Better Known

Alexandra Pringle discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.

Alexandra Pringle was Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing for 20 years and she is now Executive Publisher. Her authors include Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Esther Freud, Elizabeth Gilbert, Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Colum McCann, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, Kamila Shamsie, Patti Smith and Barbara Trapido. She is a Patron of Index on Censorship, a Trustee of the charity Reprieve, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin University and Warwick University.

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BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Rory Cellan-Jones has been a reporter for the BBC for thirty years, covering business and technology stories for much of that time. He joined the BBC as a researcher on Look North in 1981, moving to London to work as a producer in the TV Newsroom and on Newsnight.

At the beginning of 2007, he was appointed Technology Correspondent with a brief to expand the BBC’s coverage of the impact of the internet on business and society. His first big story was the unveiling of the iPhone by Steve Jobs in San Francisco. In 2014, he began presenting a new weekly programme Tech Tent on the BBC World Service.

In 2001 his first book Dot Bomb, a critically acclaimed account of Britain’s dot com bubble, was published. In 2021 Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era documented his experiences reporting on the smartphone era. It was described by Stephen Fry as “delightfully insightful and intensely readable.”

In recent years he has investigated the role technology can play in improving the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease, having been diagnosed with the condition in 2019. He recently announced that after 40 years he would be leaving the BBC at the end of October 2021.

You can find out more at https://rorycellanjones.substack.com.

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/01/small-pleasures-by-clare-chambers-review-a-suburban-mystery

The Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571214976-backroom-boys.html

Eben Upton https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54782255

BBC Radio 4 Six’o’Clock News https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qjxt

Acquired https://www.acquired.fm/

The Cardigan Show https://cardigancountyshow.org.uk/

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James Plunkett discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

James Plunkett has spent his career thinking laterally about the complicated relationships between individuals and the state. First as an advisor to Gordon Brown, then a leading economic researcher and writer, and then in the charity sector, helping people struggling at the front-line of economic change. James combines a deep understanding of social issues with an appreciation of how change is playing out not in the ivory tower, but in the reality of people’s lives. James' first book is End State: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/james-plunkett/end-state/9781398702202/.

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Kehinde Andrews discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. Kehinde is an academic, activist and author whose books include The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World (2021), Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century (2018) and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement (2013). Kehinde is founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity.

Birmingham https://www.bcu.ac.uk/student-info/why-study-at-bcu/living-in-birmingham/facts-you-didnt-know

Universal Negro Improvement Association https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-unia/

British Empire https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html

Race Relations Act 1965 https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/race-relations-act-1965/race-relations-act-1965/

Nanny of the Maroons http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP023

Makoko https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/23/makoko-lagos-danger-ingenuity-floating-slum

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Kerry Shale discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Kerry Shale’s theatre appearances include Frost/Nixon, His Girl Friday, The Normal Heart and six self-written solo shows. Television work includes The Sandman (Netflix: 2022), Dr. Who and The Trip. Films include Angel Has Fallen, Little Shop of Horrors and Yentl. For BBC radio, he has recently read Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang and has won three Sony Awards for acting and writing. He co-hosts Is It Rolling, Bob? Talking Dylan https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/is-it-rolling-bob-talking-dylan/id1437321669, one of the UK’s leading music podcasts.

Today! by Mississippi John Hurt https://open.spotify.com/album/2AijI0LujDEUd9smSk87Uw

Swimming To Cambodia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swimming-Cambodia-DVD-Spalding-Gray/dp/B00QNNZ52G

Vietnamese Coffee (Premium Blend) https://www.dragoncoffee.com/shop_order1.php

BrainDead https://www.amazon.co.uk/BrainDead-Season-1/dp/B01GSSHPWI

Canadian Football https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/cfl-mobile-the-official-app/id389370180#?platform=ipad

The Parker novels https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/S/R/au6035391.html

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Rosita Boland discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.

Rosita Boland was born in County Clare in 1965 and lives in Dublin where she is Senior Features Writer at the Irish Times. She has published two collections of poems, Muscle Creek and Dissecting the Heart. She has travelled extensively, most recently in South East Asia and her travel books include Sea Legs: Hitch-hiking the Coast of Ireland Alone (1992), A Secret Map of Ireland (2005), Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel (2019) and Comrades: A Lifetime of Friendships (2021). She won the Hennessy Award for First Fiction in 1997.

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David Benedict discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

David Benedict is a culture critic and broadcaster. He read drama at Hull University, spent ten years as an actor, singer and director and was artistic director of the U.K.’s national lesbian and gay theatre company, Gay Sweatshop. He joined The Independent in 1993, becoming a daily arts columnist and associate editor. The former arts editor of The Observer, he is the London critic of Variety and a weekly columnist for The Stage and divides his time between criticism, arts journalism and broadcasting. He is writing the authorised biography of Stephen Sondheim and also plays Tristram Hawkshaw on The Archers.

1. Better Things https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/28/better-things-gets-better-pamela-adlon-triumphs-without-louis-ck

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Beaty Rubens discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.

A BBC Radio producer for 35 years, Beaty Rubens has collaborated with some of the great names in broadcasting, the arts and academia. Her many documentaries have focussed on the arts, history and the lives of women and children. Some high-points include working with Lyse Doucet, Katya Adler and James Naughtie, Professor Mary Beard, Professor Emma Smith and Professor Thomas Dixon, dancers Akram Khan and Marianela Nunez, poets Seamus Heaney, Alice Oswald, Sean O’Brien and Sasha Dugdale, writers Michael Morpurgo, David Almond, Shirley Hughes and Anna Pavord. She has won the radio category of the prestigious One World Media Award, the Glenfiddich Award and The BP Arts Journalism Award. In 2021 she left the BBC and now works as an independent producer and writer. Particularly happy in the Aegean, Beaty is also a passionate three-season swimmer in the Thames near where she lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and daughter.

1. Journey to the River Sea https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zdn6dp3

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Alexei Sayle discusses with Ivan both things which he thinks should be better known and a number of things which he thinks are terrible.

Alexei Sayle is a comedian and writer. He was the original MC of the Comedy Store in London when it opened in 1979 and was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He is best known for his performances in the BBC TV programmes The Young Ones, The Comic Strip and Alexei Sayle’s Stuff. He has written three novels and two volumes of autobiography: Stalin Ate My Homework and Thatcher Stole My Trousers.

The Bride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bride_(1985_film)

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Author Francis Spufford discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.

Francis Spufford’s novel Light Perpetual has been longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. His first novel Golden Hill was published in 2016 and won the Costa First Novel Award.He is the author of five celebrated books of non-fiction. The most recent, Unapologetic, has been translated into three languages; the one before, Red Plenty, into nine. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

The leafy hills of South London https://www.southlondonclub.co.uk/blog/2016/10/14/8-secret-leafy-getaways-to-visit-this-autumn-in-south-london

The Pilot G-Tec C4 fine-line pen https://www.penandpaper.co.uk/product/pilot-microtip-rollerball-g-tec-c4/

Crisp Green Williams pears sliced thin, and eaten with Italian blue cheese https://www.bertolli.co.uk/recipes/warm-pearblue-cheese-crostini-180506

The works of Elizabeth Knox https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/25/the-absolute-book-by-elizabeth-knox-review-an-instant-classic

The Church of England https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-defence-of-the-church-of-england

The entire genre of science fiction https://www.salon.com/1999/05/25/sfdefense/

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