Sunday 16:00-16:30, repeated Thursday 16:00-16:30, except first Sunday in the month when it is replaced by Book Club.
Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.
This week
Sunday 30 October 2005
Kirsty Lang talks to Ben Elton about his new book The First Casualty and Rose Tremain on the strange life and sad death of Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom a king abdicated.
80's alternative comedian turned musical librettist turned novelist Ben Elton talks to Kirsty Lang about his new novel The First Casualty. Set in the trenches of the First World War, it tells the story of detective Douglas Kingsley who refuses to fight in the war yet finds himself sent to the battleground in order to investigate a mysterious death.
Nicola Humble and novelist Paul Bailey discuss the history of recipe books - and the difference between the books we cook from and the books we just like to read.
And Rose Tremain discusses her new collection of short stories, and her fictional account of Wallis Simpson's sad, lonely deathbed.
Booklist
Ben Elton:
The First Casualty - Ben Elton
Publisher: Faber
ISBN: 0593051114
Reading Clinic - Love Stories featuring Older Women and Younger Men:
The Red and the Black - Stendhal trans. Roger Gard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140447644
A Widow for One Year - John Irving
Publisher: Black Swan
ISBN: 055299796X
A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance - Jane Juska
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0099466708
'Jane' in Collected Short Stories Vol. 2 - W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Penguin 20th Century Classics
ISBN: 0140185909
All This and Heaven Too - Rachel Field
Publisher: Buccaneer Books Inc
ISBN: 0899663230
Recommended Recipe Books:
Culinary Pleasures: A History of Britain Through Cook Books - Nicola Humble
Publisher: Faber and Faber
ISBN: 0571200052
Modern Cookery for Private Families - Eliza Acton
Publisher: Southover Press
ISBN: 1870962087
Honey From A Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia - Patience Gray
Publisher: Prospect Books
ISBN: 190301820X
The Independent Cook - Jeremy Round
Publisher: Pan
ISBN: 0330480464
