When a writer sits down to face that blank white page where do the creative ideas come from? June Knox-Mawcr has been talking to a group of distinguished writers including Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury. Mollie Hardwick , Ian McEwan and Dick Francis to find out about the curious rituals that writers seem to go through before they can actually bring themselves to write-the right fountain pen, the correct size paper-and beyond that the origins of the impulses for stories, plots and characters. With thoughts on the matter from other literary ' greats' such as Henry James and Hemingway, read by David Ashford.
Producer FRANCES DONNELLY