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PODCAST

The Book Club

Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented weekly by Sam Leith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

arts books

All Episodes

39:32

Peter James: Jack Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed

The Book Club ·

2025/10/22

Sam Leith's guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the crime writer PeterJames. Peter has contributed the introduction to a new edition of the classic thrillerThe Eagle Has Landed, which is 50 years old this month. He tells Sam what it was that made Jack Higgins's novel so groundbreaking, about what it takes to make you root for the bad guys, how thrillers and detective stories differ – and about his own history with Jack Higgins. Plus, he tells me about his own new novelThe Hawk Is Dead— which

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48:33

Luke Kemp: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

The Book Club ·

2025/10/15

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Luke Kemp. In his new book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Luke seeks lessons from prehistory to understand how societies grow and flourish, what kills them, and where we are now. He tells me what Hobbes got wrong, why ‘civilisation’ isn’t always the boon we have been taught to think it is, and why societal collapse might have been a good thing in the past but could be a very bad thing in the future.Become a Spectator

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38:20

Ben Schott: An Unexpectedly Essential Guide to Language

The Book Club ·

2025/10/07

his week’s Book Club podcast is Ben Schott. The author of the world- (or downstairs-loo-) conquering Schott’s Original Miscellany returns with Schott’s Significa, a deeply reported and constantly surprising book in which he uses the private languages of various communities – from gondoliers to graffiti writers and from Swifties to sommeliers – as a way of understanding their worlds. Ben tells me about how the project came together, how he was inspired by the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie pinning

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50:41

Speaker series: Jeffrey Archer – End Game

The Book Club ·

2025/10/05

Michael Gove speaks to Jeffrey Archer about his life, career and his new novel End Game, which marks the gripping finale of the William Warwick series. This discussion was part of the Spectator's speaker series. To see more on our upcoming events – including with Charles Moore and with Bernard Cornwell – go to events.spectator.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

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39:17

Philippa Gregory: Boleyn Traitor

The Book Club ·

2025/10/01

Sam Leith's guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the historical novelistPhilippa Gregory. In her gripping new book Boleyn Traitor, Philippa seeks to rescue Jane Boleyn from the vast condescension of history. She tells Sam how fiction allows her to make plausible speculations about the gaps in the record, how she works to makethe Tudors speak to us in language we can recognise, where Henry VIII went wrong — and what the Tudor court's descent into tyranny has to say to us about our own

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43:15

Sudhir Hazareesingh: Daring to be Free

The Book Club ·

2025/09/24

Sam's guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Sudhir Hazareesingh, whose new book Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World reframes the story of Atlantic slavery. He explains why the familiar tale of enlightened Europeans bringing about abolition leaves out the most important voices of all – the enslaved themselves – and how from Africa to Haiti and beyond, traditions of rebellion, resistance and spiritual resilience shaped the struggle for

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37:31

Roger Lewis: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

The Book Club ·

2025/09/17

Sam Leith's guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Roger Lewis, whose book The Life and Death of Peter Sellers has been republished to mark 100 years since the comedian's birth. Roger tells Sam about the difference between Sellers's public persona and private life, plus his influence on comedy today. They also discuss how Roger reinvented the way biographies were written, and whether the view he had of Sellers as a teenager changed through writing the book.Produced by James Lewis.Become a

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42:38

Andrew Bayliss: Sparta – The Rise and Fall of An...

The Book Club ·

2025/09/10

Sam Leith’s guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Andrew Bayliss, author ofSparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower. Andrew tells Sam what we know — and don't know – about these much-mythologised figures from the Ancient world and tells the story of how a tiny city-state punched above its weight, until it didn't.Thisis Sparta.Produced by Patrick Gibbons.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more

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47:50

Lea Ypi: Indignity

The Book Club ·

2025/09/03

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the Albanian-born political philosopher Lea Ypi, whose new bookIndignity: A Life Reimaginedreconstructs the story of her grandmother's early life amid the turbulence of the early and mid twentieth century. She talks to me about using the techniques of fiction to supply the gaps in the archive, about Albania's troubling position as a tiny power among great ones, why the fight between Kant and Nietzsche remains a live one — and how online trolls sparked her

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42:29

Brideshead Revisited, 80 years on: from the archives

The Book Club ·

2025/08/27

This week's Book Club podcast marks the 80th anniversary this year of the publication of Brideshead Revisited. This conversation is from the archives, originally recorded in 2020 to mark its 75th anniversary.To discuss Evelyn Waugh's great novel, Sam Leith is joined by literary critic and author Philip Hensher, and by the novelist's grandson (and general editor of Oxford University Press's complete Evelyn Waugh) Alexander Waugh. What made the novel so pivotal in Waugh's career, what did it mean to

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31:54

Max Hastings: Sword – D-Day, Trial by Battle

The Book Club ·

2025/08/20

Sam Leith's guest for this week's Book Club podcast is Max Hastings. Max joined Sam earlier this year for a live recording to discuss his new book Sword: D-Day, trial by battle, which tells the story of the individual stories who risked their lives as part of Operation Overlord. The discussion was arranged to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day. On the podcast Max tells Sam about why he was drawn to chronicle war, why it is important to remember all victims and not just the ‘traditional heroes’, and

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35:23

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound

The Book Club ·

2025/08/13

Sam Leith's guest for this week's Book Club podcast is Joanna Pocock, whose new bookGreyhounddescribes two trips she took across America by Greyhound bus in 2006 and 2023. They talk about the literature of the road, that distinctively American and usually distinctively male genre, and the meaning of travel – and Joanna tells Sam how the America you see from a Greyhound differs from the one you see on television;and how dramatically it has changed even over the last couple of decades.Become a

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26:34

Nicola Barker: TonyInterruptor

The Book Club ·

2025/08/06

Sam Leith's guest on this week'sBookClub podcast is Nicola Barker, talking about her newbookTonyInterruptor-- about how a man who interrupts a free jazz concert becomes a viral sensation on social media. Nicola tells Sam why some of herbooks are bouts of the flu and some are sneezes, how hard she works on her apparently spontaneous prose, why she remains devoted to reality television — and about the time she went to visitMartin Amis with a ghetto blaster.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access

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34:38

Gary Shteyngart: Vera, or Faith

The Book Club ·

2025/07/30

Sam Leith is joined for this week's Book Club podcast by Gary Shteyngart — whose new novelVera, or Faithis set in a near-future America whose politics seems to be less science-fictional by the day. It tells the unexpectedly tender story of a bright but lonely ten-year-old girl contending with her parents' failing marriage and navigating the beginnings of a friendship. Gary tells Sam how parenthood changed him as a writer, how his feelings about his Russian heritage have shifted uncomfortably in

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44:01

Frances Wilson: Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel...

The Book Club ·

2025/07/23

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the biographer Frances Wilson, whose new bookElectric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Sparkwas recently lauded in these pages as "mesmerising" and "a revolutionary book". She tells me how she immersed herself in the spooky life and peerless art of the great novelist, and why a conventional biographical treatment would never have been adequate to a subject for whom fiction and reality twined in unexpected and disconcerting ways.Become a Spectator subscriber

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34:18

Irvine Welsh: Men In Love – Trainspotting Sequel

The Book Club ·

2025/07/16

My guest this week is Irvine Welsh – who, three decades after his era-defining hit Trainspotting, returns with a direct sequel, Men In Love. Irvine tells me what Sick Boy, Renton, Spud and Begbie mean to him, why his new book hopes to encourage a new generation to discover Romantic verse and shagging, and why MDMA deserves more credit for the Good Friday Agreement than Tony Blair.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out

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34:30

M. John Harrison: The Course of the Heart

The Book Club ·

2025/07/09

My guest this week is the writer M. John Harrison, who joins me to talk about the rerelease of his 1992 novel The Course of the Heart – a deeply strange and riddling story of grief, friendship, memory and occult magic. We talk about why this book is so personal to him, what he learned from Charles Williams and Arthur Machen, turning his back on science fiction/fantasy and returning to it – as well as how probably the most acclaimed of all his novels, Light, came about after Iain Banks told him he

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35:43

Karin Slaughter: We Are All Guilty Here

The Book Club ·

2025/07/02

Sam Leith's guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is one of the most popular living thriller writers. Karin Slaughter has made her native Georgia her fictional territory, and she joins Sam as she launches a new series set in a whole new county, with the book We Are All Guilty Here. They talk 'planning versus pantsing', what it means to write violence against women as a woman and how becoming the showrunner for television compares to the sovereignty of the novelist.

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44:03

Carl Zimmer: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

The Book Club ·

2025/06/25

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is science writer Carl Zimmer, whose new book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe explores the invisible world of the aerobiome – the trillions of microbes and particles we inhale every day. He tells me how Louis Pasteur's glacier experiments kicked off a forgotten scientific journey; how Cold War fears turned airborne research into a bioweapons race; and why the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a century-long misunderstanding about how diseases

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49:01

William Dalrymple: The Golden Road

The Book Club ·

2025/06/18

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India’s cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road’ is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra Modi’s new favourite author.

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452 results

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