898 episodes
Books and Authors BBC Radio 4
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- Society & Culture
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4.3 • 39 Ratings
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This podcast features Open Book and A Good Read. Open Book talks to authors about their work. In A Good Read Harriett Gilbert discusses favourite books.
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Carol Morley and Will Hislop
Film director Carol Morley and comedian Will Hislop discuss their favourite books.
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Open Book: Carys Davies, Annie Ernaux
Carys Davies on her new novel, Clear. Plus Annie Ernaux and photography
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Jonathan Buckley, Lit Crit and David Baddiel
Jonathan Buckley, Lit Crit and David Baddiel
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A Good Read: Christopher Eccleston and Lindsey Hilsum
JUST KIDS by Patti Smith, chosen by Lindsey Hilsum
MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor E. Frankl (trans. Ilse Lasch), chosen by Christopher Eccleston
TOWARDS THE END OF THE MORNING by Michael Frayn, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
The television journalist and actor share favourite books with Harriett Gilbert.
Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor of Channel 4 News, loves Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids, her account of coming to New York as a young woman and of her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It's a coming-of-age story set against the heady backdrop of 1970s counterculture; it's a story of becoming an artist; and it's a love story that turns into an elegy.
The actor Christopher Eccleston chooses Man's Search for Meaning, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl's account of his time in Nazi concentration camps and how those experiences informed his belief that man's deepest need is to search for meaning and purpose. It's a powerful book about retaining one's humanity in the face of unimaginable suffering and degradation.
And Harriett Gilbert chooses Towards the End of the Morning, Michael Frayn's 1967 satire about journalists working on a newspaper during the heyday of Fleet Street.
Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio
Customer Reviews
A Good Read! The book club I wish I was a member of.
Hands down my favourite podcast. Love the humour and mixed dynamics in each episode and getting lost in the reviews of books, many of which I will never read - but have found some gems along the way. Well done Harriet and team!
9th July 2019 A good read with Dom and Kate
Thank you Harriet, for the consistently wonderful conversations, not only introducing me to gems written in every era and every culture, but also introducing me to so many interesting people.
I need to write to bring a very special book to your notice arising from your discussion of March Violet by Philip Kerr.
I love Le Carre, Raymond Chandler and was given 3 Len Deighton for my birthday, introducing me to Bernard Samson.. all very fine page-turning train reading enjoyment. I was delighted to learn it was the 1st trilogy of a triple trilogy; such a pleasure!!
However, and here’s the diamond. There is a book poised before the dive into the 2nd trilogy called “Winter. The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family 1899-1945”
It holds all the elements you and your guests valued about the Kerr book without narrowing into a channel. The Deighton book brings us to Vienna and Berlin, through each decade of the early 20th century, into the generational story of the Winter family. He writes with grace and insight to enable psychological and historical revelation.
Despite the serious communication to us in the title , we walk through the months and years experiencing the passage of time the way the characters live through time passing and shapes forming... being engrossed in the ordinariness and dramas of immediate living with inability to understand the magnitude of those forces gathering strength.
We would all do well to read this very moving book and reflect .