Victoria Pile and Julian Baggini
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE LIVES AND LOVES OF A SHE DEVIL by Fay Weldon, chosen by Victoria Pile THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway, chosen by Julian Baggini CLEAR by Carys Davies, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Comedy writer and director Victoria Pile joins philosopher and author Julian Baggini to talk about their favourite books with Harriett Gilbert. On the menu is a feminist revenge novel that is as dark as it is funny, a classic Hemingway novella that casts us out to sea, and an evocative short story set on a remote island off Scotland.
Join the conversation on Instagram: agoodreadbbc
Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Becky Ripley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:09.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:12.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:17.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:19.5 | I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging |
| 0:25.2 | out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:28.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:31.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:34.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:35.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:36.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.8 | Ernest Hemingway, Faye Weldon, names not often yoked together. But there are two of the authors whose books my guests and I think you might enjoy. Or maybe not, let's see. |
| 0:50.2 | With me, our first, the comedy writer, director and producer Victoria Pyle, whose many award-winning TV shows include Smack the Pony and Green Wing, of which latter she's currently working on a second series for podcast. |
| 1:03.7 | With Victoria is philosopher and writer Julian Bargini, author of more than 20 books, among them The Ego Trick, How the World Thinks, and most recently |
| 1:13.2 | how the world eats a global food philosophy. Victoria, to you first, what have you chosen |
| 1:20.0 | as a good read? I have chosen the lives and loves of a she-devil by Fay Weldon, written in the 80s, |
| 1:29.9 | and actually much more so than just being a reflection of its time. It's a classic feminist novel, but for me, it's absolutely |
| 1:35.6 | about the heroine that is at the centre of it, or an anti-heroine, perhaps. The book is about |
| 1:41.9 | Ruth Patchett, who's a giantess of a woman. She's six foot two |
... |
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