21/08/2011

Available for over a year

DJ Taylor talks to Joe Dunthorne, whose debut Submarine was recently adapted as a successful film. He talks about his newly-published second novel Wild Abandon, set in a Welsh commune, and explains why in his work children tend to get the best lines. Sixty years ago the German-born art historian Nikolaus Pevsner published a small book about the buildings of Cornwall. It was the first volume of the forty-seven that make up his monumental architectural survey, The Buildings of England. This anniversary year has been marked by the publication of a new biography. Its author, Susie Harries, talks about the writing of The Buildings of England; and two architectural writers, Jonathan Glancey and Hugh Pearman, reflect on the quirks that make this magnum opus such a pleasure to read. And the novelist Adam Thirlwell explains his passion for Petersburg, a strange and wonderful book by the Russian writer Andrei Bely and set in the city of the same name. Producer: Thomas Morris.