5. Sofka Zinovieff on the trail of the Red Princess
A few years ago Sofka Zinovieff became fascinated by the life of her grandmother and namesake, Sofka Dolgorouky, who was born into a noble family in imperial Russia exactly a century ago. Sofka had...
View Article22. From barman to biographer
Rodge Glass – Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography In this week’s podcast, Rodge Glass tells me how, after his first disastrous meeting with Alasdair Gray in a bar in Glasgow, he later went on to be...
View ArticleIntroducing the Last Englishman
Here is a short video I recorded with Roland Chambers about his new book, The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome. You could view this as an appetizer for the longer audio interview with...
View ArticleBooks of the Decade – Kirsten Ellis
Continuing our series in which writers and publishers choose their favourite books of the past ten years, today’s guest is Kirsten Ellis. Kirsten is the author of Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary...
View Article38. Poland – a country in the moon
My guest on this week’s programme is Michael Moran, author of A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland. Michael first visited Poland in the early 1990s after the collapse of...
View Article40. Charles Dickens – a writer’s life
We mark the birthday of Charles Dickens earlier this week with a special extended edition of my interview with his biographer Michael Slater from the end of last year, which originally appeared on...
View Article41. It’s only a movie (and a book)
Last Monday I met film critic Mark Kermode at the Watershed in Bristol before his event there which formed part of his countrywide tour to present his new book, It’s Only a Movie. He was remarkably...
View ArticleSummer Reading Choices: Michael Bywater
Our next guest recommender of Summer Reading is Michael Bywater, author (of Lost Worlds and Big Babies, inter al.), broadcaster, and – as you will see when you read on – now writing for the stage… This...
View ArticleSummer Reading Choices: Graham Farmelo
Graham Farmelo is Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. He edited the best-selling It Must be Beautiful: Great...
View ArticleTolstoy’s bedtime story
I was in Oxford on Friday to interview Rosamund Bartlett about her recent Tolstoy biography, which coincides with the great man’s death a century ago on 20 November 1910. The interview will appear...
View Article1. Books of the Year – Elizabeth Speller
Today we begin a new series of guest posts in which writers and publishers choose their favourite books of 2010. Our first guest is Elizabeth Speller, whose first novel, The Return of Captain John...
View Article3. Books of the Year – Louise Foxcroft
Our third guest reviewer of this year’s publishing highlights is Cambridge-based historian of medicine, Louise Foxcroft. Louise won the Longman/History Today Prize in 2009 for her book Hot Flushes,...
View Article4. Books of the Year – Andrew McConnell Stott
Andrew McConnell Stott is an award-winning writer and academic. For several years he was a stand-up comedian, described by London’s Evening Standard as “an absurdist comic with a satirical eye for...
View Article6. Books of the Year – Catherine Arnold
Our final guest who shares the highlights of her past twelve months of reading is historian Catherine Arnold. I first interviewed Catherine about the second book in her London trilogy, which explores...
View ArticleFirst in a series…
The idea is very simple. I ask an interviewee to talk about a photograph with special significance for them. The video lasts less than two minutes. And at the end you get to see the photo. Talking...
View ArticleOf fathers
As this series, Talking about Photographs, continues, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that fathers will feature prominently as a subject – fathers gone and fathers barely known in particular. Here,...
View ArticleRebecca Mead on The Road to Middlemarch
Rebecca Mead is an English-born, Brooklyn-based, New Yorker staff writer. I met her recently when she visited Toppings bookshop in Bath to talk about her new book The Road to Middlemarch. Rebecca’s...
View ArticleFiona Sampson on Limestone Country
W H Auden wrote: when I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, but what I see is a limestone landscape Fiona Sampson too hears the murmur...
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