The Shakespeare and Company Interview

• Books Matter More Than Ever: A Conversation with Ian Patterson

  In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with poet, translator and critic Ian Patterson about Books: A Manifesto, his passionate defence of reading in all its forms. What begins with the construction of a personal library in a converted coach house opens into a wide-ranging meditation on memory, loss, vulnerability and the profound role books play in shaping a life. Patterson discusses the anguish of parting with thousands of volumes, the intimacy of marked-up, well-lived-in books, and the politics of reading slowly in a culture addicted to speed. The conversation moves through genre snobbery, guilty pleasures, poetry’s complex rewards, the porous borders of contemporary literature, and Patterson’s experience translating the final volume of Proust—an immersion so deep it altered his own prose. It’s a warm, generous exploration of why books matter, how they remake us, and why defending them feels more urgent than ever.Buy Books: A Manifesto: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/books-a-manifesto*Ian Patterson is a widely published poet and translator, and a former academic. The translator of Finding Time Again, the final volume of the Penguin Proust, he is also the author of Guernica and Total War and Nemo’s Almanac. He won the Forward Prize for Best Poem in 2017, with an elegy for his late wife, Jenny Diski. He worked in Further Education between 1970 and 1984, had a second-hand bookselling business for ten years after that, and from 1995 until 2018 was an academic, teaching English Literature at the University of Cambridge. Many of his students have gone on to shape the world of publishing and writing, both in the UK and the US.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, with Ian Leslie

  In this live conversation at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, Adam Biles speaks with writer Ian Leslie about John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, Leslie’s acclaimed exploration of the creative and emotional bond at the heart of The Beatles. Together they trace John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s relationship from their first meeting as bereaved teenagers in Liverpool, through the crucible of Hamburg, the frenzy of Beatlemania, and the artistic revolutions of the 1960s. Leslie explains why their partnership was neither simple friendship nor sibling rivalry, but a passionate, volatile, and profoundly collaborative romance—one that shaped their music as much as their music shaped them. They discuss myth-making around the band’s breakup, why McCartney’s reputation took decades to recover, and how John and Paul remained “entangled particles” long after going their separate ways. A rich, moving conversation about genius, chemistry, and the power of creative partnership.Buy John & Paul, A Love Story in Songs: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/john-and-paul*lan Leslie is a journalist and author of two acclaimed books on human behaviour, Born Liars, and Curious. His first career was in advertising, where he worked as a strategist for some of the world's biggest brands at ad agencies in London and New York. He now counsels business leaders on communication and writes about psychology, technology, politics and business for the New Statesman, Economist, Guardian and the Financial Times. He is the co-host of a podcast series called Polarised, on the way we do politics today. lan is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He lives in London with his wife and two young children.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• When Stories Fall Apart: Miriam Robinson on Love, Loss, and Truth

  In this intimate conversation recorded at Shakespeare and Company, novelist Miriam Robinson joins Adam Biles to discuss her remarkable debut, And Notre Dame Is Burning. Together, they explore the novel’s fractured structure and the emotional aftermath of betrayal, loss, and motherhood. Robinson reflects on her protagonist Esther—a woman piecing together the wreckage of a marriage through letters and fragments—as well as on grief, storytelling, and the disorientation of time. From the shadow of Notre Dame to the uncertainty of rebuilding a life, Robinson examines how women navigate love, autonomy, and the stories they tell themselves. Touching on subjects from miscarriage and memory to patriarchy and the politics of intimacy, this conversation balances literary craft with raw honesty.Buy And Notre Dame Is Burning: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/and-notre-dame-is-burning*Miriam Robinson is an author who has worked in the world of books and bookshops for over 15 years. Previously the host of podcast My Unlived Life, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London and her short fiction has been shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize, the inaugural Pindrop/RA Short Story Prize and the Pat Kavanagh Prize. Originally from Colorado, Miriam lives in East London with her daughter and their six-toed cat Astrid.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Why We Write, Why We Live, with Miriam Toews

  An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-miriam-toewsTrigger warning: This is a tender, funny, and hopeful conversation, that inevitably touches on the subjects of suicide and depression. Please be advised before listening.In this moving and intimate discussion, Miriam Toews joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to talk about her memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace. Beginning with the question “Why do I write?”, Toews embarks on a deeply personal exploration of creativity, doubt, family, and loss. She reflects on her Mennonite upbringing, the deaths of her father and sister, and the ways in which writing—and laughter—have helped her make sense of pain and love. With warmth, wit, and clarity, Toews examines the limits of narrative, the pull of silence, and the stubborn hope that persists in the face of despair. A meditation on grief, rebellion, and the meaning of home, this is a conversation about how to keep living, and how to keep creating, when life itself resists coherence.Buy A Truce That Is Not Peace: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/a-truce-that-is-not-peace*Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, Fight Night and one work of nonfiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is the winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• How France Lost Its Way, with Andrew Hussey

  In this episode recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, historian and cultural critic Andrew Hussey joins Adam Biles to discuss his powerful new book, Fractured France: A Journey Through a Divided Nation. With wit, erudition, and decades of on-the-ground insight, Hussey examines how France—once the model of revolutionary ideals and republican universalism—has splintered along social, cultural, and political lines. From the banlieues to the boulevards, from secularism to identity politics, Hussey traces the fractures that now define the French experience and asks whether the nation can still live up to its promise of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Their conversation moves between history, journalism, and personal reflection, exploring nationalism, colonial legacies, and the uneasy relationship between Paris and the rest of the country. Fractured France is both an elegy and a challenge: can a republic built on unity survive in an age of division?Buy Fractured France: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/fractured-france*Andrew Hussey was Director of the Centre for Post-Colonial Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and the New Statesman, and the writer/presenter of several BBC documentaries on French food and art. He is the author of The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (2001), and Paris: The Secret History (2006). He was awarded an OBE in the 2011 New Years Honours list for services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and France. His latest book, The French Intifada, was published by Granta Books in 2014. He lives in Paris.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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