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| | | OPEN BOOK
Spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | Defying any attempt to pigeonhole her skills and talents Mariella combines her television and radio career with that of a prolific journalist.
Over a fifteen-year TV career she has continued to impress both audiences and critics with her friendly, accessible and intelligent screen presence. Her projects run the gamut from current affairs to movies and the arts.
As a journalist she is currently the film critic for Harpers And Queen and has a weekly dilemma column in The Observer Magazine, while her book reviews and travel pieces appear regularly in the press. She has also been a member of the Booker-Mann Prize panel.
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|  | | Listen to Michael Dobbs interview
The Reading Clinic:
Do you have a problem that concerns books? If so, Open Book's Reading Clinic wants to hear from you.
For instance, do you have a partner who never reads and want some suggestions as to what might entice them in to the world of literature?
Are there some books or genres that you have never managed to get your head round and to which you'd like an introduction?
What book do you give to the person who has read everything?
Where do I start with Proust?
What book should I take on a long train journey?
How do you get teenage boys to read?
If you want a full and frank discussion of your particular literary conundrum, then Open Book's Reading Clinic can prescribe the right book for you.
Please contact Open Book here with your literary ailment, giving as many details as you can including a daytime contact number if possible.
This week's programme:
In Open Book this week - why Leslie Thomas' 'The Virgin Soldiers' was so beloved of schoolboys when it was published in 1966 and Michael Dobbs on his belief that his fiction about the political life and times of Winston Churchill is more revealing than a history book. Writers explain their passion for chapter headings and why shopping leads to rack and ruin in the English novel.
Books by Michael Dobbs:
Never Surrender (Harper Collins)
Winston’s War (Harper Collins)
House of Cards (Harper Collins)
Goodfellowe MP (Harper Collins)
Whispers of Betrayal (Harper Collins)
The Buddha of Brewer St (Harper Collins)
The Devil’s Tune by Iain Duncan Smith (Robson Books)
Books recommended by Michael Dobbs:
My Early Life by Winston Churchill (Eland Books)
The Dream by Winston Churchill (Churchill Collage Cambridge)
Chapter Headings Feature:
Blacklist by Sara Paretsky (Hamish Hamilton)
Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (Collins)
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (Oxford World’s Classics)
The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh (Canongate)
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (Oxford World’s Classics)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (Penguin Classics)
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (Penguin)
Posession by A. S. Byatt (Vintage)
The French Lieutenants Woman by John Fowles (World Books)
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Wordsworth Editions)
Shopping in fiction:
The Shops by India Knight (Penguin)
The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture by Margot Finn (CambridgeUniversity Press)
The Wanderer by Fanny Burney (The World’s Classics Oxford University Press)
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (Penguin Popular Classics)
Column:
The Virgin Soldiers by Leslie Thomas (Constable)
Fanny Hill by John Cleland (Wordsworth Editions)
The Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth (Arrow)
The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins (Bantham Books)
E-mail Open Book here with your comments and views.
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RELATED LINKS
Front Row Summer Reading Recommendations
BBC Books
Reading the Decades
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