Elizabeth Day

Available for over a year

Elizabeth Day is joined by Eley Williams to talk about her new novel The Liar's Dictionary. It's a playful, funny book about two lexicographers who are both working on the same dictionary, but in different eras. Winceworth is a shy Victorian clerk who starts to amuse himself by inserting made up words; in the present day, a young intern Mallory is charged with weeding these 'mountweazels' out. Eley Williams talks about her love of language, and its limitations and why she included a pelican in the novel. Also on the programme, writer Richard Beard continues his series about the narrative voice by exploring the rarely used second person narrator; Joseph Knox tells Elizabeth why he chose to re-write and re-publish his first novel Sirens and Gillian McAllister reveals what she learnt during a personal lockdown in her twenties, due to illness, and how that has helped her in the current worldwide lockdown.