London Review Bookshop
500 episodes listed below
Live literary thought, given room to breathe.
London Review Bookshop Podcast records thoughtful literary events with writers, translators, poets, critics, and readers in conversation. Its best moments linger over shelves, meals, poems, love, exile, and the stubborn private meanings that books gather around them.
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London Review Bookshop Podcast is built from live events in a literary bookshop, and it keeps the grain of that setting. There is applause, weather, room tone, and the occasional practical aside. Then the conversation settles. A new book becomes the occasion for a wider act of attention, sometimes through close reading, sometimes through biography, sometimes through the odd physical detail that makes an idea visible. The range is broad. Ian Patterson and Ali Smith move through personal libraries, loss, storage, and the strange emotional accounting of books kept or sold. Stephen Grosz and Helen MacDonald turn love toward pain, surrender, obedience, happiness, and the difficulty of knowing desire. Ruby Tandoh and Olivia Sudjic treat food culture through the concrete scene of a Wimpy restaurant, with its menus, counters, machines, nostalgia, and unease. Lorna Goodison and Fawzia Muradali Kane bring Dante into Jamaica, where translation becomes transposition, tribute, pun, memory, and argument. A conversation on John Burnside turns a memorial evening into readings of weather, gardens, fire, birdsong, and endings. Other episodes take up Miriam Toews on family and love, Ágota Kristóf on exile and violence, and Simone de Beauvoir through newly available or newly translated work. The show rarely rushes to a conclusion. It lets guests explain the pressure behind a sentence, the history inside an image, or the moral charge hidden in a familiar object. That patience is its pleasure. The mood can be warm, grave, dry, or quietly funny, but hype is absent. It is not a recommendations feed in disguise. It is closer to sitting among attentive readers while an argument, memory, or poem slowly finds its shape. For listeners who want brisk summaries, the pace may feel ceremonious. For those who like literary thought with room to breathe, it is unusually hospitable.
Made for: For patient readers, writers, translators, and culturally curious listeners who enjoy long-form literary conversation. It especially suits those drawn to close reading, biography, books as objects, and the moral weather around art.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the live bookshop setting: conversation keeps its pauses, jokes, readings, and audience-facing warmth. Rather than reducing books to takeaways, it lets writers and interlocutors think at length from detail toward consequence.
Listen to the latest literary events recorded at the London Review Bookshop, covering fiction, poetry, politics, music and much more. Find out about our upcoming events here More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: https://lrb.me/bkshppod From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: [email protected]
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bookshop conversations turn new books into close, generous examinations of writing, translation, publishing and the lives gathered around them.
London Review Bookshop Podcast keeps the shape of a bookshop evening intact: an introduction, a sustained conversation, then questions from the floor.
Dante reaches Jamaica, Eliot reaches Faber, and your reading list quietly becomes a liability.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful conversation about libraries, storage, and the hard choices behind keeping a life of books.
Ian Patterson and Ali Smith make the London Review Bookshop event for Books A Manifesto, or How to Build a Library feel like a careful study of libraries, storage, and the labor of deciding what stays.
A patient conversation about love, pain, and the line between submission and surrender.
Stephen Grosz's Love's Labour reads as a careful public conversation about love, pain, self-knowledge, and the line between submission and surrender.
A sharp, bookish look at food culture and the everyday habits of consumption.
Ruby Tandoh's All Consuming is treated with a clear eye, finding strangeness in what usually feels ordinary. Olivia Sudditch keeps the discussion steady and exact, moving from food media into the larger language of consumption and the way people live, eat, and consume now.
Dante meets Jamaica in a wide-ranging conversation about poetry, history, and retelling.
Lorna Goodison's Jamaican reworking of Dante's Inferno comes across as a major literary event. Fawzia Muradali-Kane leads the conversation from a reading into a close look at what it means to relocate a classic into Jamaica, and the focus stays on Jamaican people, history, and…
A warm, bookish evening that lets Burnside's poems and memoirs carry the tribute.
The London Review Bookshop evening gives John Burnside a warm, measured tribute, with attention to his latest poetry collection, Just Out. Michael Simmons-Roberts and Hannah Westland guide the stage conversation, and the newly jacketed memoirs, now with fresh introductions,…
A careful conversation about Stalin, displaced persons, archives, and the politics of who gets to speak for whom.
This London Review Bookshop conversation holds Stalin's death, Soviet displaced persons, and the wreckage of war in the same frame without forcing the issue.
A close look at Eliot's arrival at Faber and Geyer and the publishing culture around it.
This episode treats a centenary as a way into literary history, with T. S. Eliot's arrival at Faber and Geyer as the anchor. The strongest stretches stay close to the work itself: The Waste Land, Geoffrey Faber's first reaction to it, and the strain between trade publishing and…
Philip Hoare and Olivia Laing turn Blake into a wide-ranging conversation about Ireland, Joyce, family memory, and swimming.
Philip Hoare and Olivia Laing let William Blake open out into Ireland, Joyce, family memory, swimming, and the writers and places gathered around him.
Amit Varma's marathon interviews on Indian history, economics, and cricket.
Long-form Apple talk with sharp product judgment and deep tech history.
Weekly film, music, and arts criticism from Monocle 24's Midori House studio in London.
Two product designers talk Figma workflows, button sizing, and AI design tools weekly.
Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert dissect CSS, CMS workflows, and AI coding agents weekly.
A personal library turns into evidence.
Love shows up through pain.
A rainy bookshop evening starts softly.
Dante enters Jamaica.
John Burnside is remembered through his poems.
This episode features a discussion between author Miriam Toews and journalist Octavia Bright about Toews' latest non-fiction book 'A Truce That Is Not Peace', exploring themes of family and love.
This episode features authors Camilla Grudova and Jennifer Hodgson discussing Ágota Kristóf's short fiction collection 'I Don't Care', focusing on her biographical context as a Hungarian refugee and reading from her essay 'The Illiterate'.
A discussion at the London Review Bookshop about two new releases by Simone de Beauvoir, featuring translators and curators.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop celebrating the 60th anniversary of Sylvia Plath's Ariel with poets Lavinia Greenlaw, Victoria Adequabulli, and Richard Scott.
An author reads from her book about COVID and refugee camps, followed by a discussion at the London Review Bookshop.
A panel discussion at the London Review Bookshop on whether the Labour left can save the Labour Party, featuring journalists and historians.
A poetry reading and conversation with poets Anthony Joseph and Peter Gizzy at the London Review Bookshop.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop celebrating the work of author Alexander Barron.
An author interview event at the London Review Bookshop featuring Marina Warner discussing her book Sanctuary with James Butler.
An author interview and reading at the London Review Bookshop, featuring Sam Fisher discussing his novel Migraine.
A poetry reading and conversation with Korean poet Kim Ho-Soon at the London Review Bookshop.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop celebrating the launch of Nell Stephens' novel 'The Original', featuring an interview with the author and discussion of the book's themes.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop featuring artist Lillian Lynn in conversation with critic Jennifer Higgy about her memoir and artwork.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop featuring an author interview about a book inspired by a diary.
This episode features a conversation between authors Jeremy Atherton Lin and Diarmuid Hester celebrating the launch of Lin's book 'Deep House' at the London Review Bookshop.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop celebrating a new book on leisure and Marian Milner, featuring author Akshay Singh and psychoanalyst Anushka Gross.
Gareth Evans interviews Geoff Dyer about his new book exploring childhood, post-war English society, class, and community.
This episode features a conversation between Francesca Wade and Lara Pawson celebrating the publication of Wade's book 'Gertrude Stein An Afterlife', discussing Stein's life, work, and legacy.
This episode features the launch event for Vittles Issue 1, with introductions from hosts and editors celebrating the magazine's first print edition.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop celebrating the Penguin UK edition of Bell Hooks' 'Art on My Mind' with guests Lola Olufemi and Zarina Mohamed discussing Hooks' legacy and the importance of art in feminist theory.
This episode features a conversation between geography professor Danny Dorling and philosophy teacher Arianne Shahvisi about Dorling's book 'The Next Crisis', exploring social and academic themes.
An author interview event at the London Review Bookshop discussing a new book about counter-cultural choices.
A live recording of a book launch event at the London Review Bookshop featuring author Jameson Webster in conversation about her new book 'On Breathing'.
An author interview about a new book on extractive capitalism, featuring a conversation between the author and a lecturer.
A bookshop evening starts with Soviet aftermaths and keeps getting thornier.
A literary event at the London Review Bookshop launching Laura Beattie's new book 'Pear Trees' with a conversation between the author and Edmund de Waal.
One hundred years on, Eliot walks into Faber and Geyer.
Blake arrives by way of Ireland.
A poetry reading and discussion event at the London Review Bookshop featuring poets Sasha Deverick-McKenney and Jack Underwood.
An author interview event at the London Review Bookshop discussing Jenny Uglow's book 'A Year with Gilbert White' with Fiona Stafford.