Katherine Bucknell discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Katherine Bucknell edited all four volumes of Christopher Isherwood’s Diaries, a volume of letters between Christopher Isherwood and his partner Don Bachardy (The Animals), and W.H. Auden’s Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Co-editor of Auden Studies, a founder of The W. H. Auden Society, and director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, she is widely recognised as a leading authority on Isherwood and her new biography Christopher Isherwood Inside Out is now available. She is also the author of five novels. She was born in Vietnam, raised in America, and lives in London.

1. Christopher Isherwood’s novel Prater Violet https://lonesomereader.com/blog/2024/1/30/prater-violet-by-christopher-isherwood

2. DH Lawrence’s novel The Lost Girl https://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/2328

3. The Nucleo Project https://www.thenucleoproject.org/

4. Marfa Stance https://www.marfastance.com/

5. How scallops move https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGdXxoHJaBA

6. The value of memorising poetry https://theconversation.com/ode-to-the-poem-why-memorising-poetry-still-matters-for-human-connection-121622

Tom Newton Dunn is a presenter, political commentator and writer. He first made his name as an award-winning defence correspondent covering the Iraq and Afghan wars. He went on to be Political Editor of The Sun for 11 years, leading coverage of four general election campaigns and the Brexit referendum, and interviewed seven British Prime Ministers and US President Donald Trump.

Moving to broadcast, Tom helped launch Times Radio as the new station’s Chief Political Commentator and the presenter of its flagship Sunday morning political programme. He moved to TalkTV on its launch to anchor an hour-long weeknight news programme. He continues to write for The Times and The Evening Standard.  His book is Letters from Everest.

1. Britain once invaded Tibet, and by brutal force (in 1904). This was the earliest origin of the modern day conquest of Mount Everest.

2. Mallory was bisexual, and had homosexual affairs with other Bloomsbury Group members

3. Mallory had ADHD – or at least, I’m certain he did, as it explains much about him, from his obsessiveness to his forgetfulness (though of course he was never diagnosed)

4. The Mallory family think George’s habit of climbing with a photograph of wife Ruth could be a key clue to whether he reached the top

5. We revere noble failure more than success – we do for Mallory

6. More than 300 climbers have died while trying to summit Everest since. Mallory was only the first 

Alex Edmans discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be less well known.

Alex’s new book, May Contain Lies, is about biases and misinformation, and so, in a reversal of the usual format, he discusses six ideas and beliefs which have been overexposed.

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.8 million views. He serves as non-executive director of the Investor Forum, on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing, on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, and on Novo Nordisk’s Sustainability Advisory Council.

Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was a Financial Times Book of the Year and has been translated into nine languages, and he is a co-author of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen). He has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His latest book is May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It.

1. Mothers should exclusively breast-feed their babies
2. You can be an expert in anything if you devote 10,000 hours to it
3. Starting with “why” is the secret to success
4. Diverse teams always perform better
5. More information makes you more informed
6. Grit is more important than IQ in driving achievement

Jonn Elledge is a New Statesman columnist, and a contributor to the Big Issue, the Guardian, the Evening Standard, and a number of other newspapers. He was previously an assistant editor at the New Statesman, where he created and ran its urbanism-focused CityMetric site, and spent six happy years writing about cities, maps and borders and hosting the Skylines podcast. He has written over a hundred editions of the Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything. His new book is A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps. He previously wrote The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything: All the Facts You Didn’t Know You Wanted to Know and, with Tom Phillips, Conspiracy: A History of Boll*cks Theories, and How Not to Fall for Them.

1. Babylon 5 https://www.douxreviews.com/2015/08/babylon-5-series-review.html

2. Life & Fate by Vasily Grossman https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n20/john-lanchester/good-day-comrade-shtrum

3. The Truth about Markets by John Kay https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=economics-faculty-publications

4. Why there was no Danish holocaust https://www.history.com/news/wwii-danish-jews-survival-holocaust

5. Nehru’s affair with Lady Mountbatten https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/from-the-india-today-archives-1980-mountbattens-and-nehru-friendship-in-high-places-2413716-2023-07-30

6. Ethiopian food https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ethiopian-food-best-dishes-africa/index.html

Henry Oliver discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Henry Oliver is a writer, speaker, and brand consultant. He writes regularly for outlets like the New Statesman, The Critic, and UnHerd. He writes the popular Substack The Common Reader, which was recently mentioned in the Atlantic. His book Second Act is about late bloomers. In 2022, he was given an Emergent Ventures grant.

1. Izaac Walton https://newcriterion.com/article/the-right-angle/

2. Wren churches https://sixinthecity.co.uk/news/2023/03/51-wren-churches/

3. Lyrics of Noel Coward songs https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n13/rosemary-hill/mushroom-cameo

4. Lichfield https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/The-City-of-Lichfield/

5. Byron Janis Bach recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdL3-xwoFik

6. Elizabeth Jenkins https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/sep/07/elizabeth-jenkins-obituary

Jamaica Kincaid discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s, Antigua. Her books include At the Borrom of the River; Annie John; Lucy; The Autobiography of My Mother; My Brother; Mr Potter; and See Now Then. She teaches at Harvard University and lives in Vermont. Her new book, with Kara Walker, is An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children.

1. Let Love Come Between Us by James and Bobby Purify https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32CgFcOSbxw
2. 26 of the 50 United States bear the names of Native Americans https://thoughtcatalog.com/james-b-barnes/2014/10/26-states-that-were-named-by-native-americans-was-your-state/
3. The Travels of William Bartram https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/americas-first-great-enviromentalist-florida-william-bartram-180983452/
4. The first paragraph of the 3rd Chapter of the Life of Frederick Douglas https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/narrative/full-text/chapter-iii/
5. Ervartung, a mono-drama opera with music by Arnold Schoenberg https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/feb/01/artsfeatures.classicalmusicandopera
6. The seed packet was invented by The Shakers, an English Protestant sect, who immigrated to America and made many beautiful and useful things for the home. Their beliefs were quite severe regarding sex so no children were produced to ruin the beautiful and useful things they made for the home https://digventures.com/2018/02/11-things-we-still-use-that-were-invented-by-the-shakers/

Caroline Eden returns to discuss with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Caroline Eden is a writer and book critic contributing to the Financial Times, Guardian and
the Times Literary Supplement. Her new book is Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys. Her earlier books include Samarkand, Black Sea and Red Sands, winner of the prestigious André Simon Award and a Book of the Year for the New Yorker.

1. Ukrainian borsch

2. Uzbek melons

3. Russian pirozhki

4. Polish pierogi 

5. Armenian lavash

6. Turkish boza

Caroline Crampton discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Caroline Crampton is the author of The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary (Granta, 2019). Her award-winning podcast, Shedunnit, is distributed by BBC Sounds. Her journalism has appeared in the New Statesman, The Times and the Guardian. An experienced broadcaster, she has appeared on BBC Two, Sky News, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4. Her new book is A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria.

1. The Lime Street Cutting https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/stunning-pictures-reveal-rarely-glimpsed-22659098

2. The adult novels of Eva Ibbotson https://shereadsnovels.com/2012/11/25/madensky-square-by-eva-ibbotson/

3. Beremeal flour https://baronymill.com/

4. The inverted story or “howdunnit” https://www.novelsuspects.com/articles/inverted-detective-stories-when-you-already-know-whodunnit/

5. The 1944 Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/powell-pressburger-kent-locations-canterbury-tale

6. Clumber spaniels https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/clumber-spaniel/

Kathryn Hughes discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Kathryn Hughes is the critically acclaimed author of The Victorian Governess, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and the hugely acclaimed George Eliot: The Last Victorian, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. Her new book is Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World. Educated at Oxford University, she holds a PhD in Victorian studies. She is a visiting lecturer at several British universities and reviews regularly for The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Literary Review.

1. Mrs Cotman, portrait by John Sell Cotman (hanging in Norwich Castle Museum) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Mrs_John_Sell_Cotman.jpg

2. Frances Simpson https://cat-o-pedia.org/frances-simpson.html

3. The Heart of Wales railway line https://news.tfw.wales/news/heart-of-wales-railway-line-best-in-europe

4. The proper use of the word “disinterested” https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/disinterested-vs-uninterested

5. Linley Sambourne House https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/museums/sambourne-house

6. The Gas Man Cometh (1963) by Flanders and Swann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0

Elaine Lin Hering discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Elaine Lin Hering has been a lecturer at Harvard Law School and a Managing Partner at Triad Consulting Group. She has worked with a wide range of clients in Fortune 500 companies, including American Express, Capital One, Google, Merck, Nike, Shell and Pixar, as well as with government and non-profit organisations.

[Elaine] “has all the ingredients to become the next Brené Brown” – Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, co-authors of NYT Bestseller, Difficult Conversations.

Elaine’s new book is Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent and Lead with Courage.

1. The real costs of AI https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ais-climate-impact-goes-beyond-its-emissions/

2. Babble hypothesis of leadership https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/leaders-talk-more-babble-hypothesis/

3. No-knead pizza dough https://www.seriouseats.com/jim-laheys-no-knead-pizza-dough-recipe

4. Social change ecosystems https://buildingmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ecosystem-Guide-April-2022.pdf

5. Use of low power language is strategic https://www.yourpowerunleashed.org/blog/2023/5/21/womens-use-of-low-power-language-at-work-is-not-diminishing-but-very-strategic

6. Forest-bathing is healthy https://time.com/5259602/japanese-forest-bathing/