Our final guest who shares the highlights of her past twelve months of reading is historian Catherine Arnold. I first interviewed Catherine about the second book in her London trilogy, which explores the darker aspects of the city’s past, Bedlam: London and its Mad. You can hear the interview here. (The first volume of the [...]
Entries Tagged as 'biography and memoir'
6. Books of the Year – Catherine Arnold
January 2nd, 2011 · No Comments
Tags: biography and memoir · historical fiction · history and politics · podcasts
4. Books of the Year – Andrew McConnell Stott
December 14th, 2010 · No Comments
Andrew McConnell Stott is an award-winning writer and academic. For several years he was a stand-up comedian, described by London’s Evening Standard as “an absurdist comic with a satirical eye for popular culture.” The world, however, was unprepared for such hilarity and so he decided to give it up. He is the author of Comedy [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · crime fiction · graphic novels · literature · podcasts
3. Books of the Year – Louise Foxcroft
December 10th, 2010 · No Comments
Our third guest reviewer of this year’s publishing highlights is Cambridge-based historian of medicine, Louise Foxcroft. Louise won the Longman/History Today Prize in 2009 for her book Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause. You can hear a podcast in which she discusses the book here. And here are Louise’s favourite books [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · literature · medicine · podcasts · science and philosophy
1. Books of the Year – Elizabeth Speller
December 3rd, 2010 · No Comments
Today we begin a new series of guest posts in which writers and publishers choose their favourite books of 2010. Our first guest is Elizabeth Speller, whose first novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett, was published to great acclaim earlier this year. You can hear my interview with her about the book here. Her [...]
Tags: art and music · biography and memoir · historical fiction · history and politics · podcasts
Tolstoy’s bedtime story
November 29th, 2010 · No Comments
I was in Oxford on Friday to interview Rosamund Bartlett about her recent Tolstoy biography, which coincides with the great man’s death a century ago on 20 November 1910. The interview will appear shortly on the Blackwell Online website, but in the meantime, here is Rosamund reading a short extract from the book itself, in [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · literature · podcasts
Summer Reading Choices: Graham Farmelo
August 10th, 2010 · No Comments
Graham Farmelo is Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. He edited the best-selling It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science in 2002. His biography of Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man, won the 2009 Costa Biography Prize and the 2010 Los Angeles [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · literature · podcasts · science and philosophy
Summer Reading Choices: Michael Bywater
July 22nd, 2010 · No Comments
Our next guest recommender of Summer Reading is Michael Bywater, author (of Lost Worlds and Big Babies, inter al.), broadcaster, and – as you will see when you read on – now writing for the stage… This summer I’m too too utterly utterly up to my ears in queers, dears. Specifically the (slightly illusory) late [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · crime fiction · literature
Michelangelo: A Tormented Life
April 6th, 2010 · No Comments
Tags: art and music · biography and memoir · video
41. It’s only a movie (and a book)
March 1st, 2010 · No Comments
Last Monday I met film critic Mark Kermode at the Watershed in Bristol before his event there which formed part of his countrywide tour to present his new book, It’s Only a Movie. He was remarkably bright and engaged, considering he had been at the BAFTAs the night before and had already done 37 interviews [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · film · podcasts
40. Charles Dickens – a writer’s life
February 12th, 2010 · No Comments
We mark the birthday of Charles Dickens earlier this week with a special extended edition of my interview with his biographer Michael Slater from the end of last year, which originally appeared on Blackwell Online. John Bowen, reviewing the book in the Times Literary Supplement, said: “[it] immediately takes its place as the most authoritative, [...]
Tags: biography and memoir · literature · podcasts
