Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast | Listen online for free

68 episodes

The UK’s Risible Reading Age and Bloody Books
2026/2/11 | 42 mins.
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking is the English literature curriculum really being dumbed down or are we simply not reading as a country anymore or simply shifting our allegiance to audiobooks? And Peter, as if to prove otherwise, will be bandying a copy of Lord of the Flies around and poring over the latest BBC adaptation.

Plus, why was Stephen Fry stalking Peter at a memorial for his late brother? Why we should eat even if the Queen has done with her meal, royal protocol be damned! Why neither wants a coat of arms, divorce etiquette and why the Suez Crisis reminds Peter of his father getting on his bike.

On our reading and watch list this week:

· The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
· Lord Of The Flies – William Golding
· A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
· The Box Of Delights - John Masefield
· Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene
· Heart Of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Please do get in touch, email: [email protected] you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ducking KGB Bullets and Inside the Epstein Files
2026/2/04 | 59 mins.
On this week’s episode Peter will be going back 35 years to a moment in time where he stood and watched the KGB murdering people in Vilnius. And I’ll be asking why did Sarah Ferguson take her children to see Jeffrey Epstein just days after he was released from prison?

Plus, we find out the truth about magnetised train tracks (all lies!), why both 1976 and 1979 are vying for the best of all possible years for two of our listeners, the rise of the extreme right wing and the night the Queen wore rhinestone.

On our reading and watch list this week:

· Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
· Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
· Hamlet – William Shakespeare
· Short Breaks In Mordor – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: [email protected] you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Pitiful Policing and Ballroom Beckham
2026/1/28 | 32 mins.
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking what can Brooklyn Beckham possibly mean when he accuses his mother of dancing ‘on him’ at his wedding? Both Sarah and Peter have a few wedding horror stories of their own to share too. Also, Peter wants to know if proposed mega police forces will just mean more constabulary cockups? His guess is yes.

Plus, what do the pair make of the new ‘super’ Chinese Embassy in London? Was Peter really in a secret MI5 file? Annoying train announcements and remembering Tony Benn.

On our reading and watch list this week:

· A Small Town In Germany – John Le Carre
· Tony Benn: A Biography - Jad Adams
· The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power - Tom Bower

Please do get in touch, email: [email protected] you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Team America and Ten Years After
2026/1/21 | 39 mins.
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah are asking what were you doing ten years and why is social media suddenly transfixed by 2016? And why has America decided to turn into the world’s bully?

Plus, why is Australia’s economy at such a low ebb? What the hell’s happened to civility? Why does Sarah’s fridge keep shouting at her? And when it comes to transporting coal, what’s better, the canal barge or railway track? You can guess which side Peter landed on…

On our reading and watch list this week:

· North By Northwest – Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
· Going South: Why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014 – L. Elliott & D. Atkinson
· Brothel In Pimlico – Roy Brooks

Please do get in touch, email: [email protected] you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Kissing Cousins and an Iranian Uprising
2026/1/14 | 41 mins.
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah Welcome are asking why is Sir Kier Starmer choosing not to condemn marriage between first cousins in some cultures? And what it might take for the Iranian people to be heard as civil unrest and revolution spread throughout the country?

Plus, why America is ruining the English language, the idea that Russia is a military world power is complete piffle, Trump’s Golden Fleet, Heated Rivalry (no, really) and the food that neither Peter or Sarah will eat.

On our reading and watch list this week:

· Rules For Radicals – Saul Alinsky
· The White Cliffs - Alice Duer Miller
· Dictionary Of Modern American Usage – Bryan A. Garner

Please do get in touch, email: [email protected] you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More News podcasts

Trending News podcasts

About Alas Vine & Hitchens

What's the Big Idea? Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) and Peter Hitchens (a man whose writing a critic was called to compare to a Guardsman’s boot: ‘as highly polished and potentially lethal’) meet once a week to look at the world and mutter, alas… Acclaimed columnist and journalist Sarah Vine and best-selling author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens discuss and dissect social, economic, and pop cultural flotsam and jetsam that have risen out of the dark waters of that week’s news. Taking one big idea each episode and pulling it apart with élan, imagine Vine and Hitchens respective columns brought to life and then skewered, scoffed at, debated, and given the full weight of Vine and Hitchens impenetrable gaze. Though an accord might not always be reached, it’s the journey that matters. Whether it’s the tech bros gone rogue – Meta tearing up its own rule book on fact checking, Musk attempting to influence governmental policy, or the knotty subject on society’s ever-increasing reliance on anti-depressants to treat what might just be the modern malaise and not depression at all. Or, evil, nature or nurture? Does evil actually exist or is it an idea that hangs over us, or do we just sometime embody it and the actions themselves are evil, not the individual? All this and more are to be pored over, one towering topic each week discussed with humour, insight, and real understanding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Podcast website

News News Commentary