The Goldster Conversations Podcast

Katharine has written non-fiction, short stories and books for children. The Low Road is her first novel. Her non-fiction works include Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People and No Place to Call Home: Inside The Real Lives Of Gypsies And Travellers. Katharine also works as an investigative journalist and editor, with particular interests in disability, the environment, race and ethnicity a...

How much can a good relationship improve your home life and make your work and social life more fulfilling?  Best-selling author and communicator, Jen Nash will reveal all about the power of relationships with inspiring zippy true life stories taken from her best-seller The Big Power of Tiny Connections—How Small Interactions Spark Awesome Outcomes.    Over the past twenty years, Jen has coached t...

Mike Gayle was born and raised in Birmingham. After graduating from Salford University with a degree in Sociology, he moved to London to pursue a career in journalism and worked as a features editor and agony uncle. He has written for a variety of publications including The Sunday Times , the Guardian and Cosmopolitan . He lives in Birmingham with his wife, kids and greyhound. Mike became a full-t...

Essie Fox was born and raised in rural Herefordshire. After studying English Literature at the University of Sheffield she moved to London, working on newspapers and in publishing – before she changed direction, becoming an illustrator in the world of art and design.  Always an avid reader, Essie now writes Victorian gothic novels. Her debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book...

James Clarke specialises in writing about cinema. He has worked with Iconic Images in London on a series of books about movie stars and their collaborations with particular photographers. The latest in this series of books is entitled Being Bardot and has just been published in the UK and the US. James also teaches screenwriting and works for the BFI as a Script Reader. James’s other books include...

“It’s never going to work. You’re not good enough!” Are you tired of hearing that nagging voice inside your head? And what if you could do something about it? Do you have a dream or a project that’s been on the back burner for too long? Even with all your accomplishments, do you still doubt yourself sometimes? Statistics show that eight-five per cent of people suffer from a lack of self confidence...

Mandy Preece is an award-winning communications trainer, author and a soul midwife – also known as a ‘holistic end-of-life practitioner’. Mandy gives motivational talks on the art of 'being alongside' other people, in life and at the end of life. Heartfelt, honest, funny and poignant, Mandy inspires us to find new ways to support each other. Her book Being Rock (which redefines listening) was publ...

How much does fiction act as a safety release to the pressures building up inside us?  How much to stories help in dealing with trauma and upheaval?   In its continual search for the new, fun and unexpected, Goldster Inside story brings you Mark Everglade, author of dystopian fiction and an expert in the sub-genre of CyberPunk.  Goldster members, unfamiliar with CyberPunk, check it out with your c...

The Tennis Champion Who Escaped The Nazis is a family memoir. Felice Hardy’s grandparents fled to London with their daughter, escaping from Nazi-occupied Vienna. This book explores their new lives in England, as well as the terrible fate of those loved ones they were forced to leave behind in the Holocaust. Felice’s grandmother, Liesl Herbst, was the 1930 Tennis Champion of Austria and later beat...

Frances Evesham’s advice to those thinking of retiring is ‘to do something you truly love, whether it's travel, growing orchids or painting - the days just fly past." So, after stopping work as a speech therapist after thirty years, Frances tried her hand at something she really loved, and had been nagging her for years. "I thought I'd get to put my feet up when I retired, but I was wrong,” she sa...

Victoria & Abdul is the story of the controversial relationship between Queen Victoria and a young Indian servant called Abdul Karim who arrived in court as a special present for her Golden Jubilee. Soon he became the Queen’s favourite, was promoted to being her Munshi or teacher, taught the Queen Urdu and introduced her to curries. Based on previously unseen journals and letters, Shrabani Bas...

In The Kitchen Prescription , Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed draws on her love of good food and her expertise in gut health to create 101 recipes that are easy to make, incredibly delicious to eat and will effortlessly keep your gut and digestion in tip-top condition. Eating well doesn't need to be dull food and deprivation - it should be eating a wonderfully varied, vibrant and exciting range of foods....

Gerald Dickens is a great great grandson of the author, Charles Dickens. He has been working as an actor, director and producer for many years.  In 1993 he created his first one-man show, a theatrical performance of A Christmas Carol inspired by Charles’ own energetic readings of the 1860s. A fascination in the life and works of his subject led him to write and direct further one-man shows includi...

John Hands is a scientist, novelist, creative writing tutor and the author of substantive and much-lauded non-fiction works Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe and The Future of Humankind:  Why We Should be Optimistic. After teaching physics for Britain’s Open University devoted more than ten years to evaluating scientific theories about how we evolved from the origin of...

Louise Minchin went from presenting BBC Breakfast to competing for the GB Team in Triathlon in the World and European Championship. In her new book Fearless she set out to push herself even further. Over 17 chapters, Louise embarked on terrifying, exhilarating adventures across the UK and the world to be able to tell extraordinary women's stories – and to test herself. She free dived under the ice...

Danièle Cybulskie has been making the Middle Ages fun, entertaining, and accessible for over a decade.  She is the author of four books and hundreds of articles on medieval history. The creator and host of The Medieval Podcast, Danièle brings expertise and a sense of humour to the airwaves to dispel common myths about the medieval period and enrich our understanding about the people of the past. I...

Sareeta Domingo is the author of The Three of Us (previously published as The Nearness of You ), and the editor and contributing writer of the romantic fiction anthology Who's Loving You . Her novel If I Don't Have You was shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards 2021. She has also written books for Young Adults, published under the name S.A. Domingo; these include Love on the Main Stage , which wa...

Jack Barsky grew up in the old East Germany and became a Soviet spy living undercover in the United States. No, this is not the plot of a fictional thriller movie. Jack Barsky’s book Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America gives us a picture of his austere, but stable childhood in the 1950s in a backward corner of East Germany where summer camps were fun, an...

It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a fifteen-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of The Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster of a new movie called Pretty Woman . February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May, she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in...

Malcolm Brabant is a larger-than-life figure in the worlds of filmmaking, war and medicine.  In 2011, he had a routine yellow fever shot at a clinic near his home in Athens where he was then living as a foreign correspondent. He was due to travel to the Ivory Coast in West Africa to shoot a series of films about child soldiers. Within eighteen hours, he was burning up with violent fever that laste...

Jessica Fellowes is the author of the crime series, The Mitford Murders , which has been published in eighteen territories worldwide and nominated for awards in England, Germany, Italy and France. Her first standalone novel, The Best Friend , was published this year in the UK and US.  Jessica started her career in journalism, working as the deputy editor of Country Life magazine and as a columnist...

India Be Damned is an epic thriller set during the last days of Britain’s colonial rule of India and the first dreadful, blood-ridden months of independence. The author is legendary foreign correspondent, Peter Popham, who has turned his forensic journalist’s eye to fiction in a work that both vividly entertains while prompting us to think more closely about Britain’s role in India’s modern histor...

In 1985, 24 young people from around the world had their RSVP pen pal requests (and their full postal addresses!) published in the bestselling music magazine of the day, Smash Hits . 35 years later, a couple from South London decided to reply – to all of them. Paul Chronnell and Sarah-Louise Young then wrote a unique, funny and touching book (think Danny Wallace & Dave Gorman meet Nora Ephron...

Widowland and Queen High are a publishing phenomenon and among the most critically-acclaimed novels of recent years. Widowland, set in 1953, has been described as the most important feminist novel for decades and tells of an alternate history where instead of Nazi defeat, there has been a Grand Alliance between Great Britain and Germany. The much-awaited sequel is Queen High, set in 1955. Presiden...

The Male Gaze , Joe Treasure’s first novel, was inspired by his experiences in Los Angeles during the early years of George W Bush's "war on terror". In his second novel, Besotted he drew on his memories of growing up in a large, eccentric family and his close bond with a troubled but brilliant brother. This is a theme on which Joe is now working more directly, as he is currently writing a memoir....