London Review Bookshop Podcast

Sylvia Plath’s second collection Ariel (Faber) was published in 1965, two years after the poet’s death, in a version somewhat reconfigured from her draft copy by Ted Hughes. Plath’s original arrangement was restored in 2004 in an edition edited by her daughter Frieda Hughes. To mark Ariel’s 60th birthday and the new Faber edition, poets Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Richard Scott read from Plath’s work and from their own, and examined the abiding legacy of one of the 20th century’s most influential literary documents. Fellow poet and essayist Lavinia Greenlaw was in the chair.

Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola and COVID-19 – in Edna Bonhomme’s groundbreaking analysis of six pivotal moments in medical history, the pandemic is revealed to be inevitably political. Urgent and illuminating, A History of the World in Six Plagues is far more than a history of disease – it is a call to reimagine a more equitable future in the face of ongoing global health challenges. Edna Bonhomme was in conversation with journalist and novelist Rachel Connolly.

Throughout its history the Labour left has been a key source of energy and ideas for the party – but left-right tensions have long been the cause of damaging divisions. What lessons does this story hold for today’s left and the struggling Starmer government? Are they irreconcilable enemies - or can they ever work together? Guardian columnist Andy Beckett, author of When the Lights Went Out, Pinochet in Piccadily and The Searchers, a joint portrait of Labour mavericks Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, was in conversation with journalist and novelist Melissa Benn, whose selection of her father Tony Benn’s political writings The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? was recently published by Verso. In the chair was historian Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, whose most recent book Women and the Miners’ Strike, 1984-1985 is published by Oxford.

Reviewing Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy in the Guardian, Oluwaseun Olayiwola described how, ‘in its beautiful, fiery insistence, this collection redeclares the elegy as the undying practice of the living’. The judges of the 2024 T.S. Eliot prize agreed. Gizzi read from his work and was in conversation with Anthony Joseph, chair of the judges, who was awarded the Eliot prize in 2023 for his Sonnets for Albert.

Alexander Baron’s cult classic The Lowlife, first published by Black Spring in 1963, has recently been reissued by Faber. Set in Hackney in the aftermath of WW2, Baron’s novel follows the descent of Zola-reading gambler Harryboy Boas into the murky world of East End gangsters, hoodlums and loan sharks. Iain Sinclair, who has written an introduction about Baron for the new edition, was discussing the book and its author with Susie Thomas and Ken Worpole, co-editors of So We Live: The Novels of Alexander Baron (Five Leaves).

Drawing on a lifetime’s engagement with myth, literature and history as well as on her work with young refugees in Sicily in the ‘Stories in Transit’ project, Marina Warner’s latest book Sanctuary (William Collins) explores the concept of hospitality, the cult of relics, shrines and festivals, the imagination of place, and travelling tales and asks profound questions about political ideas of a right to safety, home, freedom of movement, and peace. Warner was joined by James Butler, contributing editor at the London Review of Books. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

’Samuel Fisher’s prose moves with swift and sure tread across the glinting particulars of locality, until that condition, that curse, with its pains and pleasures, becomes universal. Our fate. Our challenge. Our discarded future' – Iain Sinclair In a London ravaged by climate change, where the few survivors suffer from an epidemic of chronic pain, accompanied by haptic and visual hallucinations known as ‘migraine aura’, Ellis wakes from his first bout of the illness in a ruined bookshop. Accompanied by the bookshop’s former owner Sam, he embarks on a psychogeographic quest through the city in search of his ex-girlfriend Luna. Fisher’s third novel Migraine (Corsair) confronts vital issues of environmental collapse, and asks what kind of society might survive in the face of it. He was in conversation with the poet and essayist Helen Charman, author of Mother State.

Kim Hyesoon is one South Korea’s foremost poets. Her groundbreaking and radically feminist poetry – ‘a transnational collision of shamanism, Modernism, and feminism’ (Griffin Prize Judges) – has been translated into English by poet Don Mee Choi for over a decade. We celebrate the latest of these translations – the Griffin Prize-winning masterpiece on mourning and survival, Autobiography of Death, now published for the first time in the UK by And Other Stories – with an evening of readings from Kim and discussion of her work with Will Harris, whose latest collection is Brother Poem (Granta).

In The Original (Scribner), Nell Stevens’s second novel, Grace Inderwick grows up as the ward of a cold Victorian family in which the only warmth and affection is provided by her cousin Charles. After many years missing at sea, Charles returns to the household. But is this the real Charles or an impostor? Nell Stevens brilliantly reconfigures the familiar trope of the returning stranger as a gripping meditation on forgery and authenticity, in life, in art, and in love. Nell Stevens was joined in conversation by essayist and novelist Olivia Laing, whose most recent book is The Garden Against Time. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In 1958 the 18-year-old Liliane Lijn left New York for Paris, determined to become an artist. Her captivating memoir Liquid Reflections (Hamish Hamilton) tells the story of her meetings with poets, painters, philosophers and revolutionaries and of the development of her groundbreaking artistic practice, pioneering the interaction of art, science, technology, eastern philosophy and feminine mythology. Now resident in London, Lijn was in conversation about her life and work with Jennifer Higgie, former editor of the art magazine frieze and author of The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World.

Twenty years ago Kathryn Scanlan (Kick the Latch, The Dominant Animal) acquired a diary at a public estate auction. It was kept by Cora E. Lacy, an eighty-six-year-old woman living in a small Illinois town, from 1968 to 1972. Scanlan began to compulsively read and reread the stranger’s diary. In the years following she edited, arranged and rearranged the diarist’s words into the composition that is Aug 9 – Fog. Scanlan was joined by Emily LaBarge, whose book Dog Days was published in autumn 2025. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Deep House (Allen Lane) is an unexpected romantic comedy haunted by centuries of gay ghosts. It’s 1996, and Jeremy, a young American, has met the British boy of his dreams – just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples rights including immigration. Via forests and deserts, London fashion shows and East Village hotel rooms, they eventually shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in San Francisco. Combining cultural history with radically intimate memoir, Deep House is a journey through the queer archives and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle. Atherton Lin is in conversation with Diarmuid Hester, author of Nothing Ever Just Disappears (Allen Lane). More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In her new book In Defence of Leisure (Cape), Akshi Singh presents Marion Milner as a writer for our times. In asking the simple question: how do I want to spend my free time? Milner developed a method for discovering her true likes and dislikes. As Singh follows Milner’s approach – from keeping a diary to painting, building a home to travelling to the sea – she discovers the importance of rest, creativity and play in all of our lives, and how it can open the door to achieving what we truly desire. Singh was in conversation with Anouchka Grose, psychoanalyst, writer and climate campaigner whose books include Uneasy Listening: Notes on Hearing and Being Heard (Mack, 2022) and Fashion: a Manifesto (Notting Hill Editions, 2023). More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Geoff Dyer has written books on every subject under the sun; now, at last, he turns his hand to memoir. Homework is his account of his childhood and adolescence in provincial England, as the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, and the opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement in the 1960s and 1970s. Merve Emre describes it as being like ‘going for a long walk with a close friend, whose singular voice — inventive, absorbing, a little rakish, and wonderfully dry — will hold your interest for hours on end.’ Dyer was in conversation with curator, editor and writer Gareth Evans.

Francesca Wade’s biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, follows on from her acclaimed Square Haunting (Faber, 2020) to present a portrait of one of 20th century modernism’s most rowdy and confounding geniuses, in what Lisa Appignanesi has described as both a ‘discerning literary biography and a page-turning whodunit’. Wade was joined by Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light (CB Editions, 2024). More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Since its founding, the online food and culture publication Vittles has sought to disrupt mainstream ideas of what food writing looks like. To mark its fifth anniversary, Vittles produced its first print issue – an engaging mix of newly commissioned articles and a selection of some of the best essays it published in the previous five years. At the Bookshop, three contributors to Vittles Issue 1 – Robin Craig, Amy Key and Waithera Sebatindira – discussed what it means to write about food as a non-food writer with Vittles editor Odhran O’Donoghue. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

To celebrate the Penguin Classics reissue of bell hooks’s Art on My Mind, Zarina Muhammad & Lola Olufemi discuss her work. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

If the first quarter of the 21st Century has been rich in one thing, it is anxiety. Pandemics, asteroids, climate change, global instability, the cost of living, tsunamis, migration – the list of things to be worried about seems to grow longer every day. We should thank our lucky stars then for Oxford Professor of Geography Danny Dorling. In ⁠The Next Crisis⁠ (Verso), he delves into the data with characteristic diligence and level-headedness to discover what we’re worried about, what we shouldn’t be worried about, what we should be worried about and what we should do about it. Dorling was joined by writer and philosopher Arianne Shahvisi. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever (Bloomsbury) Lamorna Ash, author of the coming-of-age memoir cum anthropological study of the Cornish fishing industry Dark, Salt, Clear, visits Evangelical youth festivals, Quaker meetings, a silent Jesuit retreat along the Welsh coastline and a monastic community in the Inner Hebrides to investigate, through interviews and personal reflections, what drives young people in the twenty-first century to embrace Christianity. Poet Seán Hewitt writes ‘Humane, curious and unexpectedly moving, Lamorna Ash’s book is as much an account of the human condition as it is an investigation of faith. Quietly radical in its empathy, this is a book I have waited years and years to read, without even knowing it.’ Lamorna Ash was in conversation with James Butler, contributing editor at the London Review of Books.

In On Breathing (Peninsula Press) Jamieson Webster, a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York and part-time faculty member at The New School for Social Research, draws on psychoanalytic theory to reflect on her own experiences as an asthmatic teenager, a deep-sea diver, a palliative psychologist during covid and a new mother to explore how the experience of air and breathing serves to undermine the pervasive myth of the individual, and to underline how dependent we are on invisible systems, and on each other. In this recording, Webster is breathing the same air as Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered, Daddy Issues and Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again.