A Good Read

Lively conversation around three book choices. Presenter Harriett Gilbert talks to two guests about books they love.

A SEVERED HEAD by Iris Murdoch, chosen by Lucy Kellaway

Lucy Kellaway, former Financial Times journalist turned secondary school teacher and founder of the charity Now Teach, chooses a slim novel by author-philosopher Iris Murdoch. A Severed Head (1961) centres on the marriage and affairs of Martin Lynch-Gibbon and his circle of friends and family.

Lord Bird MBE, more commonly known as John Bird, founder of The Big Issue and now a crossbench peer campaigning on homelessness and poverty prevention in the House of Lords, picks the American poet Walt Whitman's memoir Specimen Days (1882). Written when Whitman was in his sixties, it details, in fragmentary form, his experiences of the Civil War and his love of the natural world.

Presenter Harriett Gilbert brings Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1949), which follows Hilary Wainwright's search for his lost son amid the ruins of post-war France.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol

Photo credit: The Big Issue

Lively conversation around three book choices. Presenter Harriett Gilbert talks to two guests about books they love.

Raymond Antrobus chooses Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

Raymond Antrobus is a poet whose memoir The Quiet Ear, which investigates the intersection of race and deafness, was published in 2025. His choice for the programme, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, is the startling story of a severely disabled woman who blogs pornography from her care home.

Guy Gunaratne is a prizewinning novelist who has chosen Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie's work which explores sex, ill health and photography over the course of their relationship.

Harriett nominates The Mars Room, a novel which looks at the lives, experiences and motivations of the inmates of an American women's prison.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sally Heaven

Photo credit: Marco Giugliarelli

Lively conversation around three book choices. Presenter Harriett Gilbert talks to two guests about books they love

EUPHORIA by Lily King

Selina Brown has written three children's picture books. She is the founder and CEO of the Black British Book Festival. Her book recommendation is Hunger Pains by Derek Owusu - a novel that puts the growing trend of male obsession with appearance and fitness under the spotlight.

Fellow guest Andrea Wulf is author of eight books, including the Founding Gardeners and The Invention of Nature. Her latest, The Traveller, is about the life of ethnographer George Forster, She chooses the novel chooses Euphoria by Lily King. It's based on the life of the life of the American explorer and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt is Harriett's choice - a poignant story about the fierce love of a grandmother who brings up her troubled daughter's child.

Producer: Maggie Ayre, BBC Audio Bristol

Photo credit: Antonina Gern

Guests discuss books they love. This time: 

Loving and Giving by Molly Keane, chosen by podcaster and Archers actor Susie Riddell

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sarah Goodman

A sharing of book recommendations and lively discussion. Harriett Gilbert is joined by children's author Lauren Child and musician David McAlmont to talk about books they love by George Orwell, Elizabeth Strout and Alan Bennett.

The books are:

Producer for BBC Audio Bristol: Sally Heaven

Writer, actor and comedian Cariad Lloyd and writer Geoff Dyer join Harriett Gilbert for an enthusiastic and robust discussion about favourite books.

The books are:

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Eliza Lomas

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, chosen by Joanne Harris

Join us over on Instagram @agoodreadbbc

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sally Heaven

The classicist and the author talk about books they love with presenter Harriett Gilbert. One of the books is eerily prescient about the state of the world today.

The books are:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, chosen by classicist Daisy Dunn

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Beth O'Dea

Photo credit: Timothy Foster

A special episode of A Good Read, recorded live at the Hay Festival. The books are:

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, chosen by psychotherapist and artist Philippa Perry

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Maggie Ayre

Photo credit: Pal Hansen

Two Scottish crime writers choose books by:

And Harriett's choice is Summer by Edith Wharton

Producer: Maggie Ayre BBC Audio Bristol

Photo credit: Julie Broadfoot