The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis

This was such a fun conversation. After becoming fascinated by an old photo taken on the island of Hydra in Greece, Polly Samson set about researching the lives of the musicians, writers and artists who settled there in the 1960s, from Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen to the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston. Her novel, A Theatre For Dreamers, is a lush fictionalised account of their lives, and a look at the problematic role of an artist's muse. I loved hearing about how and why she wrote it, her experience writing lyrics - she has written dozens for her husband David Gilmour of Pink Floyd - and her glamorous-sounding career in publishing in the 90s. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-theatre-for-dreamers/polly-samson/9781526600592

Edited by Chelsey Moore

I absolutely loved interviewing today's guest. Jenny Kleeman is a journalist and broadcaster and the author of Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death, which has just come out in paperback. The book is utterly riveting - Jenny travels all over the place talking to those at the forefront of some of the world's most intriguing technological innovations, from lab-grown meat to euthanasia machines. Her experiences range from the weird and wonderful to the downright disturbing, and she doesn't shy away from looking at some of the more problematic elements of tech evangelism.  I've never met Jenny before - but I have spoken to her, several times, when doing the news review on the weekend breakfast radio programme she hosts on Times Radio. So I was absolutely thrilled to get to grill her about the incredible research that went into the book as well as her fascinating career as a documentary maker and foreign correspondent. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/sex-robots-and-vegan-meat/jenny-kleeman/9781509894925

Edited by Chelsey Moore

This was such an interesting conversation. Natalie Morris is a journalist and the author of Mixed/Other: Explorations of Multiraciality in Modern Britain, which draws on her own life experience as well as dozens of interviews to examine the mixed experience. From why she uses the term mixed, rather than mixed race, to the problem with brands' current enthusiasm for ethnically ambiguous models and how it makes her feel when people speculate as to the colour of any hypothetical child she might have, it's thoughtful, fascinating and hugely informative. I loved talking to Natalie about all of this - she was just so insightful. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/mixed-other/natalie-morris/9781409197140

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Katherine Faulkner has had such a fascinating career. A former investigative journalist at the Daily Mail, she used to go undercover to get to the heart of her stories. Then she went on to become joint head of news at The Times - and while on maternity leave wrote her first book, Greenwich Park, an absolutely gripping thriller about toxic relationships and unwanted friends. I loved hearing about all of this - especially a particularly hair raising reporting mission involving designer fashion and an escape dash to the airport, as well as her memories of stashing her laptop in the pram so she could snatch writing time if her baby fell asleep. Oh, and there was just so much else too - she was absolutely great and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/greenwich-park/katherine-faulkner/9781526626325

Edited by Chelsey Moore

If you’re feeling a little cooped up after a year in lockdown, then this is the episode for you. Kate Wills is a travel writer and columnist and the author of A Trip of One's Own: Hope, heartbreak and why travelling solo could change your life. I absolutely gobbled up this book - not just because Kate has such a warm, easygoing writing style but also because of what’s in it: a totally addictive combination of memoir, advice and history. The book starts just as Kate has called time on her marriage, and decides to embark on a prolonged period of solo adventure. While doing so, she seeks inspiration - and comfort - from the solo voyages of women who’ve come before her. We learn about them, but also about Kate herself as she rebuilds a new life, navigating a new relationship, reflecting on old ones (including her difficult past with her mother) and assuming a new role and identity (you’ll see what I mean when you hear the interview). Oh and if you’ve ever wanted to travel alone but haven’t been sure where to start, she has plenty of tips on that too. She was so brilliant to talk to - and I hope you enjoy hearing her as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-trip-of-ones-own/kate-wills/9781788704304

Edited by Chelsey Moore

This week's guest is the journalist Gaby Hinsliff, former political editor of the Observer and now a columnist and writer for the Guardian and others. This was such a dream interview in so many ways - I've admired Gaby's journalism for years, and I loved her book Half a Wife: The Working Family's Guide to Getting a Life Back when it came out nine years ago. Examining the compromises men and women make to juggle work and home, and the benefits of workplaces taking a new more flexible approach, it feels pretty timely right now, almost a decade on. Now Gaby has written the introduction to the first ever UK ebook edition of The Feminine Mystique, published  to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s birth. It looks at the incredibly important role she played in freeing women from the cult of domesticy - but also at more problematic elements of Friedan's life, including her homophobic comments. It's a refreshingly mature way to approach an historic text and I loved talking to Gaby about that, as well as about breaking boundaries when she became the youngest political editor of a national newspaper -  and then packing in those 18 hour days to find (a bit) more balance. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://books.apple.com/gb/book/the-feminine-mystique/id1553757817

Edited by Chelsey Moore

One day, when her son Cato was three months old, Catherine Cho looked at him and, instead of his eyes, she saw devil eyes. She and her husband James had taken Cato to the US from their home in London to introduce him to relatives. She grew gradually more anxious as the trip went on, before being hit by a tidal wave of postpartum psychosis, becoming convinced that she was in hell and that her son was going to die. She was sectioned.

Inferno is her astonishing memoir about what happened next. Moving between scenes from her childhood, her romance with James, and her newly infantilised existence in a psychiatric institution, it’s powerful, raw and eye opening. I’m so grateful to Catherine for talking to me about this - as well as what it was like reliving her trauma for the book, her anxiety over having a second child, and the urgent need to open up the conversation around maternal mental health.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/inferno/catherine-cho/9781526619044

Edited by Chelsey Moore

We have a term for our teenage years - ‘adolescence’ - and we are all familiar with the ‘menopause’ - but there’s no word for the decade or so in which, arguably, women navigate more life-altering decisions than any other - their late 20s and 30s. Or at least there wasn’t, until Nell Frizzell came along and coined one: ‘the flux’, aka The Panic Years, the title of her new book. For her, these began when she was 28 and called time on the relationship that had dominated her adult life thus far. It came just as her friends started settling down and having children - something she was pretty sure she wanted too. What follows is a rollicking and smart account of her ‘panic’ years from hare-brained camping trips with dates to soul searching over the ethics of procreation in a time of global warming - to the gnarly conundrum of falling in love with a man who says he doesn’t want children yet. It’s honest and fun and thought-provoking, as was Nell herself - I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-panic-years/nell-frizzell/9781787632837

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Still WFH? The food writer Rebecca Seal has been doing it for more than a decade. Six years ago, however, she reached something close to breaking point: working until eight or nine at night, six days a week (plus Sunday mornings, when she’s a regular on brunch TV). So she and her partner decided to change things. They set rules: no working or talking about work before breakfast; no working after 8pm; no talking about work after 8pm - and no working at weekends. They stuck to them - and things got better. Now she has written a book, Solo: How to Work Alone (and Not Lose Your Mind), about how to make WFH work for you. It’s full of brilliant advice - I loved hearing about how she has managed to cut back her hours while also being more productive, how she copes with loneliness, and also how, as a food writer, she approaches dinner parties (top tip: always test the recipe). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/solo/rebecca-seal/9781788164856

Edited by Chelsey Moore

Sarah Sands is a media industry legend. A trailblazer for women in journalism, she has had one of the most glittering careers it’s possible to have - editing two newspapers before going on to head up BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme, Today. Having left that role last year, she’d be forgiven for putting her feet up. But no - she has just published The Interior Silence: 10 Lessons from Monastic Life. The book moves between her frenetic journalism career - buzzing along on six hours sleep, dealing with endless emails, breaking news and tweets - and her quest to discover the kind of inner calm more often seen among monks and nuns. It’s a really fun, fascinating read - written in a kind of travelogue style, with bits of history, culture and monastic life interwoven with anecdotes from Sarah’s busy, high-powered professional world. I lapped it up - and absolutely loved interviewing Sarah about everything from her start in journalism, holding her own in what was then a very male-dominated environment while also being a young single mother, making it to the top as the editor of The Sunday Telegraph - only to lose her job eight months later, reaching the pinnacle again as editor of the Evening Standard and then at the Today programme - and much, much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buy the book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-interior-silence/sarah-sands/9781780724546

Twitter: @aliceazania / @sarahsands100

Edited by Chelsey Moore