Bookclub

Ben Macintyre discusses Agent Zigzag - his bestselling book on the true story of a professional criminal named Eddie Chapman, a successful British double agent who infiltrated the Nazi intelligence services during World War II. A notorious safe-breaker before the war, Chapman duped the Germans so successfully that he was awarded their highest decoration, the Iron Cross. He remains the only British...

Sathnam Sanghera discusses his memoir The Boy With The Topknot, which won the 2009 Mind Book of the Year. Born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands, the book is his account of his childhood in 1980s Wolverhampton. The youngest of a Sikh family, it wasn't until he was 24 that he discovered his mother had protected him from the family's secret : that his father had suffered from paranoid schizoph...

David Almond talks about his prize winning novel, Skellig, which is loved by children and adults alike. Skellig is the story of what happens when a Newcastle boy finds a strange man living in the garage of his new home. Michael sets out to help the ill Skellig recover. With him is his new unconventional friend Mina, who David Almond says is the star of the book. She introduces Michael to the world...

American writer Marilynne Robinson talks to James Naughtie and readers about her novel Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Marilynne Robinson enjoyed great success with her first novel, Housekeeping, when it was published in 1980. She reveals to Bookclub why there was a gap of twenty-four years before she was able to write Gilead, her second book; and how the voice of the narrator came to h...

Victoria Hislop talks to James Naughtie and readers about her debut novel The Island, a fictional account of a real life leper colony, the island of Spinalonga, just off the coast of Crete. First published in 2005, The Island has now sold over a million copies. Victoria says that when she first went to Spinalonga, as a curious tourist, she had no idea that leprosy still even existed in the 20th ce...

Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje talks to James Naughtie and readers about his 1992 Booker prize-winning novel The English Patient. The novel tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian villa as the Second World War ends. The exhausted nurse Hana, the maimed thief Caravaggio, the bomb disposal expert Kip who are each haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nam...

To celebrate the centenary of novelist Elizabeth Taylor, David Baddiel is our guide to her best known book, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Like many writers, David Baddiel thinks that Elizabeth Taylor has been overlooked and is one of the finest writers of the middle of the twentieth century. He has called her 'the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike'. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont was...

Philippa Gregory, queen of historical fiction, talks about her best-selling tale of lust, jealousy and betrayal, The Other Boleyn Girl. James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions. The novel charts the lives of Anne Boleyn, and her sister Mary, thought to be the mistress of Henry VIII before Anne. Each in their turn are "the other Boleyn Girl", pawns of their fiercely ambitiou...

Ross Raisin is a young writer who won much praise for his debut novel God's Own Country in 2008. He discusses the book with James Naughtie and a group of readers. It's the story of Sam Marsdyke who's a troubled nineteen year old young man living on a remote farm in the North Yorkshire Moors. It's a place of beauty and Sam resents the incomers, be they the ramblers he spies upon, or the new neighbo...

Anne Enright talks to James Naughtie and readers about her 2007 Man Booker prize-winning novel The Gathering. The book was the surprise win of that year - beating Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Chair of Judges Howard Davies proclaimed the novel had one of the best closing sentences of any he had ever read. The Gathering of the title is the wake of Liam Hegarty who has committed suicide by walking i...

Alan Hollinghurst talks to James Naughtie and readers about his 2004 Man Booker prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty. Framed by the general elections of 1983 and 1987 which returned Margaret Thatcher to power, The Line of Beauty is a story of love, class, sex and money - and AIDs. It won praise for the way it crawls deep under the skin of 1980's Britain. Protagonist Nick Guest is a young, gay Ox...

James Naughtie and readers talk to the American writer and artist Art Spiegelman about his graphic novel Maus. First published in short frames in his experimental comic RAW in the 1970s, Maus the book has become a publishing phenomenon, selling over two million copies world wide. It tells the story of his parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, from their first meeting in pre-war Poland to their surv...

Hunter Davies talks to James Naughtie and readers about his biography of The Beatles, first published in 1968. Recorded at the Cavern, Liverpool. In 1966-68 Hunter Davies spent eighteen months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers. As their only ever authorised biographer he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George and Ringo but to their friends, family and colleagues. He hu...

December's Bookclub author is Sebastian Barry. Well known as a successful dramatist and novelist, his literary career became stellar when he won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year Award with this month's chosen book, The Secret Scripture; and he is considered one of Ireland's greatest living writers. The novel is told by Roseanne, who is uncertain of her age; she thinks she is now one hundred. She's...

Iain Banks meets James Naughtie and readers at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to talk about his debut novel The Wasp Factory, first published in 1984. This shocking novel is an insight into the life of sixteen year old Frank, a brutal and disturbed teenager who enjoys killing animal and insects all too much. But Frank isn't alone in his madness - his brother Eric has just escaped fr...

Arundhati Roy talks to James Naughtie and readers about her Booker prize winning novel The God of Small Things. It's Arundhati Roy's first and so far only book of fiction and it took the literary world by storm, winning the Booker Prize in 1997. It's a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who must be loved, and how, an...

Mohsin Hamid talks to James Naughtie and readers about his bestselling book The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This edition of Bookclub will be broadcast just two days after the novel has been featured as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, and it's a timely choice as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a sparse, gripping, short...

Donna Leon talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about the first in her hugely successful crime series set in Venice, Death At La Fenice. The book launched the career of her fictional detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti in the early 1990s, and he is now beloved by readers. Like an Italian Maigret, he's a policeman of integrity. Brunetti also has a fulfilled family life with his intellec...

James Naughtie and readers talk to William Fiennes about his memoir The Music Room. The book is his account of growing up in a castle with an epileptic brother. It's an honest yet discrete story of a fascinating family and how they deal with the eldest brother's struggle with epilepsy. In his upbeat moments, Richard brims with tenderness and high spirits, and at his worst he is threatening and eve...

James Naughtie and readers talk to American writer Nicole Krauss, shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize. Our chosen novel is her critically acclaimed The History of Love. It's a complex tale of loss - a lost manuscript, lost homelands, characters grieving for lost loved ones. There are four separate narrators who are all drawn to the lost book - also called The History of Love. Leo Gursky is at...

Andrew O'Hagan is a rising star in the literary world. He joins James Naughtie and readers to discuss his novel Be Near Me, the story of Father David, an aesthetic English Catholic priest working in a working class community in Ayrshire. This is a poignant story of a man who doesn't fit in. Father David is trapped by class hatreds, and troubled by sexual feelings which he struggles to keep submerg...

Recorded at the Verbal Arts Centre in Londonderry/City of Derry, James Naughtie and readers talk to one of Ireland's finest writers - Jennifer Johnston. Now in her eighties, Jennifer has been called 'The Quiet Woman' of Irish literature. Her distinguished career has spanned more than 40 years and has netted the Whitbread Prize among her many awards. Her books are taught on the Irish school curricu...

James Naughtie and readers talk to Benjamin Zephaniah, the poet and novelist who's equally popular with both adults and children. Our chosen novel is Refugee Boy, written for young adults. Benjamin is perhaps best known for his performance poetry with a political edge, but he has also written novels for young people. Benjamin is interested in international affairs and travels extensively throughou...

James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to journalist Tim Butcher about his bestselling travel book Blood River. When Tim Butcher was appointed the Daily Telegraph's correspondent to South Africa in 2000, he became obsessed with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This vast country dominated a map of Africa on his office wall and he began to plan a journey following in the footsteps of a famous p...

James Naughtie and readers talk to this year's Man Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson. The chosen book for this edition of Bookclub is the one he says he wants people to read : The Mighty Walzer, first published in 1999. Peculiarly, it is a comic novel about the joy and despair of table tennis. It's also a portrait of a Jewish boyhood in Manchester, showing how the main character - Oliver Walze...