From no formal education before the age of seventeen to a PhD from Cambridge ten years later, Tara Westover’s transformation is the stuff of Hollywood. And that’s before you learn about the violence and brainwashing that tainted her upbringing within her Mormon survivalist family. Westover’s remarkable memoir, Educated, made Barack Obama’s summer reading list. But what did […]

A Far Cry From Kensington has many fans amongst the critics but what did Kate’s book club make of it? Did they fall in love with Muriel Spark’s genteel farce set in the postwar London publishing industry? Or did they need more convincing of Spark’s genius? For an informed opinion we interview Hannah Griffin of […]

The New York Times called it a ‘powerfully expansive novel’ and it was shortlisted for the Booker, but what did Laura’s book club make of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien? For our regular book club interview, we get radical with London’s Radical Reading Group. And we finish as always with some […]

It has been called her finest novel yet, but what did Laura’s book club make of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time? In our regular interview, we talk to The Divas, a close-knit group of women based in north-west London, about books, friendship and travel. And we finish as always with some fresh recommendations for your next […]

East West Street is the gripping memoir by prominent British barrister Philippe Sands. It’s a history of atrocity combined with a relentless search for the truth, with Sands digging deep into both his own family history and the legal framework that eventually brought Nazi war criminals to justice. Sands tells the story of two lawyers, Hersch […]

We find out what Kate’s book club made of Dr Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party, by Graham Greene. Alfred Jones, a widower who works as a translator for a chocolate company in Switzerland, meets Anna-Luise Fischer in a restaurant. Despite the difference in their ages the two fall deeply in love. They marry […]

Proustian mediatation on love and desire? Atmospheric beach read? What did Laura’s book club make of André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name? First published in 2007 and recently made into an Oscar-nominated film, the story follows 17-year-old Elio’s obsession with charismatic Oliver,  a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. […]

We debate Two Serious Ladies, the neglected 1940s ‘cult’ classic by Jane Bowles, and David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into A Bar, which won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. For our regular interview, we talk to Kat Brown about how she started the Jilly Cooper Book Club. Book recommendations To The End Of The Land […]

When we’re not reading books, what’s our dream publication? A magazine that takes the book club as its form and runs with it. And so it is with great delight, we bring you an episode inspired by The Happy Reader, Penguin’s very special publication that has a cult-following amongst those in-the-know. We discuss their winter […]

We take recommendations from Emily Rhodes of Emily’s Walking Book Club seriously. So, it was with much anticipation that Kate’s book club read All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, one of Emily’s all-time favourite reads. After the death of her husband, everyone assumes his eighty-eight-year-old widow will slowly fade away in her grief. But Lady […]

We delve into The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. Longlisted for the Booker Prize (2017), it didn’t make the shortlist, but did it make for a good book club read? Meanwhile for fans of horror and Halloween enthusiasts alike we meet up with Andy Russell of London’s Horror Book Club to find out […]

For Kate’s most recent book club, we set off to the high Himalayas in search of snow leopards and spiritual enlightenment with Peter Matthiessen’s cult classic The Snow Leopard. But what did we make of it? Is it a ‘man’s book’? And did it make for good debate? Also in this episode we take a […]

For a long time, according to our podcast stats, this was our most-popular episode, downloaded more than any other. Just what is it about This Is London by Ben Judah that makes people so curious? Judah’s book is a spare and unflinching investigation into what life in London can be like for the migrants who make up […]

Lincoln in the Bardo is a ghostly story that unfolds in a graveyard over the course of a single night. Narrated by a chorus of voices and historical sources this innovative novel invites discussion, and won the Booker Prize in 2017. In this episode we find out what Kate’s book club made of it. Were […]

What did Laura’s book club make of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, winner of the 2016 National Book Award, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and ranked no. 30 on The Guardian‘s list of Best Books of the 21st Century. In this alternate history novel we meet Cora, a young slave on a cotton […]

Kate’s book club read Kim Leine’s historical novel The Prophets of Eternal Fjord, translated by Martin Aitken, and discover they have wildly differing opinions. ‘My front teeth are quite fallen out but for five that dangle like scoundrels of the night from a gallows’ complains the main character, Morten Falck, as we follow his experiences attempting to convert […]

In this episode Laura’s book club are reading The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. The novel is set in 1970s England, during an unusually long heatwave. In an ordinary suburban neighbourhood a woman goes missing. For two ten-year-old girls, Grace and Tilly, searching for God is a way to find her and bring […]

Laura’s book club have been reading the travel memoir Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Bulgarian emigrée Kapka Kassabova. She explores the borderzone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece in the company of border guards and treasure hunters, entrepreneurs and botanists, psychic healers and ritual fire-walkers, refugees and smugglers, and traces the physical and […]

Can a sci-fi novel make for a good book club book? We find out with The Left-Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. The novel is set on a planet called Winter where all the inhabitants are all of neutral gender. Much like Earth they are unaware of life in the universe beyond their own planet and so […]