The Book Club (The Spectator)

With Dominic Dromgoole, author of Hamlet: Globe to Globe. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Anne Margaret Daniel, editor of I’d Die For You and Other Lost Stories, and Sarah Churchwell, author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of the Great Gatsby. Presented by Sam Leith.

Meditation, psychedelic drugs, charismatic Christianity, sex parties... all this, and more, in the search to lose control.

With Jules Evans, author of The Art of Losing Control. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Peter Stanford, author of Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident, and Peter Marshall, author of Heretics and Believers. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Will Self, author of Phone. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Professor Michael Wood. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Kit de Waal, and Francis Spufford. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Andrew O'Hagan, author of The Secret Life. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Jonathan Meades, author of The Plagiarist in the Kitchen. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Greg Garrett, author of Living With The Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse Presented by Sam Leith.

With Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Alex Clark and Damian Barr. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Rosie Wilby, author of Is Monogamy Dead? Presented by Sam Leith.

With Nick Hilton and Melanie McDonagh. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Bonnie MacBird, author of Unquiet Spirits, and Anthony O'Neill, author of Dr Jekyll and Mr Seek. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Jonathan Raban. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Clive James, author of Injury Time. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Harriet Gilbert, presenter of World Book Club on the BBC World Service. Presented by Sam Leith.

With A.N. Wilson, author of Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Robert Webb, author of 'How Not To Be a Boy'. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Anne Applebaum, author of Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Robert Harris, author of Munich. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Simon Heffer, author of The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Alan Hollinghurst, author of The Sparsholt Affair. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Claire Tomalin, author of A Life of My Own. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Philip Collins, author of When They Go Low, We Go High. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Philip Pullman, author of La Belle Sauvage and Daemon Voices. Presented by Sam Leith

With Hilary Spurling, author of a new biography of Anthony Powell. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Melvyn Bragg, author of William Tyndale: A Very Brief History. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Viv Groskop, author of The Anna Karenina Fix. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Richard Flanagan, author of First Person. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Masha Gessen, author of The Future is History: How totalitarianism reclaimed Russia. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Andrew Hunter Murray, Dan Schreiber, James Harkin, and Anna Ptaszynski. Presented by Sam Leith.

With Johann Hari, author of Lost Connections, and Joel Beckman, Operations Director of CALM.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Fiona Sampson, author of In Search of Mary Shelley.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Alan Taylor, author of Appointment in Arezzo, and Philip Hensher.

Presented by Sam Leith

With Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Stuart Kelly, author of The Minister and the Murderer: A Book of Aftermaths.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Mick Herron, author of London Rules.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now.

Presented by Sam Leith.

This is a live recording of a Spectator Books Podcast event. To find tickets to more events, visit spectator.co.uk/events

With Jay Heinrichs, author of How To Argue With A Cat: A Human’s Guide to the Art of Persuasion.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Wendy Cope.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With N. T. Wright, author of Paul: A Biography.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Andrew Gimson and Martin Rowson, author and illustrator of Gimson's Prime Ministers.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Richard Holloway, writer, broadcaster, and formerly Bishop of Edinburgh, discussing questions of life, death, and faith.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Lisa Hilton, a.k.a. L.S. Hilton, author of Ultima, who talks about her 'filthy books' on international art dealing and murderous heroines.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Boyd Tonkin, former chair of the International Booker and author of the forthcoming The 100 Best Novels in Translation, and Frank Wynne, nominated in the International Booker shortlist for his translation of Virginie Despentes.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Stig Abell, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and LBC talk radio host. Stig talks about Britain's magnificently chaotic hodgepodge of institutions, his own unusual career, how the press is doomed, being a "centrist dad", the joys of PG Wodehouse -- and his first and only encounter with Richard Desmond. 

Presented by Sam Leith.

Sam Leith talks to physicist Carlo Rovelli about the nature of time. Do we have free will? Can you understand physics without maths? Just what is Roger Penrose on about? We tackle all these questions and more. And gosh he’s a good talker. So go on: take the time. 

Sam Leith talks to historian Richard Overy about his new book The Birth of the RAF, 1918. 

100 years ago this spring, the Royal Air Force took to the skies for the first time. Yet it was far from inevitable that it would come into being, that having done so it would continue to exist beyond the end of the First World War, or even that the Royal Air Force would be Royal. He disentangles a forgotten history of political and public-relations manoeuvring and inter-service rivalry, before looking at the present and future of those who have inherited the mantle of The Few… 

In this week’s Spectator Books, Sam Leith talks to the military historian Antony Beevor about his latest book, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944.

Is the "American Dream", as Donald Trump claims, dead? Is “America First” a policy of national pride or a dogwhistle to white supremacists? In this week’s Spectator Books, we take the long view. My guest, Sarah Churchwell, excavates the long histories and surprisingly variable meanings of these two phrases in her new book Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream — and shows how central they have been to the United States’s long argument with itself about the meaning of the nation, and how they continue to be so today.

In this week’s Spectator Books I’m talking to the journalist and comic novelist Carl Hiaasen about his latest book, a splenetic broadside against feelgood commencement speeches called Assume The Worst that serves as a joyous corrective to “you can be anything you want to be” boosterism. Our conversation ranges to his take on the state of journalism and politics, the time Donald Trump chatted up his wife, and (for fans) the possibility of a return of Skink...

It’s a first for the Spectator Books podcast this week: music! We’ve temporarily dispensed with our usual intro jingle to allow this week’s guest, Paul Kildea, to play us in. Paul’s new book Chopin’s Piano: A Journey Into Romanticism is a fascinating and unusual piece of non-fiction that sheds light on Chopin’s life and music, and on their afterlife, as its author pursues an Ahab-like pursuit of the piano on which he composed his Preludes in Majorca. Sam Leith speaks to Paul at the Royal Overseas League in London, so that with the help of their instrument, he could punctuate our conversation with some musical illustrations of his points. Bitter musical disputes, doomed love, George Sand and Nazis: this one has it all.

Sam Leith is joined by William Dalrymple, co-author with Anita Anand of Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Famous Diamond

Is LSD good for you? Sam Leith is joined by the author Michael Pollan, who talks about the fascinating lost history of psychedelic drugs, speculates on what they may tell us about the human mind and the universe, recalls his own mind-blowing encounter with toad venom, and reveals that serious scientific research is even now being done into whether the “machine elves” that DMT users meet are hallucinations or visitors from another dimension. Plus, we learn why “enough LSD to kill an elephant” isn’t just a figure of speech…

Presented by Sam Leith.

Produced by Cindy Yu.

This week’s episode is a family affair: Sam talks to the children’s writer and illustrator Judith Kerr (Mog The Forgetful Cat; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit; and The Tiger Who Came To Tea), and her son the novelist and historian Matthew Kneale, author of English Passengers and Sweet Thames, and most recently, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings.

They talk about fiction and nonfiction, hereditary writers, whether what we’re seeing now answers the definition of fascism — and the bit that Judith’s publisher wanted taken out of The Tiger Who Came To Tea on the grounds of it "not being realistic”. 

Sam talks to the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature Jay Rubin, editor of the new Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. 

Many of us in the West know little of Japanese literature beyond, perhaps, Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima and perhaps Banana Yoshimoto and Kenzaburo Oe. Jay fills in the blanks. Did you know the Japanese novel got going centuries before Don Quixote? That Japanese novelists were producing pitiless self-portraits decades before Knausgaard's voguish 'auto-fictions'? All this, plus the story of Japanese women's writing and the place of manga in the culture.

Produced by Connor O'Hara.

This week’s episode sees Sam Leith joined by Margo Jefferson, author of 'On Michael Jackson' and the memoir Negroland, to moonwalk back to the glory days of Michael Jackson. Jackson was one of the central figures in pop culture, but what was it that made him so captivating? And can his artistic legacy ever be disentangled from the gruesome murk of the last years?

In this week’s Spectator Books, Sam talks to a man who has spent more time on Air Force One than even Piers Morgan: President Obama’s former foreign policy speechwriter and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, author of new memoir The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House. 

What is it really like writing speeches for Obama — and when did the President insist on writing his own words? How did Obama really greet the election of Donald Trump, away from the public magnanimity? And why is the Presidential plane, actually, a bit 1980s?

Presented by Sam Leith.

Adam Smith is the most quoted and misquoted economist of all time. Sam Leith talks to Jesse Norman, author of the new Adam Smith: What He Thought and Why It Matters (reviewed in last week’s Spectator by Simon Heffer). Norman argues that we can only understand Smith in the round by reading his Theory of Moral Sentiments as well as the Wealth of Nations; and by putting him in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment and the thinkers such as Hume who surrounded and influenced him. But he also says that a proper appreciation of Smith’s thought has relevance for us right to the present day. And he even ventures a thought on what the Sage of Kirkcaldy would have made of Brexit.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this summer rewind, hear Sam Leith talk to Times columnist and former speechwriter for Tony Blair, Philip Collins, originally released last October.

His book When They Go Low, We Go High is a fascinating look at political oratory from Pericles to (Michelle) Obama, and a vigorous argument for politics itself as a bulwark against the false promises of populism. We talk about what it was like writing for Blair, the greatest speech he wrote that was never delivered, how a speechwriter can trick a Prime Minister into announcing a policy he didn’t expect to announce – and why he’s proud to be a “Centrist Dad”.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this summer rewind, Sam Leith talks to the journalist and historian Simon Heffer, originally released in October 2017.

He is the author of the magisterial The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880-1914. The second part in his trilogy of books about the Victorian and Edwardian ages, it works to explode the myth that the pre-war years were an endless Merchant Ivory Summer’s afternoon. They talk about imperial decline, savage industrial unrest and aristocratic complacency… and how one writes a history of the years before 1914 without talking about the roots of the First World War.

Among the biggest surprises of this year’s Man Booker Prize longlist was the inclusion, for the first time in the prize’s 50-year history, of a “graphic novel”. Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina — a chillingly claustrophobic account of the aftermath of a murder in post-truth America — is undoubtedly a brilliant example of its form. But does a comic belong in contention for a fiction prize? Sam didn’t think so (and wrote as much in the FT. In this week’s Books Podcast the Man Booker Prize’s Literary Director, Gaby Wood, argues otherwise — and raises in the process the possibility that, one day, the Man Booker prize could be won by a book that doesn’t contain any words at all. 

Presented by Sam Leith.

How are the subprime collapse in the US and the Eurozone crisis that came after linked? Why did a cartel of mega-wealthy businessmen do a good job at rescuing the US from disaster, and a group of well-intentioned political technocrats make such a hash of it in Europe? And how is the Balance of Financial Terror between the US and China holding up these days? Adam Tooze, author of 'Crashed: How A Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World', joins Sam Leith

In this week’s books podcast, Sam Leith talks to Sir Ian Kershaw about his new book Rollercoaster: Europe 1950-2017. Here from one of our most distinguished historians, is a history of Europe that goes from the postwar period right up to the present. Is he aiming at a moving target? How can you meaningfully speak about “Europe” as one thing when for much of the period under discussion half of it was behind the iron curtain? Were the machinations of powerful individuals, or sheer chance, the great drivers of our history? And how was the raising of the Berlin Wall — from some perspectives — a good thing?

In this week’s books podcast, Sam talks to Sebastian Faulks about his brilliant new novel Paris Echo, which describes the twined stories of a Moroccan teenager and an American academic in the French capital – and the way that the ghosts of the past, from the Occupation to the decolonisation of North Africa, still play out in the present. Sam and Sebastian talk about whether writing from the point of view of a 19-year-old Moroccan means he’s going to be chucked in the Lionel Shriver High Security Prison for “cultural appropriation”, whether Paris Echo is an excursion into Magic Realism, how his serious literary novels coexist with his writing James Bond or Jeeves and Wooster — and about this book’s very unusual dedicatee…

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week’s books podcast Sam talks to Helen Parr about her remarkable new book Our Boys: The Story of A Paratrooper, which blends memoir, social history and military history to tell the story of the paratroopers who fought in the Falklands War and what happened when they came home — or, as in the case of Parr’s 19-year-old uncle, didn’t. Helen talks about what civilians can and can’t know of the experience of men who kill and risk death in combat, about the history of the paratroop regiment, and the sea-change in Britain’s relationship with its serving soldiers and its veterans that took place from the 1980s onwards.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week’s books podcast, Sam talks to the former head honcho of the National Gallery and British Museum, Neil MacGregor, about his new book Living With The Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples. Neil tells the story of the world’s religions through objects — beginning with a 40,000-year-old carving that might be the first human representation of an entirely imaginary object. What do religions have in common? How do you represent icon-averse creeds through physical objects? Why should there be an evolutionary advantage in engaging with the intangible or imaginary? And what does the history of religion tell us about the common threads of humanity?

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's Spectator Books podcast, Sam Leith is talking to Adam Sisman about More Dashing -- his new selection from the remarkable correspondence of one of the 20th-century's most celebrated adventurers, spongers and men of letters, Paddy Leigh-Fermor. What did Paddy really feel about his most famous act of derring-do, when he kidnapped a Nazi general in occupied Crete? What really went on in his unconventional marriage? And were -- as Adam Sisman contends -- his letters really at the heart rather than the periphery of his literary achievement?

Political scientist William Davies talks to Sam Leith about his new book Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over The World. Here’s a deep dive into the parlous condition of our public discourse, drawing the line from Descartes and Hobbes to Trump and Generation Snowflake. Can speech be a form of violence? Will argues that our instincts on that may be wrong…

In this week's books podcast, Sam talks to Andrew Roberts in front of an audience about his new biography on Winston Churchill. It charts the leader's powerful sense of personal destiny, his ambition and bravery as a soldier and a leader. The book interprets the events that defined Churchill, from the Dardanelles disaster of 1915, his years in the political wilderness, and his summoning to save his country in 1940. Sam and Andrew discuss Churchill's belief that he was 'walking with destiny', his prophesies of European disaster in the 1930s, as well as his drinking habits, the racist charges against him, and his singular ability to deliver some of the most memorable speeches of the 20th century.

Presented by Sam Leith at Daunt Books, Marylebone.

Sam talks to the incomparable Sara Paretsky about her latest V. I. Warshawski novel Shell Game — which pits the original feminist gumshoe against art thieves, Russian mobsters and her fink of an ex-husband. They talk about keeping Vic young (skincare doesn’t come into it), chiming with MeToo and immigration anxieties in Trump’s America, whether she feels rivalrous with other female crime writers, spotting her own writerly tics, and making friends with Obama.

Presented by Sam Leith.

Sam Leith talks to the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin about his new book Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, in which he argues that it’s not only height and weight and skin colour that are heritable, but intelligence, TV-watching habits and likelihood of getting divorced. They talk about the risks he takes publishing this book, the political third rail of race and eugenics, and what his discoveries mean for the future of our data and for medical care. You can read Kathryn Paige Harden’s review of Blueprint, meanwhile, in this week’s magazine.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's books podcast Sam talks to Ben Schott. The author of Schott's Miscellany, Ben's literary productions have taken an unexpected turn with the publication this week of his first novel. Jeeves and the King of Clubs is a tribute or companion piece to P G Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, published with the authorisation of the Wodehouse estate. What the hell was he thinking? Ben comes clean -- and also talks about the joys of nerdiness, the difficulty of living up to Plum, and the Spectator's role in the whole story.

Presented by Sam Leith.

With Geoff Dyer, one of our most wayward and wittiest writers, about his new book Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, a frame-by-frame discussion of the classic war movie Where Eagles Dare. Learn from Geoff about the importance of squinting in Clint Eastwood’s thespian toolbox, about the joy of snow-patrol Action Man, about why he shied away from plans for "Alistair MacLean: A Critical Reappraisal", and about why on earth Geoff would follow a learned book about Tarkovsky’s Stalker with a discussion of a piece of late-60s schlock. Plus: what happens when you get on the wrong side of Julian Barnes.

Presented by Sam Leith.

Sam talks to Nora Krug about her remarkable graphic work Heimat - in which this German born writer and artist discusses how it has felt to grow up in Germany and later the US with the shadow of her homeland’s war guilt, how that has issued in art, literature and humour, and about her risky attempt to discover her own family’s wartime past.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's books podcast Sam talks to Oxford's Professor of Global History Peter Frankopan about his follow-up to his bestselling history The Silk Roads. In The New Silk Roads, Peter brings his story up to date, and argues that with our Trump and Brexit obsessions, and a divided and fissiparous West still obsessed with itself, we are missing the bigger picture of what's going on in the world today. Once again, the Silk Roads -- those lines of connection between East and West running through what he calls the "heart of the world" -- are where the action is. In our conversation we look at the rise of China and asks what its vast "Belt and Road" programme means for the future shape of the world, at the deeply complex relations between the Gulf states and the nations with interests in them, at the forces at work in India, Pakistan and Iran -- and why our school curricula need to go a bit beyond the old diet of Black Death, Mary Seacole and the Second World War. Plus, Peter's (almost) diplomatic about the enduring madness of Turkmenistan.

Presented by Sam Leith.

According to which bit of hype you read, there’s a copy of one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers sold somewhere in the world every four seconds, or every seven, or every nine. It’s a cute statistic and (as Child wryly notes), there’s an element of Barnum & Bailey hucksterism to it. Sam talks to Lee Child in this episode of Spectator Books and writes about it in this week's magazine.

In this week's books podcast, Sam is speaking to the Pulitzer-prizewinning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about her new book Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times -- in which she describes what Lincoln, two Roosevelts and LBJ had in common, and didn't. Obviously, they talk a bit about that nice Mr Trump -- as well as hearing how Doris had perhaps history's classiest pyjama party at the White House with Hillary Clinton, and how as a young woman she worried at one point that she was going to be #metooed by Lyndon Johnson. Tune in, kids. Doris is remarkable.

In this week’s books podcast Sam talks to the great trivia expert Mark Mason about his new The Book of Seconds: The Incredible Stories of the Ones Who Didn’t (Quite) Win. Here’s the Christmas present for all the Tory frontbenchers in your life. Who remembers the Christmas number two in the pop charts? Who got silver at the Olympics? Who was the second man to walk on the moon? Mark — my second choice of guest for this week’s podcast — masterfully pulls together the psychological and social implications of not quite cutting the mustard.

In this week’s books podcast Sam talks to Chris Kraus — author of the semi-autobiographical cult novel I Love Dick and the new essay collection Social Practices — about her strange and interesting life in the New York and LA art worlds, about taking Baudrillard to a “happening” in the desert, about ambition and fame, about how art and literature feed into one another — and about why we English should stop sneering at “theory” and learn to love its strangeness and beauty.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week’s books podcast we’re going to the wars. Sam's guest is Ed Vulliamy, the veteran war correspondent who has written a fascinating memoir called When Words Fail: A Life With Music, War and Peace. In it, Ed talks about how his lifelong love of music — he saw Hendrix at the Isle of Wight — has threaded through his terrifying adventures in conflict zones from Bosnia to Iraq to the Mexican/American border; and of how music really can salve the soul when everything else is broken. He describes his own terrifying experiences with PTSD, snagging the last interview with BB King, and how playing “Kashmir” over and over again while roaring unembedded around a battle-zone led him to a friendship with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant.

In this week’s book’s podcast Sam's guest is Jonathan Ames, a writer who has produced everything from memoir (Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer) to TV writing (Bored To Death), graphic novels (The Alcoholic), pitch-black noir (You Were Never Really Here), Wodehouse hommage (Wake Up, Sir!) and now, in The Extra Man, a comic novel riffing on Henry James. We talk about why he calls so many of his characters “Jonathan Ames”, how he goes about his work, and whether — as a man who has become synonymous with “overshare” — he can ever quite retreat into the background.

In this week's episode, Sam talks to investigative journalist Kajsa Norman about her book 'Sweden's Dark Soul'. In it, she turns her gaze on the oppressive forces at the heart of Sweden’s ‘model democracy’. The story begins with the cover-up of mass sexual assaults at a Stockholm music festival. The reason? The perpetrators were unaccompanied refugee minors.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week’s books podcast, Sam's guest is Robert Alter - who has just published the fruits of decades of labour in the form of his complete new translation of the Hebrew Bible into English. Acclaimed for his Bible translations by Seamus Heaney, John Updike and Peter Ackroyd, Prof Alter explains how Biblical Hebrew really works, what can and cannot be preserved in translation - and why, as he sees it, nearly every modern translation of the Bible gets it catastrophically wrong.

Presented by Sam Leith, the Spectator's Literary Editor.

In this week's books podcast Sam is joined by Josh Cohen, author of the Not Working: Why We Have To Stop. Josh is a literary critic and a working psychoanalyst, and his book is a thoughtful and subtle discussion of the way in which work dominates not only our lives and identities but our leisure time too -- and a speculation about some of the ways we might set about changing that. His references range from Max Weber and Freud to Orson Welles, Andy Warhol, Emily Dickinson and David Foster Wallace. Is it all the fault of "late capitalism"? Has the digital age made quiet contemplation impossible? And why, Sam queried, does his eccentric list of great idlers include some of the most insanely productive people in history?

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's books podcast I'm joined from Los Angeles by Andrew Morton -- the Royal writer who scooped the world with the inside story of Princess Diana's marriage. To coincide with the publication of a revised and expanded edition of Diana, Her True Story -- including new material recovered from the tapes they smuggled out of Kensington Palace -- he looks back on those days and that story, and discusses how Royal reportage has changed. Why didn't they call it "Diana: The True Story"? Does he worry that that sort of public exposure during a divorce battle was risking the happiness of the children caught up in it? And what was it like when -- before his source was known -- people were publicly calling for our man to be sent to the Tower of London?

Hosted by Sam Leith.

In this week's Spectator Books, Sam is joined by Deborah Lipstadt -- the historian who herself made a piece of history when she defeated the Holocaust denier David Irving in court. In her new book Antisemitism Now, Professor Lipstadt returns to the fray to look at the worldwide uptick of antisemitism in our own day and age. Sam asks her why she felt the need to write this book and frame it in the way she did, how antisemitism differs from other forms of prejudice, and what you can and can't say about Israel.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's Spectator Books, Sam talks to the American journalist David Wallace-Wells about his new book The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future. In it, he uses the best available scientific projections to underpin a picture of what the world would look like if it heats up by four degrees or more. Not pretty, is the conclusion he comes to. But what’s he trying to achieve with this book? Why, in his view, do we not take climate change seriously enough? And is this Project Fear — or Project Damn Well Pay Attention?

In this week’s books podcast Sam talks to Peter Stanford, author of Angels: A Visible and Invisible History. Why is it that, according to some polls, more people believe in angels than believe in God? Peter takes us on a tour through history, theology and literature to find how the winged cherubs on our Christmas cards got there, and why they look as they do. Along the way he addresses some of the vital questions. Do angels have wings — and if so, how many? What are they made of — light, or compressed air? Are they above or below humans in the hierarchy of creation? Which is the friendliest archangel: Michael, Gabriel or Raphael? And how many can dance on the head of a pin?

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's books podcast Sam talks to Max Porter, former publisher at Granta and author of the prizewinning debut Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, about his brilliant new novel Lanny (reviewed by Andrew Motion here). He asks: why are we used to novels having 15 page boring bits? What does the Green Man myth, and myth in general, have to offer readers? How do you convey the white noise of a village's chatter on the page? And which Thomas brother is the best: Dylan or RS?

In this week’s books podcast Sam is joined by Owen Matthews to talk about the man many have claimed was the greatest spy of the 20th century, Richard Sorge, the subject of Owen’s riveting new book An Impeccable Spy (reviewed in the new issue of The Spectator by Nicholas Shakespeare). Sorge (he’s pronounced 'zorgey', by the way — not, as I introduce the podcast, idiot that I am, 'sawj'). Here was a man who supplied information that changed the course of the Second World War — and far from being the sort of glum duffelcoated figure who populates Le Carre’s “Circus” — he really did lead an existence of James Bondish extravagance. He played the Germans off against the Japanese, all for the benefit of the Russians — and did so while drinking like a fish, seducing every woman he crossed paths with, waving around samurai swords and roaring about on a motorbike. Owen has the low-down on this “bad man who became a great spy”.

In this week's books podcast, Sam Leith is joined by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri. Someone whose own fiction has negotiated the cross-cultural territory of her Bengali-American identity, Jhumpa in the last few years has been negotiating a new crossing of cultures after settling in Rome with her family and starting to write fiction and memoir in Italian. She joins the podcast to discuss the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, which she edited, and talk about what a new language gives a writer, how the war shaped Italian literature, and why - as a professor of creative writing at Princeton - she refuses to teach creative writing.

In this week’s books podcast Sam is joined by one of the doyennes of crime writing, the brilliant Donna Leon. She talks about her latest Commissario Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given, about what Venice gives her as a setting, why she welcomes snobbery towards crime writers, and why she never lets her books be published in Italian.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week’s books podcast Sam is talking to Clare Mulley about The Woman Who Saved The Children, her biography of Eglantyne Jebb reissued to coincide with next week’s centenary of Save The Children, the charity that Jebb founded. Eglantyne was a fascinating and deeply unconventional figure — a nice young gel from the Shropshire squirearchy who refused to fit into the social, sexual or professional pigeonholes her background seemed to destine her for. Instead she found herself investigating war crimes in Macedonia, campaigning against the postwar economic blockade of Germany, revolutionising charity fundraising, clashing with the law and pioneering the concepts that would go on to become the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

Sam's guest for this week’s books podcast is Clare Carlisle, author of a new life of Soren Kierkegaard, Philosopher of the Heart. Kierkegaard has a reputation for being forbidding, pious and difficult to pronounce - but Clare’s here to tell us why the work of this transformational thinker and writer speaks to every age about the difficulties and the vital importance of finding a way of living in the world. Plus, we learn about his very strange love-life, his mental health, and how he got monstered by Copenhagen’s equivalent of Private Eye. There ain’t nothing like a Dane.

Presented by Sam Leith.

In this week's Books Podcast Sam is joined by Professor Cass Sunstein - best known here as co-author of the hugely influential 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, which spawned a whole transatlantic movement in using behavioural psychology to influence public policy (not least over here in the Cabinet Office's celebrated "Nudge Unit"). Cass's new book is called How Change Happens -- and extends the arguments of his previous books to talk about the mechanisms that determine quite big, and quite abrupt shifts in politics and social attitudes.

Sam asks him how his ideas about nudging have changed over the last decade; about the limits and contradictions of "libertarian paternalism"; about the dangers of "group polarisation"; about how much we can or should trust to big tech and the mechanisms of the market; and about how the explosion in digital media has changed the democratic landscape for good.

In this week’s books podcast Sam is joined by the journalist and (as one half of the crime writer Nicci French) novelist Nicci Gerrard to talk about her new book What Dementia Teaches Us About Love. The loss of her own father to dementia prompted Nicci to look at one of the most painful and pressing social problems of the age: how we care for, or fail to care for, those who have dementia — and the philosophical questions of what it means when the things that make you you start to fall away.

In this week’s books podcast, the guest is the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, architect of Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” and former chief economist at the World Bank. 

His new book People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent argues Trump’s economic boom is a “sugar-high”, and that the US economy is in a far, far worse state than anybody thinks. As a result, he says, we need to reevaluate our whole faith in free markets. The reason the "invisible hand" is invisible, he says, is because it isn’t there.  He talks about why thinks that, and what we need to do about it.