Better Known

Ana Schnabl discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian writer and editor. She writes for several Slovenian media outlets and is a monthly columnist for the Guardian. Her collection of short stories Razvezani (Beletrina, 2017) met with critical acclaim. Three years later Schnabl published her first novel Masterpiece (Mojstrovina, Beletrina, 2020). Her se...

Adam Lind discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam Lind has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged like-minded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The Ne...

Food critic Andrew Turvil discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Described by The Independent as one of the UK’s ‘arbiters of taste’, Andrew Turvil is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, AA Restaurant Guide and Which? Pub Guide. As a freelance restaurant critic, writer, and editor, he has spent his career writing about pubs and restaurants, and, undeterred, bought a pub...

Andy Reid discusses with Ivan six films chosen by previous guests which he thinks should not, after all, be better known. With apologies to Daria Lavelle, Steve Cross, Neil Brand, Tom Newman, Adam Higginbotham and Sam Sedgman. Andy Reid is the founder of Buddy Up, a mentoring charity for young people across south London and Surrey. He has worked in the youth sector for over 20 years delivering pro...

Matt Greene discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Matt Greene is an author, teacher, former screenwriter, and stay-at-home dad. His first novel, Ostrich, won a Betty Trask Award and his memoir Jew(ish) was described by Booker-shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed as ‘wonderful’ and ‘acerbically funny’. He teaches critical and creative writing in South London, where he lives with...

Danny Scott discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Danny Scott grew up in an East Midlands mining village, serving his apprenticeship as an engineer on leaving school, before moving to London in the 1980s. After a job in counter (industrial) espionage, he became a private investigator, then a painter and decorator, then an engineer again, before becoming a journalist and inte...

Alan Green grew up on the north coast of Cornwall and now lives in south London. As an environmental science graduate, he remains passionate about protecting and preserving the natural world. Alan spent nearly three decades at a Magic Circle law firm in the City of London, where he led a copy-editing team. A committed daily runner for over 35 years, Alan combines his love of nature with a commitme...

Laurence Bergreen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Laurence Bergreen is an award-winning biographer, historian, and chronicler of exploration. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. They include Columbus: The Four Voyages, a New York Times bestseller, published by Viking in 2011. In 2007, Knopf published his Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. For th...

Sam Sedgman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Sam Sedgman is a bestselling children's author, confirmed nerd and enthusiastic ferroequinologist. Co-creator of the award-winning 'Adventures on Trains' and 'Isaac Turner Investigates' series, he writes fact-based mystery and adventure stories for the young and young at heart. Before writing stories for children, Sam worked...

Jordan Prosser discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Victoria, Australia. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades. His short story Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game won the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022 and was publish...

Michel-Yves Bolloré discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Michel-Yves Bolloré is an engineer and entrepreneur whose career spans industrial innovation and philanthropic investment in education. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieur de Toulouse and Paris-Dauphine University (Master of Science and Doctorate in Business Administration), he began his career in...

Simon Hall discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Simon Hall studied history at Sheffield and Cambridge, and held a Fox International Fellowship at Yale, before moving to the University of Leeds, where he is currently Professor of Modern History. His previous books include 1956: The World in Revolt and Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s. His new book...

Kasim Ali discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Kasim Ali was born and raised in Alum Rock, Birmingham, where he spent the first eighteen years of his life, at which point he left to study a degree in English. Over the years, he has lived in London, Nottingham, and Newcastle, but still thinks of Birmingham as the place he’s from. He has had a short story long-listed for the...

Sally Smith discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Sally Smith spent all her working life as a barrister and later KC in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of the Edwardian barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, she retired from the bar to write full time. A Case of Mice and Murder, her first novel, was inspired by the historic surroundings of the Inner Temple in whi...

Hal LaCroix discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Hal LaCroix lives outside Boston with his wife, Elahna. He has worked as a journalist at newspapers in New England, a reporter and editor at Harvard Medical School, a conservation writer for non-profits and an instructor at Boston University. Here and Beyond is his first novel, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com...

Peter Lamont discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Peter Lamont is Professor of History and Theory of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He has written about a variety of curious topics such as magic, belief, wonder and critical thinking. He is also a former professional magician and an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle. His new book is Radical Thinking, which is a...

Sarah Stein Lubrano discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Her thinking often reaches the public through the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. She was previously the Head of Content at The School of Life, tutored in prisons and...

Sarah Dunant discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Sarah Dunant studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge from where she went on to become a writer, broadcaster, teacher and critic. She has written twelve novels, four of which have been short-listed for awards, and edited two books of essays. She is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society, lecturing on Italian histo...

AE Gauntlett discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. AE Gauntlett completed an MA in English Literature at King’s College London in 2010. He then went on to find success as a literary agent with Peters Fraser and Dunlop, earning himself a prestigious Shooting Star nomination from The Bookseller in 2017. The Stranger at the Wedding, written secretly as he represented the work o...

Simon Tolkien discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. Simon studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a barrister specializing in criminal defence. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and...

Daria Lavelle discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, immigrated to the US with her family as a child and now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She writes fiction, with short stories published in a variety of US outlets. Aftertaste is he...

Michelle Young discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Michelle Young, a journalist and professor of architecture at Columbia University, spent four years researching The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland, which is available at https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-art-spy-michelle-young?variant=43046200836130 . A veritable female...

Róisín Lanigan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Róisín Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in i-D, VICE, The Atlantic, New Statesman, The Fence and Prospect, amongst other publications. She was longlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019, and won the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2020. I Want to Go H...

Laura Spinney discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Laura Spinney is a writer and science journalist. Her writing on science has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, Nature and National Geographic, among others. She is the author of two novels, The Doctor (2001) and The Quick (2007), and a collection of oral history, Rue Centrale (2013). Her bestselling non-fiction accou...

Sara Leila Sherman and Mort Sherman discuss six things which should be better known. Sara Leila Sherman is a distinguished classical musician and educator, renowned for her work in making music accessible to young audiences through her children's concert series, Mozart for Munchkins, and the non-profit Little Mozart Foundation. Morton Sherman, PhD is the retired Senior Associate Executive Director...