Radio Oldie

The Oldie’s Agony Aunt, the stand-up, novelist and columnist Virginia Ironside, opens up about solving reader conundrums, something she has done now for nearly 40 years. She airs her mixed feelings about celebrity agony aunts and the unreadable prose of some of her contemporaries. Our Digital Editor goes to her house in West London, to see Virginia and meet her cat.

They were famous queens, unrecognised visionaries, great artists and trailblazing politicians. They all pushed back boundaries and revolutionised our world. Jenni Murray presents the history of Britain as you've never seen it before, through the lives of twenty-one women who refused to succumb to the established laws of society, whose lives embodied hope and change, and who still have the power to inspire us today. This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand on July 17th 2018.

Who is your favourite prime minister? Gimson has written a vivid account of the lives of PMs from Walpole to May. The former parliamentary sketchwriter for the Telegraph and biographer of Boris Johnson, Gimson is the dream guide to our First Lords of the Treasury. This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand on July 17th 2018.

The former head of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit and former editor of the TLS will talk about his latest book, Prime Movers. It examines the political ideas of twelve great thinkers across the centuries, including Pericles, Jesus Christ and Edmund Burke. This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand on July 17th 2018.

Christopher Howse recalls the heyday of London’s boozy artistic bohemia – from the Forties to the Eighties. In conversation with Harry Mount.

From the man who exposed the Jimmy Savile scandal – in The Oldie – comes a book on the mysterious death of Dr David Kelly in 2003. It remains one of the most shadowy episodes in recent British political history.  This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch as part of Buxton International Festival on July 7th 2018.

Drawing on lost royal letters from a closed archive, The White King introduces us to Charles I as the monarch at the heart of an epic tale: of populist politicians, the fall of the mighty, religious hatreds, civil war, the power of a new media, and a maligned queen. This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch as part of Buxton International Festival on July 7th 2018.

'Rock and Roll is Life' is a vastly entertaining, picaresque and touching novel inspired by the excess and trajectories of the great '60s and '70s supergroups, and of the tales brought back from the front line by a very special breed of Englishmen who made it big in the States as the alchemists and enablers, as well as the old making way for the new in the era of the baby boomers. At its heart is one man's adventure, and the poignancy of the special relationships that dominate his life. This talk was recorded at an Oldie Literary Lunch as part of Buxton International Festival on July 7th 2018.

Sam Leith, literary editor of the Spectator, talks about 'How to Write a Book Review' and proffers wisdom on how to make a review 'really sing on the page' and why you should read a book armed with a pen.

Mary enlightens course-goers, telling them that 'only a blockhead goes into journalism for money' in her session on 'How to Write a Column' – something she has been doing now, for the best part of 50 years.