An authoritative look at recent books that may or may not have shown up on your radar screen. Author interviews, reviews, informed discussions. And shed-loads of opinion. Fiction and non-fiction. Biographies and comic books. Politics and the arts. And quite certainly, no gardening or cookery books. All presented with Tim Haigh’s passion for books and writing. Tim is a widely respected critic, reviewer and broadcaster. Expert without being stuffy, he is noted for the lively intelligence and irreverence he brings to the field.
You may remember Survivors and Blake’s Seven. You may even remember that they were created by Terry Nation. But Terry Nation’s immortality will always be tied up with invention of The Daleks. Alwyn W Turner has written a lively and fascinating account of Terry Nation’s times and career, from his radio days with Ted Ray and Tony Hancock, through the glory years of The Saint, The Avengers and countless others. Tim chased Alwyn through a petrified forest towards a steel-covered city populated by the last few mutant descendants of the human race, while a doomsday bomb ticked its countdown to oblivion, pausing only to chat about why Terry Nation’s television shows got under your skin.
When the dust settles we will observe that more books have been written about New Labour than about any other British administration, yes, including Mrs Thatcher's febrile season in the sun. But let the Peter Mandelsons and the Alistair Campbells and even the Tony Blairs make room: Steve Richards of The Independent has written the most incisive, authoritative and readable account yet of the implausible story of Gordon Brown and new Labour. Tim and Steve discussed Brown's astonishing longevity at the top of British politics, and his relationship with Tony Blair, and why there is nobody else from that government worth talking about.
Russell Hoban defies comparison with other writers. There is nobody else writing books like his. If his readership is select, he is nonetheless one of those writers whose new book we read as a matter of course. You never know what you’re going to get, except that it will delight and tease and intrigue, and take you in unexpected directions. A Russell Hoban novel is mysterious. You will think you have got hold of it, and want to share it with your friends, and then when you try to pin it down and tell someone about it, you will find that its solidities and vivid themes have escaped you like smoke. You will be left with stray phrases and images and brilliant flashes that worked better for him than they do for you. Tim visited the incomparable Russell Hoban in his London home to talk about his typically elusive and compelling new novel, Angelica, Lost and Found which embraces myth and poetry while cleaving to an idiosyncratic vision of present day San Francisco, rooted in the most concrete details.
Iain Banks is one of the most successful and productive British novelists of his generation; a writer of apparently boundless invention and self-confidence. Since 1984, with the publication of The Wasp Factory, he has reached a huge and devoted audience with his mainstream books and his series of science fiction novels. Tim met Iain Banks in a hotel room in Central London and set about the job of talking to him about the his writing, his career and in particular about his new novel, Surface Detail.
Iain Banks is one of the most successful and productive British novelists of his generation; a writer of apparently boundless invention and self-confidence. Since 1984, with the publication of The Wasp Factory, he has reached a huge and devoted audience with his mainstream books and his series of science fiction novels. Tim met Iain Banks in a hotel room in Central London and set about the job of talking to him about the his writing, his career and in particular about his new novel, Transition; although before that he felt obliged to check that Iain was happy to be Scottish.
