Simon and Rachel speak with the novelist Ian McEwan, the critically acclaimed author of 17 novels and two short-story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, "First Love, Last Rites", won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. Ian's novels include "The Child in Time", which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 1987; "The Cement Garden"; "Enduring Love"; "Amsterdam", which won the Booker Prize in 1998; "Atonement"; "Saturday"; "On Chesil Beach"; "Solar"; "Sweet Tooth"; "The Children Act"; "Nutshell"; and "Machines Like Me", which was a number-one bestseller. "Atonement", "Enduring Love", "The Children Act" and "On Chesil Beach" have all been adapted into films. We spoke to Ian about his experience as the first-ever student on the University of East Anglia creative-writing course, his extraordinary run of success in the 1990s and early 2000s, and about his new novel, "Lessons."

You can find us online at alwaystakenotes.com, on Twitter @takenotesalways and on Instagram @alwaystakenotes. Our crowdfunding page is patreon.com/alwaystakenotes. Always Take Notes is presented by Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd, and produced by Artemis Irvine. Our music is by Jessica Dannheisser and our logo was designed by James Edgar.