This week, Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig are joined by the critic and gym-sceptic Irina Dumitrescu to consider a clutch of books about fitness – how it came to be the industry it is, what it means to us, even what the smell of sweat does; Alex Clark, a regular contributor to the TLS’s fiction pages, runs through this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, just announced, before turning to a real-life story that reads like a mystery novel: the “Stonehouse affair”, the tale of the MP and former Cabinet minister John Stonehouse, who disappeared while swimming from a private beach in Miami
The Age of Fitness: How the body came to symbolize success and achievement by Jürgen Martschukat
Exercised: The science of physical activity, rest and health by Daniel Lieberman
The Joy of Sweat: The strange science of perspiration by Sarah Everts
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
John Stonehouse, My Father: The true story of the runaway MP, by Julia Stonehouse
Stonehouse: Cabinet minister, fraudster, spy by Julian Hayes
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A Bengali Polymath and an ‘Accidental Modernist’
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D. H. Lawrence in Flames
Jane Austen and Abolition
Angela Thirkell’s Relentless Self-Belief
Pirandello’s Controlled Chaos
Violence Upon the Roads
Underground and on the Run
Getting Shakespeare’s Measure
Philip Roth, For Better, For Worse, Forever?
Dreams of America
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Vivian Gornick’s Time
Avoidance and absurdity
Ishiguro’s AI and Grendel’s Mother
Nostalgia, Outsiders and "Rubber Tramps"
Weapons, Grouse and Red Herrings
Tentatively Pressing
The Barbara Comyns revival
BONUS: David Baddiel - Jews Don't Count
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