Toni Morrison 1: The Bluest Eye
Published in 1970, written by an unknown new writer, The Bluest Eye is the great African American novelist Toni Morrison’s debut. It remains in many ways her most radical. It’s one of the most banned ...
3 Feb 1h 9min
Queens of Crime 4: The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham
A serial killer on the loose in the foggy, battle-scarred streets of London after the Second World War. Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is Bleak House meets 1984 meets Silence of the...
27 Jan 1h 6min
To See or Not to See? Hamnet tune-up session
With the release of Chloe Zhao's rapturously acclaimed film Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's much-loved 2020 novel, SLOB re-releases one of our earliest episodes.Hamnet is a beautiful, lyrical ...
23 Jan 50min
Queens of Crime 3: A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie
A Murder is Announced (1950) was Agatha Christie’s 50th published book. So when better than the 50th anniversary of her death to celebrate one of her greatest works - and introduce Miss Marple into th...
20 Jan 1h 7min
Queens of Crime 2: Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
This week, for the second of our episodes on the Queens of Crime, we travel by steamer with Ngiao Marsh and her celebrated detective Roderick Alleyn, who decides to go on holiday in Marsh's native New...
13 Jan 1h 5min
The Golden Age of Crime with Grantchester's James Runcie
James Runcie is author of the acclaimed Grantchester Mysteries - the focus of six books and a hugely successful ITV television series - following vicar-sleuth Sidney Chambers in his sleuthing career f...
9 Jan 46min
Queens of Crime 1: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
Last year, the SLoBlight lingered briefly on Agatha Christie when we celebrated the centenary of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from 1925. This book, more than any other, heralded the start of the so-cal...
6 Jan 1h 12min
By George (Eliot) She's Done It! The road to Middlemarch
George Eliot’s Middlemarch is the Mount Everest of Victorian fiction. A book so brilliant and monumental that it’s taken us a year of planning to take it on. But as we close out 2025, we’ve establishe...
30 Dec 20251h 9min
