Joanna Hardy-Susskind and Horatio Clare
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE TRUCE by Primo Levi, chosen by Horatio Clare THE SUN DOES SHINE by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin, chosen by Joanna Hardy-Susskind SULA by Toni Morrison, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Writer Horatio Clare joins criminal defence barrister Joanna Hardy-Susskind to discuss favourite books with Harriett Gilbert. Horatio's choice is a book he returns to every winter, The Truce, in which writer Primo Levi recounts his survivor's journey home to from Auschwitz across a war-torn Europe. Joanna puts forward another powerful autobiography, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, in which Anthony Ray Hinton recounts his time on death row after being wrongly accused of murder. And finally, Harriett's choice is an early novel by Toni Morrison, called Sula, which follows the turbulent friendship of two girls as they grow into adulthood within a poor but close-knit community in Ohio.
Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Becky Ripley
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:03.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:06.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:11.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm Jenny Clemen and in the new series of The Gift, |
| 0:17.5 | we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:22.8 | They didn't know that I was different. |
| 0:25.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:27.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:27.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:28.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:29.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:30.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.2 | BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:38.3 | Today's suggestions for a good read come first from the writer and broadcaster Horatio Clare, whose memoirs, travel and children's books include Aubrey and the Terrible Ute, Your Journey Your Way, The Recovery Guide to Mental Health, and published just last month, we came by sea, |
| 0:55.0 | Stories of a Greater Britain. |
| 0:57.0 | And with him is the criminal defence barrister Joanna Hardy Suskind, who specialises |
| 1:02.0 | in allegations of homicide and sexual offending. |
| 1:05.0 | Joanna is the writer and presenter of Radio 4's Justice series. |
| 1:09.0 | You do not have to say anything. |
| 1:13.9 | Horatio, would you start us off, please? |
| 1:23.1 | Yes, well, I chose the truce by Primo Levy, and it's the sequel to If This Is a Man. |
... |
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