A Good Read: Sophie Hannah & Viv Groskop
Books and Authors
BBC
4.2 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sophie Hannah and Viv Groskop join Harriett Gilbert to talk about books they love.
Sophie, an Agatha Christie expert and superfan, recommends The Rose and the Yew Tree, a book – misleadingly billed as a romance, she says – that Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She claims it can rival any detective novel for suspense and intrigue. Will Harriett and Viv agree?
Harriett champions Dame Eileen Atkin’s recent memoir Will She Do? which charts the first 30 years of the actor's life, including her time as a child soubrette, performing in working men’s clubs as ‘Baby Eileen’.
Writer, podcaster and stand-up Viv Groskop recalls her time living in Russia in the 1990s and explains why she thinks The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, a 1920s satire about science gone very wrong, will become increasingly relevant in the months and years ahead.
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sarah Goodman.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation. |
| 0:07.0 | It was an extraordinary news story. |
| 0:09.0 | The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny, |
| 0:14.0 | mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared. |
| 0:18.0 | One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for |
| 0:21.7 | Leukin. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex von |
| 0:26.7 | Tunselman. This is The Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.2 | Hello, I'm Harriet Gilbert. Thank you for downloading a good read the podcasts, where two guests and I recommend books we love and describe why we love them. We don't always see eye to eye, but I hope you'll find some great reading suggestions here. |
| 0:51.3 | Hello, today Agatha Christie, as you may not know her, Eileen Atkins, as you may not know her, |
| 0:57.1 | and a very un-house-trained dog. With me to introduce their good read are first the crime writer Sophie |
| 1:02.8 | Hannah, whose more than 20 bestsellers include four continuation Ercud Poirot novels and the |
| 1:08.6 | Waterhouse and Zala mysteries. The most recent of those, the couple at the table, came out earlier this year. |
| 1:14.7 | Sophie's also published five poetry collections and two self-help books, including How to Hold a Grudge. |
| 1:21.0 | With her is the writer, broadcaster and stand-up Viv Groskop, author of How to Own the Room |
| 1:26.4 | and Lift as You Climb, Women,, author of How to Own the Room and Lift as you climb, |
| 1:28.6 | Women, Ambition and How to Change the Story. |
| 1:31.6 | Viv also hosts the long-running How to Own the Room podcast, and here on Radio 4, |
| 1:35.8 | you may have heard her on Front Row, Saturday Review or Woman's Hour. |
| 1:40.6 | Sophie, Hannah, would you start? What is your choice of a good read? |
| 1:44.7 | My choice is The Rose and the U Tree by Agatha Christie, originally published under the name Mary Westmacott. |
| 1:52.2 | And for 15 years, nobody knew that Mary Westmacott was Agatha Christie. |
| 1:57.9 | But now, in its current incarnation, the book does have Agatha's name on the cover. |
... |
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