PODCASTS
Talks by authors, interviews and readings
We are lucky enough to host some of our favourite authors upstairs at the shop. A bookshelf is swung back, chairs laid out, bottles uncorked and, an hour or so later, books signed. We began recording these events in 2019 with a talk by William Dalrymple; when the pandemic prevented them, we started recording the interviews remotely. Guests include Edmund de Waal, Olivia Laing, Hisham Matar, Tom Stoppard, Es Devlin, et al… we are hugely grateful to them all.
Listen to any episode below, or on Spotify, iTunes, etc. You can sign up to our events and podcast mailing list here.
1st June 2025
With the small boats crisis as its focus, We Came By Sea is an exemplary work of reportage, motivated by curiosity and a suspicion of prevailing narratives. It began ‘with a feeling of deep disquiet’ following a period of intensive reading of reports of people coming to ...
17th April 2025
Bouverie's first book, Appeasing Hitler, was a tremendous success. His second - a history of the alliance that won the war - is once again fascinating and beautifully written. He spoke to Johnny about the destruction of the French fleet by the British (they had been allies ...
15th January 2025
Dalton, who has worked for over a decade as a parliamentary and Foreign Office policy advisor and speech-writer, found herself raising a leveret in lockdown. Her approach was to intervene as little as possible and allow the animal to remain wild – yet it still comes to ...
20th November 2024
The scapegoat in question is the Duke of Buckingham: favourite and lover of James I and beloved friend of his son; husband, father, art collector, tireless statesman… The cost of his pearl-spilling outfit when he went to meet Henrietta Maria would have paid the ...
20th November 2024
We were delighted that Helen Charman, a Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, whose writing has been published in The Guardian, The White Review, Another Gaze and ...
10th September 2024
Five years – almost to the day – since the first episode of the Sandoe's podcast, we welcome back the very first author to have graced our airwaves: William Dalrymple. In September 2019 he came to discuss The Anarchy; he returns, on our 80th episode, for The Golden ...
23rd August 2024
Rupert Thomson has attracted the kind of critical acclaim which would flatter any rockstar, let alone writer. David Bowie chose The Insult as one of his 100 favourite novels of all time; he’s been compared to Dickens, Kafka and Grace Jones; his first novel, Dreams of Leaving ...
15th July 2024
Acclaimed historian Giles Milton (Checkmate in Berlin, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Paradise Lost) talks to Johnny about his new book on the US and Britain’s diplomatic mission to brace Stalin against the Germans and bring him into WW2 as an ally. The story is remarkable ...