Books and Authors BBC Radio 4

Recorded at the Hay Festival
SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stewart
ON THE BLACK HILL by Bruce Chatwin
AGAINST NATURE by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Harriett Gilbert takes to the stage in the BBC Marquee at the Hay Festival for a special edition of the programme recorded in front of an audience.
Actor and writer Doon Mackichan known for her outrageous character Cathy in the sitcom Two Doors Down chooses Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart as her good read. It's a touching but heartbreaking tale of a young Glaswegian boy's desperate efforts to save his mother Agnes from the alcoholism that ruins and degrades her. It won the Booker Prize in 2020.
As we're in Wales Harriett's fitting choice is Bruce Chatwin's On The Black Hill an account of rural Welsh life in the mid 20th century. It's the story of two brothers' lives over 80 years and their connection to land and community.
Bruce Robinson actor, director and writer of the hit film Withnail and I which has been adapted for stage chooses a book that features in the final scene of the film. The I character places two books in a suitcase at the end of the film, one of which is A Rebours - Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Bruce confesses that he's not the book's biggest fan but the ensuing discussion provides an entertaining insight into books we might read when we're younger and how differently we feel about them in later life. It's the story of an eccentric recluse Jean des Esseintes in 19th century France who loathes people and creates a fantasy world for himself but ultimately suffers from his self-inflicted pretentious ennui.
"I wish I hadn't chosen this book" proclaims Bruce Robinson as he introduces it. "I wish you hadn't chosen it" agrees Doon Mackichan. They then elicit a lot of audience laughter from their deconstruction of this seminal French novel that all three find pretentious.
This is a longer version of the broadcast programme.
Producer: Maggie Ayre

Shahidha Bari discusses EM Forster's A Passage to India with Neel Mukherjee, Elizabeth Lowry and Dr Chris Mourant.

ABSENT IN THE SPRING by Agatha Christie (writing as Mary Westmacott) (HarperCollins), chosen by Simon Brett
IN THE GARDEN OF THE FUGITIVES by Ceridwen Dovey (Penguin), chosen by Denise Mina
HIDE MY EYES by Margery Allingham (Penguin), chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Crime writers Denise Mina and Simon Brett join Harriett Gilbert to read each other's favourite books.
Simon chooses Agatha Christie under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, with Absent In The Spring. It’s a story without any detective and one that, perhaps, reveals a more personal side to Christie's writing.
Denise picks the novel In the Garden of the Fugitives by South African-Australian author Ceridwen Dovey, an epistolary novel which begins with a letter that breaks seventeen years of silence between a rich, elderly man with a broken heart and his former protegee, a young South African filmmaker.
And for the occasion of having two crime authors, Harriett Gilbert picks a golden age crime book, Hide My Eyes by Margery Allingham, where private detective Albert Campion finds himself hunting down a serial killer.
Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio in Bristol
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Johny Pitts talks to Kevin Barry about his new novel, The Heart in Winter

Claire Messud, Kafka and Jiaming Tang

QUARTET IN AUTUMN by Barbara Pym, chosen by Samantha Harvey
MRS CALIBAN by Rachel Ingalls, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
PHARMACOPOEIA: A DUNGENESS NOTEBOOK by Derek Jarman, chosen by Darran Anderson
Two award-winning writers share books they love with Harriett Gilbert.
Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio