Book of the Day Bret Easton Ellis’s death wish The Shards, the author’s first novel in 13 years, is an Eighties-set autofiction thriller that plays on our cultural addiction to violence. By Anna Leszkiewicz
The last bell foundry in Britain This peek inside the John Taylor bell foundry is a ringing endorsement for BBC radio storytelling. By Anna Leszkiewicz
The Sewing Bee’s Esme Young: “Now I’m older, I think – whatever! Go for it!” The TV judge and designer on partying with Pink Floyd and David Bowie, dressing Grace Jones, and collecting animal… By Anna Leszkiewicz
Emily Ratajkowski’s new podcast is a painful listen High Low with EmRata is both grandiose and trivial, self-absorbed and unrevealing. By Anna Leszkiewicz
Sara Baume: “I’m attracted to artists who find new ways to tread the same ground” The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Seven Steeples on the pandemic, the death of her father and the role… By Anna Leszkiewicz
How near-death experiences change people In a powerful new podcast, From the Other Side, John Burnside recounts his own brush with death and hears… By Anna Leszkiewicz
Sylvia Plath’s 90th birthday party In October, around 300 readers arrived in Hebden Bridge for the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival hoping to change perceptions… By Anna Leszkiewicz
BBC Radio 4’s Raiders of the Lost Archive explores the world of “audio archaeologists” and missing tapes In a tape-filled attic, Roger Bickerton finds 94 instalments of Desert Island Discs. By Anna Leszkiewicz
The podcast Hoaxed packages suburban trauma as grim entertainment No matter how well researched, an investigation into a fake satanic conspiracy can’t help but seem salacious. By Anna Leszkiewicz