisham Matar: ‘On Marriage’

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Marriage has been an institution for centuries but why this highly contested and ancient practice has remained relevant to so many is by no means cert...

Lynne Tillman & Michael Bracewell: Mothercare

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman’s mother became ill with the rare condition of normal pressure hydrocephalus she became entirely dep...

Claudia Rankine & Nicola Rollock: Plot

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Claudia Rankine’s Plot, an early work published for the first time in the UK this month, is a meditation on pregnancy and the changes it heralds: th...

Amy Key & Megan Nolan: Arrangements in Blue

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Amy Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life l...

Polly Barton & Amelia Abraham: Porn An Oral History

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A landmark work of oral history written in the spirit of Nell Dunn, Porn: An Oral History (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is a thrilling, thought-provoking, r...

Christopher Clark & Katja Hoyer: Revolutionary Spring

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Revolutionary Spring (Allen Lane), a series of brilliant set-pieces, pre-eminent European historian Christopher Clark brings back to our attention ...

Nicole Flattery & Claire-Louise Bennett: Nothing Special

07 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother’s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist...

Brenda Shaughnessy & Amy Key: Liquid Flesh

31 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brenda Shaughnessy’s Liquid Flesh (Bloodaxe) gathers together poems from across her first five collections, as thrilling and unpredictable as any co...

Ruth Padell and Sean Borodale: Watershed

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Ruth Padel’s latest pamphlet, Watershed, the poet reflects on the natural world, on water, and on the psychology of denialism, particularly where...

Don Paterson & Declan Ryan: Toy Fights

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Toy Fights poet Don Paterson recounts his childhood in working-class Dundee. This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophre...

Ian Patterson & Keston Sutherland: Shell Vestige Disputed

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Patterson, in both poetry and prose, revels in language, its possibilities, absurdities and contradictions. He joined fellow poet Keston Sutherlan...

Blake Morrison & Cathy Rentzenbrink: Two Sisters

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

30 years after he reinvented the family memoir with And When Did You Last See Your Father? poet, critic and novelist Blake Morrison returns to the sub...

Sophie Mackintosh & Rebecca Watson: Cursed Bread

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Based on the true story of an unsolved mystery, Sophie Mackintosh’s new novel, Cursed Bread (Hamish Hamilton), centres on a small village community ...

Brian Dillon & Jennifer Higgie: Affinities

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Affinities, a series of linked essays, Brian Dillon investigates what it might mean for a thing to be like something else, and what it might mean ...

Clare Bucknell & Rosemary Hill: The Treasuries

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fellow of All Souls, Oxford and regular LRB contributor Clare Bucknell argues in The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture ...

Tom Crewe & Paul Mendez: The New Life

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In one of the most eagerly anticipated debuts of 2023, LRB editor Tom Crewe presents a fictionalised account of the lives and loves of John Addington ...

Michael Bracewell & Gwendoline Riley: Unfinished Business

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Novelist and essayist Michael Bracewell reads from and talks about his latest novel Unfinished Business. An apparently ordinary, suburban office life,...

Colin Grant & Michael Rosen: I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be (Cape) Colin Grant, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, director of WritersMosaic and author of Homeco...

Perry Anderson and John Lanchester: Powell v. Proust

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Different Speeds, Same Furies, Perry Anderson measures the achievement of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time against Proust’s more cel...

Ha-Joon Chang & Daniel Chandler: Edible Economics

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ha-Joon Chang is one of the world’s leading thinkers on development economics. In Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World, Chang co...

Juan Gabriel Vásquez & Shahidha Bari: Retrospective

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s latest book a film director is attending a retrospective of his work in Barcelona. Plagued by personal...

Sheila Fitzpatrick & James Meek: The Shortest History of the Soviet Union

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over a century after the Russian Revolution, the tumultuous history of the Soviet Union continues to fascinate us and influence global politics. In Th...

Katherine Rundell and Alice Spawls: The Golden Mole

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine Rundell has been writing about endangered animals in the LRB since 2018. Her new book, The Golden Mole, gathers those essays and new pieces...

Derek Owusu & Jason Okundaye: Losing the Plot

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Derek Owusu’s first novel That Reminds Me, a haunting, edgy Bildungsroman, won the Desmond Elliott prize in 2020. He was joined by Jason Okundaye to...

Wallace Shawn and Gareth Evans: Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wallace Shawn talks to Gareth Evans about his new collection of essays. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sophie Lewis & Lola Olufemi: Abolish the Family

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Abolish The Family, leading feminist critic Sophie Lewis asks us to imagine a world without families. She traces the history of family abolitionism...

Vigdis Hjorth & Shahidha Bari: Is Mother Dead

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vigdis Hjorth’s latest novel Is Mother Dead (translated by Charlotte Barslund; Verso) is a characteristic blend of thriller, metafiction, meditatio...

Chantal Mouffe & James Schneider: Towards a Green Democratic Revolution

11 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chantal Mouffe is one of the world’s leading left thinkers on power and populism. In her latest book, she proposes the creation of a broad coalition...

Martin Shaw and Claire Armistead: s t a g c u l t

04 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A storyteller, mythologist and poet, Martin Shaw’s latest collection, s t a g c u l t (Hazel Press, 2022) lifts a lantern to a kind of haunting we c...

Lara Feigel and Lauren Elkin: Look! We Have Come Through!

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the spring of 2020 Lara Feigel found herself locked down with her partner, her two children and the works of D.H. Lawrence. In Look! We Have Come T...