A Good Read: Monica Ali and Shami Chakrabarti

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2014

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights organisation Liberty, and Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane, talk about their favourite reads with Harriett Gilbert. Books under discussion are Evelyn Waugh's satire on the Anglo-American relationship staged in and around an LA funeral business, The Loved One, Rachel Holmes' biography of Eleanor Marx, and the children's classic, Charlotte's Web.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to
0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all
0:28.1	put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,
0:34.9	check out BBC Sounds. Thanks for downloading a good read.
0:38.8	You can find more information on all the BBC downloads at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four.
0:47.1	Hello, welcome. Evelyn Waugh, Carl Marx's youngest daughter, a pig and a spider, an unlikely
0:53.0	quartet, but let's see how we get on with them.
0:55.4	My guests are Shami Chakrabati, Director of Liberty, aka the National Council for Civil Liberties,
1:01.5	Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, and now an author, her first book on Liberty, comes out this autumn.
1:08.1	With Shami is the award-winning novelist Monica Ali, whose four
1:11.9	fictions include Brick Lane and most recently Untold Story, and who's currently working on a new
1:18.0	novel. Writing but also reading Monica, you've brought a book in to recommend as a good read.
1:23.9	I have. Tell us what it is. Tell us what it is. Well, my choice is The Loved One by Evil in War, which I first read when I was about 14 or 15
1:32.3	years old, shortly after the TV series of Bride's Head, which I devoured along with the rest of
1:39.3	the nation, and I subsequently started reading his books, and I started with Bride's Head, found it much funnier, much darker than the show,
1:48.6	moved on to the loved one, which is a wicked little satire about the English expats in Hollywood in the 1940s.
1:59.1	And the American Way of Death death as exemplified by the happier hunting
2:06.3	ground pet cemetery where Dennis, who is the hero or the anti-hero of the novel and a struggling
2:15.5	English poet works and the whispering glades, the great necropolis,
	...

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