The Author Archive Podcast

Richard Dawkins - Growing up in the Universe

It's Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution time again. This year the subject is artificial intelligence.

Way back in 1991 the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was the lecturer and his subject was Growing Up in the Universe.

He talked to David Freeman about the experience.

 

George Alagiah - A Passage to Africa

George Alagiah died on July 24  2023

Before George Alagiah was known as a BBC newsreader he was a working TV journalist.

In this conversation recorded more than 20 years ago he recounts what Rwanda meant to him. Not a near perfect place to be deported to, but a country that had experienced the most horrendous genocide.

He recounts the effect of constant propaganda. How people can be turned against each other by daily repetition of untruths. 

Couldn't ever happen here ......... could it?

George Alagiah reveals himself to be both thought provoking and wise. 

Beatles Historian Mark Lewisohn, Thomasina Lowe on the Kennedy years and science writer Marcus Chown explains everything.

The Beatles are chart toppers again. In this episode David Freeman talks to Beatles Historian Mark Lewisohn about his mammoth history of the Fab Four.

Thomasina Lowe talks about her fathers photographs of the Kennedy presidential years and science writer Marcus Chown talks about his book "What a Wonderful World". that endeavours to explain almost everything.

 

Clementine Taylor - Something About Her

A brand new novel by first time author Clementine Taylor.

It is the story of two young women Aisling and Maya and their love. Of course it isn't a simple story. The complications and obstacles are engagingly told. The book is a real page turner.

Both women are charismatic characters and as a reader you are supporting both of them ...... so how does it end?

 

 

Sir Stanley Wells, Ellen Apsten.

The Shakespeare First Folio was published 400 years ago. 

In this interview recorded in 2003 the Shakespeare scholar  Sir Stanley Wells talks to David Freeman about Shakespeare the man and Shakespeare the writer.

Russian history is all too relevant. Ellen Apsten tells David Freeman about the second novel in her series telling the stories of the powerful Russian women who lived remarkable lives in the 18th century.

The Tsarina's Daughter is about Elizabeth the beautiful daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine. This is the couple that Putin has studied and have influenced his world view.

 

Helen Dunmore - The Siege

This is a brilliant novel set in Leningrad in September 1941. It tells of love in a time of unimaginable hardship.

The horrific reality of a siege is being played out again in the Middle East  and Russian history is relevant to the war in Ukraine.

Helen Dunmore was a major literary talent.

Helen died of cancer in 2017.

Patricia Scanlan - Francesca’s Party

'Revenge - God's gift to women!' 

That's the message printed on the cover of this book.

So does the author know what the desire for revenge feels like?

Sarah Waters : Fingersmith

Sarah Waters burst onto the literary scene at the very end of the last century with her novel 'Tipping the Velvet'

The story centered on the love between two women in Victorian England.

Her next novel Affinity was again set in Victorian times and centres on the spiritualism beliefs of the time.

In this interview Sarah talked to me about her novel Fingersmith.

In Victorian slang what was a Fingersmith? And how did a collector of contempory pornography have a place in the story?

Maggie Gee : The White Family

This novel was nominated for award when it was first published over 20 years ago.

It has a message of acceptance and tolerance which, sadly, is still totally relevant.

The novel was republished last year.

 

Simon Kuper - Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK

There is a thought that UK politics is still suffering from 'long Boris'. His attitudes and behaviour still cast a long shadow.

How did it all come to pass in the first place? How did Johnson and his coterie ever make it to the top of the pyramid?

In this detailed  and depressing book FT journalist Simon Kuper traces the idea of Brexit back to toffs in the Oxford Union in the late 1980s. 

As the UK government enters a death spiral in 2023 and the Conservative party fractures yet again the events covered in this book must surely be the base cause of the malaise.

2023 marks 50 years since the UK realised it no longer had an empire and joined Europe. And then catastrophically 52% of the electorate were persuaded that their lives would be better if we left. How wrong can you be?