Susanna Clarke, Adam Scovell, Lucy Arnold and Anton Bakker are Matthew Sweet's guests. Susanna Clarke talks about the inspiration behind the follow up to her best-selling first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Piranesi is the springboard for a discussion about haunted spaces and mind-bending architecture in film, fiction and art from MC Escher to Christopher Nolan's Inception, Shirley Jackson to Mervyn Peake. The print maker Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who was born 300 years ago on Oct 4th 1720, became known for his etchings of Rome and images of imagined prisons.
Piranesi drawings: visions of antiquity is an exhibition planned by the British Museum now due to open early in 2021. Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi is out now. Adam Scovell writes on film for Sight and Sound and is the author of books including Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange and two novellas: Mothlight and How Pale the Winter Has Made Us. Dr Lucy Arnold researches contemporary literature at the University of Worcester and is the author of Reading Hilary Mantel: Haunted Decades. Anton Bakker's virtual exhibition Alternative Perspective at the National Museum of Mathematics in NYC can be visited via the MoMath website.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod