John Sandoe Books

Juliet Nicolson: The Book of Revelations

We are delighted to have Juliet back on our podcast. Her books have been regular bestsellers at Sandoe’s: The Perfect Summer, A House Full of Daughters, Frostquake, which she spoke about on the podcast in 2020. Her new book looks at the dynamics of corrosive secrets that women have been obliged to keep, how those secrets fit into a broader social context and how exposing them has been a release for many. Her own family is the starting point for her investigation; numerous case studies follow. 

Interviewed by Johnny de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena

Charles Darwent: Monsieur Ozenfant's Academy

A mentor to Le Corbusier, Ozenfant was an artist and critic who ran art schools in Paris and London in the 1920s and ’30s. Highly regarded, he knew everyone; Leonora Carrington was a student, Henry Moore worked for him, Paolozzi admired him. Despite his connections, energy and talent, his star dimmed and he passed into obscurity. This short, beautifully written book is a superb resuscitation of a fascinating individual whose influence was – and is – far-reaching. Johnny speaks to its author, Charles Darwent — art critic and reviewer. 

Photo: Ozenfant (left) and Le Corbusier launching their new magazine, L'Esprit nouveau, in 1920, from a fake hot air balloon. 

Interviewed by Johnny de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena 

Jonas Hassen Khemiri: The Sisters

We are delighted to bring you a new episode of our podcast: a conversation with Jonas Hassen Khemiri. He is a Swedish novelist and playwright, a teacher on the creative writing course at NYU and a finalist for the National Book Award. His writing is warm and playful, often concerned with his own Swedish-Tunisian heritage and with the joys and exasperations of being a writer, a father and a partner — rarely in that order. The Sisters is his latest novel, and his first to be written originally in English. It’s a wonderful, expansive book set between Tunis, Stockholm, Paris, Berlin and New York, beginning in 1999 and ending several decades later, the three sisters of the title having grown from adolescence into middle age. 

He spoke to Magnus about his approach to fiction, about place, ambition, migration and home, as well as David Foster Wallace, the Rockefeller Building, IKEA bags and the strange relief that comes from writing your own family into a novel. 

Interviewed and edited by Magnus Rena 

Horatio Clare: We Came By Sea

Horatio is an outstanding writer of literary non-fiction. He’s written before about life on a container ship and on an icebreaker, three memoirs, two important books on acute mental crisis, a glorious book on Bach, a book on curlews and swallows, three delightful books for young children and a couple more on Welsh myths — all in addition to regular journalism.

With the small boats crisis as its focus, We Came By Sea is an exemplary work of reportage, motivated by curiosity and a suspicion of prevailing narratives.

This short book began ‘with a feeling of deep disquiet’ brought on by reading the reports (suspiciously consistent in tone and agenda) of people coming to Britain’s south coast in small boats from France since 2020. Sceptical of the single narrative and cautious of the political winds of recent years, Clare visited Dover, Calais, Cornwall and Merseyside, where some refugees were housed as they waited for their applications to be processed. He also talks to people involved with the crisis in every kind of capacity. Observant and careful, he writes what he sees; exposes hypocrisy, corruption, lies, political cynicism and undue profit at the taxpayer’s expense – while celebrating the extraordinary courage and tenacity of the search and rescue teams and charities involved.

Interviewed by Johnny de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena 

Tim Bouverie: Allies at War

Bouverie's first book, Appeasing Hitler, was a tremendous success. His second — a history of the alliance that won the war — is once again fascinating and beautifully written. He spoke to Johnny about the destruction of the French fleet by the British (they had been allies months earlier), the betrayal of Poland, and the significance of public opinion for democracies at war; offensives that would stir a sense of patriotism back home were as important as those which were strategically necessary.

Interviewed by John de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena

Chloe Dalton: Raising Hare

Dalton, who has worked for over a decade as a parliamentary and Foreign Office policy advisor and speech-writer, found herself raising a leveret in lockdown. Her approach was to intervene as little as possible and allow the animal to remain wild – yet it still comes to snooze in her house, and has now raised leverets that treat Dalton’s small converted barn as their own. She spoke to Arabella about this improbable experience, about swapping the city for the country, and writing her first book – which has just been shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize. 

Interviewed by Arabella Friesen 

Edited by Magnus Rena

Lucy Hughes-Hallett: The Scapegoat

The scapegoat in question is the Duke of Buckingham: favourite and lover of James I and beloved friend of his son; husband, father, art collector, tireless statesman… The cost of his pearl-spilling outfit when he went to meet Henrietta Maria would have paid the mercenary army for four months. He was hated so fiercely by the time of his stabbing in a Portsmouth inn that his murderer was cheered en route to London. This biography of the fabulously handsome skimbleshanks is a scintillating portrait of a complex man and his tumultuous times. 

Interviewed by Johnny de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena 

Mother State: Helen Charman in Conversation with Kate Briggs

'motherhood is frequently politicised, but rarely acknowledged in all its fullness to be political'

We were delighted that Helen Charman, a Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, whose writing has been published in The Guardian, The White Review, Another Gaze and The Stinging Fly, came to the shop to speak about her new book, Mother State. The impetus behind the book — a history of motherhood in the UK and Ireland — is that motherhood is an inherently political state of being, and should be considered in terms of collective responsibilities as well as individual. The communities that she is interested in — anti-nuclear campaigners, lesbian squatters, the wives of striking miners... — present a world in which mothering is a powerful, radical act. 

She was joined in conversation by Kate Briggs (The Long Form and This Little Art, both published by Fitzcarraldo). 

To hear about upcoming events in the shop and new episodes on our podcast, please click here. 

Edited by Magnus Rena

William Dalrymple: The Golden Road

Five years - almost to the day - since the first episode of the Sandoe's podcast, we welcome back the very first author to have graced our airwaves: William Dalrymple. In September 2019 he came to discuss The Anarchy; he returns, on our 80th episode, for The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. He traces the rise and spread of Buddhism from its roots, showing the dominance of Indian culture in the ancient and early medieval worlds. WD's customary grace, zest and elegance render unfamiliar names and ideas both accessible and compelling. There's a limited number of signed copies so please give us a ring, email or order through our website if you'd like one.

Interviewed by Arabella von Friesen 

Edited by Magnus Rena 

Rupert Thomson: How to Make a Bomb

Rupert Thomson has attracted the kind of critical acclaim which would flatter any rockstar, let alone writer. He's been compared to Dickens, Kafka and Grace Jones; The Insult was chosen by David Bowie as one of his 100 favourite novels of all time; and his first novel, Dreams of Leaving - one of the earliest books to be published by Bloomsbury soon after it was established in 1986 - found fans in everyone from the drummer of Souxsie and the Banshees to the New Statesman, who said, “When someone writes as well as Thomson does, it's a wonder other people bother”.

His latest book is called How to Make a Bomb (or Dartmouth Park in its American edition). It's a heady, swirling novel about a writer's psychic collapse which begins in Norway and takes him to Cadiz and Crete. There are shades of John Fowles's The Magus to it: acute, sensitive, eerie but compulsively readable. 

Interviewed and edited by Magnus Rena