London Review Bookshop Podcasts

My House of Sky (Little Toller) tells the hitherto largely unknown story of J.A. Baker, author of nature writing classic The Peregrine. Working with an archive of materials that only came to light in 2013, Hetty Saunders provides an invaluable insight into the life of the reclusive naturalist, whose work has influenced writers and artists as diverse as Richard Mabey and Werner Herzog. To celebrate the publication of this new biography, Hetty Saunders was joined by Robert Macfarlane, author of Landmarks, and conservationist and editor of Baker's Diaries, John Fanshawe. The evening was chaired by Gareth Evans.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The two parts of Mary Beard’s latest book were originally given as lectures in the LRB’s prestigious Winter Lecture series, and subsequently appeared as essays in the magazine itself. In each part of the book, Mary Beard deals with the history and politics of women in public life, and draws on personal experience, family history and an unrivalled knowledge of the Classics. On November 21st at 7pm Mary Beard was at St George’s Bloomsbury where she spoke about her latest book *Women & Power* and about her position as one of Britain’s most prominent public intellectuals. Mary Beard was joined by Professor Sarah Churchwell, professorial fellow in American literature and chair of public understanding of the humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marx’s Das Kapital, published in three volumes between 1867 and 1883, exercised a profound influence on the history and politics of the 20th century, and, despite the expectations of many, continues to resonate through the 21st. In Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (Profile), David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate School and the author of many highly acclaimed books on Marx and Marxism, explains in clear and concise language just what it is that makes Marx’s analysis so powerful, and what it still continues to offer us for the future. Harvey was in the bookshop in conversation with architectural critic and journalist Owen Hatherley, author of, most recently, The Ministry of Nostalgia and Landscapes of Communism.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What do we think about when we think about football? Football is about so many things: memory, history, place, social class, gender, family identity, tribal identity, national identity, the nature of groups. It is essentially collaborative, even socialist, yet it exists in a sump of greed, corruption, capitalism and autocracy. At our event in the Bookshop on 2 November, Philosopher Simon Critchley attempted to make sense of it all with writer, critic and Norwich City fan Juliet Jacques.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Following her Man Booker shortlisted Autumn, Ali Smith was at the shop to present its sequel Winter, (Hamish Hamilton), the second in a quartet of novels reflecting and embedded in the shifting seasons. A book full of truths for the post-truth era, Winter confronts and contrasts this bleakest of seasons with the evergreen qualities of love, memory, art and laughter. Smith was in conversation with Olivia Laing, writer and critic, and author of, most recently, The Lonely City (Canongate).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Iain Sinclair has been writing about London for most of his adult life, and if any of us can even begin to understand this peculiar sort of city that we sort of call a sort of home, then it's with Sinclair that we begin. The Last London (Oneworld) is the culmination of Iain's London project, although 'project' is far too determined a word to describe a body of work so many-layered, so prodigiously polyvalent. At our event at St. George's, Bloomsbury, he talked about the book and the city with comedian, writer and film director Stewart Lee, another Londoner from elsewhere.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Twenty years after Kathy Acker's untimely death, Chris Kraus has provided the first full biography of the avant-garde artist, writer and counter-cultural heroine. Sheila Heti writes of After Kathy Acker (Allen Lane) 'This is a gossipy, anti-mythic artist biography which feels like it's being told in one long rush of a monologue over late-night drinks by someone who was there.' On the 25th September, Chris Kraus, the author of amongst many other books I Love Dick ('the most important book about men and women written in the last century.' according to Emily Gould in the Guardian) was joined in conversation about Acker by writer Juliet Jacques, the author of Trans: A Memoir (Verso).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A very special evening at the Bookshop poet, playwright and translator Anne Carson. With Robert Currie and Ben Whishaw, Anne performed Lecture On The History Of Skywriting, a piece originally commissioned by Laurie Anderson for New York Live Ideas.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Four of the most interesting poets working today read at the bookshop, to mark the publication of Cambridge Literary Review 10: Vahni Capildeo, Drew Milne, Luke Roberts and Eley Williams.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'Americans don’t actually believe in death.' Siri Hustvedt and Lisa Appignanesi were in conversation in the bookshop. Hustvedt's latest collection of essays on art, sex and psychology, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, is published by Sceptre; Prospect magazine, reviewing the volume, called her 'a writer of blazing intelligence and curiosity'. Lisa Appignanesi's Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness was published in 2014.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Horacio Castellanos Moya was in conversation at the Bookshop with Rory O'Bryen. Best known in the UK for novels such as Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador and The Dream of My Return, Castellanos Moya is a writer who, in the words of Natasha Wimmer, 'has turned anxiety into an art-form and an act of rebellion, and redeemed paranoia as a positive indicator of rot'. This event took place in association with Cervantes Institute London and the Embassy of El Salvador.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anna Minton, Reader in Architecture at the University of East London and author of Ground Control, asks, in her latest book Big Capital (Penguin), a very big question: 'Who is London For?' As the cost of housing spirals upwards, putting this most essential of all necessities beyond the financial reach of the majority of Londoners, Minton draws on original research to bring us the stories of those in the frontline of the struggle to keep a roof over their heads, to analyse how we got into this mess, and to suggest some practical policies for how we might start to get out of it. Anna was in conversation with Oliver Wainwright, the architecture and design critic for the Guardian.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philip Hoare, who won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009 for his magnificent Leviathan, continues his exploration of our watery world with RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (Fourth Estate). In searching the past and present for stories encapsulating the human fascination with the sea, Hoare mixes natural history with travel writing, autobiography and literary criticism to create an invigorating portrait of the oceans, and of their often fatal allure. He was in conversation with Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City, The Trip to Echo Spring and To the River.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

PalFest, The Palestinian Festival of Literature, which brings writers from around the world to Palestine to read to and meet their readers, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This Is Not a Border is an anthology of essays, poems and stories from some of those writers and artists as they respond to their experiences at this unique festival. Heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations. To celebrate the launch of this remarkable anthology, we were joined for an evening of readings and discussion by its editor Ahdaf Soueif, contributors Jeremy Harding and Rachel Holmes, and Bashir Abu-Manneh, lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Kent.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew O’Hagan’s latest book The Secret Life brings together three of his finest long essays, each of them investigating the strange, vexed intersections and conflicts between the virtual and the real, and what they mean for the nature and construction of identity in the modern world. ‘Ghosting’ tells the story of O’Hagan’s difficult collaboration with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; in ‘The Invention of Ronald Pinn’ he uses the real identity of a deceased young man to create an entirely spurious one that exists only in cyberspace, and ‘The Satoshi Affair’ explores the strange history of Craig Wright, the man who may or may not be the inventor of Bitcoin. As well as being ‘The best essayist of his generation’ (New York Times), O’Hagan is an acclaimed novelist and contributing editor at the LRB. He was in conversation about his latest work with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, curator of the Serpentine Gallery and author of Ways of Curating.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ali Smith was at the shop to read from and talk about her (now Booker nominated!) novel Autumn, an unconventional love story that plays with boundaries of time and space and is the first in a quartet of seasons. Smith won the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction in 2015 for How to Be Both and has been short-listed for the Man Booker prize on several occasions. Smith was in conversation with The Guardian journalist Alex Clark.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In his latest book In Writing (Hamish Hamilton) psychoanalyst and regular LRB contributor Adam Phillips celebrates the art of close reading and asks what it is to defend literature in a world that is increasingly devaluing language. Through a vivid series of readings of writers he has loved, from Byron and Barthes to Shakespeare and Sebald, Phillips draws on his work as a practicing psychoanalyst to demonstrate, in his own unique style, how literature and psychoanalysis can speak to, and of, each other. He was joined in conversation by Dr Devorah Baum, Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Southampton. She is the co-director of the feature film The New Man (2016) and author of two forthcoming books, Feeling Jewish (a book for just about anyone) (Yale University Press) and The Jewish Joke (Profile).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paul Beatty, winner of 2016's Man Booker Prize, will be in conversation with Lola Okolosie, Guardian journalist and editor-at-large of Media Diversified. The Sellout (Oneworld) was the first novel by a US author to win the Booker; Beatty's other novels, being released in new paperback editions, are The White Boy Shuffle, Tuff and Slumberland.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer, filmmaker, architectural critic and essayist Jonathan Meades was in conversation with his publisher, John Mitchinson (Unbound Books) to discuss his career in literature, criticism and journalism. Meades’ literary works include novels Filthy English (1984) and Pompey (1993) and autobiography An Encyclopaedia of Myself (2014). His most recent work, The Plagiarist in the Kitchen (2017), is his first cookbook.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To celebrate the publication of Vanishing Points, a new showcase of writing from El Salvador, Tania Pleitez Vela and Claudia Castro Luna were at the shop to discuss the anthology, which aims to challenge the traditional concepts of nationality and the idea of a 'national literature'. The anthology includes stories from the likes of Horacio Castellanos Moya, Jacinta Escudos, Miguel Huezo Mixco, Rafael Menjívar Ochoa and Ana Escoto, showcasing authors that reside in El Salvador as well as authors that have emigrated to the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Europe. Thus, Vanishing Points offers both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking readers an array of linguistic, thematic and aesthetic contrasts. This is Kalina’s second volume––the first one was dedicated to poetry and published in 2014––and also a first of its kind: a bridge and an opportunity for Salvadoran writers to establish a dialogue with the literary community at large. This event took place with the support of the Embassy of El Salvador. &n