‘Octopuses,’ Amia Srinivasan writes, ‘are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.’ In our third summer reading, Srinivasan explores the paradoxical nature of octopus lives, and the difficulties humans have in understanding them.
John Lanchester dissects Agatha Christie’s compulsive readability, and considers why, despite her brazen lack of style, she was a great formalist.
In the first of our summer readings, Terry Castle reads her 2005 piece about her “on-again, off-again, semi-friendship” with Susan Sontag.
Almost eighteen months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv residents have resumed something resembling pre-war life. James Meek recently returned to the city, and joins Tom to discuss the new normal.
Irina Dumitrescu joins Tom for a Close Readings fusion episode looking at Chaucer’s classical mind, and in particular his use of Ovid’s Heroides in The Legend of Good Women, in which the poet does penance for his poor depictions of women by retelling the stories of Ariadne, Phaedra, Lucrece and others in a more sympathetic light.
As Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover exercised a dictatorial influence over the department – and, it seems, everyone else. Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss some of the most puzzling features of Hoover’s personality and approach to policing.
Patricia Lockwood joins Joanne O'Leary to discuss David Foster Wallace’s work in the light of posthumous publications and the shadow of #MeToo.
The political economist William Davies joins Tom to discuss the UK’s high inflation, what government policies could alleviate the crisis and whether next year’s general election will lead to any significant change.
Amia Srinivasan discusses the UK's recent appointment of a "free speech tsar", whether students are increasingly leaning left and how activists across the political spectrum weaponise the concept of harm.
Rosemary Hill and Jeremy Harte discuss the many groups and stories that have emerged throughout the 20th century to challenge the narratives about Stonehenge presented by archaeologists.
For the third episode in her short series on Stonehenge, Rosemary Hill is joined by Seamus Perry to experience the stone circle through the mind and eyes of a Romantic, with the likes of Wordsworth, Blake, Turner and Constable.
Kevin Okoth and Jeremy Harding join Tom to discuss two recent books reassessing African decolonisation.
In the second episode of her short series looking at why Stonehenge has occupied such an important place in the story of Britain, Rosemary Hill talks to Kate Bennett about the two antiquarians, John Aubrey and William Stukeley, who first treated the stone circle as a material object whose secrets could be revealed through careful measurement and study, and so pioneered many of the practices of modern archaeology.
Following the Turkish president’s success in the run-off election on Sunday, Izzy Finkel and Tom Stevenson join Tom to discuss whether Erdoğan’s victory was ever in doubt.
Rosemary Hill begins a new four-part series looking at what people have thought about Stonehenge over the past few hundred years, and why it’s come to matter so much in the story of Britain. In the first episode she talks to architectural historian Vaughan Hart about how Inigo Jones and John Wood were inspired by the great stone structure.