Diary From the Pandemic Year
Alan Bennett, 20 August 2025
26 May 2021 · 41mins
Alan Bennett reads selections from his diary from March 2020 to March 2021.
Alan Bennett reads selections from his diary from March 2020 to March 2021.
Adam Shatz talks to Tareq Baconi and Henriette Chacar about the crisis in Israel-Palestine, the significance of the ceasefire, the context of the war, the politics inside Israel and the Gaza Strip, and the response in Washington.
Claire Hall talks to Thomas Jones about Ancient Greek horoscopy, the Ptolemaic model, the mysteries of the Antikythera mechanism, and why astrology was the first data science.
Rosa Lyster talks to Thomas Jones about the global water crisis, from the severe droughts in her home city of Cape Town, to the sinking of Mexico City and the damming of the Nile, and the need for all countries to prepare for future shortages.
Peter Geoghegan talks to Thomas Jones about the Greensill lobbying scandal, the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat, the unhealthy relationship between successive British governments and the private sector, and what it might all mean for the future of the Union.
Jesse McCarthy talks to Adam Shatz about his studies of Black diasporic culture, from Juan de Pareja to Audre Lorde, and his critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s case for reparations.
Irina Dumitrescu talks to Thomas Jones about female authorship in early medieval England, and how the power and freedom that (some) women had in the eighth century challenges the idea of linear social progress.
John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about his experience of being on a cargo ship blocked from entering the Suez Canal in 1967, his subsequent journey round the Cape of Good Hope, and the modern-day business of containers.
Diane Williams talks to Thomas Jones about her short stories, and reads her latest two published in the LRB.
Gill Partington and Thomas Jones explore Kenneth Goldsmith’s online avant-garde archive UbuWeb, listen to some of the things you can find on it, and consider what might not be found there.
Mouin Rabbani and Nathan Thrall talk to Adam Shatz about Israel’s vaccination programme, the system of apartheid that now effectively exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, the legacy of Trump’s policies, and how the Biden administration may or may not exert its influence.
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of the Saint Lucian poet, playwright and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott.
Terry Castle talks to Thomas Jones about Patricia Highsmith.
Catherine Moore, a consultant clinical virologist at Public Health Wales, and Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the vaccine rollout for Sars-CoV-2, the new variant originally found in Brazil, and whether the virus might ever be eliminated.
Mary-Kay Wilmers, who retired as editor of the LRB last month, talks to Andrew O’Hagan about her career, first at Faber and Faber, then the Listener, then for 42 years at the London Review of Books. She talks about working with T.S. Eliot, the importance of being teased, and how a joke by Alan Bennett changed her life.