This week, Laurie Maguire is in the audience for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; and Lucy and Alex catch up with novelist Curtis Sittenfeld on her whistle-stop visit to the UK.

‘Hamnet’, an RSC production, from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell

‘Romantic Comedy’, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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David talks to Ian McEwan about Italo Calvino’s The Watcher (1963), one of the greatest of all works of political fiction. Challenging, disturbing, redemptive: this is a book about who gets to count and who doesn’t, and what identity politics really means. David and Ian also discuss how political fiction works - and why the climate change novel is so hard to write. Plus they argue about whether children should be allowed to vote. 

Next week: Helen Thompson on Dallas and the end of oil.

Ian McEwan’s latest novel is Lessons, available now.

To read more about Calvino, here is a recent appreciation of his later writings in the New Yorker.

On the children’s focus groups, here is the report. 

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