I don’t think it’s too much of a reach for me to assume that, if you’re reading this, your preferred method of consuming literary criticism is in the pages of an esteemed 122-year-old magazine, perhaps alongside the weekend newspaper supplements. That’s not to say you don’t do other media. Perhaps you were a fan of Radio 4’s Open Book before the BBC shuttered it at the end of last year. You might never miss an episode of the much-loved Backlisted podcast. It’s likely you get to the Hay or Cheltenham festivals when you can. But the foremost champion of books right now, you might be surprised to hear, is a pop star.
Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, for which the global pop powerhouse interviews acclaimed authors, has been a regular fixture on YouTube since 2023. In that time, Lipa has spoken to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hernán Díaz, the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and the novelist-turned-public intellectual Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Clearly, Lipa has taste.
The singer’s love of books extends beyond this platform: she often posts pouty Instagram portraits where she holds up a recommended title, and has for several years been associated with the Booker Prize, speaking movingly at its 2022 ceremony about how reading the works of the novelist Ismail Kadare as a teenager helped her connect with her family’s Kosovan-Albanian heritage. “I often wonder if authors realise just how many gifts they give us,” she said then.
Now, Service95 Book Club is available in podcast form. It delivers, for all intents and purposes, a classic author interview format: Lipa introduces a writer, and together they discuss the major themes of one of their books. She asks about the origin of the tale, as well as their linguistic and formal choices. Across 40-45 minutes, the episode becomes a thorough exploration of the text in question.
Lipa’s podcast isn’t revolutionary. It doesn’t imagine a new critical form altogether in the way BookTok did five or so years ago. But it nonetheless marks a significant shift in the landscape of mainstream literary media. As many publications’ literary pages have steadily decreased in number and readership, book coverage on the radio has thinned and decent literary programming on TV remains a fantasy, a new approach has emerged: here is a glamorous, 29-year-old chart-topper taking a break from headlining stadiums around the world to lead the charge for books.
The book snobs won’t want to hear it, but for the most part Lipa is a satisfying interviewer. She chooses quality texts, not just the obvious latest bestsellers. In recent months her guests have included Max Porter, the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, and Guadalupe Nettel, the Mexican writer whose novel Still Born has found acclaim in English translation. Lipa selects books published by independent presses as well as the “Big Five”, is unafraid of tackling weighty political themes, and isn’t confined by the publishing cycle, often choosing titles that appeared years ago.
Like any good critic, she thinks deeply about each of the texts she discusses. Her recent episode with Vincent Delecroix, the French author of the International Booker-shortlisted novel Small Boat – a story of 27 migrants who die while crossing the Channel, told from the perspective of an onshore operator who refuses to provide help – is a showcase in close reading and moral clarity.
Admittedly, not all of the episodes are stellar: Lipa’s chat with the American novelist Ocean Vuong gets a little soppy and self-congratulatory, and I have once too often heard her perform a real bugbear of mine: answering her own question in the question, therefore assuming a response rather than leaving it open for the author. But there is no doubt she is championing literary culture among a generation – hell, a population – for whom reading has become passé compared to screen addiction. Last year the National Literacy Trust found that only 35 per cent of children over the age of eight enjoy reading in their spare time, the lowest figure ever recorded, while more recent polling by YouGov has found that 40 per cent of Britons have not read or listened to a book in the past year.
Lipa’s podcast alone is never going to solve the calamitous demise of reading for pleasure. But even if a sliver of her listenership buy or borrow a book they otherwise wouldn’t have, it’s unquestionably a worthwhile project – for her, for those readers, and for all of us who love literature.
Ellen Peirson-Hagger covers education as senior writer at “Tes”, and music and books as a freelance writer
[See also: Long live the solar power revolution]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 07 Aug 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special 2025
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment