Tea or Books? #79: Political Books (Yes or No?), and The Diary of a Bookseller vs Bookshop Memories

Shaun Bythell, George Orwell, and a whole host of politicians – it’s episode 79! We have a special guest for this episode – my very good friend Lorna, who was meeting Rachel for the first time. We recorded in person

Shaun Bythell, George Orwell, and a whole host of politicians – it’s episode 79!

We have a special guest for this episode – my very good friend Lorna, who was meeting Rachel for the first time. We recorded in person in Rachel’s flat, bunched along the sofa. It was really fun – and since Lorna is a broadcast journalist, I feel like we’ve elevated ourselves…

In the first half we talk about political books, both fact and fiction. In the second half we compare two works on running bookshops – Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller and a short essay by George Orwell called ‘Bookshop Memories’.

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Here are the books and authors we mention in this episode:

Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

The Quest for Christa T by Christa Wolf

The Tiger Who Came To Tea by Judith Kerr

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg

Goethe

Theft By Finding by David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Why I’m No Longer Speaking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Small Island by Andrea Levy

The Island by Victoria Hislop

Unleashing Demons by Craig Oliver

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro

Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski

Love on the Supertax by Marghanita Laski

Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood

Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli

Walter Scott

Charles Dickens

Emile Zola

George Eliot

Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Ian McEwan

Autumn by Ali Smith

Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope

The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe

Holy Deadlock by A.P. Herbert

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden

The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden

Head of State by Andrew Marr

Mrs Harris, MP by Paul Gallico

Flowers For Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

E.M. Delafield

Old Books, Rare Friends by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie