Adam Foulds discusses his Man Booker shortlisted novel The Quickening Maze with James Naughtie and a group of readers.Set in the 1840s, The Quickening Maze tells the story of the poet John Clare, and his incarceration at High Beach Asylum in London's Epping Forest. Run by the charismatic and reformist Dr Matthew Allen, its principles include occupational and talking therapies. Based on real life events, amongst the patients is Septimus Tennyson, brother to the young poet Alfred Tennyson. The Tennysons suffered from the English affliction : depression, and Alfred moves to be near his brother, and enjoy the peace of the forest. In the programme Foulds describes how his discovery of Tennyson and Clare being at the asylum at the same time inspired the novel, and how the closed world of the asylum is a gift for a novelist. He grew up on the edges of the forest himself and spent his teenage years birdwatching there, before he discovered a love of poetry. This intensely lyrical novel draws on John Clare's love of nature, how the Enclosure laws of the time contributed to his alienation and the deterioration of his mental health after a lifetime's struggle with alcohol and critical neglect. Foulds shows us Nature's paradise outside the walls, and Clare's dreams of home, of redemption and escape.May's Bookclub choice : In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar.Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Adam Foulds Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Wilbur Smith discusses his novel When the Lion Feeds with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

With James Naughtie.Judith Kerr discusses her novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. First published in 1971, she wrote it for her son in order to explain the story of her own family's flight from Nazi Germany. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936.Kerr found herself a fairly willing refugee, seeing her long travels as a great adventure. Her parents went to great pains to confirm and support this view, often hiding their own personal and professional privations and struggles from their young children.When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit is now used as a set text in German schools, used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of German history.Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Judith Kerr Producer : Dymphna FlynnMarch's Bookclub choice : When the Lion Feeds by Wilbur Smith.

James Naughtie's first guest on Bookclub for 2015 is Marina Lewycka.Marina was born in Kiel, Germany, after the war, and moved to England with her family when she was about a year old.Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005.Nadezhda and her sister Vera are dismayed when their eighty-four year old father falls in love with a thirty-six year old Ukrainian divorcee. Their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets going back fifty years into some of Europe's darkest history, and the two sisters must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their father.James Naughtie presents and a group of readers - including some from the Ukrainian community in London - join in the discussion.Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Marina Lewycka Producer: Dymphna Flynn February's Bookclub choice : When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.

With James Naughtie. In a special 200th edition of the programme we celebrate the centenary of author Patrick O'Brian and Allan Mallinson is our guide to the first in his hugely popular series of Napoleonic naval stories, Master and Commander. Known as the Aubrey/Maturin novels, the twenty books are regarded by many as the most engaging historical novels ever written. Master and Commander establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his ship's surgeon and an intelligence agent. O'Brian won fans not just because of the story-telling and his power of characterisation but also his detailed depiction of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war : the weapons, food, conversation and ambience, the landscape and the sea. Master and Commander was first published in 1969 and the twentieth novel in the series Blue at the Mizzen, in 1999, a year before O'Brian died. Allan Mallinson also writes novels about the Napoleonic wars and knew O'Brian. And as always on Bookclub a group of invited readers join in the discussion. December's programme marks the 200th edition of Bookclub which began in 1998 and has featured the world's leading authors from the late 20th/early 21st century like Toni Morrison, JK Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Alan Bennett. James Naughtie's impressive list of guests also includes writers who are no longer with us like Muriel Spark, Gore Vidal, Douglas Adams, Carol Shields, and Sue Townsend. All are available online to download and keep forever, via the programme's website bbc.in/r4bookclub . Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Allan Mallinson Producer: Dymphna Flynn January's Bookclub choice : A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.

With James Naughtie. Poet Blake Morrison talks about his memoir of growing up in Yorkshire in the fifties and sixties, the son of two local GPs. It's an honest account of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement.The book also movingly chronicles his father's death in 1991, and attempted to resolve some of the secrets in his father's life.First published in 1993, And When Did You Last See Your Father? became a bestseller, was adapted into a film starring Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent, and inspired a whole genre of literary confessional memoirs. Recorded at the Ilkley Literature Festival, Yorkshire.December's Bookclub choice : Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian (1969)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Blake Morrison Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Celebrated Australian writer Tim Winton discusses his novel Dirt Music with a group of readers.Tim reveals how after seven years of writing Dirt Music, he was unable to hand it in to his publisher on the agreed date. He felt ashamed of the novel and that it wasn't ready; if he found himself getting lost in it so would the reader. He spent the next fifty-five days redrafting and rewriting, and the novel went on to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2002 and is considered one of his best.Dirt Music is set on the coast of Western Australia and in its vast isolated deserts. Forty year old Georgie Jutland is a mess, with her career in ruins she's torn between two men who are both bereaved and grieving. These characters' lives are in stasis, they are incapable of articulating their emotions and instead resort to alcohol and petty crime. Tim Winton explains :"I'm interested in people who have very few words to express feelings, it's not that they don't have feelings but they have no language, and I'm interested in finding ways to portray that ... and in this instance it's space, memory and music by which they express themselves or communicate."November's Bookclub choice : And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison (1993)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Tim Winton Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Recorded at the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals, Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties. First published in 1989, the book is widely acclaimed as his finest.The novel engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty and nationality as it follows a family through the divisions in France during World War II, and the repercussions which last for decades. In the early 1950s Etienne de Balafré strives to find out what happened to his father when the German invasion of 1940 divided the country between collaboration and resistance. Where some might see an accomplice, the author Allan Massie seeks to understand a human being making difficult choices.As always on Bookclub, a group of especially invited readers join in the discussion.October's Bookclub choice : Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Allan Massie Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Sadie Jones talks about her novel The Outcast which won the Costa First Novel award in 2008.The book is about a boy called Lewis - his childhood and adolescence - as he grows up in the stultifying world of the home counties in the late forties and fifties. It's a tale of drunkenness, violence and a fair amount of sex, set amongst the well-brought-up professional classes. It is also a love story.Sadie says : There's something fascinating about the 50s, the cataclysm of the war and the 60s. We all think about this explosion of freedom, but caught in between it was ten years of breath held and that fascinated me.August's Bookclub : A Question of Loyalties by Allan Massie (1989)Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Sadie Jones Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. The celebrated American writer Lorrie Moore discusses her short novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? In the early nineties, Lorrie Moore was wandering through an art gallery when she came upon a painting with this same intriguing title, depicting two young girls looking at a pair of bandaged frogs. Lorrie Moore bought the painting, and borrowed its name and imagery for her second novel.She says the book is not autobiographical except "in a spiritual way." Her intent was to examine the passion and purity of adolescence and the special quality of girls' friendships in those teenage years.August's Bookclub choice : The Outcast by Sadie Jones (2008).