On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for

Lucan. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex von Tundselman. This is

The Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, today impossible parents, Italian art and talking

animals. And with me to introduce their good read, our first

the poet Patience Agbabi, whose four collections include Telling Tales, a reimagining for the

21st century of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Patience has also written three books for children,

of which the latest, the Circle Breakers, comes out in January.

With her is Andy Miller, author most recently of the Year of Reading Dangerously,

subtitled How 50 Great Books and Two Not So Great Ones Saved My Life.

Andy co-hosts the literary podcast backlisted and is a regular guest on BBC radio talking about

not only books but film and music. Patience Agbabi, would you start us off? What's your choice of a

good read? Well, I chose the animals in that country by Laura Jean McKay and I read it last year,

2021 so we was probably halfway through another lockdown, and

I'd avoided plague narratives until that point.

But it was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

And I love speculative fiction.

And I love the premise of it, which basically is that a flu is ravaging Australia, but it's

a very unusual flu. It's called zoo flu. And what it does

...