20/11/2011

Available for over a year

Mariella Frostrup continues her celebration of funny books and funny writers with award winning writer A L Kennedy selecting Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One as her favourite funny book. Less well known than "Scoop" this biting satire, described by a critic as "one of the funniest and most significant books of the century" lambasts the Anglo-American cultural divide via Hollywood and a Los Angeles pet cemetery called the Happier Hunting Ground. The second installment of Open Book's mini-history of comic writing invites one of Britain's foremost actresses Fiona Shaw to join our resident expert John Mullan, Professor of Literature at UCL to explore the impact of Shakespearean and Restoration comedy on the development of the comic novel, with particular reference to the romantic comedies of Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. And Sarah Hall, award winning writer of four novels, talks about her first collection of short stories, the hauntingly beautiful and psychologically complex "The Beautiful Indifference" - one of which, "Butcher's Perfume" was nominated for the BBC National Short Story Prize in 2010. Producer Hilary Dunn.