First of two programmes in which novelist Louise Welsh considers what "gothic" really means, and why gothic literature still captures our imagination.

[Caption] The grim splendour of Glasgow's Necropolis provides the backdrop for an exploration of the gothic spirit

A Gothic Quest 11.30am R4
The novelist Louise Welsh (listed recently by The Guardian as one of their "50 women to watch") extends a long pointy finger tipped by an even longer pointy black nail and then slowly coils it back as she requests your company on a dark tour of the gothic genre. Starting in "a spectacular place, a city of the dead" (aka the Necropolis cemetery in her home town of Glasgow), Welsh interviews various experts about the ways in which gothic has popped up in poetry, fiction, art, architecture and film since the first gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, was printed in 1764. Fellow novelist Sarah Waters joins the debate halfway through and provides the best description of gothic as something that "takes us to a place of fear, beyond our place in society, and shows all our anxieties." If the idea of a programme dealing with "death, madness, altered states, scientific abuses and outsiders" puts you off your mid-morning coffee, just remember that one of the great joys of gothic is that it never takes itself too seriously!