A Good Read

Harriett Gilbert and her guests - actress and author, Dame Sheila Hancock and journalist, Cosmo Landesman - discuss their favourite books by Toby Young, John Williams and Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Stoner by John Williams

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2014.

Mariella Frostrup is joined by award-winning Irish writer, Colm Toibin, to discuss his new novel, Nora Webster, and to look back over a career that spans a quarter of a century.

Harriett Gilbert and her guests - broadcaster, Jeremy Paxman and classicist, Dame Mary Beard - discuss their favourite books by Natalie Zemon Davis, Ben Fountain and Graham Greene.

Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2014.

Mariella Frostrup discusses Robert Merle's iconic French series The Brethren, now in English. And behind the genius of Ian Curtis and the socio-linguist Steven Pinker on style.

Novelist Esther Freud talks about her latest, Mr Mac and Me, inspired by the time architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh spent in Suffolk. Howard Jacobson talks about the book that he would never lend, not least because he can't find it at the moment and the changing face of book launches: how the crowded market has inspired publicists to think of new ways to draw attention to new books.

Ali Smith has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for the third time this year for her novel How To Be Both. She talks to Mariella Frostrup.

As we head for a September publishing bonanza, Mariella Frostrup is joined by acclaimed writers Ian McEwan and Amy Bloom, as well as Books Editor of the Guardian Claire Armitstead.

Writers Damian Barr, Evie Wyld and Joe Dunthorne discuss the rise of live literary events.

A literary ramble through the Yorkshire moors and the work they have inspired, from the Brontes to Sylvia Plath. With authors Ross Raisin, Will Atkins and Professor John Bowen.

John Banville takes Mariella on a tour of the foggy streets, smoke-filled bars and genteel hotel tea rooms of 1950s Dublin.