This week, Lucy and Alex discover how James Shapiro created his landmark work on a formative year in Shakespeare’s life; and Miranda France on her spellbinding study of memoir and creative writing.
‘1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare’, by James Shapiro
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
Historian Emily Baughan on two books chronicling the immense impact of the NHS and the welfare state on the lives of Britons; and a new film explores Patricia Highsmith’s hinterland.
’The Welfare State generation: Women, agency and class in Britain since 1945’, by Eve Worth
‘Poster, protests and prescriptions: Cultural histories of the National Health Service in Britain’, edited by Jennifer Crane and Jane Hand
Boyd Tonkin visits Complicité’s audacious adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; and Barnaby Phillips on two Victorian explorers at daggers drawn
'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’, staged by Complicité, based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk
‘River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile’ by Candice Millard
Lamorna Ash joins us to talk about Shy, Max Porter’s tale of teenage angst; and Jonathan Taylor on an illuminating survey of the uses and abuses of storytelling.
’Shy’ by Max Porter
’Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative’ by Peter Brooks
This week, Margarette Lincoln on the secret life of Daniel Defoe, government agent; and Claire Lowdon transports herself back to the teenage turmoil of Martin Amis’s debut novel, fifty years on.
‘The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Daniel Defoe’ edited by Nicholas Seager
Flora Willson explores the struggle of four women composers to have their work heard, and Biancamaria Fontana on the late David Graeber’s survey of Madagascan pirate kingdoms.
‘Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World’ by Leah Broad
‘Pirate Enlightenment: Or the Real Libertalia’ by David Graeber
In our first instalment, we talk to novelist Dame Margaret Drabble and her son, gardener and TV presenter Joe Swift. Their wide-ranging conversation includes a disagreement over pelargoniums, Joe’s childhood insistence on playing football in his mother’s cottage garden, the joys of irregular hedges and fashions in fiction and foliage alike.
This week, Margaret Drabble and Joe Swift talk about the relationship between literature and gardening; and a new short-story collection from Margaret Atwood.
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