If you enjoyed the Spectator's podcast, why not subscribe to the magazine as well?

You can get 12 weeks of The Spectator for just £12, plus a free £20 £10,000 or weight raise voucher

if you go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

This is a podcast-only deal, and we hope you take us up on it.

Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's podcast,

Joan Collins reads an extract from her diary.

Owen Matthews explains that Russia and China's love in is purely pragmatic.

Reviewing Daniel Lights, The White Ladder,

triumph and tragedy at the dawn of mountaineering,

Sarah Wheeler asked the question,

What makes men and women climb high?

Eagle Toroni Lalik reviews let cinema go to its ruin,

the cinema of Marguerite Duras, at the ICA,

and argues that the most important thing that we should know

is that she was a total drunk.

And Tanya Gold reads her notes on tasting menus.

Up first, Joan Collins.

My French is rusty, to say the least.

Thanks in part to a very strict French teacher at Francis Holland,

who absolutely insisted on teaching us how to grammatically conjugate and recite our verbs before we even

...