Michelle Ogundehin and Lisa St Aubin de Terán
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michelle Ogundehin is a broadcaster, magazine editor and author also known as a presenter on TV's Interior Design Masters. She and author Lisa St Aubin de Terán give their book recommendations. Michelle's is 4000 Weeks: Time Management For Mortals by Oliver Burkeman which she says has helped her simplify her life. Lisa chooses Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix the powerful retelling of the 2021 incident in which 27 people drowned in the English Channel attempting to make the crossing from France. It's a fictionalised account of a real event told from the perspective of the French Coastguard blamed for not taking adequate action. Harriett's choice is The Party by Tessa Hadley set in post war Bristol.
Have your say on any of these books on Instagram @agoodreadbbc
Producer: Maggie Ayre
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:09.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:12.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:17.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:19.5 | I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:28.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:31.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:34.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:35.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:36.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.2 | Hello, more book suggestions for you, coming this week first from interior's guru, |
| 0:44.3 | Michelle O'Gundahin, formerly editor-in-chief of Elle Decoration UK, |
| 0:48.9 | currently series judge on the BBC's Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr. |
| 0:57.0 | Michelle's second book, Healthy by Design, How to Create a Healing Home, is due out next year. With her is award-winning author Lisa |
| 1:03.0 | St. Obin de Terran, whose 21 books include most recently the psychological thriller The Hobby |
| 1:09.5 | and a memoir, better broken than new. Until recently, the psychological thriller The Hobby, and a memoir, Better Broken Than New. |
| 1:13.5 | Until recently, Lisa lived in Mozambique, where she and her then partner ran community projects |
| 1:18.8 | for their NGO, the Tehran Foundation. |
| 1:23.3 | Michelle, to you first. What have you chosen as a good read? |
... |
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