Freedom, Books, Flowers & The Moon

From Ovid to the "Black Spartacus". Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's classics editor Mary Beard to pick apart the story of "seduction", ancient and modern, the poet Fiona Benson reads her latest work, and the TLS's history editor David Horspool explores two accounts of America's domestic slave trade and a new biography of Toussaint Louverture.Strange Antics: A history of seduction by Clement KnoxWilliams’ Gang: A notorious slave trader and his cargo of Black convicts by Jeff Forret Sweet Taste of Liberty: A true story of slavery and restitution in America by W. Caleb McDanielBlack Spartacus: The epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From Poirot on the River Nile to Verdi's take on the infamous Scottish play. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas talk to writer Laura Thompson about the work of Agatha Christie and how she managed to move with the times, and Professor Larry Wolff joins us from Florence to discuss the tentative return of live opera in Italy with Verdi's Macbeth at the Parma Verdi Festival.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Toby Lichtig talks us through this year's Booker shortlisted novels, plus a couple of others, and Lucy Dallas reports on the French scene (where real life and fiction blur...); finally, we explore the situation in Israel and Palestine from three rather different perspectives.An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces made a nation by Haim Bresheeth-Zabner The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine campus debate by Kenneth S. SternThe new peace? – Israel’s unexpected ray of light by Ari Shavit – www.the-TLS.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In 1405, Christine de Pisan took up the pen in defense of her maligned sex, imagining a 'City of Ladies' in which the most virtuous female leaders of history might be preserved from the distortions of misogyny. Six hundred years later, with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great as her guides, the novelist and historian Lisa Hilton revisits the City to shake the foundations of the way we write about power  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, and today we’re returning to last year’s suggestions. In 2019, our contributor Diana Darke said in the paper: "A lot of things need saving this summer – tangible things like bees, Notre-Dame, water … and intangible things like democracy, humanitarian ideals, community". Among the many subjects under discussion here are Oulipo, impeachment, and climate change. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on books you might have missed. Today we are sauntering back to the summer of 2018, and an episode in which we learnt which books our contributors – including Bernardine Evaristo, Claire Lowdon and Carlo Rovelli – were looking forward to. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance once again to hear recommendations from our writers and editors, on subjects like Marcel Proust’s letters, tech-ensnared science fiction and Euripides. In this episode, from 2017, there is also an interview with that year’s Man Booker International Prize Winner, David Grossman, and his translator Jessica Cohen. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on all that good stuff. Today we’re skipping back to 2016’s books of the year recommendations. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gabrielle Walker talks us through three unhelpful attitudes to global warming, as exemplified in the Michael Moore-produced film Planet of the Humans; Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses the complex relationship between charisma and celebrity in the age of Revolution (spoiler: it helps to have a horse)Planet of the Humans - YouTubeMen on Horseback by David Bell  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What style of life did an ancient Roman emperor lead? How did he actually spend his time? Mary Beard fills us in; Frances Wilson on literary couples (and their pet names) and what they can, and can’t, tell us about marriage; Mika Ross-Southall on how gentrification works and who it works for The Emperor in the Roman World by Fergus MillarLiterary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and intimacy by Janine UtellParallel Lives: Five Victorian marriages by Phyllis RoseNewcomers: Gentrification and its discontents by Matthew L. SchuermanUs Versus Them: Race, crime, and gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods by Jan DoeringThe Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change, edited by Lisa Berglund and Siobhan GregoryAlpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich, by Rowland Atkinson  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Geoff Dyer on why Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove was one of the most memorable reading experiences of his life (a taster from his essay: “There was no book and no reader. There was just this world, this huge landscape and its magnificently peopled emptiness”); In April 1939, the black contralto Marian Anderson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and performed to a crowd of 75,000 people. Carol J. Oja sheds light on the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. Read more at the-tls.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Min Wild on recent attempts to get to grips with that most slippery of beasts, the history of the novel (expect a lively cast, including Frances Burney, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne and Jane Porter); Declan Ryan on where writing overlaps with boxing and the story of the eighteenth-century boxer Daniel Mendoza, known as The Fighting Jew, who made of the sport an art form BooksWithout the Novel: Romance and the history of prose fiction by Scott BlackRevising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from manuscript to print by Hilary HavensPublic Vows: Fictions of marriage in the English Enlightenment by Melissa J. GanzBorn Yesterday: Inexperience and the early realist novel by Stephanie Insley HershinowCaptain Singleton by Daniel Defoe, edited by Manushag PowellTristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, edited by Judith HawleyThaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter, edited by Thomas McLean and Ruth Knezevich  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lynsey Hanley on the Pet Shop Boys and how a music duo that has always refused to play the pop game just keeps winning; The TLS’s history editor David Horspool talks us through a selection of articles on medieval history, including a compelling account of Henry III, a pious and peculiar king, who, against the odds, reigned for more than half a century ‘Pet Shop Boys, Literally’ and ‘Pet Shop Boys Versus America’, both by Chris Heath Blood Royal: Dynastic politics in medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett Henry III 1207–1258: The rise to power and personal rule by David Carpenter Westminster Abbey: A church in history, edited by David Cannadine  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When, last year the writer and activist Bernardine Evaristo, won the Booker Prize for fiction – becoming in fact, the first black British person to do so – we at the TLS were not surprised. Evaristo has written for us for some years now, and ‘Girl, Woman, Other’, the novel for which the prize was awarded, was only the latest in a run of novels full of life and questions and challenges. And the recognition keeps coming. This week brought two more prizes at the British Book Awards; 'Girl, Woman, Other' won in the Fiction category and Evaristo was named Author of the Year. In this reissued episode of the TLS podcast, recorded just after winning the Booker Prize, the author speaks to our fiction editor Toby Lichtig  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

TLS editors pick through the books some of our writers will be reading this summer, and share their own selections.Visit the-TLS.co.uk to read the 'Summer Books' feature in full    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The death row lawyer Clive Stafford Smith certainly can’t, especially as this week should have seen Edward Earl Johnson turn sixty. Instead, in 1987, he was executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary for a crime nobody thinks he committed; Harry Sidebottom considers the ancients’ view on the plague, a serious outbreak of which occurred somewhere around the Mediterranean every ten to twenty years; “If oil is the blood of the global economy, shipping is the circulatory system”, say Tom Stevenson, who describes how the world’s economic and diplomatic relationships play out at sea Fourteen Days in May – BBC Storyville, on BBC iPlayerSinews of War and Trade: Shipping and capitalism in the Arabian peninsula by Laleh Khalili  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What art have we been enjoying in lockdown? What are we most missing? And what is the future of art institutions? The TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas joins us to discuss; Edith Hall tells us about Artemidorus, the author of an ancient dream manual now finally available in English; David Bromwich on democracy and the rise of the strongman A symposium on art in lockdown by the TLS , plus commentary by Nicholas KenyonThe Interpretation of Dreams by Artemidorus, translated by Martin HammondAn Ancient Dream Manual – Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams, by Peter ThonemannSee David Bromich’s round-up of books on the TLS website.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin Grant on several hundred years of Jamaican excellence and dysfunction; fifty years since the death of E. M. Forster, Michael Caines considers Forster’s legacy as a novelist and critic; the poet A. E. Stallings on an Athens slowly emerging from lockdown The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the postcolonial predicament by Orlando Patterson  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The poet and novelist Adam Foulds on the evolution of loneliness and its traditionally privileged cousin, solitude; Sam Leith on thrills, spills and racism in Willard Price’s children’s Adventure series; Molly Guinness dips into 300-odd years of children’s books and finds leaden instruction, radical ideas and pure nonsenseA History of Solitude by David VincentA Biography of Loneliness: The history of an emotion by Fay Bound AlbertiDiscovering Children’s Books, the British Library onlineBritish Literature Catalogue, Peter Harrington  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hirsh Sawhney files a lockdown dispatch from New Haven, Connecticut, the uneasy home of Yale University; Arin Keeble talks us through the tricksy, rewarding and under-known work of Percival Everett; Lauren Kassel on the history of astrology, one of the oldest, most complex, intellectually powerful – and controversial – sciences Telephone by Percival EverettA Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the birth of science by Alexander Boxer  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.