FaberBooks

Set in 18th-century London, Maria McCann’s third novel Ace, King, Knave has everything you’d want in a work of historical fiction, and more. Everything from gin and gambling, to the harsh realities of Georgian life, including the burden of disease (which cared little for class or status), the levels of extreme poverty and the plight of women. We first spoke to Maria on the Faber Podcast in 2010 wh...

In the first part of our extensive interview with film-maker and Britten expert John Bridcut we covered his fascination with Britten and his companion to his life and works, Essential Britten. John's other book - Britten's Children - is central to this second instalment, and covers a subject little discussed until Bridcut himself produced a television documentary about it a decade ago - the compos...

Benjamin Britten's association with Faber is a long one, dating back to 1964 to the creation of Faber Music, one of whose express aims was to publish the composer's music. Over the decades Faber has published many books on Britten, including multiple volumes of Letters, the still-controversial 1992 biography by Humphrey Carpenter, and two books by John Bridcut - Britten's Children (2006) and Essen...

As part of our series of podcasts to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten - the nation's greatest 20th-century composer - we had the pleasure of speaking to Colin Matthews. As an employee of Faber Music, Matthews assisted Britten with several of his late scores, in particular Britten's final opera, Death in Venice. He has since become a distinguished composer in his own right...

Distinguished writer, essayist and anthologist Ronald Blythe is best-known for his classic portrayal of 1960s Suffolk village life, Akenfield. This year sees publication of a new memoir, The Time by the Sea, in which he remembers life in the mid-1950s and the early years of the Aldeburgh Festival, with a social scene dominated by the likes of Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Imogen Holst, John and C...

The Time by the Sea is a new memoir by distinguished writer, essayist and anthologist Ronald Blythe, best-known as the author of Akenfield: A Portrait of an English Village. In The Time by the Sea he recalls a bygone era - life in 1950s Suffolk and the milieu surrounding the Aldeburgh Festival. He remembers great friendships with the likes of John and Christine Nash, Imogen Holst and Cedric Morris...

After concluding his Britten interviews, George Miller had one final, burning Britten-related question, which he put to Colin Matthews. It was about a musical sign that Britten had invented and named after that quintessential East Anglian wading bird, the curlew …

The premise of the fifth of our Benjamin Britten centenary podcasts is a simple one - we ask our contributors (John Bridcut, Colin Matthews and Dobrinka Tabakova) if they could take just one work by Britten to a desert island, what would it be? Given the extensive breadth of Britten's catalogue, this is easier said than done ...

In the fourth of our special podcasts to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, we examine the great British composer's musical legacy - his music, the recordings, his place in the concert hall, and his influence on a younger generation of composers. John Bridcut talks us through the process of rating all of Britten's works for his book 'Essential Britten', and how he used a star-rat...

Graham Farmelo first appeared on the Faber Podcast in 2009 to tell us about his book on physicist Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man, which went on to earn the author the Costa Biography Award. He’s back to discuss his new book, Churchill’s Bomb, a fascinating and pacy story of how Britain became a nuclear power, seen through the lens of Winston Churchill’s career. Churchill, as we learn, always had an...

The third programme in our series of Britten podcasts looks at perhaps the most controversial aspect of Britten’s biography – the sequence of relationships he had throughout his life with adolescent boys. The principal guest in this instalment is John Bridcut, who produced a documentary and subsequently wrote a book entitled ‘Britten’s Children’. Also featuring here is Colin Matthews who tells us...

In the second of our specially commissioned podcasts to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, we look at some of the evidence that later writers and musicians have to work with when they come to assess Britten the musician and the man. He was a notorious hoarder - tens of thousands of letters, manuscripts, draft manuscripts, annotated scores. He seldom tore things up and proved to b...

In this series of podcasts to mark the centenary of Benjamin Britten our interviewer George Miller speaks with a number of people who knew Britten, or who have written about him, or been captivated and inspired by his music from across several generations. In the first episode (of six) we focus on first encounters. Joining us in conversation are composers Colin Matthews and Dobrinka Tabakova, auth...

Costa Award-winning poet Christopher Reid's CV includes the roles of anthologist, editor, publisher and even academic so there are few people better-placed to turn their satirical eye on the world of contemporary poetry - its ambitions, vanities and rivalries. His new book 'Six Bad Poets' charts the criss-crossing fates of six protagonists, all trying to make, cling on to, or re-establish their re...

In this extended interview with poet Christopher Reid (recorded alongside a podcast featuring his new book 'Six Bad Poets') we discuss the many aspects of a varied career: Reid's early association with the 'Martian' school of writing (notable for its use of surprising visual imagery); his eight years as Poetry Editor at Faber, at the helm of a list featuring the likes of Hughes, Heaney and Muldoon...

'A Scattering' is the title poem from Christopher Reid's Costa Book award-winning collection of the same name. It's also included in Reid's Selected Poems, which is an essential introduction to the work of a richly resourceful poet engaged in what he himself once described as 'provisional negotiations with untidy life'.

Award-winning theatre director Michael Blakemore arrived in the UK from Australia in 1950. Following 15 years as an actor he moved into directing, scoring his first major hit with A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Many successes have followed: productions of classics, new plays from the likes of Hare and Mamet, and a successful partnership with Michael Frayn. His new book Stage Blood describes Blakem...

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com/

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com

John Lloyd recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, from his show Liff of QI, talking about his and Douglas Adams's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff and the new sequel Afterliff written with Jon Canter. http://afterliff.com