The Book Club

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Edward Mendelson, who with the publication of the Complete Poems of W H Auden in two volumes now sets the crown on more than half a century of scholarship on the poet. There’s nobody on the planet who knows more about this towering figure in twentieth-century poetry. He tells me what he finds so inexhaustibly rewarding about Auden’s work, talks about the shape of the poet’s career, the personal encounters that set him on this path… and about sex, religion and semicolons.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest in this week's Book Club Podcast is Christopher de Hamel, author of the new The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club. He tells me about the enduring fascination of illuminated manuscripts, and the fraternity over more than a millennium of those who have loved, coveted, collected, sold, illustrated and – in one case – forged them. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s Book Club podcast is a live special, recorded at this year’s inaugural Braemar Literary Festival. I’m talking to Sir Ian Rankin, in an exclusive pre-publication event, about his new Rebus novel A Heart Full of Headstones. You can see images from the event and more details of the festival at https://www.braemarliteraryfestival.co.ukBecome a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov – who has this year become one of the most articulate ambassadors to the West for the situation in his homeland. As a book of his recent writings, Diary of an Invasion, is published in English, he tells me about the experience of trading fiction for the "duty" of a public intellectual in wartime. As an ethnic Russian Ukrainian, he talks about what the West fails to understand about the profound differences between Russian and Ukrainian people, how their national literatures nourish and reflect these differences, how language itself has become one of the battlegrounds, and what Zelensky looked like to Ukrainians before he became a heroic war leader.      Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the art historian Dr Matt Lodder, whose new book is Painted People: Humanity in 21 Tattoos. He tells me how much more there is to the history of painting on the body than we commonly suppose; and how over the years the history of tattooing (and public attitudes to it) have been shaped by religion, imperialism, class and fashion. Plus, we discover the one thing on which Boomers and Gen Z can agree…Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week's podcast is best known as a stand-up comic, and co-host of the hit second world war podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Now Al Murray has produced a book – Command: How The Allies Learned To Win the Second World War – in which he looks at the progress of the war through case studies of the men who, one way and another, made a difference to it. He tells me how we turned round a war we spent three years losing so badly, and along the way provides some sharp reassessments of (among other eminences) Orde Wingate, George Patton and the two-pound gun. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Peter Stothard, whose new book Crassus: The First Tycoon tells the story of the third man in Rome’s great triumvirate: landlord, power-broker, Spartacus’s nemesis and leader of a hubristic expedition to the east that was to see his glorious career end in bitter failure.Image © Teri PengilleyBecome a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is the doyen of war studies, Lawrence Freedman. His new book Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine takes a fascinating look at the interplay between politics and conflict in the post-war era. He tells me why dictators make bad generals, how soldiers are always playing politics, how the nuclear age has changed the calculus of conflict and gives me his latest read on the progress of the war in Ukraine. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Book Club podcast we’re talking about the best crime writer you’ve (probably) never heard of. As Penguin reissues three of Josephine Tey’s classic Golden Age novels, I’m joined by Nicola Upson, whose own detective stories (most recently Dear Little Corpses) feature Tey as a central character. She tells me about the unique character of Tey’s writing, her discreet private life, and about how she made possible the psychological crime fiction that we read now.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is A. M. Homes. She talks about her new novel The Unfolding, which imagines a conspiracy of angry Republicans forming after John McCain’s 2008 election defeat in the hopes of taking their America back. She talks about her history of prescience, about the deep weirdness of the Washington she grew up in, and why there’s more than one 'deep state'.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.