Modern writers

Great writers have always fascinated their readers. We want to know how they create the characters we love or hate, the evocative settings, and the plots that have us reading late into the night, desperate to know what happens next.

Throughout its history, the BBC has aimed to help audiences delve into the imagination of writers. This collection of interviews with some of the 20th Century's most read authors reveals something of those imaginations and the personalities which lie behind some of the greatest modern novels.

Panorama - W Somerset Maugham
video
Truth and Fiction - Elizabeth Bowen
audio
Monitor - Kingsley Amis
video
Monitor - Aldous Huxley
video
Monitor - PG Wodehouse
video
Monitor - EM Forster
video
Monitor - TH White in Alderney
video
Monitor - William Golding
video
Monitor - Christopher Isherwood
video
Tonight - John Wyndham
video
Modern Novelists - Iris Murdoch
video
Intimations - Lawrence Durrell
video
Intimations - Robert Graves
video
Intimations - John le Carre
video
One Pair of Eyes - Margaret Drabble
video
Release - JRR Tolkien
video
Summer Season - Daphne du Maurier
video
One Pair of Eyes - John Braine - The Magic is Here and Now
video
Tonight - Rebecca West
video
Lively Arts - John Fowles
video
The Lively Arts - Len Deighton
video
The Book Programme - Ian McEwan
video
Doris Lessing
video
Motives - Beryl Bainbridge
video
In Conversation - Keith Waterhouse
video
Late Show: Face to Face - Anthony Burgess
video
Late Show: Face to Face - JG Ballard
video
Third Ear - Angela Carter
audio
Late Show: Face to Face - Martin Amis
video
Late Show: Face to Face - VS Naipaul
video
Late Show: Face to Face - Jeanette Winterson
video
Woman's Hour - Hilary Mantel
audio
Late Show: Face to Face - John Berger
video
Newsnight - Margaret Atwood
video
Book Club - Penelope Lively
audio
The Brian Morton Show - Sebastian Faulks
audio
Profile - The World of Philip Pullman
video
Malorie Blackman, 1995
video
John Agard, 1999
video
Chinua Achebe, 1990
video
Book Club - Salman Rushdie
audio
Cover Stories - Yann Martel
audio
Open Book - Pat Barker
audio
Toni Morrison Talks to Kirsty Wark
video
The Culture Show - Kazuo Ishiguro
video
Maya Angelou, 1985
video
Stark Talk - Marian Keyes
audio
Front Row - Monica Ali
audio
The Culture Show - David Mitchell
video
Night Waves - Zoe Heller
audio
Night Waves - Zadie Smith
audio
Mark Lawson Talks to Alan Bennett
video
Mark Lawson Talks to AS Byatt
video
Face to Face: Maya Angelou
video
Daphne Du Maurier
video
Monitor - A Poet in London
video
Summoned by Bells
video
The Secret Life of Arthur Ransome
video
Tolkien on invented language, 1968
video
JK Rowling talks Harry Potter, 1997
video
Midnight queues for Harry Potter, 2000
video
The final Harry Potter book, 2007
video
Book Club - Hanif Kureishi
audio
BBC Radio 4 author archive
audio

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