Meet the Writers
Georgina Godwin in conversation with top authors. Explore their inspirations, writing processes, and the stories behind their books.
Latest Episodes
Christopher Isherwood, ‘Inside Out’, with Katherine Bucknell
The twentieth-century author Christopher Isherwood, made famous by his 1930s work in Berlin, approached his writing about queerness, politics and religion with frankness and wit. The writer repeatedly fictionalised himself and his friends in his novels. Katherine Bucknell, the editor of four volumes of Isherwood’s diaries and letters, explains that…
UK general election special with Alun Evans
The 2024 UK general election is just days away. Speaking to Georgina Godwin is an expert on many aspects of UK government and politics, in particular, the support systems to ministers and prime ministers. Alun Evans CBE, a civil servant for more than three decades, lifts the lid on what’s…
Anders Lustgarten
Today’s guest is perhaps the only playwright and novelist to have been an international athlete, teacher of those on death row at San Quentin prison in California and a tree surgeon – and he only began writing in his thirties. He won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwright’s Award for ‘If…
Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 winner
Taking home this year’s prize is US writer and journalist V V Ganeshananthan for her second novel, ‘Brotherless Night’, which took her almost two decades to complete. Her debut novel, ‘Love Marriage’, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2009. ‘Brotherless Night’ is the story of Sashi, a 16-year-old aspiring…
Sasha Salzmann
The Berlin-based author and playwright was born in the then-USSR and emigrated to Germany in 1995. ‘Glorious People’, their second novel, now translated into English, was longlisted for the German Book Prize and won several others. Salzmann has since been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize for 2024, the biggest prize…
Kaliane Bradley
The British-Cambodian writer and editor initially wrote ‘The Ministry of Time’ – her gripping sci-fi rom-com debut – as a joke for a handful of friends. The genre-bending thriller, which explores themes including immigration and environmentalism, became an instant bestseller. Even before the novel landed on bookshelves last month, the…
International Booker Prize 2024 winner
Announced this week is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. The recipient of this year’s award is ‘Kairos’ by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hoffman, who each take home half of the £50,000 prize money. Host Georgina Godwin speaks to the winning duo and the…
Andrew O’Hagan
Award-winning Scottish author and editor at large at the ‘London Review of Books’, Andrew O’Hagan has spent the past decade working on his state-of-the-nation novel, ‘Caledonian Road’. Employing the traditions of Victorian writing, his research took him to the homes of Russian oligarchs, the Old Bailey and even a ship…
AK Blakemore
‘For me, beauty and disgust don’t really exist in binary.’ AK Blakemore’s discovery of tales of The Great Tarare, a French showman with an insatiable appetite, was the perfect setting for her to explore her love of the grotesque and abject. Shortlisted for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize, her novel…
Avi Shlaim
“We left Iraq as Jews, and we arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” Acclaimed historian Avi Shlaim is a man with a complicated backstory as an Arab Jew. He has a very clear-eyed view of events leading up to the current crisis in the Middle East. He traces the origins of…
