Open Book

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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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Martyn Pickersgill

Open Book: Forbidden love with Douglas Stuart; Oxford’s influence on interwar writers

17/04/2022

Forbidden love with Douglas Stuart; Oxford’s influence on interwar writers

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Forbidden love with Douglas Stuart; Oxford’s influence on interwar writers

Elizabeth Day talks to Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart about his new novel, Young Mungo

Elizabeth Day talks to Douglas Stuart about his new book, Young Mungo. And we explore the creative inspiration behind many interwar British writers.

Elizabeth Day is joined by the author Douglas Stuart, whose debut novel Shuggie Bain became a worldwide hit after winning the 2021 Booker Prize. The book chronicled a brutal family love story set in the heart of the working-class housing estates of Glasgow.  

His follow up ‘Young Mungo’, also set in Glasgow, sees the writer in similar territory, but this time exploring a gay relationship across the sectarian divide in a post industrial Glasgow of the early 1990's. It explores the danger of being different in a hyper-masculine world, and the tension created in these often violent surroundings.   Written across two different timelines, it is a propulsive and sometimes challenging read but it is also imbued with tenderness, dark humour and highlights the power of community and small kindnesses. 

We’re also joined by the writer and classicist Daisy Dunn to discuss the themes in her new book ‘Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between The Wars’. She talks about some of the interwar writers like Vera Brittain, Mary Renault and Aldous Huxley, who all passed through the city and were influenced in some way by the university. Their writing invoked a break with writing traditions and helped spearhead some of the most exciting literature of the 20th Century. 

And the Book I’d Never Lend is back with Donna Leon, the celebrated crime writer. Author of over 30 books, the stories of her central detective investigator Commissairo Guido Brunetti, now sits in the company of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. She explains why a Charles Dickens classic is a book she’ll always return to. 

Produced by Belinda Naylor and Robbie Wojciechowski
Edited by Di Speirs 
Presented by Elizabeth Day

Book List - Sunday 17 April and Thursday 21 April 

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart 
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Give Unto Others by Donna Leon
Not Far from Brideshead by Daisy Dunn
Chrome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien
Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

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