Translator Laura Marris, my guest on this episode, had long wanted to translate Albert Camus’s The Plague, his novel about a fictional pestilence that afflicted the Algerian coastal city of… Read More
Category: podcast
Laura Clancy: on running the (royal) family firm
This week a conversation about the British royal family with Laura Clancy, who’s a lecturer in media in the sociology department at Lancaster University. Last autumn I spoke to Laura… Read More
Conversations with Translators: Polly Barton (part 2)
This is the second half of the conversation I had last autumn with Polly Barton, a translator from Japanese and the author of a terrific memoir-cum-reflection on language and translation,… Read More
Conversations with Translators: Polly Barton (part 1)
This episode is part one of a two-part conversation I had last autumn with Polly Barton, a translator from Japanese and the author of Fifty Sounds, which was one of… Read More
Nicholas Cook: More to music than meets the ear
In this programme we’re talking about the recently published new edition of a book that first came out over twenty years ago, Nicholas Cook’s Music: A Very Short Introduction. (And… Read More
Craig Robertson: Cabinets of curiosities
In this programme we’re looking at what I used to think of as ‘the humble filing cabinet’ until I read Craig Robertson’s fascinating book, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History… Read More
James Danckert: Boredom is trying to tell you something
In this episode, we tackle boredom head-on. Danish philosopher Kierkegaard suggested the gods created humanity out of boredom, and the poet Charles Baudelaire foresaw its French version, ennui, one day… Read More
Juliana Adelman on the beasts of Dublin
In this episode, I’m talking to Juliana Adelman, who’s assistant professor of history at Dublin City University. Juliana’s recent book, Civilised by Beasts: Animals and Urban Change in Nineteenth-Century Dublin,… Read More
Conversations with Publishers: Margo Irvin, Stanford University Press
In this new episode in the Conversations with Publishers series, guest is Margo Irvin, who’s an editor at Stanford University Press, where she’s been commissioning history and Jewish studies for… Read More
Jennifer Howard: Disentangling the clutter
In this episode, we delve deep into clutter with Jennifer Howard, author of a recent book entitled Clutter: An Untidy History. This book is for you if you have a… Read More