London Review Bookshop Podcasts

The Observer called Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy ‘a landmark in twenty-first century English literature, the culmination of an artist’s unshakeable efforts to forge her own path’. The essays in her latest book Coventry explore other writers who forged their own path – among them Natalia Ginzburg, Olivia Manning and D.H. Lawrence – and wider themes political, personal and ethical. The discussion focussed on the themes that she has explored in her impressive body of work to date: the thinking and philosophy that have driven her to these positions, how her thinking is evolving and the new challenges that she is exploring. Cusk was in conversation with Chris Power, author of Mothers (Faber and Faber). Rachel Cusk is the author of the trilogy Outline, Transit, Kudos; the memoirs A Life’s Work, The Last Supper and Aftermath; and several other novels: Saving Agnes (winner of the Whitbread Award), The Temporary, The Country Life (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), The Lucky Ones, In the Fold, *Arlington Park* and The Bradshaw Variations. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best Young British Novelists. She has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize three times, most recently for Kudos.

One of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, Susan Sontag’s writing – on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism, Fascism, Freudianism, Communism and Americanism – forms an indispensable guide to our modern world. Benjamin Moser’s Sontag: Her Life is the first biography based on exclusive access to her restricted archive, providing fascinating insights into both the public myth and private life of an endlessly complex individual. Moser was at the shop to discuss Sontag’s life and legacy with Lara Feigel, author of Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing.

Long regarded as one of the world’s leading pianists, Stephen Hough is also a fine and perceptive writer, whose first novel was published last year. Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More (Faber) brings together around 200 of his short essays, many of which began as notes made ‘during that dead time on the road’ that is the lot of the international performer – at airports, on planes and in hotel rooms. In these ‘jottings’, Hough ranges widely over all aspects of music and musical life, as well as people and places, art and literature, religion and ethics. Hough was in conversation with James Jolly, Editor-in-Chief of Gramophone magazine.

In her latest book, Astra Taylor – ‘a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions’ (Naomi Klein) – argues that democracy is not just in crisis, but that real democracy, inclusive and egalitarian, has never existed. Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (Verso) aims to re-examine what we mean by democracy, what we want from it, and understand why it is so hard to realise. Taylor was in conversation with David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs and Professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Diane Williams’s short (most of them very short) stories have been captivating literary audiences on both sides of the Atlantic for the last three decades. Ben Marcus, in his introduction to The Collected Stories, has described them as ‘fictions of perfect strangeness’, adding that they ‘prize enigma and the uncanny above all else.’ Williams read from her work, and was in conversation with Lara Pawson, formerly the BBC’s correspondent in Angola and author of This is the Place to Be (CB Editions).

Celia Paul, born in India in 1959 and now resident in Bloomsbury is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working in Britain today. Following a passionate affair with painter Lucian Freud and figuring in several of his canvases she emerged as an immensely talented painter, initially focussing on intimate depictions of family life before more recently turning to the broader scale of landscape and sea-scape. Her memoir Self-Portrait (Jonathan Cape) is an invaluable first-hand account of the trials and rewards of making great art, and has been described by Esther Freud as ‘An insight into the white-knuckle determination needed to make great art, and why it is so few women painters reach the heights. An astoundingly honest book, moving and engrossing – full of truths.’ Paul was in conversation about her work with curator and art writer Catherine Lampert.

Something strange has happened to truth in the past few years. Politicians, marketeers, Twitterists and others seem to have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if what they say is true as long as some people believe it (and even that doesn’t seem to matter all that much sometimes). In his latest book This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (Faber) intrepid investigative reporter Peter Pomerantsev travels the world, from China to Russia to Syria to the Balkans and to Brexit Britain in an often surprising investigation of why we can no longer believe what we say, or say what we believe. Peter Pomerantsev was in conversation with Guardian columnist Marina Hyde and Carl Miller, author of The Death of the Gods.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the first emancipated generation of black women in the USA were obliged, sometimes enabled and often hindered in creating new ways of living after the abolition of slavery. In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (Profile), Professor Saidiya Hartman tells the inspiring and surprising stories of these pioneers, whose discoveries about how to be in the world have been followed and emulated by people, black, white, gay, straight, cis, trans and other, ever since. Hartman was in conversation about her work with writer and activist Lola Olufemi.

Jorge Galán’s extraordinary non-fiction novel Noviembre, now published in an English translation by Jason Wilson as November, recounts the horrifying murder of six Jesuit priests and two women during the Salvadorian civil war in 1989, dealing both with its aftermath and the complex political situation from which the atrocity arose. Its original publication in Spanish led to death threats against the author which forced Galán to flee his native country. Galán was in conversation with journalist Mark Dowd who has written widely and produced several documentaries on the relationship between religion and human rights. The interpreter was Cecilia Lipovseck from [Multilateral London][2]. This event is made possible by the generous support of Instituto Cervantes and Elisabeth Hayek.

In her latest book ‘Surfacing’ (Sort of Books), poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie explores what emerges: from the earth, from memory and from the mind. Her travels take her from Arctic Alaska to the sand dunes and machair of Scotland in a quest to discover what archaeology might tell us about the past, the present and the future. Her writing throughout is marked, as always, by an acute attention to the natural world. She was in conversation about her work with Philip Hoare, author of ‘Leviathan’ and ‘Risingtidefallingstar’.

LRB contributors and editors convened at the London Review Bookshop in the month of the paper’s 40th anniversary to reflect on the last four decades through the lens of subjects they’ve written about in the pages of the LRB. In the last event of the series, Jeremy Harding and Adam Shatz discussed shared preoccupations including decolonisation and orientalism, Israel-Palestine, 20th-century music, and France, in conversation with the novelist Nikita Lalwani.

Join LRB contributors and editors at the London Review Bookshop in the month of the paper’s 40th anniversary, as they reflect on the last four decades through the lens of subjects they’ve written about in the pages of the LRB. Nell Dunn and Tessa Hadley discuss fictional representations of women’s everyday lives with the LRB’s Joanna Biggs.

Join LRB contributors and editors at the London Review Bookshop in the month of the paper’s 40th anniversary, as they reflect on the last four decades through the lens of subjects they’ve written about in the pages of the LRB. On Wednesday 16 October, William Davies and Katrina Forrester discussed shared preoccupations including the subjects of their recent books, Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World and In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy.

Join LRB contributors and editors at the London Review Bookshop in the month of the paper’s 40th anniversary, as they reflect on the last four decades through the lens of subjects they’ve written about in the pages of the LRB. In the first event of the series, Rosemary Hill and Iain Sinclair discussed shared preoccupations starting with London.

Join LRB contributors and editors at the London Review Bookshop in the month of the paper’s 40th anniversary, as they reflect on the last four decades through the lens of subjects they’ve written about in the pages of the LRB. In the first event of the series, Rosemary Hill and Iain Sinclair discussed shared preoccupations starting with London.