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PODCAST

New Books in British Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

0:00

Jonathan Schneer, "Nine Days in May: The General...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/07/01

In May, 1926, nearly three million British workers downed tools to support nearly one million of their countrymen, miners whose employers meant to lengthen their working day and cut their pay. This General Strike brought the country to a grinding halt - which, according to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, represented a threat not merely to the nation but to the parliamentary system itself. For nine days, the world's best organized working class confronted the world's most powerful, and

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52:42

Dallas Liddle, "News Machines: The Systems of Daily...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/29

British daily newspapers transformed rapidly at the turn of the nineteenth century, ballooning in size and radically reorganizing staffing and production decade by decade. By mid-century, newspapers had grown from the folded single sheets of the previous century to large multi-page broadsheets, so impressive in the quantity of print they held and their speed of production that one of their nicknames was 'the daily miracle'. Traditional news history has overlooked a key fact for understanding

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39:58

Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/26

Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built the Beatles. There will never be another pop manager like Brian Epstein, the young record-retailer from Liverpool behind the 20th century's greatest romance. Having achieved his much-derided aim of making the Beatles "bigger than Elvis," Brian went on to make them bigger than any earthly instrument could measure. Only a handful of years older, he

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73:31

Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/24

Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain (U Chicago Press, 2026) examines how imperial precedents and racial ideologies shaped the medical treatments that the British state offered to several million Black and brown servicemen during World War I. In recovering the voices and experiences of these soldiers, Hilary R. Buxton illustrates how they navigated the institutional culture of the imperial military and how they helped to shape health and welfare systems well beyond the

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37:35

Christina Williams "Work of Fiction: Making a Living...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/23

Just how difficult is a career as a writer? In Work of Fiction: Making a Living from Writing in the UK (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) Christina Williams, a Lecturer in Media Communications at Bath Spa University examines contemporary writing as a paradoxical and precarious occupation. Foregrounding the experiences of a range of different writers, the book shows the range of work writers actually do to sustain their lives, along with the ideas and ideologies that help them to cope with the complexity

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46:41

Catherine Fletcher, "The Firearm Revolution: From...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/23

In Renaissance Italy, the gun was not only a tool of war but also a desirable object, a luxury item carried at court. Guns were in use on the battlefield by 1440; later in that century Leonardo da Vinci sketched a design for a faster-firing, more portable handgun that could be hidden beneath a cloak. As the gun proliferated in society, it became both a means of self-defence and a threat to civic order. In The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires (Princeton

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49:38

Samantha Ellis, "Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/17

I had the privilege of speaking with writer Samantha Ellis about her deeply moving new book, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture (PegasusBooks, 2026). Our discussion explored not only the story of a disappearing language, but also the broader questions of memory, identity, and what it means to inherit a fragile cultural legacy. At the heart of Ellis’s book is Judeo-Iraqi Arabic—also known as Baghdadi Jewish Arabic or Hakimalna—a language once spoken by the Jews of

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45:26

How Does the Second-Hand Book Business Really Work?...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/12

Today I’m speaking with Mike Lane, Managing Director and co-founder of WeBuyBooks about the economics of the second-hand book business. WeBuyBooks is one of the UK’s largest second-hand book dealers. Mike talks about how he got his start in the book industry, which books sell and which don't, and what the future holds for the book industry more broadly. Mike also discusses other second-hand business lines in CDs, DVDs, and Legos.Visit WeBuyBooks.co.uk and use code NBN15 for 15% extra on your

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0:00

Brexit Britain: 10 Years on from the Referendum

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/09

Anniversaries provide opportunities to take stock and reflect. It is now ten years since voters in the United Kingdom cast their ballots in a referendum on whether the UK should Leave or Remain in the European Union. The subsequent decade has seen much churn and change in British politics. Join Tim Haughton and guests Maria Sobolewska, Charlotte Galpin and Monika Brusenbauch Meislova for a discussion of the causes, process and consequences of that decision made on 23 June 2016.Maria Sobolewska is

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60:07

Stephen C.E. Hopkins, "⁠Translating hell: Vernacular...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/08

In the Middle Ages, hell was useful because it was vaguely defined. Canonical scriptures scarcely mention hell, leaving much to the imaginations of early Christians, who used it to sort out who belonged within the faith. Translating hell: Vernacular theology and apocrypha in the medieval North Sea (Manchester University Press, 2026) by Dr. Stephen C. E. Hopkins explores how hell became a place for literary experiments with local challenges in theology and identity. Following the reception and

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35:47

Ashok Malhotra, "Imperial Science, the Organic...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/06

Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion of scientificand environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US. Ashok Malhotra examines how imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped dietary and agricultural research carried out in the 1920s in British India, from soil protection initiatives to studies of diet and healthy living. It also discusses how a selective

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44:24

Lewis Ryder, "Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/05

⁠Connoisseurs and conmen: The contest for cultural authority in early twentieth-century Britain⁠ (Manchester University Press, 2026) by Dr. Lewis Ryder examines John Hilditch (1872-1930), a notorious collector of Chinese art who lied, hoaxed and manipulated in his struggle against museum experts to become a cultural authority. Previously overlooked as a pest with a dubious collection, this book uses Hilditch to interrogate how far the monumental social, cultural and political changes of the

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57:44

Radio ReOrient S14:10: Muslims in the Neoliberal Era,...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/05

In this episode hosts Salman Sayyid and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by William Barylo to discuss his most recent book ‘Muslims in the Neoliberal Era: Resisting, Healing, and Flourishing in the Metacolonial Era’. The discussion centred on the differing nature of the Muslim experience in France, the UK, and beyond, and the ways in which Muslims find spaces and forms of community resistance in view of the dominant structures. William Barylo is a research fellow in Sociology at the University of

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94:11

Alex Law, "The Roots of Sociology: Scottish...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/02

The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment have often been claimed for sociology. But, what does it mean to say these thinkers were sociologists, or at the very least precursors to the subject? Does it, for example, mean that intellectuals of 18th Century Scotland had the same concerns as we do today? Alternatively, does it mean we should think of sociology as an elite discipline, developed by men who were attached to power, albeit with some often critical insights? In turn, if we accept

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32:02

The Predictable Shock of Brexit: Cultural Dissonance...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/06/01

Was Brexit really a sudden, populist shock, or was the writing on the wall for decades? This week on International Horizons, Eli Karetny sits down with award-winning cultural historian Prof. Iain Quinn to discuss his forthcoming book, Cultural Dissonance: Brexit Reconsidered. Quinn dismantles the narrative that Leave voters were simply misled, arguing instead that the referendum was the inevitable boiling point of a deep, historical distrust in Westminster and the media. From the decline of serious

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24:10

Gregory Kenicer, "Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z"...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/05/29

Names are incredibly powerful things and are a crucial part of the way we see and classify the world around us. Plant names are especially fascinating in this respect. Some are simply descriptive or speak of ancient uses and remedies, whilst others have religious origins or roots in wider folklore, and some are very recent inventions.Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z (Birlinn, 2026) by Dr. Gregory Kenicer introduces almost 300 plant names to showcase the enormous variety of Scotland’s native species

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35:43

Laura Tisdall, "We Have Come to Be Destroyed:...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/05/27

What was life like for young people in twentieth century Britain? In We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr Laura Tisdall, a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Newcastle University tells the story of this era through the eyes of children and young people, offering a radical reinterpretation of Britain’s Cold War age. The book offers a wide range of perspectives, from young people’s hopes and anxieties for the future, through

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56:10

Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/05/27

Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles. In Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2026) Dr. Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most

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30:02

John Waddell, "The Celtic World: A History" (Four...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/05/23

At the dawn of history the Celts occupied a vast swathe of Europe from Ireland in the west to lands south of the Black Sea in Asia Minor. The study of this Celtic past has often been a disputed and debated territory and for centuries the true story of these Celtic-speakers of old was obscured by fanciful origin myths. Their origins and subsequent history were slowly revealed when linguistic studies and archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth century began to expose a rich and complex narrative

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76:28

Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness,...

New Books in British Studies ·

2026/05/21

Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale (Liverpool UP, 2026) is about the way the Romantic National Tale exercises power and defines the boundaries of citizenship through the categories of health, illness, and disability. When we see these categories at work in these novels, we understand how socio-political belonging is premised on the conception of the healthy body, to the exclusion of bodies deemed otherwise. Employing the medical humanities and,

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623 results

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