John L. Williams and Travis Elborough discuss John’s new book, “Heatwave”, which chronicles the famously hot and eventful British summer of 1976, a summer remembered bot just for its intense heat but also for riots, inter-racial violence, and the emergence of punk music.
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50:16
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50:16
The Scandalous History of Dolphin Square
Join former M.P.-turned-author Simon Danczuk for an amusing conversation with the Sohemian Society co-founder Marc Glendening about the long and often downright weird history of Dolphin Square, an exclusive 1930s London housing development. Among the featured residents are the eccentric spymaster Maxwell Knight, the gay spy John Vassall, and the Labour Party politician/British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.
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42:28
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42:28
Soho's Golden Age of Glamour
Publisher Yak El-Droubie talks to the lively and charming eighty-nine-year-old former nude model Jean Sporle about her life. Their conversation focuses on late 1950s and early 1960s Soho when she worked for Pamela Green and George Harrison Marks, creators of the groundbreaking magazine, Kamera, which brought artistic flair to so-called glamour photography.
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36:30
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36:30
Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country
Edward Parnell is in conversation with Paul Willetts about ghost stories and bereavement, twin preoccupations of Edward’s hit nonfiction debut. Published in 2019, “Ghostland” was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography and received unanimously enthusiastic reviews.
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32:47
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32:47
The Lives of Gay Men in Postwar London
Peter Parker talks to Travis Elborough about “Some Men in London”, Peter’s recent, acclaimed and often witty two-volume collage of letters, diaries, and newspaper stories, chronicling gay male life between 1945 and 1968, the year when sex between consenting adult men was decriminalised. The discussion is punctuated by the actor Jon Glover’s readings from the diaries of Noël Coward and others.
Radio Sohemia provides recordings of Q-and-As and talks hosted by the London-based Sohemian Society as well as interviews that aren’t staged in front of an audience. Founded in 2003, the Society originally focused on Soho bohemia, hence its name, but it has since widened its focus. Past guests range from the former Home Secretary Alan Johnson to the hairdresser-turned-memoirist Suzi Ronson, who created David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust hairstyle.
The podcast's continuity announcer is Miles Cholmondley-Warner, best-known for the spoof public information films that he presented with Harry Enfield.
UK