The Goldster Conversations Podcast

Monique Roffey is a writer, lecturer,  professor of contemporary fiction and founding member of Writers Rebel which combats climate change.  Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Monique has had life-long links to the Caribbean region and has set four of her six novels there. Her latest The Mermaid of Black Conch won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year Award with a myriad of praises from her peers. Set on...

Breaking the Maafa Chain takes the reader back to the nineteenth century. Two sisters, Fatmata and Salimatu, are captured and sold separately into slavery. Forced to change their names to Faith and Sarah, they end up in two different countries with opposite slavery laws. Faith ends up in America, where slavery is still legal and slaves don't have any rights; Sarah ends up in a Victorian England an...

In this special hybrid PPG, Humphrey Hawksley will be joined by his fellow presenter – and very distant cousin! – Lucinda Hawksley. He’ll be interviewing Lucinda about the difficulties she faced when researching her biography, The Mystery of Princess Louise (Vintage Books). As an art historian, Lucinda was interested in Princess Louise as a sculptor and part of the Aesthetic art world of late 19th...

Natalie Jenner is the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls , which were both instant national bestsellers, Amazon Best Books of the Month, and People Magazine Books of the Week.  The Jane Austen Society has now been published in more than twenty languages and has been optioned for film and television. Natalie's third novel, Every Time We Say Goodbye, i...

Robin Dreeke is a people person. He knows how to judge, win over, recruit and build relationships that are less transactional and more collaborative. For many years he worked for America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, better known as the FBI and became head of its elite Behavioral Analysis Program, a  Counterintelligence Division tasked with uncovering threats within the United States. He has...

Philip Clark is an author and music journalist who spent twenty years writing about classical music, modern composition, jazz, free improvisation and rock music for many leading publications, including The Wire, Gramophone, The Guardian and London Review of Books. He trained as a composer (and in that capacity worked with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the percussionist Orphy Robinson), but has mo...

Goldster Inside Story is thrilled to welcome back former American naval interrogator Lena Sisco with her new book Honest Answers: Interview and Negotiation Skills to Get the Truth.  No matter the conversation, whether with friends, family, the community or colleagues, cementing trust, detecting honesty and persuading others, to be honest are some of the most valuable skills you can possess. Goldst...

Last October we interviewed our own PPG Presenter, the world-renowned explorer Rosie Stancer, as she introduced her plans to cross the Sinai desert to gather scientific evidence on the depredation of climate change on the lives  of the Bedu nomads of the Sinai Peninsula  and her intention to report to the COP 26 Conference at the end of their 160 mile journey. (see map below of their proposed came...

Goldster Inside Story gives you a story of love, spies and parenting with a rare double-act interview and a ground-breaking book for frazzled families -- License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids . Christina and Ryan Hillsberg both spied for America’s Central Intelligence Agency before Christina turned her skills to becoming a stay-at-home-mom shar...

Katherine May is an internationally bestselling author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Her hybrid memoir Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times became a New York Times , Sunday Times and Der Spiegel bestseller. It was also was adapted for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes and Noble Book of the Year.     The Electricity of...

Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times bestselling author and creator of the Orphan X series  -- Evan Smoak is a man with a dangerous past who has skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. Gregg has also published poetry, academic, political, and cultural articles, screenplays and is a bestselling comic book writer. In short, Gregg is a non-stop creative machi...

Laura Payne began her career as a journalist and has a background in international media and marketing. She has advised and mentored some of the world’s leading businesses and organisations – and then, in her 50s, she decided to change her life and career. She made the decision to go back into academia and train as a psychotherapist.  Her book Nine Steps to a Mindful Life (Without Meditating) grew...

Animal-lover Gillian Carrick is the author health guides for pets which includes tips for their healthy ageing.  Gillian’s early career took her far away from her passion. With a degree in politics, she became a researcher in the House of Commons and a feature writer on the House magazine. She then moved to BBC Radio with stints as a producer/presenter of travel programmes for Radio Four and Five...

There’s nowhere quite like Piccadilly Circus. From the moment they emerge, blinking from the underground station, visitors to Piccadilly Circus face a sensory onslaught. Its streets and alleyways merge into an intoxicating thoroughfare, with the power to propel an individual onwards to adventure, romance, or something more sinister. Ever since its iconic Eros statue appeared in 1893, the junction...

What do Erotica and Sherlock Holmes have in common?  Find out in Goldster’s amazing end of year Inside Story with the legendary Maxim Jakubowski, the mastermind of The Mammoth Book of Erotica , the creator of The Return of Sherlock Holmes , the compiler of numerous anthologies and currently chair of the Crime Writers’ Association with its Red Herrings magazine and array of Dagger awards. And that...

Henrietta Heald is the author of Magician of the North , a biography of William Armstrong, the dazzling Victorian inventor, engineer and industrialist who created Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. The book was shortlisted for two literary prizes and, since first publication in 2010, has generated huge interest in Armstrong, with Henrietta makin...

We have a very special Goldster Book Club event to welcome in the new year. Lucinda Hawksley will be chatting online to Joanne Harris, the award-winning author of 19 novels, including Chocolat , Blackberry Wine and The Strawberry Thief . Her novels also include four psychological thrillers, including Gentlemen & Players and Different Class . Chocolat was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie, s...

Professor Sir Muir Gray is reframing the public conversation about getting old.  He is the co-author of two hilarious but insightful books aptly named Sod 60 and Sod 70, both subtitled, The Guide to Living Well. .  His other books include Midlife: Look Younger, Live Longer, Feel Better , Antidote to Ageing and   Sod Sitting, Get Moving!: Getting Active in Your 60s, 70s and Beyond .  No spring chic...

Join Lucinda Hawksley as she chats with Adele Parks about her amazing writing career. Adele Parks MBE was born in North Yorkshire and has become one of Britain’s best-loved novelists. She is the author of 22 bestselling novels, including the Sunday Times and eBook Number One bestseller, Both Of You .  Over four and a half million UK editions of Adele’s work have been sold, and her books have been...

Join Humphrey Hawksley with Maggy Piggot on this uplifting Goldster Inside Story Maggy Pigott is the vice-chair of Open Age, Life’s Just Begun and has published the critically-acclaimed How to Age Joyfully,  Eight Steps to a Happier, Fuller Life. Dame Judi Dench commends the book to everyone of all ages and Giles Brandreth describes it as ‘full of wit, wisdom – and hope’.  Here are Maggy’s nub tho...

Elly Griffiths wrote four novels under her own name (Domenica de Rosa) before turning to crime with The Crossing Places . This was her first novel featuring forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway – since then her name has entered into the elite of fictional detectives, with The Times commenting “Galloway now seems as real as Marple and Morse’. The Crossing Places won the Mary Higgins Clark award...

Join Humphrey Hawksley to hear Leonid Volkov’s story in his own words and ask him how he thinks he can create a new Russia.  Born into Soviet Jewish intelligentsia, leading Russian opposition figure, Leonid Volkov, is now in exile in Lithuania. Through lawyers, he liaises with his jailed friend Alexei Navalny who is serving nine years in a maximum-security Russian prison. Both became Internet blog...

Damian Le Bas was brought up by Romany Traveller parents, who had lived a life of hardship and adventure on the road. Because his family had largely settled down by the time he was born, Damian always felt that he had missed out on a vital part of his culture. While he was working as a journalist defending Romany people and other Travellers, he realised that few people really saw ‘Gypsies’ as belo...

Dr Parag Khanna is a bestselling author of books that explain where our world is heading and why. Parag, who has been named by Esquire magazine as one of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century, will be talking to Humphrey about his latest book Move: The Forces Uprooting Us . It’s a thought-provoking eye-opener that cuts through the clutter and predicts what lies ahead for our children...

On the Goldster Book Club podcast you hear captivating interviews with best-selling authors, intrepid explorers, former spies and international sports people.  We have different shows – Inside Story, Purpose, Passion and Grit , and Author to Author . By joining Goldster you can be part of the live conversation asking our guests directly any question you want -- about their failures, successes and...