The EI Podcast

Philip Hensher speaks to Alastair Benn about his new book, ‘A History of the Novel in Britain’, a stylish and very personal survey of a great tradition.
Image: Portrait of Algernon Talmage circa 1915, by Hilda Fearon. Credit: Alamy

Hannah Lucinda Smith speaks to Caitlin Allen about her new book, ‘Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers’.
Image: United Nations Buffer Zone near the ghost town resort of Varosha, Famagusta, Cyprus. Credit: Alamy

Stephen Bowd speaks to Paul Lay about why, 500 years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli remains one of the world’s most vital political philosophers.
Image: Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli (1570). Credit: Alamy

Film critic David Thomson speaks to Paul Lay about his new book, ‘A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies’. 
Image: A sign advertises the opening of the Hollywoodland housing development in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. Credit: Alamy

Marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Michael Auslin speaks to Paul Lay about the document’s powerful yet often strange afterlife. From Philadelphia in 1776, through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, both World Wars and the Cold War, America’s founding document has been a perennial symbol of hope. 
Image: An illustration from ‘Columbia's Courtship: A Picture History of the United States in Twelve Emblematic Designs in Color with Accompanying Verses’ by Walter Crane (1983). Credit: Alamy