The Booking Club

The stories we read as children are indelible in our memories; reaching far beyond our childhoods, they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past – collective and individual, remembered and imagined – and invite us to dream up different futures.In a pioneering history of the children’s literary canon, The Haunted Wood reveals the magic of childhood reading, from the ancient tales of Aesop, through the Victorian and Edwardian golden age to new classics.Excavating the complex lives of our most beloved writers, Sam Leith offers a humane portrait of a genre and celebrates the power of books to inspire and console entire generations.Sam met Jack at Pizza Express in Euston, LondonFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Technology has delivered a world that we expect to revolve around us, our needs and preferences, and our unique personalities. We willingly hand over intimate information about ourselves in return for a world that’s easier to navigate.We live in the Personalised Century, where we view ourselves in terms of what rather than who we are – the objects of others’ recognition, rather than the subjects and authors of our own lives. Is this a sign of our shrinking sense of self?Interrogating the historical currents that have brought us here, Timandra Harkness envisages a messier, riskier and less comfortable world than the one into which we’re sliding. Challenging readers to look at what’s missing from their personalised menus, Technology is not the Problem encourages us to look afresh at the familiar: not just the technology we use every day, how we relate to the world and those around us. (Harper Collins)Timandra and Jack met at Jamaica Wine House in the City of London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Rory Sutherland is the vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK and the co-founder of its Behavioural Science Practice. He is the author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense, writes The Spectator’s Wiki Man column, presents several series for Radio 4, serves on the advisory board of the Evolution Institute and is former president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. His TED talks have been viewed more than 7 million times.Now, he joins Jack Aldane on The Booking Club days before the 2024 General Election to discuss the myriad reasons Great Britain needs more alchemists in positions of power, why listeners should subscribe to the political and economic theory of Henry George, and what is fundamentally at fault with the UK tax system.Rory and Jack met at Sea Containers in London, which houses Ogilvy and its in-house restaurant and bar Cucumber.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

What does it mean to live a good, whole and fulfilling life? And if the world really is ending, or at least expecting turbulent change, what kind of people will we need when it happens?In Fully Alive, Elizabeth Oldfield explores how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age.Drawing on the ancient wisdom of faith and stories from her own life, Oldfield writes about her quest to live a meaningful, fulfilling life, and the niggling questions that bother all of us below the surface, such as:How can I focus on what really matters and stop getting so distracted by trivialities?How do I become a depolarising person in a culture of outrage, tribalism, and division?Can I find my highs in expansive, life-giving ways, rather than in a bottle of wine or a tub of ice cream?And what kind of world am I leaving for the next generation?Fully Alive is for readers looking for an honest conversation about the deepest questions in our ordinary lives, and practical, meaningful ideas to help us pay attention to the people we are becoming. For ourselves, our communities and the world.Elizabeth and Jack meet at The Anchor and Hope in SouthwarkFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, bestselling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.From the era of the hunter-gatherer to today, when we exist as workers in the globalised economy and citizens of online worlds, the need for status has always been wired into us. A wealth of research shows that how much of it we possess dramatically affects not only our happiness and wellbeing but also our physical health – and without sufficient status, we become more ill, and live shorter lives. It’s an unconscious obsession that drives the best and worst of us: our innovation, arts and civilisation as well as our murders, wars and genocides.But why is status such an all-consuming prize? What happens if it’s taken away from us? And how can our unquenchable thirst for it explain cults, moral panics, conspiracy theories, the rise of social media and the ‘culture wars’ of today?On a breathtaking journey through time and culture, The Status Game offers a sweeping rethink of human psychology that will change how you see others – and how you see yourself (Harper Collins).Jack met Will at Parrillan in Borough Yards, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we're stuffed too. How have people in the British Isles shared the riches from our fields, dairies, kitchens and seas, as well as those from around the world? And when the cupboard is bare, who steps up to the plate to feed the nation's hungry children, soldiers at war or families in crisis?Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the celebratory roast goose; the Victorian chemist searching for unadulterated mustard; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Drawing on cookbooks, literature and social records, Pen Vogler reveals how these turning points have led to today's extremes of plenty and want: roast beef and food banks; allotment, fresh vegetables and ultra-processed fillers.It is a tale of feast and famine, and of the traditions, the ideas and the laws which have fed - or starved - the nation, but also of the yeasty magic of bread and ale, the thrill of sugary treats, the pies and puddings that punctuate the year, and why the British would give anything - even North America - for a nice cup of tea.Pen met Jack Aldane at Brunswick House in Vauxhall, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Pax is the third in a trilogy of books narrating the history of the Roman Empire. The series that began with Rubicon, and continued with Dynasty, now arrives at the period which marks the apogee of the pax Romana. It provides a portrait of the ancient world's ultimate superpower at war and at peace; from the gilded capital to the barbarous realms beyond the frontier; from emperors to slaves.The narrative features many of the most celebrated episodes in Roman history: the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii; the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian's Wall; the conquests of Trajan and the spread of Christianity.Pax gives a portrait of Rome, the great white shark of the ancient world, the Siberian tiger, at the very pinnacle of her greatness.(Little, Brown Book Group).Tom met Jack Aldane at Noble Rot in Bloomsbury, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth, Remi AdekoyaWhat really matters when it comes to race?Western conversations on race and racism revolve around familiar themes; colonialism, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ideology of white supremacism form the holy trinity of the race debate. But what if we are neglecting a key piece of the puzzle? Something that explains why a racial order persists today despite a moral consensus it should not.In It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth, Remi Adekoya persuasively argues that – in our capitalist world – it is socioeconomic realities which play the leading role in sustaining racial hierarchies in everyday life and in the global big picture, something regularly overlooked in the current debate. Financial power is what enables ultimate influence over events, environments, and people, and, as Adekoya expertly demonstrates, it is money more than anything else that maintains the racial pecking order. Exploring immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, status perceptions and more, this book cleverly shows how wealth determines what’s what in key domains of modern life, and how this affects racial dynamics across the globe.An incisive, insightful and open investigation into the links between financial power and racial hierarchies, Adekoya sheds much needed light on the status and power imbalances shaping our world and reveals what needs to be done to combat them going forward. (Hachette)Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, by Kenan MalikIs white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?The ‘culture wars’ have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race’ in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today’s heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern West’s long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.Not So Black and White is both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity. (Hurst Publishers)Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod