Forbidden love with Douglas Stuart; Oxford’s influence on interwar writers

Available for over a year

Elizabeth Day is joined by the author Douglas Stuart, whose debut novel Shuggie Bain became a worldwide hit after winning the 2021 Booker Prize. The book chronicled a brutal family love story set in the heart of the working-class housing estates of Glasgow. His follow up ‘Young Mungo’, also set in Glasgow, sees the writer in similar territory, but this time exploring a gay relationship across the sectarian divide in a post industrial Glasgow of the early 1990's. It explores the danger of being different in a hyper-masculine world, and the tension created in these often violent surroundings. Written across two different timelines, it is a propulsive and sometimes challenging read but it is also imbued with tenderness, dark humour and highlights the power of community and small kindnesses. We’re also joined by the writer and classicist Daisy Dunn to discuss the themes in her new book ‘Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between The Wars’. She talks about some of the interwar writers like Vera Brittain, Mary Renault and Aldous Huxley, who all passed through the city and were influenced in some way by the university. Their writing invoked a break with writing traditions and helped spearhead some of the most exciting literature of the 20th Century. And the Book I’d Never Lend is back with Donna Leon, the celebrated crime writer. Author of over 30 books, the stories of her central detective investigator Commissairo Guido Brunetti, now sits in the company of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. She explains why a Charles Dickens classic is a book she’ll always return to. Produced by Belinda Naylor and Robbie Wojciechowski Edited by Di Speirs Presented by Elizabeth Day Book List - Sunday 17 April and Thursday 21 April Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Give Unto Others by Donna Leon Not Far from Brideshead by Daisy Dunn Chrome Yellow by Aldous Huxley Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers South Riding by Winifred Holtby Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain