Jo Nesbo interviewed, Howard Brenton on Cromwell

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Philip Dodd presents. Playwright Howard Brenton discusses his new play, 55 days, focusing on Cromwell and Charles 1st and the period between the king's capture by parliamentarians in December 1648 and his execution. The life of traveller and writer Paddy Leigh Fermor often appears to have been one great adventure. His account of walking in the early thirties from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople is a classic. A legend quickly grew around the charming adventurer and raconteur and this month a new biography Patrick Leigh Fermor An Adventure, attempts to separate the fact from the fiction. Biographer Artemis Cooper is joined by acclaimed travel writer Colin Thubron to discuss who the great travel writer really was. Corin Throsby reviews Elena, the Russian film which won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It is a depiction of a grim marriage between a wealthy, but mean, business man and his dutiful ex-nurse wife and the point of desperation they eventually reach. Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian writer and economist, reflects on his novel The Bat, as the first of the Harry Hole detective novels is finally translated into English. The series, which has sold millions of copies worldwide, follows Harry Hole, a tough detective who fights crime on the streets of Oslo while also battling his own demons. Producer Philippa Ritchie.