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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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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

BBC Radio 4 LW

Mariella Frostrup

Sean Michaels

Rachel Johnson

Michelle Miller

Suzi Feay

Open Book: Rachel Johnson and Sean Michaels

12/07/2015

Rachel Johnson and Sean Michaels

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Rachel Johnson and Sean Michaels

Award-winning Canadian novelist Sean Michaels talks about his book Us Conductors.

Award-winning Canadian novelist Sean Michaels talks to Mariella Frostrup about his book Us Conductors, the story of the inventor of the theremin.

Sean Michaels won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for his novel Us Conductors. It's a fictional account of the relationship between the inventor of the theremin, Russian Lev Termen and the musician - and superb theremin player - Clara Rockmore. He talks to Mariella Frostrup about creating fiction from a historical figure.

Also blurring the lines between fact and fiction are the novelists Rachel Johnson and Michelle Miller who have written books about worlds they know intimately - Notting Hill for Rachel and Wall Street for Michelle. They talk to Mariella about gathering material close to home. 

Literary critic Suzi Feay surveys a crop of novels which feature authors as characters - Dickens, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and others have all been included in the pages of books recently. And we take a trip to Hastings to discover why budding authors are turning to art for inspiration.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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