Dec 24, 2018

Hannah Knowles, Senior Commissioning Editor at Canongate Books in London, tells me what she does. I question her with the help of Geoffrey Faber. We talk, among others things, about track records, The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump, books with legs, back-lists, bestsellers, Robert Webb's How Not to be a Boy, selling...

Dec 17, 2018

Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive who has worked in the publishing business since 1972. He has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, Reed International/Reed Elsevier and Current Science Group, and is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive...

Dec 10, 2018

Throughout my twenties I harboured a strong desire to read the Great Books, but it wasn't until I'd finished university and come across Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan at the now defunct Book Den in Ottawa on MacLaren street, that I started to act seriously on the urge. It, and the 100 books recommended, had...

Dec 3, 2018

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.   We met in Ottawa and talked about, among other things, his father Murray, a Bernini bronze, African art, reference books, Linda...

Dec 1, 2018

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare's Freedom; and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. He is General Editor of The...