Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,

history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

This is a download from the BBC.

To find out more, visit BBC.co.uk. slash radio four.

Hello on today's program.

I love being a writer.

What I can't stand is the paperwork.

We explore the pain and occasional pleasure of writing novels.

But first, an author whose fans include a dazzling array of literary supernovas,

from Sawbello to Philip Roth, Samuel Beckett,

to Harold Pinter, along with the less cerebrally smitten, from Marlon Brando to Robert Mitcham,

and even Bond himself in the shape of Sean Connery. We know all this because after years of disdaining

the prospect, Edna O'Brien has finally written her memoir. As you'd expect

from this controversial and groundbreaking author, it makes riveting reading. From her early

convent days in the west of Ireland to her decades at the epicentre of London cultural life,

here is a woman and an artist who's lived life to the full.

Married as she hit 20 to the Czech Irish author Ernest Gabler, with whom she had two sons,

Carlo and Sasha, the marriage ended ten years later, and since then, despite the aforementioned glittering array of suitors, O'Brien has remained an independent spirit and controversial chronicler of the vicissitudes of her native Ireland.

She began with a trilogy of heavily autobiographical novels,

the country girls, the lonely girl or girl with green eyes,

and girls in their married bliss, the latter a particularly ironic title.

...