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Robert Bound and guests explore what’s new in art, film, books, and media. Expect lively discussions, in-depth interviews, and expert insights.
Latest Episodes
How do you write a biography?
Robert Bound is joined in the studio by ghostwriter Fanny Blake and Cathy Rentzenbrink, books editor at ‘The Bookseller’. Up for discussion is how to choose your subject, adopt their voice and dig up the most salacious stories possible. Plus we hear from Kim Jong-il’s biographer and about a Brazilian…
Who still writes letters?
We speak to Christopher Howse about the letters to the editor section in ‘The Telegraph’, Julien Planté about making letters relevant to a new audience through ‘Letters Live’ and our Hong Kong bureau chief Aisha Speirs heads to Saigon to meet the city’s last remaining professional letter writer.
How do you reboot a classic?
Great works and well-loved products are always being rewritten, redesigned, remixed or remade. But how do you do this successfully? How subtle or brash should you be about reworking something the public are so au fait with? We pose the question, ‘How do you reboot a classic?’ to a few…
Whatever happened to fanzines?
Will Hodgkinson from ‘The Times’ and British Undergound’s Crispin Parry talk about the romance of waxing lyrical about your favourite bands in a homemade mag and whether fanzines can only exist in print. Plus we open the topic up beyond music with a ’zine dedicated to people who have been…
Is acoustic on its way out?
To answer this week’s question on Culture, we discover the ‘yaybahar’ – a new acoustic instrument from Istanbul that sounds electronic – we speak to oboe makers Howarth of London, piano-making masters Steinway & Sons and a woman in San Francisco who makes instruments out of whatever she can get…
How do you write a column?
We ask columnists Simon Kuper, Tim Dowling and Tabatha Southey how they approach the tricky art of column writing. How do you choose your subject? How do you keep it amusing? And how do you make your own experiences relevant to your audience? Plus we go back to school with…
Top draw
Rob Bound analyses the results of ‘The Art Newspaper’ exhibition and its museum-attendance survey for 2014 to find out which institutions come out on top around the world. Is it the masters or the contemporaries who are pulling in the crowds?
What gets washed up?
Culture is trawling the shores of Britain, Brazil and beyond this week to ask ‘What gets washed up?’ We examine ancient objects that tell tales of London’s past and track the authors of messages in bottles, plus we find out how a rubber duck can help you find a man…
How do you write about fashion?
This week Rob Bound asks writer Charlie Porter, chief fashion critic at the ‘New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman and online style guru Nick Wooster how to write about fashion.
Play it again
We go crate-digging with ‘Times’ rock and pop critic Will Hodgkinson, and Matt Sullivan, co-founder of record label Light in the Attic, who tell us how you find a lost record and then get it rereleased. We also discover a few of our own – from exotica in Portland to…
