Start the Week

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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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Start the Week: Finding consolation and community in reading

Finding consolation and community in reading

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Finding consolation and community in reading

Tom Sutcliffe with Michael Ignatieff, Christopher Prendergast and Toby Brothers.

Michael Ignatieff, Christopher Prendergast and Toby Brothers discuss the consolation of reading with Tom Sutcliffe.

The historian, writer and former politician Michael Ignatieff talks to Tom Sutcliffe about how consolation offers a way to survive the anguish and uncertainties of the 21st century. In his new book, On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, he looks at how works of literature – from the Psalms to Albert Camus and Anna Akhmatova – help increase hope and resilience. On Consolation will be Radio 4's Book of the Week from February 7th. 

Christopher Prendergast’s Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime’s reading of Proust’s masterpiece A la Récherche du Temps Perdu. It serves as a guide to readers embarking on Proust’s colossal work, highlighting the author’s many obsessions, from insomnia and food to memory, humour and colour.

The London Literary Salon is a community built around the study of literature and ideas, with its mantra: ‘opening books, meeting minds, creating community’. During the pandemic its founder and director Toby Brothers broadened its reach, welcoming people into the salon from all over the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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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Start the Week

Finding consolation and community in reading

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