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Books and Authors

A Good Read: Liz Carr and Kate Williams talk favourite books

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2824 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Actor and comedian Liz Carr and Kate Williams select a favourite read

Transcript

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0:00.0

In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers.

0:08.0

But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA

0:12.0

was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife.

0:18.0

Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family?

0:21.3

When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe?

0:25.1

I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA.

0:28.5

Steakknife.

0:29.7

Listen first on BBC Sounds.

0:33.5

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:38.0

Hello with me today, actor, comedian and activist Liz Carr, forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery in the BBC TV drama Silent Witness, series 22 of which she's in the process of filming.

0:50.8

Among much else, Liz is also creator-writer and star of the stage show Assisted Suicide, The Musical.

0:58.2

With her is author and historian Professor Kate Williams, whose nine books include four historical novels and five non-fiction histories.

1:06.5

The latest of these rival queens about Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots is just out. Liz, would you

1:13.8

start by telling us what your choice of a good read is? Oh, it's such a pleasure to introduce a book

1:18.5

called First in the World Somewhere by Penny Pepper. And I like what it says on the front,

1:23.9

The True Adventures of a Scribler, Siren, saucepot and pioneer. And indeed, Penny Pepper,

1:30.4

is that. So it's an autobiography, a memoir of a woman through her childhood to kind of her 40s,

1:39.6

I would say. And why I picked this book is it's the memoir of a disabled woman. Now, I wouldn't

1:46.7

want audiences going, ah, well, that's interesting. Obviously, I am another disabled woman. I also

1:51.7

know Penny. I have to admit that I know Penny, and I am in the book. But that's not why I

1:56.9

picked it. Why I picked it is, I don't know that I've ever personally read anything that I can connect with as a disabled woman and go, oh my goodness, those struggles and that life resonates with me.

2:11.2

But what I'd say to listeners and to anyone interested in the book is it takes you through the 80s, through the Thatcher era, through punk.

...

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