John Sandoe Books

About John Sandoe Books

'Quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for' - Edna O'Brien. Independent bookshop (est. in 1957) Chelsea, London.

Publisher

John Sandoe Books

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

17 Sept 2019

Latest episode

28 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

93 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Aug 2026

   Neil Price: The Sea-King and the Sorceress

   When you think of the Vikings – if you ever do – where do you think your information comes from? If we tend to think of them all as marauders, it’s probably because the sources of information have generally been outsiders. Since the Vikings had no written records of their own (the Icelandic Sagas were hundreds of years later), it’s only with the advent of modern archaeological techniques using DNA, isotopes and other microdata that we can begin to get a fuller picture. One of the foremost historians of the Vikings to have benefited from recent archaeology is Neil Price. In his new book The Sea-King and the Sorceress: Life and Death in the Viking Age, Neil looks at twenty-five grave sites to present an utterly riveting account of the Viking world, including vikings (pirates, with a small v), traders, slaves, men, women and children from all strata of society from Greenland to the Volga. Interviewed by John de Falbe Edited by Magnus Rena

2. 

   8 Jul 2026

   Andrea Wulf: The Traveller

   A month before Cook was intending to embark on his second voyage, he took his ship, the Resolution, for a test run on the Thames. He had a particular reason for concern: Joseph Banks, the naturalist on the Endeavour, had grandly assembled a staff of fifteen and built a superstructure on the ship. Finding that it rendered the ship hopelessly top-heavy and unsuitable, Cook instructed that it be removed – whereupon Banks threw his toys out of the pram and said he wouldn’t come. His replacement, engaged at very short notice, was a German-born botanist called Reinhold Forster. His field experience came from a trip in Central Asia, on which he was accompanied by his 10-year-old son George. This magnificent book is about that son, who – aged 17 – accompanied his father on the Resolution. Where his father was a difficult man, detested by everyone, George delighted all who met him. Clever, a fine linguist, draughtsman, botanist and writer, he was also unusually interested in others. Time and again on the voyage, he noted that the contact between indigenous people and Europeans did not go well for the indigenous people, and he was dismayed. An observant man interested in connections rather than divisions, he was lionized on his return and spent his subsequent years engaging with contemporaries and arguing for what might later be held to fall within the phrase ‘universal human rights’ – including equal rights for women. (He believed that a society could be judged according to how it behaved towards the women.) Wulf is a fine writer, immersed in the eighteenth century from previous books and also in what came to be called ecology, thanks to Alexander von Humboldt, the subject of one of her earlier books, The Invention of Nature. It is no surprise to learn that von Humboldt was himself deeply influenced by George Forster. He may not be so well known to history, but Wulf is moved by this man and – on this podcast as well as in the book itself– persuades us that we should know him better. Signed copies are available.

3. 

   11 Jun 2026

   Catherine Ostler: The Renoir Girls

   It is impossible to tell from Renoir’s celebrated portrait of two delightful, pampered-looking girls that its subject — and their family at large — are destined for a horrible end; one of the girls would be murdered in Auschwitz, by then an elderly lady. The world of Catherine Ostler's The Renoir Girls is that of the super-rich Jewish bankers of late C19th France, great patrons of the arts and apparently assimilated, whose position was shown by the Dreyfus Affair to be fragile and reached its appalling conclusions under Vichy. It is the world of Proust and, of course, The Hare With Amber Eyes, whose characters were cousins of the Renoir girls and whose author (Edmund de Waal) soundly endorses this book on its cover. The book is excellent and has received some terrific reviews, which word-of-mouth responses so far have unequivocally supported. Interviewed by John de Falbe Edited by Magnus Rena

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

17 ratings

Spotify

4.4 / 5

9 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 25 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

17

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

85

Contact John Sandoe Books

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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