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BBC Radio 4 Extra

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Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Chris Stewart

Karen Rose

Peter Nichols

Book of the Week: Last Days of the Bus Club: The Rain in Spain Part 1

The Last Days of the Bus Club

The Rain in Spain Part 1

Last Days of the Bus Club

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Last Days of the Bus Club, The Rain in Spain Part 1

Andalucia is a region racked with droughts, but one winter the downpour was biblical.

Andalucia is a region racked with droughts but one winter the downpour was biblical recalls author and farm owner Chris Stewart.

The eponymous Bus Club is the author's term for the three fathers, of which he is one, who meet each morning when they drop their children at the school bus stop. Chris Stewart's daughter Chloe is in her final year at school and times will soon be changing for the author.
 
In his latest memoir, Chris once again taps into the rich seam of story-telling in the Alpujarras Hills, and brings us tales that are, by turns, warm, funny and moving.
 
Chris Stewart had a brief flirtation with fame as the drummer in Genesis. But he was, by his own admission, not a very good drummer. After college, he embarked on a peripatetic career that saw him travelling across Europe in a converted ambulance, and playing drums in a circus, before becoming a sheep farmer in deepest Sussex.
 
In the early days of the Rough Guides, he persuaded the originator and publisher of the series, Mark Ellingham, to let him write the guide to China, and so began his career as a writer.
 
Over 20 years ago, Chris and his wife Ana settled in the Alpujarras region of Andalucia, buying their own farm. Their experiences in the remote region formed the basis of his first memoir in 1999, 'Driving Over Lemons', which became an international best-seller.
 
Writer and Reader: Chris Stewart
Abridger: Pete Nichols
 
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

Book of the Week: Last Days of the Bus Club

BBC Radio 4

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

By Chris Stewart. Tales from the Alpujarras region of Andalucia in Spain.

By Chris Stewart. Tales from the Alpujarras region of Andalucia in Spain. Abridged by Pete Nichols. Read by the author

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