Philippa Gregory, queen of historical fiction, talks about her best-selling tale of lust, jealousy and betrayal, The Other Boleyn Girl. James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions. The novel charts the lives of Anne Boleyn, and her sister Mary, thought to be the mistress of Henry VIII before Anne. Each in their turn are "the other Boleyn Girl", pawns of their fiercely ambitious, conniving family who in the novel use the girls to advance their own positions at the court of He...
Jun 03, 2012•28 min
Ross Raisin is a young writer who won much praise for his debut novel God's Own Country in 2008. He discusses the book with James Naughtie and a group of readers. It's the story of Sam Marsdyke who's a troubled nineteen year old young man living on a remote farm in the North Yorkshire Moors. It's a place of beauty and Sam resents the incomers, be they the ramblers he spies upon, or the new neighbours who've just moved up from London. Sam is one of contemporary fiction's unforgettable characters;...
May 06, 2012•28 min
Anne Enright talks to James Naughtie and readers about her 2007 Man Booker prize-winning novel The Gathering. The book was the surprise win of that year - beating Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Chair of Judges Howard Davies proclaimed the novel had one of the best closing sentences of any he had ever read. The Gathering of the title is the wake of Liam Hegarty who has committed suicide by walking into the sea at Brighton. His sister Veronica, one of the remaining nine siblings, narrates. In an ex...
Apr 01, 2012•28 min
Alan Hollinghurst talks to James Naughtie and readers about his 2004 Man Booker prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty. Framed by the general elections of 1983 and 1987 which returned Margaret Thatcher to power, The Line of Beauty is a story of love, class, sex and money - and AIDs. It won praise for the way it crawls deep under the skin of 1980's Britain. Protagonist Nick Guest is a young, gay Oxford graduate of modest means who is invited to stay with the wealthy Fedden family at their Notting...
Mar 05, 2012•27 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to the American writer and artist Art Spiegelman about his graphic novel Maus. First published in short frames in his experimental comic RAW in the 1970s, Maus the book has become a publishing phenomenon, selling over two million copies world wide. It tells the story of his parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, from their first meeting in pre-war Poland to their survival of the death camps at Auschwitz and Dachau and their move to New York after the war. Part of th...
Feb 05, 2012•28 min
Hunter Davies talks to James Naughtie and readers about his biography of The Beatles, first published in 1968. Recorded at the Cavern, Liverpool. In 1966-68 Hunter Davies spent eighteen months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers. As their only ever authorised biographer he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George and Ringo but to their friends, family and colleagues. He hung out in Abbey Road studios whilst they recorded Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At the end o...
Jan 01, 2012•28 min
December's Bookclub author is Sebastian Barry. Well known as a successful dramatist and novelist, his literary career became stellar when he won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year Award with this month's chosen book, The Secret Scripture; and he is considered one of Ireland's greatest living writers. The novel is told by Roseanne, who is uncertain of her age; she thinks she is now one hundred. She's been incarcerated in asylums in Ireland for over sixty years, and is writing the story of her life, ...
Dec 04, 2011•27 min
Iain Banks meets James Naughtie and readers at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to talk about his debut novel The Wasp Factory, first published in 1984. This shocking novel is an insight into the life of sixteen year old Frank, a brutal and disturbed teenager who enjoys killing animal and insects all too much. But Frank isn't alone in his madness - his brother Eric has just escaped from an asylum, and is gradually making his way back home to the remote island house Frank shares with...
Nov 06, 2011•28 min
Arundhati Roy talks to James Naughtie and readers about her Booker prize winning novel The God of Small Things. It's Arundhati Roy's first and so far only book of fiction and it took the literary world by storm, winning the Booker Prize in 1997. It's a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who must be loved, and how, and how much". The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people's behaviour and...
Oct 02, 2011•28 min
Mohsin Hamid talks to James Naughtie and readers about his bestselling book The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This edition of Bookclub will be broadcast just two days after the novel has been featured as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, and it's a timely choice as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a sparse, gripping, short novel that tackles the complex issues of Islamic fundamentalism and America's 'war on terror' with ...
Sep 04, 2011•28 min
Donna Leon talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about the first in her hugely successful crime series set in Venice, Death At La Fenice. The book launched the career of her fictional detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti in the early 1990s, and he is now beloved by readers. Like an Italian Maigret, he's a policeman of integrity. Brunetti also has a fulfilled family life with his intellectual and feminist wife Carla, and their two children, who are trapped in an eternal adolescence as t...
Aug 07, 2011•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to William Fiennes about his memoir The Music Room. The book is his account of growing up in a castle with an epileptic brother. It's an honest yet discrete story of a fascinating family and how they deal with the eldest brother's struggle with epilepsy. In his upbeat moments, Richard brims with tenderness and high spirits, and at his worst he is threatening and even violent. Richard dies of a seizure at forty-one; his life defined by damage done to his brain by h...
Jul 03, 2011•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to American writer Nicole Krauss, shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize. Our chosen novel is her critically acclaimed The History of Love. It's a complex tale of loss - a lost manuscript, lost homelands, characters grieving for lost loved ones. There are four separate narrators who are all drawn to the lost book - also called The History of Love. Leo Gursky is at the end of his life, tapping his radiator each evening to let his neighbour know he's still alive, ...
Jun 05, 2011•28 min
Andrew O'Hagan is a rising star in the literary world. He joins James Naughtie and readers to discuss his novel Be Near Me, the story of Father David, an aesthetic English Catholic priest working in a working class community in Ayrshire. This is a poignant story of a man who doesn't fit in. Father David is trapped by class hatreds, and troubled by sexual feelings which he struggles to keep submerged. He's a character who's almost intent on self destruction, and as the reader follows his story, w...
May 01, 2011•28 min
Recorded at the Verbal Arts Centre in Londonderry/City of Derry, James Naughtie and readers talk to one of Ireland's finest writers - Jennifer Johnston. Now in her eighties, Jennifer has been called 'The Quiet Woman' of Irish literature. Her distinguished career has spanned more than 40 years and has netted the Whitbread Prize among her many awards. Her books are taught on the Irish school curriculum and in American Universities. The chosen novel for this edition of Bookclub is one of her later ...
Apr 03, 2011•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to Benjamin Zephaniah, the poet and novelist who's equally popular with both adults and children. Our chosen novel is Refugee Boy, written for young adults. Benjamin is perhaps best known for his performance poetry with a political edge, but he has also written novels for young people. Benjamin is interested in international affairs and travels extensively throughout the developing world. He has visited refugee camps in places like Gaza and Montenegro and in Refug...
Mar 04, 2011•27 min
James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to journalist Tim Butcher about his bestselling travel book Blood River. When Tim Butcher was appointed the Daily Telegraph's correspondent to South Africa in 2000, he became obsessed with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This vast country dominated a map of Africa on his office wall and he began to plan a journey following in the footsteps of a famous predecessor - Henry Stanley. Stanley, of Dr Livingstone renown, had travelled along the route of the ...
Feb 03, 2011•27 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to this year's Man Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson. The chosen book for this edition of Bookclub is the one he says he wants people to read : The Mighty Walzer, first published in 1999. Peculiarly, it is a comic novel about the joy and despair of table tennis. It's also a portrait of a Jewish boyhood in Manchester, showing how the main character - Oliver Walzer - comes to terms with the demands of puberty and his sporting genius; as well as the attentions of...
Jan 05, 2011•27 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to Sarah Hall about her novel The Carhullan Army, recorded at the Chapter and Verse Literature Festival in Liverpool. Sarah Hall is being tipped as one of the most interesting up and coming novelists of her generation. By the age of thirty-five she had already been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. The chosen book in this month's programme is The Carhullan Army, her tale about a flooded post-apocalyptic Britain, and how a group of women are living on the outsi...
Dec 05, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to award winning biographer Claire Tomalin about her life of Thomas Hardy - The Time-Torn Man. Claire Tomalin is celebrated for her ability to create an intimacy of her subjects' life, whether it's Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan or in this edition of Bookclub, the author and poet Thomas Hardy. Claire reveals a personal relationship with Hardy - with childhood memories of her sister reciting his poem 'Lyonnesse'; and how she snuck into h...
Nov 07, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to the Irish writer Roddy Doyle about his Booker prize winning novel Paddy Clarke HA HA HA. In the novel ten year old Paddy rampages through the streets of suburban Dublin with a pack of like-minded boys, playing cowboys and Indians, etching their names in wet concrete and lighting fires. To get into the character of the boy Roddy took himself into his own childhood memories. He walked round Dublin and tried to remember how the City looked from a child's eye view,...
Oct 01, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to the Canadian writer Yann Martel about his novel Life of Pi, which won the 2002 Man Booker prize and went on to be a global phenomenon. James Naughtie chairs the programme. October's Bookclub choice : 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha' by Roddy Doyle Producer : Dymphna Flynn.
Sep 05, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to American writer Siri Hustvedt about her novel What I Loved. Siri Hustvedt's novel is part love story, thriller, and part family saga. It's set in New York's glamorous art world, and starts in 1975 when an art historian buys a remarkable painting of a woman and tracks down the artist. The two men become good friends and their lives intertwine as their sons grow up together. In the boys' teenage years the worlds of the two families fall apart and the novel change...
Aug 01, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to the Swedish thriller writer Henning Mankell about his novel Sidetracked, featuring his detective Kurt Wallander. Henning Mankell's character is now in the pantheon of fictional detectives. Like Conan Doyle before him, Mankell receives letters from readers addressed to Kurt Wallander. They think he's real because he's like us. He's a detective who suffers angst about the way the world is changing, readers witness his depressions and his difficult relationships w...
Jul 04, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to the celebrated author Lynne Reid Banks about her first novel, The L-Shaped Room. It was an instant success and has been in print ever since it was published exactly fifty years ago. It's the story of Jane, a single young woman who falls pregnant. Reading The L-Shaped Room again in 2010, it's easy to forget what a taboo it was to be pregnant and unmarried in the early 1960s. Jane is a brave character who decides to bring up the baby by herself, after her father ...
Jun 06, 2010•28 min
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most prominent writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Fiction, joins James Naughtie and readers to discuss My Name is Red. The novel is a complicated mixture of murder mystery, fairy tale and exploration of the medieval world of the Turkish miniaturist painter. The novel begins - surreally - from the point of view of the murdered man; his body thrown down the bottom of a well, he waits for this death to be discovered. The story is then taken up by a myriad of characters, ...
May 02, 2010•27 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to Jeanette Winterson about her breakthrough first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, about a girl growing up in an Evangelical Christian group. This Spring Jeanette is celebrating twenty five years since the book was first published - the question the book has always raised is how much of it is autobiographical? Because there are distinct parallels, the main character is called Jeanette, she lives in the same kind of Northern mill town and had a similar story....
Apr 04, 2010•28 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to Canadian author Douglas Coupland about his cult novel Generation X. First published in 1991, it became a worldwide bestseller and defined a generation. Set during a time of yuppies and youth unemployment, the characters in Generation X are all in their late 20s, highly educated but with no ambition - they work in bars, and tell each other stories. This is the novel that made 'McJob' a popular term; and looking back at the novel Douglas speaks movingly of his ow...
Mar 07, 2010•28 min
World-wide bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith meets readers to discuss the first in his series of humorous novels set in Edinburgh - 44 Scotland Street. The presenter is James Naughtie. The book tells the story of the interlocking lives of the inhabitants of adjoining flats in a house in the Georgian New Town of Edinburgh - their comic adventures, their foibles and accidents, their chance criss-crossings day-to-day. McCall Smith talks about the challenges of writing one thousand words a d...
Jan 03, 2010•27 min
James Naughtie and readers talk to celebrated American author John Irving about his novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. The novel starts with a shock - the eponymous hero hits a foul ball in a baseball match and kills his best friend's mother. It then moves through to spooky premonitions during an amateur performance of A Christmas Carol, to a drunken psychiatrist driving down school steps, to a bloody end during the Vietnam war. Yet there is pattern and meaning in such bizarre antics, and part of t...
Dec 06, 2009•28 min
