The Waterstones Podcast

From the discipline he learnt from his grandfather and the integrity from his parents, to the lessons learned from everything from inflatable unicorns to crucial penalties, Gareth Southgate's approach to management has lessons for us all. We sat down to speak to him about personal values, taking pride in your actions and what the future might hold.

Continuing the seasonal series after Michael Morpurgo’s Spring, Val McDermid turns from crime to Winter, with its festivals, rituals and new year drive to achieve. We sat down with her to talk about the ghosts of Christmas past, holding on to tradition and why the new year is such a creative time for writing.

Salman Rushdie’s return to fiction sees him sharing a collection of stories which look at the questions that await us all at the end of our lives. We spoke with him about mortality, looking back and what the future might hold, together with what drives his creativity.

Join us for what promises to be an unmissable evening with bestselling author R.F. Kuang, as we celebrate the publication of her much-anticipated new novel, Katabasis.The internationally bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface returns with Katabasis: a sublimely dark and unputdownable tale of two rival Cambridge academics who must join forces on a rescue mission in hell itself.R.F. Kuang is now the author of six novels, with her debut novel The Poppy War written on her gap year in China and released in 2018. This was followed by The Dragon Republic (2019), The Burning God (2022), Babel (2022) and most recently Yellowface (2023).

30 years after he introduced the world to Lyra Belacqua, Philip Pullman launched the final volume in his Book of Dust series: The Rose Field. Just ahead of that event we sat down to speak with him about his feelings on finishing this epic writing task, the importance of imagination, and what he might turn to next as a storyteller.

From the moment she began her education at Oxford University, Malala Yousafzai was aware how hard it would be for her to enjoy a normal student experience. But as we discover from her new memoir and from our fascinating conversation with her about it, she was determined, for once, to throw herself fully into life at university. From clubs to dances, missed deadlines to lockdown, heartbreak to happiness - she shares with great honesty the many ways in which she forged her own path in life.

From her childhood in Islington to the red carpet at Cannes, Kathy Burke has always spoken her mind, and that strength and independence of thought is on every page of her memoir, A Mind of My Own. We sat down to speak with her about those early days in London, how they have informed her whole life, and what have been her guiding principles through it all.

Ian McEwan's masterful new novel is a piece of speculative fiction that shows a radically altered UK on the other side of climate catastrophe and global warfare. But it centres on two academics reaching back into the past to uncover the secrets behind a poem performed only once and lost to history. We spoke with him about the novel's big themes, its human focus and how to bring past and future together in the present moment.

With the arrival of Among the Burning Flowers, the majestic prequel to her classic fantasy, The Priory of the Orange Tree, we sat down with ⁠Samantha Shannon⁠ to talk about prequels, sequels, reading order, star signs, big themes, tiny books and so much more.

Back in 2017, we made Slow Horses by Mick Herron our Thriller of the Month in August and a whole host of readers found their new obsession. Now, 15 years on from its first publication, we sat down with the author of 9 novels and 5 novellas in the series to discover how it all began, what he thinks are the most important elements of his writing and where his cast of sidelined spooks find themselves in the new novel, Clown Town.