Nicola Sturgeon and Alistair McGowan
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two books featuring teenage killers feature this time. Nicola Sturgeon MSP votes for Elif Shafak's Honour as her good read. It details the reasons behind the so-called honour killing carried out by a young Turkish Kurd living in London in the 1970s. Nicola says it provides valuable cultural insight into the reasons behind a particular form of violence against women. His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet is set in the feudal system of the Highlands in the late 1800s where crofters were at the mercy of the local Laird and his staff. Roddy's father is barely eking out a living from a small patch of land near Applecross. When his family's livelihood is threatened by a local man exerting his power over them, Roddy commits a brutal triple murder. Harriett enjoys it because it traces the events leading up to the event and Roddy's subsequent trial posing the question of whether he is legally insane or criminally violent. Something gentler is Alistair McGowan's choice. Fair Stood The Wind For France is HE Bates' wartime novel of an RAF airman crash landing in occupied France. As he recovers from his injuries he falls for the daughter of a farming family who take him in. Alistair believes Bates to be one of the finest English writers of last century but being best known for The Darling Buds of May says he's often overlooked.
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Maggie Ayre
Photo credit: Charlotte Hadden
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, with me today to champion books they love are first Nicola Sturgeon, |
| 0:04.6 | for nine years, First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party. |
| 0:09.4 | As leader of the SNP, Nicola worked with five British Prime Ministers, |
| 0:13.2 | and her best-selling memoir of that time, titled, Frankly, came out this summer. |
| 0:18.5 | With her is the Impressionist, actor and radio playwright Alistair McGowan, |
| 0:22.8 | known among much else for his award-winning BBC One show The Big Impression. |
| 0:27.1 | More recently, Alistair's released an album of classical piano pieces |
| 0:30.2 | and last year published a poetry collection called Not What We Were Expecting. |
| 0:35.9 | Nicholas Sturgeon, would you start us off? |
| 0:37.7 | What are you suggesting is a good read? |
| 0:39.5 | I am suggesting honour by the Turkish writer Elif Schaffek. |
| 0:45.7 | Honour is not Elif's best-known novel, but in my view it's one of her best. |
| 0:51.9 | She's a beautiful writer, lyrical prose, and she develops characters |
| 0:56.2 | incredibly well, but explores some themes that are very relevant to the world we live in today. |
| 1:02.2 | She sees the world through the eyes of an immigrant. She explores the immigrant experience |
| 1:07.5 | incredibly well, the clash between culture and tradition and modernity. |
| 1:13.9 | And this novel, at the heart of it, it involves a family who migrate to the UK from Turkey, |
| 1:21.5 | a Kurdish family, in the 1970s. At the heart of it is, as the name would suggest, an owner killing. There's no mystery |
| 1:30.7 | in this book about who does the killing. It is the son of the family, a character by the name |
| 1:37.8 | of Eskender. But the reasons for the killing unfold as the book develops. And it really is, I think, a really |
| 1:46.6 | compelling novel. And at the heart of it are themes of, you know, gender, inequality and |
| 1:52.5 | imbalance, the concepts of honour and shame and how the former is often attributed to men, the latter |
... |
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