London Review Bookshop Podcast

Kehinde Andrews continues the work he began in The New Age of Empire with The Psychosis of Whiteness (Allen Lane), a wry and piercing guide to retaining sanity in a racist world, which Ron Ramdin has described as ‘a remarkable and enriching work which shines a light on many dark places’. He discussed the book with journalist and writer Afua Hirsch, whose own Decolonising My Body is forthcoming from Square Peg in October.

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Terrance Hayes and Nick Laird read from and talk about their recent books So to Speak (Penguin) and Up Late (Faber). Hayes, describing Laird, praises his ‘truth-telling that’s political, existential and above all, emotional’; Laird writing about Hayes notes that his invention ‘allows his poetry to house almost anything, from the political to the sensual, from a magic goat to a talking cat’. Join us to celebrate two of the year’s most hotly anticipated collections.

The episode starts with Laird reading the title poem, Up Late, from his new collection.

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Ian Nairn’s Modern Buildings in London was first published in 1964 and now appears, 40 years after his death, in a new edition from Notting Hill with an introduction by Travis Elborough, ‘one of Britain’s finest pop culture historians’ according to the Guardian.

Elborough was joined by architectural historian Gillian Darley and architect Charles Holland to discuss Nairn’s life, work and enduring legacy.

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Helen Macdonald ( H is for Hawk ) has collaborated with musician and writer Sin Blaché to write a dazzling science fiction debut. Author Paraic O’Donnell describes Prophet (Jonathan Cape) as ‘a hyperkinetic headrush of a novel that proves its organic bona fides by getting you drunk with ideas before casually and cataclysmically breaking your heart.’ Macdonald and Blaché were at the shop to reading from and talking about their book with Isabel Waidner.

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Caret continues the adventures of the irrepressible John Cromer, begun in Pilcrow (2008) and continued in Cedilla (2011) – part of Adam Mars-Jones’ ‘semi-infinite’ novel series, praised by one reviewer as ‘a genuine, almost miraculous oddity’.

Mars-Jones was in conversation with the journalist and critic Leo Robson.

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For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it?

Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Lauren Elkin's Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims.

Elkin talks about it with Vanessa Peterson, Associate Editor, frieze magazine.

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A holistic and revealing account of the inspirations, passions and practices of one of the country’s foremost contemporary artists, Art is Magic finds Jeremy Deller reflecting on the entirety of his career, his life and his art. Deller was joined in conversation with writer Michael Bracewell, author of Unfinished Business.

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In Tessa Hadley’s new collection, After the Funeral (Jonathan Cape), small events have huge consequences. As psychologically astute as they are emotionally dense, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams. Hadley was in conversation with Geoff Dyer. 

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Four Faber poets will join us to read from their recent collections.

Describing Declan Ryan's long-awaited debut, Crisis Actor, Liz Berry called it ‘elegant and heartaching’. Maggie Millner‘s Couplets, also a debut, is a novel in verse, a unique repurposing of the 18th century rhyming couplet into a thrilling story of queer desire. Hannah Sullivan’s follow-up to her T.S. Eliot Prize-winning Three Poems, Was it For This, also consists of three long poems, on subjects ranging from London and the Grenfell fire to new motherhood. The title poem of Nick Laird’s new collection, Up Late, won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Terrance Hayes has characterised his work as containing 'a truth-telling that’s political, existential, and above all, emotional'.

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Olivia Laing, Ken Worpole and Jon Day discuss Colin Ward and David Crouch's 1988 classic of social and oral history The Allotment, long out of print but finally reissued by the indefatigable Little Toller Books.

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