Professor John Tresch – a science historian at the Warburg Institute – in conversation with former Wellcome Institute archivist Ross MacFarlane about three early nineteenth-century inventions that anticipated the programmable electronic computer. These include the Eureka Machine, which created perfectly grammatical Latin poetry.
This episode was produced with assistance from the National Lottery, Fitzrovia Noir, and the Tommy Flowers Foundation.
Jerry White and Travis Elborough in conversation about Jerry’s most recent book, “The Battle of London, 1939-45: Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire”.
John L. Williams and Travis Elborough discuss John’s new book, “Heatwave”, which chronicles the famously hot and eventful British summer of 1976, a summer remembered bot just for its intense heat but also for riots, inter-racial violence, and the emergence of punk music.
Join former M.P.-turned-author Simon Danczuk for an amusing conversation with the Sohemian Society co-founder Marc Glendening about the long and often downright weird history of Dolphin Square, an exclusive 1930s London housing development. Among the featured residents are the eccentric spymaster Maxwell Knight, the gay spy John Vassall, and the Labour Party politician/British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.
Publisher Yak El-Droubie talks to the lively and charming eighty-nine-year-old former nude model Jean Sporle about her life. Their conversation focuses on late 1950s and early 1960s Soho when she worked for Pamela Green and George Harrison Marks, creators of the groundbreaking magazine, Kamera, which brought artistic flair to so-called glamour photography.
Edward Parnell is in conversation with Paul Willetts about ghost stories and bereavement, twin preoccupations of Edward’s hit nonfiction debut. Published in 2019, “Ghostland” was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography and received unanimously enthusiastic reviews.
Peter Parker talks to Travis Elborough about “Some Men in London”, Peter’s recent, acclaimed and often witty two-volume collage of letters, diaries, and newspaper stories, chronicling gay male life between 1945 and 1968, the year when sex between consenting adult men was decriminalised. The discussion is punctuated by the actor Jon Glover’s readings from the diaries of Noël Coward and others.
A conversation between the nonfiction writers Keiron Pim and Paul Willetts. They focus on Keiron’s debut biography, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, a portrait of David Litvinoff, the East End rebel who formed an improbable link between the Rolling Stones, Lucian Freud, and the Krays. Litvinoff is perhaps best-remembered as the inspiration for the cult 1970 movie, “Performance”, starring Mick Jagger and James Fox.
A recording of a recent Sohemian Society event at which the painter/writer Darren Coffield and the art dealer/critic Clive Jennings discuss Darren’s most recent book, “Queens of Bohemia”. It charts the rackety lives of Nina Hamnett, Henrietta Moraes and other women who inhabited the mid-twentieth-century bohemian world that thrived in Soho and Fitzrovia/North Soho.
Nonfiction writer Paul Willetts talks to the historian and former foreign correspondent Patrick Bishop about his latest book, “Paris ’44”, which provides a panoramic portrait of the Nazi occupation of the French capital and its subsequent liberation.
A live recording of a Sohemian Society event at which Drake’s biographer Richard Morton Jack discussed his subject with the writer James Wilson, whose latest novel, The Pieces, features a Drake-inflected late 1960s folk singer. The discussion was chaired by the novelist and music writer Cathi Unsworth.
Jonathan Meades is in conversation with his longstanding editor and friend, John Mitchinson. They’ll not only be looking back on Jonathan’s career as a journalist, documentary film-maker, and fiction writer but also talking about his new novel, the wonderfully titled Empty Wigs.