To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency?

John Yorke’s groundbreaking bestseller, Into the Woods, revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative. Through these terrains, Yorke seeks out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too.

Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew. (Penguin Random House)

John and Jack meet at The Fig and Walnut in Bloomsbury.

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TV producer and script editor John Yorke appeared on The Booking Club’s Live show at The Battle of Ideas Festival last year, where we spoke along side Nick Wallis and Maxie Allen about the longevity of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. As I say in the forthcoming episode, British listeners of The Booking Club will have heard and seen an awful lot of John’s work over the years. John Yorke is the man who commissioned the TV drama Waterloo Road. He turned the BBC Radio 4 serialisation of GK Chesterton’s Father Brown books into the hit TV detective show starring Mark Williams.He developed and, with some serious graft I imagine, redeveloped the original script for Life on Mars, after it was rejected by Channel 4 and later taken up by the BBC. Life on Mars is now a bona fide classic.He was the brain behind the script of some of the most iconic episodes of Eastenders back in the 2000s. One such episode, a finale remembered as the cliff-hanger Who Shot Phil? aired in 2001. It attracted 20,000,000 UK viewers. The population of the UK in 2001 was around 59 million. Let that sink in. UEFA had to move a semi final match to avoid competition with that one episode. Other TV and radio shows John has either commissioned or produced include Wolf Hall, Shameless, Spooks, The Wine Show and that evergreen staple of BBC radio programming, The Archers. Thanks to John for a great recording this week at The Fig and Walnut in Bloomsbury. This episode is fast-approaching. John’s new book 📚Trip to the Moon: Understanding the True Power of Storytelling📚 is OUT NOW.

'Nearly Departed' is novelist Lucas Oakeley's first work of fiction. When not writing novels, Lucas is a food journalist and book influencer tirelessly recommending books for boys and advocating for men in general to choose reading over watching YouTube Shorts, flirting with ChatGPT or disappearing down another Reddit hole.Starting the new year over a gorgeous Ethiopian plate, he and Jack discuss men, love and modern book culture.They meet at Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell, South London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Debut novelist and book influencer Lucas Oakeley meets me at Zeret Kitchen, to discuss:🎤Why Ethiopia offers the ultimate communal eating experience. 🎤How the novel can be man’s best friend🎤Why cycling in London is not for the faint of heart, and much more

Who Will Remain by Kasim Ali is a powerful new novel following a young man as he weighs up the life of safety that his parents want for him and another path on the streets outside his door, from the acclaimed author of Good Intentions.

Amir has grown up in Alum Rock, Birmingham, under the care of his sensible older brother, Bilal, and his cousin Saqib, born just a few days before Amir. Alum Rock can be a troubled place, but Amir has managed to keep his head down, worked hard and stayed out of trouble … until now.

When Saqib is killed in a gang fight and Bilal announces his engagement, Amir suddenly loses the two men who keep him grounded. Amir’s university grades are collapsing, he’s running out of money, and pressure mounts from every direction. As tensions flare, the friends left around him start to draw Amir into their more dangerous pursuits, and the family ties that have bound him so completely begin to unravel.

Amir decides he only has himself to rely on and must take his future into his own hands.

This is a blistering story of social expectations and social condemnation, of dead ends and divided loyalties, and of what’s left behind when you have nothing left to lose. (Harper Collins)

Kasim meets Jack at Salim’s in Turnpike Lane, North London.

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This episode is lifted from a live recording that took place at The Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 in Westminster on Saturday 18th October.

Jack draws together a panel of three speakers carefully selected to provide a modern perspective on the lasting significance of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which turns 100 this year.

The panel featured Maxie Allen, radio producer for Times Radio, Nick Wallis, journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal, and John Yorke, narrative expert, author of Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines.

From Nick’s relentless coverage of one of the biggest state-facilitated corporate assaults on working people ever recorded in British history, to Maxie’s own brush with the absurdity of modern British policing earlier this year, to John’s revivifying appraisal of the text, this discussion will make you wish you’d read the The Trial sooner.

A big thank to the Academy of Ideas, and to our excellent audience on the day.

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A riveting tale of risk and obsession set in the alluring world of Macau’s casinos, by the author of the critically acclaimed The Forgiven.

As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle – “Lord Doyle” to his fellow players – descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking refuge in a series of louche and dimly lit hotels, he watches his fortune rise and fall as the cards decide his fate.

In a moment of crisis he meets Dao-Ming, an enigmatic Chinese woman who appears to be a denizen of the casinos just like himself, and seems to offer him salvation in the form of both money and love. But as Doyle attempts to make a rare and true connection, all that he accepts as reality seems to be slipping from his grasp.

Resonant of classics by Dostoevsky and Graham Greene, The Ballad of a Small Player is a timeless tale steeped in eerie suspense and rich atmosphere.

NOW ON NETFLIX: the adaptation of Ballad of a Small Player, starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings, and Tilda Swinton.

Lawrence meets Jack at Defune in Marylebone, London.

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British novelist Lawrence Osborne meets me at Defune, London’s longest-standing Japanese restaurant, to discuss it and its dazzling Netflix adaptation, directed by Edward Berger. Stay tuned for more on this upcoming episode.