BBC Radio Orkney

The Book Café

Magazines & Reviews

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Join Clare English for a feast of books and all things literary

The Book Café: 30/05/2011

30/05/2011

BBC Radio Scotland - The Book Café, 30/05/2011

Award-winning author Aminatta Forna on a remarkable new collection of travel writing.

Commonwealth Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna talks about her contribution to a remarkable new collection of travel writing.

Glasgow-born Aminatta Forna, fresh from winning one of the world's most important literary awards, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Memory of Love, joins us to talk about that, whether she can also bag next week's Orange Prize and- getting back to writing- rediscovering Sierra Leone, the place she grew up, for a remarkable new collection of travel stories.


We get a taste of modern Greece as we talk to Meaghan Delahunt about To the Island, a novel where the search for a lost father reveals the impact of recent political upheaval on the lives of ordinary people.


As her hugely-successful Dragonfire series for children reaches its conclusion, author Anne Forbes gives us a guided tour of the Edinburgh locations that inspired her magical version of the city.


And: Jock Hume, twenty one year old father-to-be from Dumfries, was one of the band of musicians who played on the deck of the sinking Titanic as passengers scrambled into life boats, only to die in the icy water themselves. Almost a hundred years later, Jock's grandson, ex-Fleet Street journalist Christopher Ward, has written about the impact of the disaster on two generations of his family. He joins Clare to reveal a story of class discrimination, corporate incompetence and family betrayal. 

Producer: Serena Field.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Book Café

30/05/2011

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC Radio Orkney

About BBC Radio Scotland