The 4 Best The Book Club Podcast Episodes
1) Robert Macfarlane: Is a river alive?
Sam Leith's guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Robert Macfarlane. In his new book Is A River Alive? he travels from the cloud forests of Ecuador to the pollution-choked rivers of Chen...Show More
2) Sathnam Sanghera: Empireworld
In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is Sathnam Sanghera, author of the new book Empireworld about the effect of British imperialism around the globe. He tells me why he's trying to get beyond th...Show More
3) Victoria Smith: Hags
My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the writer Victoria Smith, whose new book Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women explains why one of the oldest forms of misogyny is seeing a vicious ...Show More
4) Philip Oltermann: The Stasi Poetry Circle
My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Philip Oltermann, whose new book The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War, unearths one of the most unexpected co...Show More
5) Books of the Year | Sam Leith & Philip Hensher
Sam Leith is joined by Philip Hensher to pick over their books of the year. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.Fo...Show More
6) Speaker series: Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Storm
The Spectator’s associate editor Toby Young sits down with master storyteller Bernard Cornwell, author of more than 50 international bestselling novels, including The Last Kingdom and much-l...Show More
7) Jonathan C. Slaght: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Jonathan C. Slaght, whose new book is Tigers Between Empires: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction. He tells me about these remarkable an...Show More
Jonathan C. Slaght: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction
49:24 | Dec 10th, 2025
8) James Geary: A Brief History of the Aphorism
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is James Geary, talking about the new edition of his classic The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism. He tells me about what separates an aphor...Show More
9) Leon Craig: The Decadence
On this week’s Book Club podcast I’m joined by debut author Leon Craig to talk about her novel The Decadence – a story of millennial debauchery in a haunted house which uses a knowing patchwork of lit...Show More
10) Benjamin Myers: Jesus Christ Kinski
Ben Myers joins Sam Leith to discuss his book Jesus Christ Kinski, which he describes as a ‘novel about a film about a performance about Jesus’. Klaus Kinski was one of Germany’s biggest actors of the...Show More