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Open Book

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

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Open Book: Michael Palin on his novel The Truth

08/07/2012

Michael Palin on his novel The Truth

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Michael Palin on his novel The Truth

Michael Palin discusses his second novel The Truth.

Mariella Frostrup with Michael Palin about his novel, The Truth; Kitty Aldridge and Prof John Mullan talk funerals in literature; and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 150 years on.

Michael Palin discusses his second novel in seventeen years, The Truth, the story of a failed journalist and would be novelist Keith Mabbut, who's suddenly been offered big bucks to write the biography of a heroic but maverick environmental campaigner. 

Kitty Aldridge, whose latest novel is A Trick I Learned from Dead Men, and Professor John Mullan discuss the wit and pathos in the depiction of funerals in literature and the rich tradition of novelists who've used funerals and death to explore the lives and exploits of the living. 

As fans gather in Oxford to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Alice Day, when The Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll first told the story of a young girl's escapades down the magical rabbit hole to his muse Alice Liddell on a boat ride on the Thames, we'll be assessing the enduring appeal of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the on-going debates surrounding Carroll's relationship with the young girl. 



Producer: Andrea Kidd.

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