Open Book - Andrew O'Hagan and Helen Garner

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alex Clark talks to Andrew O’Hagan about his new book Caledonian Road. Told over the course of a year, Caledonian Road follows art historian and public intellectual Campbell Flynn as a friendship with a young student calls into question the complacency of his much-cherished liberal credentials. With an epic Dickensian cast from drill artists to the wealthy Russian oligarchs in bed with British politicians, the book spools out to encompass a wide canvas of contemporary British life.

Alex also talks to the Australian writer Helen Garner as three books from her back catalogue have been reissued: The Monkey Grip, chronicling a young mother’s life in bohemian Melbourne in the 1970s; This House of Grief, a true crime story of a murderous father; and her most widely renowned novel, The Children’s Bach, which takes us into the lives of a family turned upside down by the forces of sexual desire and the impulse toward freedom.

And, DJ turned novelist, Annie Macmanus shares the Book She'd Never Lend

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.
0:06.5	I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:11.2	I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,
0:16.0	relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.
0:22.4	So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,
0:28.3	and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.
0:33.6	So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.
0:39.4	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:43.3	Hello, today on Open Book, we'll be talking to two writers whose endless curiosity
0:48.6	has ensured a strikingly various body of work.
0:53.1	At 81, Helen Garner is seeing three of her acclaimed books
0:56.9	reissued and joins us to explore her eclectic career and her late-flowering love of Australian
1:03.9	rules football. But first, Andrew O'Hagan's books are rooted in a deep engagement in what are often the darker aspects of our
1:13.0	contemporary lives. His work ranges from investigative journalism about the Grenfell disaster
1:19.1	to an embedded account of life with Julian Assange to a novel based on the life of child star Lena
1:25.9	Zavaroni. His last work of fiction, Mayflies,
1:30.1	was a joyful story of music, literature and male friendship set against the debate around assisted
1:36.3	suicide. His latest Caledonian Road takes its title from a long North London street
1:42.7	that is home to both some of the capital's
1:45.2	wealthiest inhabitants and some of its most deprived. Told over the course of a year,
1:51.9	the story follows art historian and celebrity intellectual Campbell Flynn's friendship
1:57.0	with his student Milo Mangasha, an encounter that calls into question the complacency
	...

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