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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Open Book: Mary Renault's Greek Myths

Mary Renault's Greek Myths

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Mary Renault's Greek Myths

Octavia Bright discusses Mary Renault's The King Must Die.

Octavia Bright explores the enduring appeal of Mary Renault's novel The King Must Die with Bettany Hughes, Kamila Shamsie and Okechukwu Nzelu.

Octavia Bright explores Ancient Greece through the writing of the English author Mary Renault. 

Born in 1905, Renault worked as a nurse before she began writing romantic fiction, but made her name with historical novels like The Charioteer, The Bull From the Sea, and the Alexander trilogy.  The world she created was a cultural golden age and turned myths ridden with drama, cruelty, sex, and death into compelling human stories,  
Octavia is joined by classicist Bettany Hughes, who has written the introduction for the latest edition of The King Must Die, writer Kamila Shamsie, whose retelling of  Antigone, the novel Home Fire, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018, and the academic and novelist Okechukwu Nzelu to discuss the qualities and enduring appeal of her writing.

Book List – Sunday 21 August and Thursday 25 August 

The King Must Die by Mary Renault
The Bull From the Sea by Mary Renault
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
Funeral Games by Mary Renault
Purposes of Love by Mary Renault 
Kind Are Her Answers by Mary Renault
The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault
Return to Night by Mary Renault
North Face by Mary Renault
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault 
Lion in the Gateway by Mary Renault
The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault
The Praise Singer by Mary Renault

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