Radio Sohemia

Crime novelists Jake Arnott and Cathi Unsworth chat about Jake's more than two decade-long literary career. Their conversation inevitably features “The Long Firm”, which was adapted into a hit BBC drama series. He and Cathi will also be discussing his latest novel, “Blood Rival”, a psychological thriller that borrows from the life of the gangster and road rage killer Kenneth Noye.

Geraldine Norman, widow of the writer Frank Norman, joins Joe Daniel, Frank’s grandson, for a discussion with writer/musician Max Décharné about the underrated author of books such as “Banana Boy” and “Stand On Me”. Joe was the driving force behind the recent republication of “Soho Night & Day”, the classic portrait of 1960s Soho – a book that features text by Frank and high contrast black and white photos by Jeffrey Bernard, someone better-known for his journalism and taste for booze.

Andrew Smith, the journalist and bestselling author of “Moondust”, talks to historian Matthew Worley about “Devil in the Stack” – Andrew’s latest nonfiction book. It’s a genre-defying part memoir, part history, and part impassioned essay about computer code and the ways in which it’s reshaping the world and humanity. Supported by the Heritage National Lottery Fund, the Tommy Flowers Foundation, and Fitzrovia Noir.

“Guardian” staff writer Patrick Barkham chats with Ross MacFarlane about “The Swimmer”, Patrick’s appropriately unconventional biography of Roger Deakin. Abandoning his lucrative career as a 1960s Soho advertising executive, Deakin bought a ruined house in rural Suffolk and then reinvented himself first as a documentary film-maker and finally as the author of the bestselling memoir, “Waterlog”, which sparked both the fashions for nature-writing and so-called wild swimming.

Foreign correspondent Tom Parfitt, who has worked for The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, discusses his debut travel book with Paul Willetts. Entitled High Caucasus, it was hailed by The Spectator as “a work of extraordinary imaginative empathy and power.”

Bestselling novelist John King – author of The Football Factory – talks to Sohemian Society co-founder and think-tank veteran Marc Glendening about “Peekaboo Bosh”, his latest foray into dystopian fiction. They also discuss John's previous work in that genre.

Professor John Tresch – a science historian at the Warburg Institute – in conversation with former Wellcome Institute archivist Ross MacFarlane about three early nineteenth-century inventions that anticipated the programmable electronic computer. These include the Eureka Machine, which created perfectly grammatical Latin poetry. This episode was produced with assistance from the National Lottery, Fitzrovia Noir, and the Tommy Flowers Foundation.

Jerry White and Travis Elborough in conversation about Jerry’s most recent book, “The Battle of London, 1939-45: Endurance, Heroism and Frailty Under Fire”.

John L. Williams and Travis Elborough discuss John’s new book, “Heatwave”, which chronicles the famously hot and eventful British summer of 1976, a summer remembered bot just for its intense heat but also for riots, inter-racial violence, and the emergence of punk music.

Join former M.P.-turned-author Simon Danczuk for an amusing conversation with the Sohemian Society co-founder Marc Glendening about the long and often downright weird history of Dolphin Square, an exclusive 1930s London housing development. Among the featured residents are the eccentric spymaster Maxwell Knight, the gay spy John Vassall, and the Labour Party politician/British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

Publisher Yak El-Droubie talks to the lively and charming eighty-nine-year-old former nude model Jean Sporle about her life. Their conversation focuses on late 1950s and early 1960s Soho when she worked for Pamela Green and George Harrison Marks, creators of the groundbreaking magazine, Kamera, which brought artistic flair to so-called glamour photography.

Edward Parnell is in conversation with Paul Willetts about ghost stories and bereavement, twin preoccupations of Edward’s hit nonfiction debut. Published in 2019, “Ghostland” was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography and received unanimously enthusiastic reviews.

Peter Parker talks to Travis Elborough about “Some Men in London”, Peter’s recent, acclaimed and often witty two-volume collage of letters, diaries, and newspaper stories, chronicling gay male life between 1945 and 1968, the year when sex between consenting adult men was decriminalised. The discussion is punctuated by the actor Jon Glover’s readings from the diaries of Noël Coward and others.

A conversation between the nonfiction writers Keiron Pim and Paul Willetts. They focus on Keiron’s debut biography, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, a portrait of David Litvinoff, the East End rebel who formed an improbable link between the Rolling Stones, Lucian Freud, and the Krays. Litvinoff is perhaps best-remembered as the inspiration for the cult 1970 movie, “Performance”, starring Mick Jagger and James Fox.

A recording of a recent Sohemian Society event at which the painter/writer Darren Coffield and the art dealer/critic Clive Jennings discuss Darren’s most recent book, “Queens of Bohemia”. It charts the rackety lives of Nina Hamnett, Henrietta Moraes and other women who inhabited the mid-twentieth-century bohemian world that thrived in Soho and Fitzrovia/North Soho.

Nonfiction writer Paul Willetts talks to the historian and former foreign correspondent Patrick Bishop about his latest book, “Paris ’44”, which provides a panoramic portrait of the Nazi occupation of the French capital and its subsequent liberation.

A live recording of a Sohemian Society event at which Drake’s biographer Richard Morton Jack discussed his subject with the writer James Wilson, whose latest novel, The Pieces, features a Drake-inflected late 1960s folk singer. The discussion was chaired by the novelist and music writer Cathi Unsworth.

Jonathan Meades is in conversation with his longstanding editor and friend, John Mitchinson. They’ll not only be looking back on Jonathan’s career as a journalist, documentary film-maker, and fiction writer but also talking about his new novel, the wonderfully titled Empty Wigs.