Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and th...

To continue our summer of travel with Close Readings, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the medieval bestseller The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The fictional traveller’s fantastical descriptions of different places, peoples and animals across the Holy Land and Asia ...  Show more

In April this year, the US Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's voting map on the grounds that state lawmakers had violated the constitution by creating a second district with a majority of Black voters. This was followed by a similar decision by the court in June, giving Alabam ...  Show more

This week, we drop in on a conversation between Mary Beard and two former TLS editors; and Anne Enright joins us to talk about turning poet in her new novel.'Emperor of Rome: Ruling the ancient Roman world', by Mary Beard'Big Caesars and little Caesars: How they rise and how they ...  Show more

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Eimear McBride on the dark side of bad sex writing and why a new anthology is nothing to be snickered at; Diana Darke on the stories of two young women who have fled war in the Middle East and the new pressures they face; and Jenny Hendrix jo ...  Show more

This week, Ben Hutchinson on the making of Franz Kafka, a century after the writer's death; and an interview with Roz Dineen about her vision of climate catastrophe and societal collapse.'Kafka: Making of an icon', Weston Library, Bodleian, Oxford, until October 27Accompanying bo ...  Show more

This week, Lisa Hilton on the truth behind life as a 'grand horizontale'; and Juliette Bretan explores why Virginia Woolf served up boeuf en daube in To the Lighthouse.'Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power', by Sonia Purnell'Eur ...  Show more