The Author Archive Podcast

Mark Billingham talking about his change of career from comedian to writer of crime fiction.

This conversation was recorded when Mark's first Thom Thorne novel, Sleepy Head, was published.

It's interesting to note that the UK health service comes under scrutiny in the story and Mark concludes that the problem even then was funding. Some things don't change.

When asked about his own literary enthusiasms Mark comes up with cheers for Ian Rankin and Val McDermid and a whole group of American writers.

Sally Smith - Magnificent Women and Flying Machines :the first 200 years of British women in the sky.

A fantastic celebration of the amazing achievements of women in the air and space. Some of these women are hardly known. This book is a revelation.

John Woolf - Black Victorians: hidden in history

With his co-author, Keshia Abraham, John Woolf tells the story of Black Victorians who have been marginalised by history.

There are many characters to meet - Sarah Forbes Bonetta who was given as a gift to Queen Victoria, Pablo Fanque who ran a circus, the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and South African Saartjie Baartman who was exhibited as the 'Hottentot Venus'.... and many more.

Fascinating and sometimes shocking book wonderfully introduced by its co-author John Woolf.

Nancy Campbell - Thunderstone : A true story of losing one home and discovering another.

Nancy Campbell is a poet and travel writer based in Oxford. 

This is not a travel book or a book of poems. Thunderstone is different. It's about setting up a happy home in a caravan that will probably never move again.

Nancy is put in the position of being the carer for her partner Anna who has suffered a massive stroke. With kindness and fortitude, they cope.

It's a beautiful book.

 

 

John Higgs - Love and Let Die : Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche.

On Friday 5th October 1962 the first Beatles record 'Love Me Do' and the first Bond film 'Dr No' were released.

This coincidence leads to a splendidly entertaining examination of the two hugely popular cultural phenomena.

Nessa Carey - Hacking the Code of Life : how gene editing will rewrite our futures

This is a superb book brilliantly explained by Nessa. Thought-provoking in an optimistic way.

Trevor Rees-Jones - The Bodyguards Story : Trevor was the only survivor from the crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales

Trevor Rees-Jones was the sole survivor of the car crash that killed Diana and Dodi in Paris on August 31st 1997.

He was very badly injured and kept a very low profile for a long time, but such was the media interest and the search for scapegoats he wrote his story - as much as he could remember.

If things had been slightly different could it now be King Charles and Queen Diana?

Helen Fry - Spymaster : the man who saved MI6

Dr. Helen Fry has written the biography of a man who is hardly known ..... yet!

Thomas Kendrick was a major architect of intelligence services, as well as being a saviour of hundreds of Jews in wartime Vienna. Oskar Schindler is known, so far Kendrick is not.

Spymaster is the meticulously researched biography of a man who deserves to be the subject of a major movie.

Listen to Dr Fry and you will be swept along by her knowledge and enthusiasm.

 

 

Richard Fortey - Trilobite

Richard Fortey is a paleontologist with a passion.

As a boy he went on a search for fossil trilobites. He found one and turned his interest into a career. His enthusiasm is hugely engaging.

Philip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire : a fictional look at the British involvement in 19th century Afghanistan

Philip Hensher is an author, academic, critic and a past Booker Prize judge.

I spoke to him when his novel The Mulberry Empire was first published. It's a huge wide-screen historical novel about an attempted British invasion of Afghanistan. 

Although it is fiction the novel puts the plight of the country in an unhappy perspective.