The Book Club

Latest Episodes

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  August 28, 2021

  Frederick Forsyth: The Day of the Jackal at 50

  My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Frederick Forsyth, whose classic thriller The Day of the Jackal has been in print for 50 years this summer. He tells me about banging it out in a few weeks on a typewriter with a bullet hole in it, the shady characters who informed his research […]

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  July 28, 2021

  Anne Sebba: A Cold War Tragedy

  In this week’s Book Club podcast my guest is Anne Sebba — whose Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy tells the story of the first woman in US history to be executed for a crime other than murder. She tells me how attitudes to this notorious espionage case changed over the years; and why, while […]

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  December 23, 2020

  Laura Thompson: Life in a Cold Climate

  This week’s Book Club podcast celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of Nancy Mitford’s breakthrough novel The Pursuit of Love. Laura Thompson, author of the biography Life In A Cold Climate, joins me to talk about the way the book was written, how it helped create the Mitford myth — and how it shaped […]

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  December 18, 2020

  Nicholas Shakespeare: remembering John Le Carré

  In this week’s Book Club podcast, we remember the great John Le Carré. I’m joined by one of the late writer’s longest standing friends, the novelist Nicholas Shakespeare. He tells me about Le Carré’s disdain for — and debt to — Ian Fleming, his intensely secretive and controlling personality, his magnetic charm, his thwarted hopes […]

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  One man’s failed attempt to climb Everest

  In this week’s Book Club podcast, Sam Leith’s guest is the journalist Ed Caesar, whose new book The Moth and the Mountain tells the story of a now forgotten solo assault on Everest that ended in disaster. But as Ed argues, the heroic failure can be a richer and more resonant story than any triumph — […]