OFF AIR... EXTRA
Off Air with Jane & Fi
The Times
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to another Friday special. This week's bonus episode features an interview with The Times and Sunday Times' Literary Editor, Robbie Millen, from our Times Radio afternoon show (2–4 pm, Monday to Thursday).
Robbie joins us for our weekly round-up of the best book releases.
His picks this week were:
Dream State by Eric Puchner
Shibboleth by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert
The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King by Christopher de Bellaigue
If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio
Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi
Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury
Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Friday's literary off-air bonus ball with our guest Robby Millen. Now he's a cheeky chappie. He's also a very learned one, the literary editor of The Times and the Sunday Times. And here he is, with his usual mix of mirth and intellectual majesty, as he goes through some of the reads now available for your enjoyment. |
| 0:28.7 | It's Monday afternoon, it's our literary salon and... |
| 0:32.6 | Hang on there. Robbie, I'm trying to give it the big cells. |
| 0:36.8 | Right, I'll start again. |
| 0:38.5 | Monday afternoon and our literary salon here on Times Radio, |
| 0:42.3 | Jane Garvey and Fieglova, who are both relatively well-read-ish with you until 4 o'clock. |
| 0:48.1 | But Robbie Millen is the best read man on earth. |
| 0:50.5 | He's the literary editor of the Times and the Sunday Times, |
| 0:56.2 | and he joins us now. It says here, to tell us more. Right. So you have some good book recommendations, Robbie. |
| 1:02.7 | I know. I'm so rather worried now that I've been bigged up so much. Yes, you've really got to offer |
| 1:07.7 | listening to something. There'll be some people who've never heard you before |
| 1:10.9 | and are longing, genuinely longing to hear what the literary editor of the Times and the Sunday |
| 1:16.7 | Times sounds like. I mean, presumably he's a man who's really read every book on earth |
| 1:22.5 | and knows everything about it. But you know the real benchmark is you've got to be better than |
| 1:26.0 | Laura. Oh, no, yes. I've got a very good deputy. Which is difficult because she's very good. She is superb. And actually on the podcast, she's made some recommendations that our listeners have really loved. No, she's good. No pressure at all. Well, funny enough, Laura Hackett is reviewing Dreamstates by Eric Pukna or Puchner this weekend. Which is where you're starting, yes. |
| 1:45.0 | That's where we're starting, which I love a kind of slightly oversized American novels, the one that's going to take you on a journey. |
| 1:53.0 | And this one is a kind of set up is two friends met at university and then we're getting close a month before a wedding one of them |
| 2:03.5 | is marrying his new sweetheart and uh of course things aren't going to go right because it's 400 pages |
| 2:10.1 | they've got to fill it up it can't just be a happy wedding um so the the other friends starts to |
| 2:16.4 | fall for this uh rather beautiful woman. |
| 2:19.5 | But it's more than that because we follow them over, |
| 2:22.1 | something like 50, 60, 70 years. |
... |
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