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slash radio four. Hello, welcome to the last A Good Read this season, but we are going out in style,

because with me today are the actress Miriam Margulies, whose on screen roles range from Harry Potter's

Professor Sprout

to the nurse in Basler Hermans, Romeo and Juliet.

Most recently, on Radio 4, you'll have heard her as Vera sackcloth vest in the parody series

Gloomsbury, while her theatre work includes most famously her one-woman show Dickens Women.

And with Miriam, it's the author, poet and dramatist Mark Haddon, whose novels include The Red House and the curious incident of the dog in the night time.

The latter now also a successful stage play and whose new short story collection, The Pier Falls, comes out next spring.

Miriam, would you start us off with your choice of a good

read? What is it? I didn't really have to think much about what was my good read because it's so

much the best of any book that I think I've ever read and it's great expectations by Charles

Dickens.

I read it first years and years ago.

I noticed that the copy which I made my notes in was Mark 1958.

And so from that time to this, I just think it's the most perfectly achieved novel that was ever written,

possibly accepting war and peace, but that is a long book. So for me, it is just a glorious dive into the world that Dickens creates. I think a great many people would agree that

it was his, Dickens' best book. But does it have something personal for you?

I mean, it's one of his novels about a little boy who we first meet when he's quite a

small child.

And then we watch him growing up.

We watch him becoming rich, getting his great expectations and so on.

...