Peter Brook at 86

Available for over a year

With Kirsty Lang. Room at the Top is the landmark novel by John Braine, first published in 1957. It was made into a film two years later, with Laurence Harvey starring as the ambitious young working class hero. Now it's been adapted as a TV drama. Writer and critic Harry Ritchie reviews. The visionary director Peter Brook has worked in the theatre for seven decades. In the 1950s he worked with John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Paul Schofield, and in 1970 he left British theatre and set up his own company in Paris. Kirsty interviews Brook in the week of his 86th birthday, as he brings A Magic Flute to Britain, a stripped-down, 90 minute version of Mozart's opera involving only nine performers and a piano. Novelist Gillian Slovo, the new President of the writers' organization English PEN, debates whether writers should boycott literary festivals for political reasons, with Roma Tearne, who was born in Sri Lanka, but decided not to attend a recent event there. My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, the new novel from Louisa Young, focuses on a solder who suffers serious facial disfigurement during the First World War. The physical and emotional trauma has repercussions far beyond the wounded man in hospital. Louisa Young discusses her extensive research into facial damage, and how loved ones left behind came to terms with the shock of the nature of the injury. Producer Philippa Ritchie.