Writers & Books

From the Editor: Welcome - I'd like to introduce you to the new podcast by the TLS. It is called Freedom, Books, Flowers and the Moon, which seems – and indeed is – a little odd as podcast titles go. It comes from Oscar Wilde, who once asked this (still unanswerable) question: "With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?"

The podcast aims to bring together some of the best writers from each edition of the TLS to explore the ideas they have written about and the areas in which they are expert. This week, we discuss the improbable rise of Emmanuel Macron with Sudhir Hazareesingh (the first to review Macron's book in English), the imperturbable anger of Jonathan Swift with Claude Rawson, and the salutary muddle of alchemy with Diane Purkiss. We don't think that you will get such a breadth of subjects, or depth of expertise, on any other podcast. It is the TLS, given its voice. So please do click and subscribe for free (you can also find us on iTunes here), and join me and Thea Lenarduzzi every week for an entertaining conversation about books, culture and ideas, courtesy of the Times Literary Supplement. You can follow us on @FBFM_podcast, too, if you do that sort of thing. – Stig Abell