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BBC Radio 4 FM

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

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Mariella Frostrup

Helen Dunmore

Open Book: Helen Dunmore

12/03/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Helen Dunmore

Mariella Frostrup talks to Helen Dunmore.

Mariella Frostrup talks to Helen Dunmore about her new novel Birdcage Walk where a radical young woman finds herself at odds with her ambitious husband.

Acclaimed novelist Helen Dunmore talks about her latest novel Birdcage Walk, set in her home town of Bristol against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Lizzie a hot headed young woman is forced to confront the differences between her idealistic mother and man-of-action husband. Once again Dunmore creates her trademark mix of ordinary lives played out in tumultuous times, also seen in books like The Siege and A Spell of Winter. Lizzie's husband faces ruin and her family are forced to question their ideals thanks to the long shadow cast by events in France. Helen Dunmore also talks movingly about being diagnosed with a serious illness while writing this novel, and how that affected her work.

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