The Book Club

<p>In this week's Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by The New Yorker writer Anand Gopal, whose new book, long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize, is Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution.</p><br><p>What does freedom mean once the dictator has gone? Anand explains why he spent eight years reporting on Manbij, a city of 150,000 that pushed out the Assad regime and set about building a democracy from scratch – and how the argument over what came next split the revolution in two. They discuss the bubblegum seller who became a protest leader, the police chief who quietly stopped shooting at the crowds, how six outsiders talked their way into control of the city, and why the manuscript was handed in three days before Assad fell.</p><br><p>Produced by Henry Lloyd</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by bestselling novelist Hannah Richell to discuss her new memoir, An Ocean and a Day.</p><br><p>When Hannah’s husband died in a surfing accident, her life in Australia was shattered. Suddenly, she was&nbsp;a single mother to two young children, navigating a grief she could never have imagined. Her memoir traces that journey from the moment of the accident, but, more uniquely, looks beyond those first years of loss – to what grief looks like with the benefit of time, distance and reflection.</p><br><p>Sam and Hannah discuss the shame and embarrassment that can accompany grief, the physical effects of loss, how her experience has shaped her fiction, and what makes memoirs so powerful - to both writer and reader.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith is joined by <em>The Times</em> columnist James Marriott, whose new book is <em>The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-literate Society</em>.</p><p>Are we witnessing the end of the reading age? James explains why literacy has shaped not just our culture but the way we think – and why its decline could have profound consequences for politics, democracy and public life. They discuss how television, TikTok and short-form video have transformed our attention spans, whether AI will further erode the status of writing, and why the readers of the future may become a new cognitive elite.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of a number of fantastic books, including <em>The Cauldron</em>, which released this week. Simon and I talk about the making of the modern middle east, and how we forget some of the most fundamental groups who shaped this part of the world into the region that we know of today.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>This week marks the 160th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth. In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m joined by Penny Bradshaw, author of <em>An A–Z of Beatrix Potter</em>, and the historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes, whose books include <em>Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World</em>, <em>George Eliot</em> and <em>The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton</em>.</p><p>We plunge into the Potterverse. Does Potter get her due as a literary writer? How animal are her animals? And what went wrong for Ginger and Pickles?</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Tim Whitmarsh, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge and author of <em>Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity</em>. He tells me why, contrary to what we may have learnt at Sunday school, early Christianity flourished not despite the Roman empire, but because of it.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the novelist Dave Eggers, talking about his new book <em>Contrapposto</em>. Dave tells me why, after years of writing tech-saturated satire, he returned to the world of art; how a novel 20 years in the making became a love story about talent, ambition and the mystery of making beauty; and why he thinks art ends when theory begins.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes, talking about his new book <em>All We Say: A History of the United States in 15 Speeches. </em>Ben tells me why a debate between two visions of what makes the US special has been playing out since the nation's conception, what Frederick Douglass has to say to the America of the 21st century, and why Ben Franklin didn't think the constitution was sacred.&nbsp;</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by the theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli to discuss his new book <em>85 Seconds to Midnight: A Physicist's Argument Against Rearmament</em>, where in imitation of Einstein and Bertrand Russell, he uses his platform as a public intellectual to speak against the logic of nuclear escalation. He tells me what the Nazis got right and the US got wrong in the later years of the Second World War, why physicists have a bad conscience about the bomb – and why the threat to civilisation has never been greater.</p><p>Produced by Oscar Edmondson. </p><p>Edited by Ed Parker. </p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the Children’s Laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, whose new book, <em>A British Childhood: How Our Children Live Now</em>, describes what he discovered from the travels he undertook during his work with BookTrust and the Laureateship.</p><p>He tells me what he learned about what really happens when a parent reads to a child, why the crisis in childhood reading is down to much more than the rise of screens – and how <em>Heidi</em> can save your life.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Andrea Wulf, talking about her fascinating new book, <em>The Traveller: George Forster and the Search for Humanity</em>. Andrea tells me about the now-forgotten adventurer who sailed with Captain Cook, toured Europe as an intellectual celebrity and sparred with Kant and Rousseau over race and human civilisation – before throwing his lot in with the French Revolution.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s <em>Book Club</em> podcast is Emily Wilson, the scholar and translator of Homer and Seneca, among many others. She tells me what tech bros get wrong about the classical world and what Cardi B can teach us about Aristophanes, as we discuss her new book, <em>Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature</em>.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Siri Hustvedt, talking about her new book, Ghost Stories, a memoir of her long and loving marriage to the novelist Paul Auster, and of his death from cancer. Siri tells me why this book ‘needed’ to be written, what their relationship was like, how ‘horrible things’ came to this literary golden couple, and how she explains the experience of being visited, three days after his death, by her husband’s ghost.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s <em>Book Club</em> podcast is Edmund Richardson, author of a new biography of Alexander the Great called <em>Alexander: God, King, Man.</em> Edmund tells me why there is still a fresh story to tell about this most storied of historical figures, why his empire collapsed as soon as it came into being yet nevertheless changed history – and how Alexander conquered the world by mistake.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s <em>Book Club</em> podcast is Jeffrey Winters, whose new book <em>The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies</em> makes the case that democracy as it functions now isn’t, as many of us imagine, the only thing keeping the robber barons in check – it is, in fact, the very system that has enabled them to thrive. He tells me how the wealth gap in the US is now many multiples of that in ancient Rome, how extreme wealth translates into political power, and how reforming campaign finance laws is only a tiny part of the solution we need.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guests on this week’s Book Club podcast are Amanda Golden and Karen V. Kukil, editors of the new <em>The Poems of Sylvia Plath</em>, a variorum collection of every poem Plath wrote. They tell me what light her juvenilia sheds on her later work, how art and music fed into her poetry, and how deep her poetic partnership with Ted Hughes ran.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Sophia Smith-Galer, talking about her new book <em>How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words</em>. Sophia tells me why languages are vanishing faster than ever before, why it matters, how we can resist it and what her Italian-born nonna gave her.</p><br><p><strong><em>Visit&nbsp;</em></strong><a href="http://fleetstreetquarter.co.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong><em>fleetstreetquarter.co.uk</em></strong></a><strong><em>&nbsp;to book your tickets. </em></strong></p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest on this week’s <em>Book Club</em> podcast is Caroline Bicks, who tells me how she put her academic work on Shakespeare to one side to produce her new book <em>Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King</em>. She tells me why she thinks King’s work is worthy of critical attention, what we can learn from the radical way he revised his early work, what it is like dealing with the man himself – and how there are some parts of his early novels that he even scared himself with.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest in this week’s <em>Book Club</em> podcast is the reporter – cartoonist Joe Sacco, talking about his most recent book <em>The Once and Future Riot</em>, about Hindu/Muslim violence in rural India. He tells me how he knows when he’s onto a story, what cartooning can do for reportage, and why he draws himself so differently.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

<p>My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Mason Currey, author of the new book&nbsp;<em>Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life</em>. He tells me how artists, writers and composers have wrangled through history with the challenge of scraping by, and how that has affected their art, from Baudelaire's lifelong outrage at being forced to live on an allowance and John Berryman's disastrous stint as a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman to Haydn reinventing the musical idiom of his time because he was so far in the boondocks with his day job that he didn't know what the musical idiom of his time was, exactly.</p><p>Become a <em>Spectator </em>subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/follow-your-podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/adfree</a> to find out more.</p><br><p>For more <em>Spectator</em> podcasts, go to <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectator.co.uk/podcasts</a></p><br><p>Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk</p> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>