Iain Banks is one of the most successful and productive British novelists of his generation; a writer of apparently boundless invention and self-confidence. Since 1984, with the publication of The Wasp Factory, he has reached a huge and devoted audience with his mainstream books and his series of science fiction novels. Tim met Iain Banks in a hotel room in Central London and set about the job of talking to him about the his writing, his career and in particular about his new novel, Transition; although before that he felt obliged to check that Iain was happy to be Scottish.

Britain in the 1970’s is revisited in vivid technicolour by Alwyn Turner in his new book, “Crisis, What Crisis?”. Tim Haigh visited Alwyn at home to discuss the politics, the cultural upheavals, the t.v and the pop music of the 1970’s. Enoch Powell and Tony Benn: Coronation Street and Love Thy Neighbour, feminism and homosexuality, they ranged far and wide, agreeing to differ only on the vexed question of whether Middle Of The Road and Showaddywaddy were more important than Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

Tim Haigh visited Lord David Owen, sometimes known as Doctor Death in a previous life, to discuss his new book, “In Sickness And In Power- illness in heads of government during the last 100 years”. While Dr Owen has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, he nonetheless talked in fascinating and almost indiscreet detail about politicians, some of whom he has known, and considers whether he might have succumbed himself to ‘hubris syndrome’ if he had, as he might have expected, become Prime Minister of Great Britain.