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The History Hour

Nordic Noir and the Moomins

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4879 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

Indian-based author and podcaster Purba Chakraborty talks about the history of fiction writing.

We hear about the rise in popularity of 'Nordic Noir', following the publication of Henning Mankell's crime novels.

Then we listen to BBC archive of writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges - regarded as one of the most influential Latin American writers in history.

Plus, the trial of two Soviet writers, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, accused of smuggling their works to the west.

Helen Fielding looks back at her weekly newspaper column about a 30-something, single woman in London, which became a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s.

The niece of Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson talks about her iconic Moomin books - which have been published in more than 60 languages.

And finally, we hear the personal story of young Nepalese athlete Mira Rai, which shocked the ultra-running world.

Contributors: Anneli Høier - literary agent. Jorge Luis Borges - short story writer and poet. Purba Chakraborty - writer and podcaster. Andrei Sinyavsky - Russian writer and Soviet dissident. Alexander Daniel - son of Yuli Daniel, Russian writer and Soviet dissident. Helen Fielding - journalist and writer. Sophia Jansson - niece of Tove Jansson, author and artist. Mira Rai - Nepalese trail runner.

(Photo: Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell and a copy of one of his books. Credit: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:07.3

Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.

0:10.5

Evil genius.

0:11.6

He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.

0:15.5

That's like hiding at your own funeral.

0:17.1

Yeah, a big, great gig.

0:18.6

I'm Russell Kane.

0:19.6

Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius.

0:24.2

Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius.

0:26.4

It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

0:29.4

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

0:34.9

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

0:39.3

From the brilliant and bizarre.

0:41.8

It was really surreal.

0:42.8

It was a surreal kind of atmosphere there.

0:44.9

You couldn't really see anybody.

0:46.0

To the shocking and unexpected.

0:48.2

I'm just wondering, what are we going to do now?

0:50.3

This was really my worst fear.

0:52.0

He found 100% horsemeat that was labelled as beef.

0:55.6

Witness the stories that have shaped our world, told by the people who were there.

1:01.2

When he went to the factory, the poodle went in front of him, so the work was on here. Oh,

...

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