Bookclub

Andrew Miller discusses his novel Pure, winner of the 2011 Costa Prize. Set in pre-revolutionary Paris, the book is a gripping, earthy story about the clearing of a huge cemetery in the area now known as Les Halles.When a young engineer Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris from Normandy, he is charged with the huge task of destroying the church and cemetery of Les Innocents in 1785. He is surrounded by a fully fledged cast of characters : LeCoeur, his friend and former colleague from the mines near Belgium, his girlfriend, the prostitute Heloise, Armand, the church's organist and a revolutionary, and the fairytale like Jeanne. But just as significant to the novel's success are the ideas of the Enlightenment and Miller's subtle laying out the undercurrents of disquiet and unrest which would eventually lead to bloodshed and revolution.James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions.April's Bookclub choice : The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak.Produced by Dymphna Flynn.

John Simpson, the BBC's World Affairs Editor and writer Hilary Spurling discuss George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, as part of the Radio 4 Real Orwell Season. Homage to Catalonia was first published in 1938 and is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. This pivotal time in his writing career led in later years to Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm. James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions.March's Bookclub choice : Pure by Andrew MillerProduced by Dymphna Flynn.

Ben Macintyre discusses Agent Zigzag - his bestselling book on the true story of a professional criminal named Eddie Chapman, a successful British double agent who infiltrated the Nazi intelligence services during World War II.A notorious safe-breaker before the war, Chapman duped the Germans so successfully that he was awarded their highest decoration, the Iron Cross. He remains the only British citizen ever to win one. His story is one of chance and charm. Recruited as a spy whilst serving time in a Jersey jail, Chapman persuaded his German spy-masters that he was serving the Third Reich, but when they parachuted him into Norfolk in 1944 he delivered himself immediately to MI5. Because of the advanced and highly secretive code breaking at Bletchley Park, MI5 were expecting this unknown spy, with his German name of Agent Fritz. Reflecting his ambivalent status, his new British handlers called him Agent Zigzag. Ben Macintyre says that Chapman's missions of sabotage and feeding false messages back to Germany were instrumental in saving hundreds of lives, as well as averting the V1 bombers from St Paul's Cathedral.James Naughtie presents and a group of Radio 4 listeners ask the questions.February's Bookclub choice : Homage to Catalonia by George OrwellProducer : Dymphna Flynn.

Sathnam Sanghera discusses his memoir The Boy With The Topknot, which won the 2009 Mind Book of the Year.Born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands, the book is his account of his childhood in 1980s Wolverhampton. The youngest of a Sikh family, it wasn't until he was 24 that he discovered his mother had protected him from the family's secret : that his father had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia all his life. Subtitled "A memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton", writing the book was Sathnam Sanghera's way of confronting his mother with some uncomfortable truths; that after his grammar school and Cambridge education, he had moved away from the family's culture and religion and was not going to accept an arranged marriage. This was a journey of discovery and independence for Sathnam that began on the day he went to the barbers on his own, and had his joora - his Sikh topknot - cut off. When the barber asked him if his dad knew he was doing this, he thought, 'it's my mum you should be worrying about'.The memoir is a meditation on mental illness as well as class and cultural differences, and in Bookclub Sathnam ponders on whether it was a young man's folly to 'share too much information' by writing down his life story. James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions.January's Bookclub choice is Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre.Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

David Almond talks about his prize winning novel, Skellig, which is loved by children and adults alike.Skellig is the story of what happens when a Newcastle boy finds a strange man living in the garage of his new home.Michael sets out to help the ill Skellig recover. With him is his new unconventional friend Mina, who David Almond says is the star of the book. She introduces Michael to the worlds of nature and evolution, and to William Blake's poetry, his drawings of angels, his views on education. David says that when Mina walked into the book she brought Blake with her.David Almond's story centres on the imaginations of children - is Skellig an Angel, or perhaps a man evolving into a bird? In the programme, David refuses to confirm either, saying that to him, Skellig is as much of a mystery as he is to the reader.Recorded at the Lit and Phil Library in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. James Naughtie presents.December's Bookclub choice : The Boy with the Top Knot by Sathnam Sanghera.Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

American writer Marilynne Robinson talks to James Naughtie and readers about her novel Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.Marilynne Robinson enjoyed great success with her first novel, Housekeeping, when it was published in 1980. She reveals to Bookclub why there was a gap of twenty-four years before she was able to write Gilead, her second book; and how the voice of the narrator came to her when she found herself alone in a hotel one Christmas. Gilead is the autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly pastor in the small, secluded and fictional town of the same name, who knows he's dying of a heart condition. Writing in the late 1950s, Ames tells his story in the form of a letter to his seven year old son, who will have few memories of him. And as well as revealing his fears about what will happen to his family when he's gone, the account traces the family's history back to the time when the prairies around Kansas and Iowa were being settled, through the Civil War and up to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.The voice of John Ames captivates the Bookclub audience, and Marilynne discusses his life and work with themes relevant to her own - solitude and religious contemplation.November's Bookclub choice : Skellig by David AlmondProducer : Dymphna Flynn.

Victoria Hislop talks to James Naughtie and readers about her debut novel The Island, a fictional account of a real life leper colony, the island of Spinalonga, just off the coast of Crete. First published in 2005, The Island has now sold over a million copies.Victoria says that when she first went to Spinalonga, as a curious tourist, she had no idea that leprosy still even existed in the 20th century. She thought it had been wiped out hundreds of years ago. Even today, around 500 new cases are diagnosed every year in India and South America.Before writing novels Victoria was a successful travel journalist. On that first visit, her initial idea had been to write a piece for one of the Sunday newspapers, but after fifteen minutes wandering around the abandoned village on the island, she decided to tell the story in fiction instead.The resulting novel tells the story of a family beset by two cases of leprosy in the 1930s and 50s, before the cure was found. In the 1930s, Eleni, a school teacher in the village opposite the leper colony, catches the disease, probably from a pupil. As the pair are exiled to Spinalonga, we see how her husband and two daughters cope in her absence, one of whom will also succumb to the disease some fifteen years later. Victoria explores the shame and stigma of the disease through these characters and their lives and love affairs in a family saga stretching to present day London. October's Bookclub choice : Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje talks to James Naughtie and readers about his 1992 Booker prize-winning novel The English Patient.The novel tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian villa as the Second World War ends. The exhausted nurse Hana, the maimed thief Caravaggio, the bomb disposal expert Kip who are each haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless burns victim who lies in an upstairs room.As well as the mystery of the patient, the novel weaves two love stories - one from the past in pre-war Cairo, the other in the Italian villa. Noted for his lyrical prose, Michael Ondaatje talks about his love of poetry, how the characters of Hana and Caravaggio haunted him so much from a previous novel - In the Skin of a Lion - that he brought them back to appear in The English Patient. He also describes his painstaking method of writing a novel - by longhand in notebooks.September's Bookclub choice : The Island by Victoria HislopProducer : Dymphna Flynn.

To celebrate the centenary of novelist Elizabeth Taylor, David Baddiel is our guide to her best known book, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Like many writers, David Baddiel thinks that Elizabeth Taylor has been overlooked and is one of the finest writers of the middle of the twentieth century. He has called her 'the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike'. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont was the last book to be published in her life time, and was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1971. It tells the story of Laura Palfrey, a widow who can no longer look after herself and moves into a private hotel in West London, where she will probably end her days. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who uses her life for his novel.Radio 4 listeners, some new to Elizabeth Taylor, and others who've been reading her books for forty years, join in the discussion with David Baddiel, and the programme is presented by James Naughtie.Producer : Dymphna FlynnAugust's Bookclub choice : The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

Philippa Gregory, queen of historical fiction, talks about her best-selling tale of lust, jealousy and betrayal, The Other Boleyn Girl. James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions.The novel charts the lives of Anne Boleyn, and her sister Mary, thought to be the mistress of Henry VIII before Anne.Each in their turn are "the other Boleyn Girl", pawns of their fiercely ambitious, conniving family who in the novel use the girls to advance their own positions at the court of Henry VIII. Philippa Gregory will be talking about her fascination with Anne Boleyn's lesser known sister and about the lines between working with fact and fiction; and how she drew on her research to create the claustrophobic detail of palace life in Tudor England.Philippa Gregory depicts Mary, aged just 13, as little more than a child when she is presented to Henry and ordered by her family to serve her King and country by becoming his mistress. Inevitably though, the King's eyes soon begin to wander and Mary is overlooked, helpless to do anything but aid her family's plot to advance their fortunes, replace her with Anne and give Henry the greatest gift of all: a son and heir.July's Bookclub choice : Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor Producer : Dymphna Flynn.