Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello and tonight on the program, Anne Enright, named this year as Ireland's first laureate for fiction,

takes the Green Road that she'll be talking to me about her new novel later on.

How can we improve mental health in a climate of constrained health spending,

whoever wins the election?

And I'll be asking Christopher Hampton how he goes about adapting the work of some of the world's best-known playwrights.

I find if they're dead, they're very little trouble.

And we have a responsibility towards them, I think.

But the chapter is closed, and you've just got to study them in such a way that you don't betray them.

When they're actually liable to be on the end of the phone, it's a slightly different matter. More on the tricky art of Belle A. Fidel translation later.

But first, Anne Enright, she's one of Ireland's foremost novelists. No small burden that,

in a country where the story of family and land have stalked the literary tradition. But Enright's given a modern twist to the

family saga. Her novel The Gathering carried off the Booker Prize for its portrayal of Fischer's

among a clan. Her latest book, The Green Road, charts recent social history through the disparate

members of a family, gathered together in County Clare 1 Christmas,

with Rosaline their anxious matriarch.

The fates and insecurities of her children

track a changeable period in Ireland's fortunes,

from the boom and bust years of switchback economic outcomes

to expat lives in Africa and the gay scene in New York,

...