Episodes

Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Marcus Chown - The One Thing You Need To Know
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Marcus Chown is an award winning science writer and journalist.
This book has approachable chapters on Quantum Theory, Global Warming, Relativity .... 21 topics in all.
If you are curious about the cosmos - if you wonder about Dark Matter or even Dark Energy this conversation and the book behind it are for you.

Saturday Apr 15, 2023
Iain Banks - Dead Air
Saturday Apr 15, 2023
Saturday Apr 15, 2023
Iain Banks died of cancer 10 years ago.
He was a delight to interview... funny, quick, challenging and always entertaining.
Iain Banks was a rock star author!

Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Donna Leon : The joys and frustrations of being a writer residing in Venice
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
Tuesday Mar 28, 2023
This interview is a conversation found in the digital archive.
Donna Leon has written crime novels set in the magnificent city of Venice. This interview happened long ago before Italy entered the Eurozone. Donna expressed some fairly attention grabbing facts.
Didn't put me off going to Venice!
I was reminded of this interview when I was in Cheltenham Hatchards today and there was a whole table filled with the latest Donna Leon novel.

Friday Mar 24, 2023
Friday Mar 24, 2023
This conversation has contemporary resonances. LIke others that came after him this former vice chairman of the Conservative Party and would be Mayor of London had supreme confidence in his ability to tell lies and then lie his way out of the consequences of the earlier untruths. Jeffery Archer was supremely confident he would always 'get away with it'. The edifice of untruths became unsustainable and eventually collapsed. We see this happening again.
The reason for this interview was the publication of a new collection of short stories. The coverage in the tabloids at the time was much more about his relationship with a prostitute and how he persuaded a friend to give her money to go away.
With hindsight his lies were going to send him to prison and I should maybe have asked him about being banished from the Tory party and his payments to sex worker Monica Coghlan. That might have made a more riveting conversation.
This fits in with all the revelations in the Channel 5 documentary.
It was a long time ago ..... I was young!!!

Monday Mar 20, 2023
Ken Dark : The Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth
Monday Mar 20, 2023
Monday Mar 20, 2023
In this new book published by Oxford University Press, Professor Dark explains what his archeological investigations have revealed about the small village where Jesus grew up.
There are surprising details about the life style and beliefs of the community that Jesus and his family were a part.

Monday Mar 13, 2023
Jeremy Worman - The Way to Hornsey Rise : an Autobiographical Novel
Monday Mar 13, 2023
Monday Mar 13, 2023
In his excellently written evocative memoir, Jeremy Worman recounts how a privately educated schoolboy came to live in the biggest squat in Europe.
This is a personal story, but it is also full of observations about the way the world was back then.
Jeremy met the most glamorous film star of the time, saw Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight festival..... and fell in love.
Twice.
This autobiographical novel was published in March 2023

Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Marilyn Wisbey : Gangster’s Moll. A true life crime story.
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Thursday Mar 09, 2023
Marilyn Wisbey is the daughter of one of the Great Train Robbers. She grew up with her father in jail and remembers the difficulties of visiting him.
When she was an adult she was drawn to criminals and for ten years was the partner of the gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser.
Listening to this interview now there are so many questions I would like to ask ....... what was the electric pliers incident??
Gangster's Moll was published in 2001.

Saturday Mar 04, 2023
Patricia Cornwell : Isle of Dogs
Saturday Mar 04, 2023
Saturday Mar 04, 2023
Patricia Cornwell became successful at writing crime novels because she knew what she was writing about.
She had been a journalist covering crime when she took a job in the office of the Chief Medical Officer of Virginia.
Her first hand experience lead to the writing of the Kay Scarpetta series of novels.
This interview was recorded in London when Patricia was launching the third of the Trooper Andy Brazil novels.

Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Toby Matthiesen : The Caliph and the Imam : The making of Sunnism and Shiism
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Dr Toby Matthiesen is Senior Lecturer in Global Religious Studies at the University of Bristol.
In this new book Dr Matthiesen looks at the way, at this death, the followers of the Prophet Muhammad disagreed on who should succeed him. This argument started in AD632. This book traces the history of the split through history and shines a light on the modern world. Was the invasion of Iraq a good idea?
The Caliph and the Imam is published by Oxford University Press.

Monday Feb 13, 2023
Monday Feb 13, 2023
In spring 1973 these three Liverpudlians were the comedy, poetry and musical group The Scaffold.
Mike McCartney was known as Mike McGear to differentiate himself from his Beatle brother Paul.
This conversation was recorded at a time when the trio were travelling the country to promote their Island LP, Fresh Liver.
From time to time they became serious but the overriding atmosphere was a bit silly. Some of what was said shows how perceptions of what is funny have changed over 50 years!