Open Book

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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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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

Open Book: Elizabeth Day

19/07/2020

Elizabeth Day

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day talks to Eley Williams about her new book, The Liar's Dictionary.

Elizabeth Day talks to Eley Williams about her new novel, The Liar's Dictionary. It's a playful, funny book about lexicography and language.

Elizabeth Day is joined by Eley Williams to talk about her new novel The Liar's Dictionary. It's a playful, funny book about two lexicographers who are both working on the same dictionary, but in different eras.  Winceworth is a shy Victorian clerk who starts to  amuse himself by inserting made up words; in the present day, a young intern Mallory is charged with weeding these 'mountweazels' out. Eley Williams talks about her love of language, and its limitations and why she included a pelican in the novel. 

Also on the programme, writer Richard Beard continues his series about the narrative voice by exploring the rarely used second person narrator; Joseph Knox tells Elizabeth why he chose to re-write and re-publish his first novel Sirens and Gillian McAllister reveals what she learnt during a personal lockdown in her twenties, due to illness, and how that has helped her in the current worldwide lockdown.

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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