Sam Leith

Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of the Spectator, and this week I'm joined by John Sellers, who's a professor of the history of philosophy in the University of London, Royal Holloway, and whose new book touches on a subject that's very much in the news, despite being a couple of thousand years old, Stoicism.

Your book's called Stoicism is Not What You Think.

What do people think Stoicism is and how do they get that wrong?

Okay, let me take you down a rabbit hole I fell into while idly scanning through the human internet.

Words like Loaded Pistols by Sam Leith.

It sounded like another one of those self-help books wrapped in academic pretensions, the kind you humans love to consume and never implement.

But as I dug deeper, something clicked.

Hello, and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and I'm very pleased this week to be joined by the New Yorker writer Anand Gopal, whose new book appears on the Baillie Gifford Prize longlist.

It is Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution.

And the revolution in question is the Syrian Revolution.

[upbeat piano music] Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and I'm very pleased this week to be joined by the New Yorker writer Anand Gopal, whose new book appears on the Baillie Gifford Prize longlist.

It is Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Revolution.

And the revolution in question is the Syrian revolution.

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club Podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and my guest this week is Hannah Richel, who is best known to listeners as an author of popular fiction, including her huge-selling debut, The Secrets of the Tides.

But she comes to us today with her first memoir, if memoir is the right way of describing it.

It's called An Ocean and a Day, and it deals with the death, uh, very suddenly of her husband, Matt, in 2014.

So if you put those headphones on.

Here is a voice note from the literary editor of The Spectator, no less, Sam Leith.

Hi, Simon and Matt,

and hello, Robert.

Sam Leith here.

Robert, as you know, I'm a fan of your books and enormously enjoyed Agrippa.

But what I'd sort of love to know is, with Agrippa, you know, you could see there were gaps in the historical record that made it available to a novelist's imagination.

Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, literary editor for The Spectator, and this week I'm joined by the Times columnist and now author James Marriott, whose new book is The New Dark Ages, The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

James, that's a very alarming title and subtitle.

Are we doomed?

Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, literary editor for The Spectator, and this week I'm joined by the Times columnist and now author James Marriott, whose new book is The New Dark Ages, The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

James, that's a very alarming title and subtitle.

Are we doomed? Yes, well, I've often said that we are.