The The Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today you find us in the impeccable Georgian near-classical elegance of the assembly rooms in Bath

as part of the wonderful two-week riot of words and music that is the Bath Festival. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound,

the platform where readers crowd fun books they want to read.

And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously.

Thanks for coming everyone today.

Joining us today, we have a panel of three experts.

Public are allegedly tired of experts. But we don't believe that's the case and we've got

absolute top of the shop experts for you today. First of all we are joined by

Rachel Heath. Rachel Heath is a novelist whose book The Finest Type of English Woman

who was shortlisted for the Costa novel.

Since then you have published a second novel which is called

part of the spell and also Rachel and you'll want to show your

appreciation in the traditional manner lives in Bath. Also joining us today is Arifah Akbar, Arifah is a journalist and critic.

She is head of content at Unbound and editor of the literary magazine Boundless.

She is a returning guest to Batlisted, having joined us earlier this year to talk about

Hillary Mantel's Beyond Black. And our final guest, she's the mascot of this festival in Bath.

Alex Clark, she is a literary journalist, editor and

broadcaster and artistic director of words and literature at the Bath Festival, so

this is her fault.

She too is a returning guest,

having joined us two years ago for a discussion

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