The TLS Podcast The TLS

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Clifford Thompson to discuss One Night in Miami, a film by Regina King, which sees Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay gather for heated debate; from exclusivity and luxury in imperial China to cheap ubiquity in modern day Europe, Norma Clarke considers the rise and fall of porcelain; plus, a new poem by Anne Carson, “Sure, I Was Loved”


One Night in Miami, dir. Regina King
The City of Blue and White: Chinese porcelain and the early modern world by Anne Gerritsen
Porcelain: A history from the heart of Europe by Suzanne L . Marchand
“Sure, I Was Loved” by Anne Carson, in this week’s TLS
 
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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard, who, via an old exam paper, emphasizes the importance of teaching Classics in context (Q1: "Dryads, Hyads, Naiads, Oreads, Pleiads … Does 'Classical influence' in modern poetry always come down to snobbery and elitism?”); Zachary Leader reports on the latest offerings from the Joyce Industry; and Jane O'Grady considers how the Enlightenment undid itself.


James Joyce and the Matter Of Paris, by Catherine Flynn
James Joyce and the Jesuits, by Michael Mayo
Panepiphanal World: James Joyce’s epiphanies, by Sangam Macduff
The Enlightenment: The pursuit of happiness 1680–1790, by Ritchie Robertson
 
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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the Karachi-based journalist Sanam Maher to discuss cliché and originality in foreign correspondents' writing on Pakistan; a whistle-stop tour through (some) of the books of 2021; Lucy Scholes reviews a clutch of novels in the British Library's Women Writers series, dedicated to once-popular writers


The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a divided nation, by Declan Walsh
O, the Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair 
Chatterton Square by E. H. Young
Father by Elizabeth Von Arnim 
 
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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the critic Muriel Zagha to marvel at a five-volume, “definitive” study of the iconic French filmmaker Jacques Tati, every aspect of whose apparently chaotic cinematic universe was controlled to the nth degree; Calum Mechie considers some new approaches to the life and legacy of George Orwell; and – “Can we take it? Can Dickens take it?” – ’tis the season for adaptations of A Christmas Carol…


The Definitive Jacques Tati, edited by Alison Castle
On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A biography by D. J. Taylor
Orwell: A man of our time by Richard Bradford
Becoming George Orwell: Life and letters, legend and legacy, by John Rodden
Eileen: The making of George Orwell, by Sylvia Topp 


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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Toby Lichtig are joined by Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London, to discuss two important biographies of Joseph Stalin, covering the opposite ends of the dictator’s life; the debate around the official Home Office history of Britain, a document full of omissions and riddled with errors, rolls on; and can a book make you a better person? Can even the high modernists be mined for lessons in life? Joanna Scutts considers the relationship between 'serious' literature and self-help.


Stalin: Passage to revolution by Ronald Grigor Suny
Late Stalinism: The aesthetics of politics by Evgeny Dobrenko, translated by Jesse M. Savage
The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for advice in modern literature, by Beth Blum
Reading for Life by Philip Davis


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This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Paul Griffiths, the author most recently of the novel Mr Beethoven, to discuss the heroic oeuvre of the great composer, 250 years after his birth; Joseph Farrell takes us through the life and work of Gianni Rodari, a kind of Italian George Orwell transplanted to Neverland.


Selected books:
Beethoven's Conversation Books, translated and edited by Theodore Albrecht
Beethoven's Lives by Lewis Lockwood
Beethoven: A Life by Jan Caeyers
Beethoven: A life in nine pieces, by Laura Tunbridge
– read the full piece here 
Telephone Tales, by Gianni Rodari, translated by Antony Shugaar
 
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