Always Take Notes

Simon speaks with Anna Davis, founder and director of Curtis Brown's creative writing school, which launched in 2011. Anna worked for Curtis Brown for more than a decade as a literary agent before setting up Curtis Brown Creative. Previously she was a lecturer on Manchester University’s MA in novel writing. She is also a former Guardian columnist, and the author of five novels, published around th...

Simon speaks with Ferdinand Addis, the author of Rome: Eternal City, a narrative history of Rome which spans 3,000 years over some 650 pages. Ferdinand read Classics at university before embarking on a career as a journalist and author. He wrote three short books for the publisher Michael O'Mara before moving on to his epic biography of Rome, which was published last year. He is now working on a h...

Simon speaks with Canadian magazine writer May Jeong, who spent five years reporting on Afghanistan, and is best known for her months-long investigation in to the bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz for The Intercept. This story won her the 2017 South Asian Journalists Association’s Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Report on South Asia, as well as the Prix Bayeux Cal...

Simon speaks with Jeffrey Archer, a novelist whose books have sold more than 275 million copies worldwide. Archer wrote his first novel aged 34, when a failed business deal left him heavy in debt. His third novel, Kane and Abel, sold over a million copies in its first week of release in 1979. He has now written more than 20 novels, alongside short stories, a play and non-fiction, and is published...

Eleanor and Simon speak with Zahra Hankir, journalist and editor of Our Women on the Ground, an anthology of essays from Arab women reporting from the Arab world, published this month by Penguin. Zahra spoke about her personal connection as an Arab woman to these journalists, their stories and their work. She discussed the difficulties of compiling and editing an anthology broaching delicate polit...

Eleanor speaks with Jamie Glazebrook, the executive producer of hit BBC series Peaky Blinders, whose fifth series will air later this year. Peaky Blinders, which has won a slew of television awards, follows the exploits of the eponymous Birmingham-based gang in the years after the First World War. Jamie discussed whether we have reached peak TV, the influence of the streaming giants and whether th...

Eleanor and Simon speak with Ruth Padel, who is a poet, novelist, critic and Professor of Poetry at King’s College London. Ruth spoke about her verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, as well as her upcoming verse biography of Beethoven, Beethoven Variations. Ruth also discussed her brief tenure as Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 2009, and her view on the new generation of...

Simon speaks to James Graham, one of Britain's best known contemporary playwrights who has also written widely for film and television. James' first award was the Pearson Playwriting Bursary in 2006. His big break came when his 2012 play This House, written for the National Theatre and set in the British parliament in the 1970s, enjoyed a sell out run and garnered widespread critical acclaim. His...

Simon speaks to Christina Lamb, one of Britain’s leading foreign correspondents who has documented conflict across the world, from Afghanistan to Rwanda. Currently chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, Christina discussed balancing her war reporting duties with her work as an author, including writing I Am Malala and her most recent book Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, about women in w...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine and veteran war correspondent. Jon Lee began his career in the early 1980s, reporting on Central America. As a New Yorker staff writer since 1998, he has reported from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Liberia and many other countries. Jon Lee spoke about about the myths and realities of conflict...

Simon speaks with Anna Codrea-Rado, a freelance journalist who has written for titles including the New York Times and Wired, and who now advocates for better conditions for freelancers, through her #FairPayForFreelancers campaign, her popular newsletter The Professional Freelancer, and FJ&Co, a platform that provides tools and resources and organises events. Alongside discussing her campaigning, ...

Simon and Eleanor speak to British magazine writer Ed Caesar, who was recently made a contributing writer at the New Yorker and whose work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Wired, GQ and numerous other publications. Ed talked about his early career at the Independent, his decision to go freelance, breaking into the American market and the challenges of balancing his w...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Ann Goldstein, who translated Elena Ferrante's phenomenally successful Neapolitan novels (My Brilliant Friend and its three sequels) out of Italian and into English. Ann also had a long and distinguished career as an editor at the New Yorker, where she rose to become head of the copy department. Ann spoke about the process of literary translation, the challenges of worki...

Eleanor speaks to Kamal Ahmed, editorial director of BBC News and one of Britain’s most prominent journalists. He joined the BBC in April 2014 as business editor after a 20-year career in newspapers, including the Guardian, the Observer and the Sunday and Daily Telegraph. Kamal spoke about reshaping the BBC for a younger, more-open minded generation, and about the difficulties of maintaining a pub...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Pandora Sykes, journalist and co-host of the hugely successful podcast the High Low. Pandora began her journalistic career at the Sunday Times, where she held the position of fashion features editor and wrote the Wardrobe Mistress column for the paper's Style magazine. She has written for numerous other titles including Elle, the Telegraph, the Guardian, Marie Claire, an...

In an episode recorded live at the Well Told longform journalism conference in London, Simon and Eleanor speak with author and journalist Andrew Hankinson. Hankinson has written magazine features for the Observer, Wired and Cosmo, and is author of literary nonfiction book You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life, a retelling of the last eight days of killer Raoul Moat and his stand off with t...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Jennifer Croft, who won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Polish novel Flights. Jennifer, currently based in New York, has received a slew of other plaudits for her work, including NEA, Cullman, PEN, Fulbright and MacDowell awards, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation. Her work has appeared in pub...

Simon speaks to Alex Perry, who is a reporter, author and writer for film and television. His books include The Good Mothers, about the women who exposed the true might of the Calabrian mafia, which was excerpted in the New Yorker. His journalism has additionally appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times magazine, TIME, Newsweek, and other publications. Alex spoke to Simon about his first oversea...

Eleanor and Simon speak to Farrah Storr, editor-in-chief of the British edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. In her current role since 2015, Farrah was previously the launch editor of Women’s Health. She has won a slew of awards, including 'New Editor of the Year' in 2014 and 'Editor of the Year' (Men's and Women's category) in 2018 from the British Society of Magazine Editors, and is also author of...

Simon speaks to Dan Franklin, associate publisher at Jonathan Cape and one of the most celebrated book editors in the United Kingdom. Franklin talked about how the world of books has evolved since he started his career in the 1970s, the experience of editing some of Britain's most well known literary novelists, including Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, and also publishing some more eclectic books, i...

Simon and Eleanor speak with Rebecca Mead, a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker magazine who recently returned to the UK after many years in the United States. Rebecca spoke about her early career as a fact-checker, how she moved into writing her own features, first at New York magazine and later for the New Yorker, and lifted the lid on some of the internal processes at the celebrated magazi...

Simon speaks with Mark Haddon, who won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year award for his bestselling novel A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Haddon also teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and Oxford University. He spoke to Simon about how writing and illustrating children's books provided a stepping stone to writing for adults, and about his very first (unpublished) n...

Eleanor speaks with Alexa von Hirschberg, a senior commissioning editor at Bloomsbury Publishing. Alexa began her career in 2007 at Canongate Books. In 2008 she joined Bloomsbury as an editorial assistant, working with authors including Colum McCann, Lawrence Norfolk, Margaret Atwood and William Boyd. Today her list includes Kate Tempest, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Aminatta Forna, Alexei Sayle and Laurie Pe...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Dylan Jones, editor of Condé Nast's British GQ since 1999. Jones spoke about GQ's place in 2018, a year in which masculinity has never been so scrutinised, as well as the challenges he has faced as an editor, including the controversy around GQ's Johnny Depp cover. Jones also spoke about the beginning of his journalism career, starting with the first record review he sen...

Simon and Eleanor speak to Daisy Johnson, who, earlier this year and at 27 years old, became the youngest person ever shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with her novel Everything Under. We spoke to Daisy about her views on the importance of the Man Booker, whether there is rivalry between the shortlisted candidates and how fun the winning ceremony actually is. Daisy also talked about studying cr...