Collections of essays don't exactly fly off the bookshelves, even in the best of economic times, but, despite this, Hanif Kureishi's new book is a compilation of his thoughts on everything from the screenplay of My Beautiful Laundrette to a Kureishi family holiday to Venice. He believes that essay-writing is a vital part of the author's discipline- but is it of any relevance to the general reader? He'll be attempting to convince us to discover the joys of the form.

Tony Fitzjohn has spent his life working to conserve East Africa's most beautiful and endangered creatures. As a young man he left the boredom of the London suburbs for Africa, where he met Joy Adamson of Born Free fame. She told him her husband needed a new assistant, because the last one had been killed by a lion. Tony thought it sounded like the job for him and stayed for 18 years. He'll be joining us to share some of the enthralling stories of life with the big cats from his memoir, Born Wild.

American writer Gary Shteyngart discusses Super Sad True Love Story, his very funny, very thought-provoking, portrait of a status-obsessed, technology-dependent America set in the near-future.

And- we gave her a recording device and left her to it; crime writer Denise Mina gives us an intriguing insight into a day in her working life.

Producer: Serena Field. Show less