Lit with Charles
Welcome to Lit With Charles, a podcast on all things literary! I'm Charles Pignal, and every fortnight I’m asking guests about the four books which have made the biggest impact on their lives and work. If you're like me, you love literature – but maybe aren't always sure what you should be reading. The aim of this podcast is to make literature exciting and accessible; in each episode writers, artists, and other interesting people are giving real recommendations, to help you discover new books and authors off the beaten track. Here at Lit With Charles, every book has a story to tell.
Show episodes
This week I’m speaking with award-winning British author Tessa Hadley about her newest novella, The Party. Set in postwar Bristol, it follows two sisters over a single weekend as they move through a series of gatherings that reveal the class divisions and shifting gender roles of mid-century Britain — that fascinating
As we approach Halloween, I figured it was time to get a little gothic on the Lit With Charles podcast. My guest today is writer and literary champion Mairi Kidd, whose new novel Poor Creatures imagines the world of Mary Shelley before she wrote Frankenstein - the people around her, the ideas she was grappling with, an
We don’t have enough poetry on this show, and it’s time to change that. My guest today is Richard Scott, a contemporary British poet known for his bold, lyrical explorations of queer identity, desire, shame, and the politics of the body. He trained as an opera singer before turning to poetry, and has released two colle
We’re revisiting one of our most popular episodes: a 2023 conversation with rare bookseller Tom Ayling. Tom shares insights into the world of rare and antiquarian books — from the thrill of uncovering forgotten first editions to the evolving market for collectors. Now running his own business in Oxfordshire, Tom offers
Today I’m joined by acclaimed novelist and critic Tom McCarthy to talk about his latest book, The Threshold and the Ledger, a fascinating exploration of Ingeborg Bachmann — one of the most important writers of postwar European literature. We discuss Bachmann’s major works, including Malina and Salt and Bread, and the r
In this episode of Lit with Charles, I speak with Alexander Starritt, author of the novels We Germans (2020) and Drayton and Mackenzie (2024). We Germans is a devastatingly humane wartime confession: an elderly German writes a long letter to his British grandson about serving on the Eastern Front, with the grandson’s p
