Photo credit: Rosalind Hobley

Eleanor Anstruther discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Eleanor Anstruther was educated at Westminster School but dropped out of university to travel the world where she was lost and found for twelve years. When she inherited a farm in southern England she set up a commune and began to write. Her debut, A Perfect Explanation (Salt Books) was a finalist for the Desmond Eliot Prize & Not The Booker. She now lives not quietly at all between London, Surrey and the south of France. Her latest novel, Fallout (Empress Editions) is out now. Find her on Substack at The Literary Obsessive.

1. Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/greenham-common-peace-camp/
2. The Tommy Tiernan Show https://www.judecollins.com/2021/01/tv-reviewthe-tommy-tiernan-show-rte/
3. Cold Baths https://www.bupa.co.uk/newsroom/ourviews/cold-water-therapy
4. Menopause is the best thing that can happen to you https://www.drcoppaobgyn.com/blog/its-not-all-bad-5-positive-parts-of-menopause
5. Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
6. You can talk to trees https://jane-cobbald.medium.com/how-to-talk-to-trees-839f247df239

Mark Leonard discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Mark Leonard is Co-Founder and Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think-tank. His new book is Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When The Rules Fail.

1. Xi Jinping’s “Great Changes Unseen in a Century”, an understanding that the next few years will be characterized by the need to survive chaos rather than preserving or building order.
2. Bicycling through big cities – London, New York, Paris, Berlin
3. Zaho de Sagazan – a brilliant singer-songwriter and performer who is bringing French chanson into the electronic age
4. George Soros’s philosophy – the billionaire investor and philanthropist is best known for making money but just as important is his understanding of how to live in a world that is out of balance
5. Drummond Street in North London, the home of the best South Indian restaurants in Europe 
6. Neil Kinnock – the greatest political orator of my life-time who reinvented the Labour Party and is now campaigning for Britain to join the EU.

Tahmima Anam discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. Her short story ‘Garments’ was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London. Her new novel is Uprising, which is a Political Fiction Book Prize Finalist for the Orwell Prize.

1. The Dirty Protest in Ireland https://theconversation.com/dirty-protests-why-irish-republican-prisoners-smeared-their-cells-with-faeces-to-make-a-political-statement-during-the-troubles-160306
2. Lysistrata https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/aug/03/lysistrata-review-ancient-theatre-of-epidaurus-aristophanes-national-theatre-greece
3. South Korea’s 4B movement https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/blogs/how-the-4b-feminist-rebellion-is-taking-on-patriarchy
4. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana%27s_Dream
5. Coffee Ice cream https://thechalkboardmag.com/sugar-free-coffee-ice-cream-for-energy-euphoria/
6. How to be less useful by Priyanka Mattoo https://primattoo.substack.com/

Séamas O’Reilly discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Séamas O’Reilly is a writer and author who has worked as a columnist for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. He is Features Editor of London satirical magazine, The Fence and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died topped the Irish Times Bestseller List for seven weeks, and won Best Biography at the 2021 Irish Book Awards. Séamas currently lives in Walthamstow, London with his family. His new novel is Prestige Drama.

1. The book “On Bloody Sunday” by Julieann Campbell https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/30/on-bloody-sunday-by-julieann-campbell-review-the-most-powerful-account-of-a-brutal-day
2. The writer Flann O’Brien/Myles na Gopaleen https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n07/clair-wills/anti-writer
3. The Dyatlov Pass Incident https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/has-an-old-soviet-mystery-at-last-been-solved
4. AI Is A Scam https://www.gardenofmemory.net/historian-vs-ai-the-technology-sucks-and-is-basically-a-scam/
5. Alan Moore’s Top Ten comics series https://pagechewing.com/comic-commentary-top-10-by-alan-moore/
6. John Carpenter’s The Thing Is Probably The Best Film Of All Time https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/thing-2-review/

Ed Maklouf discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ed Maklouf attended school in England before moving to the USA to study at Stanford University, where he conducted specialized research into group communication and how people make decisions together. After graduating, he went on to found several start-up companies in the emerging field of “democracy technology,” building tools designed to improve participation, representation, and large-scale deliberation.

His work eventually led him to Barcelona, where he began a sustained research project on voting systems. During this period, he came to know and collaborate with leaders of the Arhuaco tribe in Colombia, whose sophisticated traditions of consensus and guardianship of the Sierra Nevada deeply influenced his thinking. Maklouf now serves as ambassador for the Arhuaco Sen Foundation, helping to connect Indigenous perspectives on agreement with contemporary debates about democracy and governance.

The Majority Myth grows out of several years of research into Collective Agreement: a framework that combines formal voting theory and Indigenous knowledge systems to ask when a decision can truly claim to speak for ‘the people’.

1. The truth about Voting and its origins https://www.ft.com/content/4df5c927-00d1-43dc-9731-b1fac4980dca

2.  The Arhuaco Indigenous Tribe https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190329-the-ancient-guardians-of-the-earth

3.  Friendship https://www.townandcountrymag.com/education-college/a38866811/boarding-school-friends-memoir-admissions-kendra-james/

4. My Mum’s Paintings My dad is a well known sculptor, Raphael Maklouf, who sculpted the portrait of the Queen on UK coins, but my mum never shows her work.

5. Trees Roots https://www.trees.org.uk/Trees.org.uk/files/61/6181f2b7-e35d-4075-832f-5e230d16aa9e.pdf

6. Etymology https://www.youtube.com/RobWords

Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen discuss with Ivan six things which they think should be better known.

Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen are co-authors of the Aisling series. Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling was the bestselling fiction title of 2017 in Ireland and its sequel, The Importance of Being Aisling, won the award for best popular fiction book at the 2018 Irish Book Awards. The third book in the series, Once, Twice, Three Times
an Aisling, won the same award the following year and the fourth book in the series, Aisling and the City, won again in 2021. The final book in the series, Aisling Ever After, was published in Autumn 2023 and was an instant number one bestseller. Combined, the Aisling books have sold more than 400,000 copies to date. Their new novel is Our Deadly Summer.

1. In 2015 Ireland legalised a number of Class A drugs for 24 hours because of a loophole in legislation.

2. An Irishman invented cheese and onion crisps at his kitchen table in 1954

3. The Irish language

4. Nearly all the world’s Viagra is made in a small Irish town 

5. Ireland is the only country in the world to have had a female, democratically elected head of state be succeeded by another female, democratically elected head of state, and both were called Mary 

6. Republic of Loose

Charles Moore discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Charles Moore was editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1995 to 2003, editor of the Sunday Telegraph from 1992 to 1995 and editor of the Spectator magazine from 1984 to 1990. He is now the Chairman of The Spectator. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020. He wrote the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher.

1. The 18th century https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-oct-26-bk-46704-story.html
2. East Sussex https://www.thekeep.info/places/eastsussex/
3. The Psalms https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/12-september/features/features/finding-inspiration-in-the-psalms-food-for-the-christian-journey
4. Ordet https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/d06c8e31-324e-5886-bfb3-200802199b37/ordet
5. Auckland Castle https://aucklandproject.org/attraction/auckland-palace/
6. Hedges https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/expert-advice/garden-management/wildlife-gardening/plant-a-hedge

Sean Murphy discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts and directs the Center for Story at Shenandoah University. He has been publishing fiction, poetry, reviews (of music, movie, book, food), and essays on the technology industry for over twenty years. His latest book is red, white, and blues, his fourth poetry collection. His Substack and podcast are Some Things Considered.

1. America learned all the wrong lessons from popular 80s movies
2. America is a myth-making machine
3. Atlantic City’s disintegration tells us everything we need to know about Trump
4. Howard Dean’s scream
5. The Assault on the Arts & Humanities Explain the Deeper Motivation of Late-Stage Capitalism
6. AI Can’t and Won’t Replace Art

Steven Seidenberg discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Steven Seidenberg is the author of Coda, Anon (Omnidawn, 2022), plain sight (Roof Books, 2020), Situ (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Null Set (Spooky Action Books) and Itch (RAW ArT Press, 2015). His books have been published in Italian, Portuguese and Swedish translation, and his collections of photographs include The Architecture of Silence: Abandoned Lives of the Italian South (Contrasto, 2023) and Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press, 2017).

Steven lives in Boston, America, and frequently travels with his work, particularly in Europe.

1. Philosopher Vilem Flusser https://www.frieze.com/article/without-firm-ground-%E2%80%93-vil%C3%A9m-flusser-and-arts
2. Composer Julius Eastman https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2021/06/21/1007150496/julius-eastman-a-misunderstood-composer-returns-to-the-light
3. Photographer Lynne Cohen https://www.frieze.com/article/lynne-cohen
4. Painter Morris Ben Newman https://www.tfaoi.org/aa/9aa/9aa5.htm
5. Poet Lorine Niedecker https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lorine-niedecker
6. Museum of Otherness and Elsewhere https://www.blocal-travel.com/street-art/maam-museum-rome/

Daniel Hahn discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Daniel Hahn is an award-winning translator, author and editor of numerous fiction and non-fiction works. He is one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, the first volume of which won the Blue Peter Book Award. Other titles include children’s works such as Happiness Is a Watermelon on Your Head (a picture-book for children) and a new edition of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. He has been a chair for prestigious international prizes including the International Booker Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He was previously chair for the Society of Authors and currently serves on the board of trustees for English PEN. His new book is If This Be Magic.

1. Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak https://www.drttmk.com/books/outside-over-there
2. Appalachian Waltz by Mark O’Connell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajkgNEO_Yeg&list=RDajkgNEO_Yeg&start_radio=1
3. Machado de Assis https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/12/17/machado-de-assis-well-ventilated-conscience/
4. Semicolons https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/colonandsemi/semi
5. Asterix in English translation https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-the-genius-of-anthea-bell-and-derek-hockridge/
6. Hamlet Goes Business https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/hamlet-goes-business