London Review Bookshop Podcast

On 23 April 1925, T.S. Eliot was officially invited by Geoffrey Faber to join the newly founded publishing house of Faber & Gwyer. It was to prove the most momentous appointment in the history of 20th-century poetry in English. Among Faber & Gwyer’s first books was Eliot’s Poems 1909-1925, which included ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, The Waste Land, and ‘The Hollow Men’. As pioneering talent scout for Faber & Gwyer (which would become Faber & Faber in 1928) Eliot launched the careers of such as W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, David Jones and Stephen Spender, and oversaw the publication of the work of the poet who had discovered him, Ezra Pound. Exactly a hundred years on, poet and critic Mark Ford, Emeritus Professor of English at Sheffield John Haffenden, former Faber managing director Toby Faber and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton Aakanksha Virkar visited the Bookshop to discuss the events leading up to Eliot’s appointment, and his early years with the firm that would become virtually synonymous with his name. 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]

In William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love (4th Estate) – ‘an impassioned magnum opus celebrating Blake’s star-shaken genius by discovering his lineage everywhere in the author’s own crystal cabinet of artists and outlaws,’ in the words of Iain Sinclair – Philip Hoare pays brilliant and digressive tribute to the maverick poet and artist and his abiding influence. Hoare, author of the classic Leviathan and Albert and the Whale, was joined in conversation by novelist and essayist Olivia Laing. 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]

Sasha Debevec-McKenney’s debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo) packs a lot in – humour, heartbreak, politics, sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism, pop culture and much else besides. ‘Where else can you read about e-girls twerking to LBJ in hell?’ asks Maggie Millner, author of Couplets. ‘Who else can pack microplastics, adultery, and overalls into the same poem, and make you (literally) cry along the way? No one, that’s who. Sasha Debevec-McKenney is the real freaking deal.’ She read from her work and spoke about it with Jack Underwood, author of A Year in the New Life and Not Even This. 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]

In A Year with Gilbert White (Faber) biographer and historian Jenny Uglow continues her exploration of the 18th-century scientific revolution with a journey in the company of the father of British natural history, whose The Natural History of Selborne has been constantly in print since 1789 in over 300 editions to date. Jenny Uglow talked about how the nature notes of an obscure Hampshire clergyman became one of the best-loved books of all time with Fiona Stafford, Professor of English at Somerville, Oxford and author of The Long, Long Life of Trees, The Brief Life of Flowers and Time and Tide.

Emily LaBarge’s Dog Days (Peninsula Press) begins with a personal trauma – the account of how she and her family were held hostage during the Christmas holidays of 2009 – building on that experience a dazzling exploration of writing, art and the imagination. Drawing on writers and artists such as Vivian Gornick, Robert Burton, David Lynch and Sylvia Plath, LaBarge picks apart the structures of narrative forms to ask how it might be possible to tell the ‘Good Story,’ and its aftermath, on its own terms. LaBarge was in conversation with writer Olivia Laing.