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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 | | | |
|  | | | | | | | | Maev Kennedy was born in Dublin 1954, the child of two writers who subsidised literary work with jobbing journalism. She worked for many years for the Irish Times, ultimately as parliamentary and political sketch writer. Maev wrote on arts and politics for a wide range of Irish and British publications, before joining the staff of the Guardian, where after a stint editing the Guardian Diary, she is now Arts and Heritage Correspondent. She lives in London with her son Samuel.
Maev Kennedy's Blaenavan Diary Reports |
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|  | | Photo: cover of Scottish writer Louise Welsh's second novel.
Listen to Peter Ackroyd interview
Take part in the programme. Find out how you can contact us to put your literary question to The Reading Clinic
This Week's Programme
Presenter Maev Kennedy tours a dark, dangerous and foul-smelling London with official city biographer Peter Ackroyd and Scottish writer Louise Welsh.
Ackroyd's latest novel depicts a fictional collision between devoted brother and sister, Charles and Mary Lamb, and the all but forgotten literary impersonator, William Ireland. Typical of Ackroyd's style, the book is an illusion of historical truth in which nothing can be trusted.
Louise Welsh's second novel, Tamburlaine Must Die, sees playwright Christopher Marlowe travelling around London during the last three days of his life. Welsh takes the reader on a ghost train ride through a violent and chaotic city lit by flaring torches and devilish-red gleaming eyes.
And as both books grip the reader so strongly they can be devoured in one sitting, Open Book considers the epithet of 'page turner' - a quality mark or a dire literary insult?
Programme Book List
1) The Lambs of London, Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
ISBN: 0701177446
2) Tales from Shakespeare, Charles & Mary Lamb
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
ISBN: 1853261408
3) Essays of Elia, Charles Lamb
Publisher: Dent
ISBN: 046001014X
4) Tamburlaine Must Die, Louise Welsh
Publisher: Canongate
ISBN: 1841955329
5) The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh
Publisher: Canongate
ISBN: 1841953830
6) Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 0340822775
7) Atonement, Ian McEwan
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0099429799
8) Morality Play, Barry Unsworth
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 0140175741
9) Without Blood, Alessandro Baricco
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
ISBN: 1841954853
10) The Ninth life of Louis Drax, Liz Jensen
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 0747571066
E-mail Open Book with your comments and views about the programme.
Open Book Needs You!
Open Book will be exploring the activity of reading aloud in a special programme this summer and we'd like to include you.
Have you had an interesting experience of reading aloud - or being read to? Perhaps as part of a courtship, or in less than happy, or unusual circumstances - we'd like to explore them all.
Write to us at Open Book:
Reading Aloud
Room 7057
BBC Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London W1A 1AA, or...
E-mail Open Book with any of your experiences
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