Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2020
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid discuss capturing different forms of speech, a sense of place, and politics - in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature and Durham Book Festival, and hosted by presenter Shahidha Bari.
Plus, how the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox has lessons for us all today. As a new translation and retelling by Anne Louise Avery is published, she joins Shahidha to discuss the book with Noreen Masud - a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker from Durham University. Based on William Caxton's translation of the medieval Flemish folk tale, this is the story of a wily fox - a subversive, dashing, and anarchic character - summoned to the court of King Noble the Lion. But is he the character you want to emulate, or does Bruin the Bear offer us a better template?
Reynard the Fox, a new version with illustrations, is published by the Bodleian Library, and is translated and retold by Anne Louise Avery.
Daljit Nagra is the author of British Museum; Ramayana - A Retelling; Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!; and, Look We Have Coming to Dover.
Val McDermid is the author of several crime fiction series: Lindsay Gordon; Kate Brannigan; DCI Karen Pirie; and, beginning in 1995, the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, which was televised as Wire in the Blood. Her latest book - a Karen Pirie thriller - was published in August 2020 and is called Still Life.
Details of events for Durham Book Festival https://durhambookfestival.com/ One of the events features Durham academic Emily Thomas talking about travel and philosophy - you can hear her in a Free Thinking episode called Maths and philosophy puzzles https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws2
Crime writer Ian Rankin compared notes on writing about place with Bangladeshi born British author Tahmima Anam in an RSL conversation linked to the Bradford Literature Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6
You can find more book talk on the website of the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/
There are more book interviews on the Free Thinking playlist Prose and Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh This includes: Anne Fine with Romesh Gunesekara; Irenosen Okojie with Nadifa Mohamed; and Paul Mendez with Francesca Wade.
Producer: Emma Wallace
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.2 | Hello, dashing, witty and anarchic. |
| 0:35.5 | No, I'm not describing the presenters of Radio 3, but Raynard |
| 0:38.9 | the Fox. We'll be hearing about the fabled medieval fox, whose stories have been retold in a new |
| 0:44.2 | edition, and they promised to be as controversial today as they were in the 15th century. |
| 0:49.9 | Dashing, witty and anarchic is a good way, actually, to describe crime novelist Val McDermott and poet Delgit Nagra. |
| 0:56.5 | That's likely what the Royal Society of Literature saw in them when they elected them as fellows in 2017. |
| 1:02.7 | In fact, Val and Dalgett signed their names on the same page of the Society's Register. |
| 1:08.1 | And today, they'll be talking together as part of On the Same |
| 1:11.4 | page, our series of writers in Conversation. Hello there, Daljet and Val. Hello. Hi. |
| 1:16.8 | I've loved to be here. That's great to have you. I should say that our conversation is also part |
| 1:20.9 | of the Durham Book Festival, which is taking place online now until the 18th of October. |
| 1:26.5 | And it's lovely to have you join us, |
| 1:28.5 | but I can't pretend that you're not two very different writers. |
| 1:32.5 | Delgett, your debut collection, |
| 1:34.6 | look we have coming to Dover from 2007, |
| 1:37.7 | explored multicultural Britain. |
| 1:39.8 | You've won forward prizes for best individual poem |
| 1:41.9 | and for best first collection, |
| 1:43.9 | and were Radio |
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