'Our Mutual Friend' was Dickens’s last completed novel, published in serial form in 1864-65. The story begins with a body being dredged from the ooze and slime of the Thames, then opens out to follow a wide array of characters through the dust heaps, paper mills, public houses and dining rooms of London and its hinterland.
In this extended extract from Nov ... Show More
Nov 21
Aftershock: The War on Terror – Episode 1: With Us or Against Us
In the days after 9/11, George W. Bush declared a state of emergency and initiated what would become an unprecedented expansion of US power. Public debate narrowed: there were new limits on what was acceptable, and not acceptable, to say. The London Review of Books published a nu ... Show More
44m 54s
Nov 15
Introducing ‘Aftershock: The War on Terror’
After 9/11, George W. Bush launched a global War on Terror. What followed was an unprecedented expansion of American power, from Guantánamo Bay to drone strikes, mass surveillance to the weaponisation of the financial system. Asked when it would end, Vice-President Dick Cheney re ... Show More
3m 57s
Nov 2013
Albert Camus - The Outsider
One hundred years after his birth this month’s World Book Club, will be discussing Albert Camus' seminal novel The Outsider with his acclaimed biographer Oliver Todd, and Professor of French at Sheffield University, David Walker. And appropriately the programme comes from the hea ... Show More
53m 21s
Mar 2025
Douglas Stuart on Shuggie Bain, Storytelling, and the Human Condition (Part Two)
This event is part of Conversations at the Kiln, a new event series at Kiln Theatre programmed by Intelligence Squared. For more events with speakers from the worlds of literature, art, poetry and politics, click here.
Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain ... Show More
33m 8s
Oct 20
742 Edgar Allan Poe (with Richard Kopley) | Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (#12 GBOAT) | My Last Book with Christopher Herbert
It's October, the perfect month to celebrate the master of mystery and the macabre. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Richard Kopley about his book Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, a comprehensive critical biography that combines a narrative of Poe's enduring challenges (including h ... Show More
1h 17m
Dec 2024
Sex Life & Scandal of Charles Dickens
<p>Like it or not, there's no escaping Charles Dickens at this time of year.</p><br><p>But who was the man behind classics such as A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and of course, A Christmas Carol?</p><br><p>His life is as rich as many of the characters' stories in one of his b ... Show More
48 m
Aug 2024
The Vision of Novelist Zadie Smith (‘The Fraud’)
Last fall, Zadie Smith published her prescient historical novel The Fraud. We return to our conversation with the beloved author this week, on the heels of our latest sit-down with writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner. At the top, Smith details her most recent book (7:48), her instinctiv ... Show More
1h 8m
Sep 21
ON WRITING... With Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro
Welcome to another special edition of How to Fail, where I revisit conversations from the How to Fail archives. Each week, we shine a light on a particular theme, hopefully offering inspiration, perspective and comfort through the words of past guests. This week’s theme is on wri ... Show More
24m 18s