09/03/2012 The Review Show

We're back on Monday. On the review show tonight, Robert Pattinson

swaps vam pieric virgins for - vampiric Virgins for Bel Ami. We

talk about the fictional lives of sex offenders in the new book, Lost

Memory Of Skin. Sex and society in the 18th century, a new exhibition

by the Danish painter, Johan Zoffany, at the Royal Academy. And

Stephen Mangan tells us about bringing Douglas Adams detective,

Dirk Gently to the screen. Not pontificating over the he can

electic election are John Mullan, professor of English at University

College London, writer and stand-up comic, AL Kennedy, who has

published six novels, most recently The Orange Prize nominated. The

Blue Book, and Marcel Theroux, writer and broadcaster, whose

latest book, Far North, is a futuristic novel set in Siberia.

Good evening, we welcome your thoughts on the subjects, tweet us,

we appreciate the feedback, most of it, at any rate. Tonight we start

in Paris, in the mid-1800s, where an all-star cast, including Robert

Pattinson and Christina Ricci, bring a tale of lust, adultery and

ambition in Bel Ami. Set in decadant 1800s Paris, it is the

story of George, played by Robert Pattinson, from ex-military upstart,

to one of the richest and best connected men in Paris, by a series

of mistresses. It has an impressive ensemble class. Ranging from big

Hollywood hitters such as Uma Thurman, and Ricci, to respected

British talent, Chris tin Scott Thomas, and Philip Glennster.

is rotten with money, if you can't succeed here, lie down and die.

film premier at the Berlin international film festival, and

marks a debut for Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, who worked

together in theatre for more than 20 years, with their own company,

Cheek By Jowl. Remarkably there were many things in common to the

theatre. I think, in a sense, our skills in film separated very

naturally. I looked after the visual side, the space, and Declan

looks after the ablgtors, that is very much -- actors, that is very

much how it works in theatre. Ami tackles theme as lust,

deception and emotional abuse, with Pattinson decribing George as

completely amoral. There is a thread of timeless political

corruption and the manipulation of the media. It springs off the page,

it is an incredibly strong, powerful, fascinating story about a

fascinating character. It also has incredibly contemporary relevance,

in that the whole political background is so up-to-the minute,

it is almost laughable. Even since we finished shooting two years ago,

the unrolling story of phone hacking, a corrupt media, seem

minute-by-minute more and more relevent. So does Bel Ami hold a

mirror from past to present predicaments, or merely a tale of

debauchry in fabulous frocks. you want to be the man who put down

the Government or do you want to be a fool?

The directors said they wanted the contemporary subject of political

intrigue to come to the fore. Did you find it part of the film?

all takes place off screen. It is the Government involved in Algeria

but they could have been dealing in orange juice futures, it is all off

stage and it is talking, and you don't get a sense it is at the

heart of the movie. The heart of the movie is this amoral character

making his way in the world. He's supposed to be making his way up

from poverty, at no point do you think he has ever been poor in his

lie. You think it is a gap year student who might have had his cash

card retained in Bangkok and is having lots of sex. The movie has

great looking actors, and in lots of scenes they are not wearing

clothes. Robert Pattinson was the central vehicle for him, this

ensemble cast of beautiful people around him, does he hold the

centre? I don't think he does, really. It is not entirely his

fault, because it is very difficult, the point of the story is that it

is told from Georges viewpoint, that is how De Maupassant tells it,

not in his voice but his viewpoint. This heartless person is somebody

into whose mind and appetites and sympathies you are drawn. Pattinson

has to do it just by lots of close- ups of his face. And not

surprisingly, he can't do it. It would take a really good actor to

do it. Somebody says about him as a character, at some stage late in

the film, there is nobody there. And a lot of the time that is the

feeling you have. Did you feel that? No, I saw a different movie.

I was tired and I had a headache and it was really late at night. No,

I was very prepared to think that Pattinson couldn't carry it, he has

very difficult scenes as you say, he has no lines, he just has to be.

I got a real sense of his absolute desperate pursuit of just anything

that would mean he could survive. It is not really a film about sex,

and the sex isn't about sex it is about power. A lot of that power is

taken by the women. That is the whole point, the women in the end

have more power. They are fantastic. You have Uma Thurman, Christina

Ricci and Chris ten Scott Thomas, she has a more Kirsten Scott Thomas,

she has a more difficult role. think Uma Thurman is great. I think

Uma Thurman gives a confidently terrible performance. The scene

where she turns the table on him, it sounds like it comes from the

director's voice, there is this nullity of the Robert Pattinson

character making his way, from scene-to-scene you don't know what

he wants. You don't actually know in the end what he's actually

driving towards? Sex, he gets plenty of it. What else does he

want. He's happy in the first scene when someone gives him five bob and

he can have sex with the prostitute, and then he's happy to go back to

the decision. Not many actors would be prepared to be that thick. In

the book he's thick, he does and says the wrong thing, he looks for

the next thing and has no ambition. He has complicated feelings, and it

is not that he's a brilliant Machiavellian figure in the book.

There is no complication in the film. The whole point is that Uma

Thurman, he's just a sieveer for Uma Thurman. Sypher for Uma Thurman.

He doesn't care about anything, maybe they did the sociopath thing,

there was a vacuum at the heart of the movie. This is the clip where

Kirsten Scott Thomas, the final woman he seduces, and is being

rejected by him. Take me with you, I need to talk to you. Remember

where you are. You shouldn't have seduced me. You should have left me

where I was, a happy and faithful wife. Please let me come with you.

Please, just for an hour, I have something so important to tell you.

Something to your advantage. It is about my husband. Kirsten Scott

Thomas has got the depth to play this, and she plays the most

difficult part? I find it difficult to watch her throwing her dignity

away chasing after that ninny. is just a character. Where have you

lived your life like that doesn't happen. He's the best looking

member of the sixth form. I feel the sexual politics is at a school

level, it never gets out. You have to feel with her, you have to feel

that she's somebody whose dignity is destroyed. There has to be a

really powerful force that makes her do that. He's very good looking,

that is not enough. That is the tragedy of falling for somebody

like that, who everybody around you knows it is bad news, still you go.

That is what happens in life. about the direction, both the

directors talk about spliting it up, they are very, very good on detail?

The frocks are fantastic. We obviously disagrow about Uma

Thurman. I think the direction, -- disagree about Uma Thurman. They

are so concerned about how she comports herself, and the frocks

and the amazing interiors, they are very, very lush, they have

forgotten to talk about the part she's playing. I love that rb you

see faces, there are people who -- you see faces, there are people who

know about it, but you see the acting. It is very close up.

That scene in the book is tremenduously moving, and his death

is greatly moving. We are in this situation, we have Robert Pattinson,

the Twilight crow, and mums and dads wanting to go -- crowd, and

mums and dads wanting to go and they are saying I'm not sure you

can go that? People saying you can't lose money with a film with

Robert Pattinson in it. We haven't mentioned the script, that is the

big hole in the film. The script doesn't move forward. You have no

sense of his motivation, even if you did, even if you assume he's

hungry for something, I don't know what it is, I don't know how he's

going about getting it. It is because he's a young guy.

script is insufficient. You notice the direction, the music, it is one

of the films which seems to have music that desperately tries to

impart drama that the script hasn't earned. I law a different movie.

you would like to see -- I saw a different movie. Bel Ami is

released today. Undersage sex and internet porn is hardly fodder for

Richard and Judy's Book Club, but Johan Zoffany chose -- Russell

Banks chose just those tough themes for his latest novel, The Lost

Reflection. An unknown 22-year-old male, known as The Kid, is released

from prison after committing a sex crime. He's forced to live in the

Florida Causeway, one of the few places where convicted sex

offenders are allowed to stay. Banks was inspired to write the

book after seeing a group of offenders living below his

apartment. The tunnel causeway crosss are from the mainland over

to the Barrier Islands, Miami Beach. I could see the causeway, I decided

to go and look in person and see who and what was there. It was a

completely ragtag and bob tail of sex offenders? The Cheek By Jowl,

you had serial rapists and some poor old drunk who maybe was

arrested for urinating in a public place. You had this mixed bag of

people, all of whom were essentially under permanent, on

going surveillance. Your anti-hero is guilty of a sex offence, but

still a virgin, he didn't physically touch anyone. Could you

write this book about any other character, who was a legislature,

who raped very young children? honest answer is I couldn't, this

was the first time I felt myself blocked out. I couldn't get into

his head. Not just because I didn't want to go there, but I didn't, I

was unable to imagine what was on the other side of that man's face.

I think it was because he had no remorse. If I can't feel affection

for a character it is very difficult for me to get

sufficiently intimate to write about a character. "the kid is no

psychologist and has no insight into what make as sex offender

offend. They are like chimps or neanderthals, who eventually would

have evolved into normal human beings, if it weren't for their DNA

having got scrambled some what. The kid wonders if all across America

there is some kind of strange radioactive leakage, like from

high-tension wires, or cellphones, or road and parking lot as falt,

turning thousands of American men, young and old of all-races into sex

offender, so instead of being attracted to women their own age,

they are attracted to young girls and little children. "You pay no

attention to the victim, why not? The victim has got plenty of

attention elsewhere and by other writers and other media. For me I

thought it was important to try to look at it from the point of view

of the perp. Novelists have been doing that for 400 years now,

looking at the world, not just through the point of view of the

victim, but the point of view of the person who has hurt the victim.

Alison, it is dark and distressing material he is writing about, he

doesn't write about the darkest and most distressing of the characters,

as he says himself, he can't do it? No, it is a strange book. I mean,

word-for-word, the way he writes, he's a writer, he can do it. There

are beautiful, descriptive passages, he talks about light coming off a

building being chummed into the dark. He nailed it. I thought

reading the first third of it, he has done a stunning book, the great

American novel for this decade, he has nailed it, he cares about

social issues, he's addressing where America is now, that it is so

divided that people can be utterly cast out with a complete lack of

justice. He's really going for it. Slowly he went further and further

away, the two characters, the Kid, the sex offender and the Professor

who comes in from outside. Professor, is essentially drawing

the story out of the Kid? He's Watson. I found the Professor quite

unbelievable for quite a lot of the time, and the Kid, I think, became

less believable as things became more allegorical. There is a sense,

this is to do with him trying to talk to America, that you are being

shouted at any somebody who expects you to be not listening, and not

sympathetic and not aware of shades of grey. He did say that he can't

get inside the head of a character unless he has some sympathy with

the character. In a sense, is that an Achilles heel with this book?

is a bit. We must be careful with the plot, it does have a plot. But

the particular offender, into sympathy with whom we have to be

drawn, turns out, by my standards, not really to be a terribly

challenging or worrying figure. In some ways the plot, he's actually

treated rather unjustly, he has been treated rather unfairly. I

agree with Alison, I think, this is really a sort of what, what the

reference call a novel which has something specific to say. It is

there in the title, Lost Memory of Skin. What it is saying is there is

a kind of range of maladjustments which are created by people living

virtually, and living just through the Internet and that's the cause

of this person's sexual malaise. There difficult thing to write

about would have been the humble character, or to write the Jonathan

Little character, and the kindly ones, a difficult character guilty

of terrible things? Yes, and I don't want to give too much away.

He's struggling with his own, the author is struggling. I enjoyed the

bok, it was three quarters of a terrific novel. He struggled with

the character of the Professor. To me it is hukle berry fin with a

massive porn collection. The kid is actually a very resourceful heroic

character, and you don't know what he has done and you want to like

him. In terms of plot and structure it moves really well. It is well

paced. The pacing is nice. The description works really well, with

the way the description is paced. I sthout it was a terrific craft -- I

thought it was a terrific craftsman the writer. In the last pit about

of the book he's wrestling with the revulsion and what it means for the

character. Margaret Atwood says he's the writer of the dark side

about the dark side. But he turned away. Essentially what he says it

means is The Most Memory of Skin, is about the Internet, where nobody

makes connections with each other. He's down on the Internet and down

on parenting in the same way. He said he thought the problems with

parenting in America is really bad? There is this peculiar thing which

seems to me rather sort of evasively done about the Kid's

relationship with his mother. She is basically, she is a single mum

who has brought him up, in his head, and he moves around inside people's

heads just as he wants to. In a rather dismaying way, sometimes. In

his head the bid thinks she has been a good mum to me -- the Kid

thinks she has been a good mum. But with her being promiscuous, there

is a connection, when she's having it off with her boyfriends, he

turns to pornography. There seems to be some sort of narrative link.

He has a fairly bog standard slightly neglected childhood. You

know that you can't necessarily trust what he's saying, or indeed

what anybody is saying, which ultimately becomes difficult,

because everybody is unhelpful, and looking at the author, helplessly

unreliable. You kind of drift into fantasy. When he's trying to

address something that is terribly real and he's passionate about.

Professor is given slabs of theory to think. He doesn't say them.

Those are surely Russell Banks theory. Who is to say about

pornography and the Internet, and the extent to which we are

inundated with pornography. In previous centuries nobody would see

the numbers of images of naked people, people engaged in different

sexual acts with the click of a mouse you can see them. The book is,

perhaps heavyhandedly towards the end about the loss of innocence and

the serpent in the garden of Eden? There is a lot about that.

whole idea he has set out with a thesis, and interesting what you

were talking about Steinbeck, he does it in a more imaginative way.

Russell Banks will talk about the disadvantage in America, endlessly.

The thing that wo take it beyond the thesis is really -- would take

it beyond the thesis is really engaging with both people, it

becomes natural and organic. Because he is, as he says locked

out of both them. There is a lyricism of it, and a buetyo in it,

there is a lyrical -- beauty of it, there is a lyrical quality. There

is lost people, a Lord of the Flies, and Coral Island, Ien joyed the

book. Before we finish -- I enjoyed the book. Before we finish, let's

talk about the six-foot character that slithers along the road. The

boy is so attached to the Ig uana that his mother smuggled into the

country when he was a baby. There are some really good bits of

description, when Russell Banks for a second forgets what he's writing

about and writes. One of the great bits is when he gets the pet ig

uana and it bites hard on his hand, and they have to go to hospital to

get it off, and they want to kill it. It is the most intimate thing

that happens to him. It is the memory of skin. The family portrait

these days is likely to be a snapshot. 300 years ago it was a

paint brush, easal and outfits glol lor. German painter, Johan Zoffany

was a big noise in London, to imhas not been so kind to his legacy. A

new exhibition at the Royal Academy I think it is a great moment for

Zoffany, there hasn't been an exhibition since the 1970. Most

won't know him. He's unlike Gainsborough, Reynolds, we know

them well, but he's a discovery. Charles N'Zogbia arrived in a

bustling London -- Johan Zoffany arrived in bustling London and made

his way into society. A sexual adventure and timeless, he had an

eye for British aristocracy and the capital's institutions. He looks at

the world very much as an independent thinker, with a great

deal of intelligence, and as an outsider, you always get the

feeling that Zoffany is something of a fly-on-the-wall. He takes a

view on society, on art, on traditions, that are quite

individual, sometimes quite eccentric.

When Zoffany first came to London he was taken up by David Garrick,

the great actor and theatre manager, it was through that Zoffany first

gained his own celebrity in England. He was also taken up by George III

and Queen Charlotte. It was through their patronage he painted these

informal, domestic portraits. Arranged by theme and featuring 60

oil paintings and a small selection of drawings and prints. Society

Observed is Zoffany's depiction of the rarified life at court, the

tricky arristok circumstance and his work inspired by his exotic

travels from Italy to India. The A Christmas Trifle is possibly

Zoffany's most celebrated picture. -- the tryna -- We have grand

tourists ogling Venus, not because she's an art object, but a sex

object too. It is a very wry look at society. While Zoffany's

detailed portrayal of the upper echelons of British society hold

many historians spell bound, will this overlooked and unsung artist

manage to pull in the punters. It is amazing, the Royal Academy,

you have these massive queues for Hockney, and not so much for

Zoffany. But there is so much to see in the small space it exists in.

I hope lots of people discover Zoffany through this. He is tucked

away. It is hard to find it. I think it is a wonderful little

exhibition. It really justifies the things being said there about his

interest. He's not a deep pierceer of the human soul, but there is

enough zest, and glisening clutter of 18th century polite life to

amuse and entertain any viewer. He arrives and David Garrick takes him

up. It is a chance to paint this huge array of David Garrick himself

and unlocks other areas? He seems to have known everyone and gone

everywhere, you get his penalty through the exhibition. It is like

a photo journalist being unleashed through the 18th century, and

taking it on. He's interested in what people are wearing, what they

clean their shoes on. Then he goes to India, and suddenly you are in

this extraordinary landscape and he's recording that as well. It

feels like you have gone into a time machine and come out. You like

the Indian ones? It is an extraordinary time. The East Indian

Company is in flow. These Masters of the Universe travelling out

there to make their fortune. And Zoffany is obviously in with them

and doing pictures of him, this is a cock fight he's doing one of

these group portraits. All the different personalities, they are

arguing about the cock. So full of, so vibrant, I didn't know there was

a record of this. What is great, this particular, there is a lot of

them, but the stories they tell within the paintings, that you have

to be in the know, and you know you can imagine the whole, particularly

in the London ones as well, all the stories going round about who is

sitting beside whom in the paintings and what the hand going

down there really means? He's a master of that, he's so lively, and

he's intoxicated by the livingness of the people. There is a guy in

one embracing this young, slightly worried looking boy. There is a

Redcoat with obviously his Indian mistress, there is sexual politics

going on between the colonel and others. It is so alive. He was

doing this, he was doing it for money. Obviously he would be

offending some people and not others, depending on the painting?

The money is part of the juice of it. He comes to London because of

the money. He starts off he's going to be a history painting and paint

biblical subjects. He goes to Rome, to learn how to. Thank God he

didn't do that? He sees these milordy, and he thinks, London.

London in the 18th century, you get the impression that England and

London was this vibrant place fuelled by cash. Because the

Hanover ians are coming, here you have Zoffany, a fellow German, and

George takes him to his bossom. Whether he's painting the Royal

Family or nay bobs, you get this wonderful mixture, he's doing his

job, getting paid and serving these rich people. He's not mocking them.

He's naughty. He's mischievous as well as doing his bit. He haven't

actually got an impage of it, there is him dressed as -- image of it,

there is him dressed as a friar, with condoms hoind it? You have a

Madonna and child on the front and on the back there is him dressing-

up as a friar to go out to the night. There is a Tyneyo thing in

the back of it -- tiny thing in the back there is a friar being tempted

by naked ladies. He has fun with the painting. He's there, he's

trying to flog a paint he sold, the Madonna. This gets him in trouble,

the sense of naughty nis, the in the Uffizi painting you see them

staring at the bum, and a notorious homosexual pointing and doing those

things. Queen Charlotte was so offended he got no subsequent.

fingers going up to the two guys wrestling. The gentleman with the

green coat and the gentleman standing behind him has a startled

expression. It is a mad painting, one of the things he was brilliant

at was painting people's, he painted people's possessions, he

painted people's art works. There is several paintings where actually

there is a painting within the painting, he renders them

beautifully. There is amazing Dutch sea scenes owned by Lord Dundos,

there he is with his grandson, that one the scene is immpossibly full

of stuff and people. Also, the idea that some of the Scottish paintings,

and the Scottish aristocracy, obviously they spent a lot of time

in London. The Drummond family is painted in London by Zoffany, but

someone takes the painting north and a Scottish painter fills in the

background. I'm sure he would have loved to come up, maybe he didn't

have the time. He went to Calcutta, that took a while. You get the

sense at the end of a very full life. It is very moving, in the end

you have a doddery, his eyesight is failing, he has dementia, he has

been a biggest, he has lost a son. You -- big ga mist, he has lost a

son. The David and Golaith, it is coquettish? If I could adopt that

position my life would be very, very different. You can see why

history paintings was no much fun. It is a gland there, I don't know

what it is? It looks like a gland broken off a penis. One more of

Zoffany's jokes. It was in tune of those he was painting. He wasn't

having a go at him, it gives you sense these were sophisticated and

witty people. A Society Observed is on at the Royal Academy until the

10th June. This weekend would have been the 60th birthday of writers

Douglas Adams, after a successful pilot, it seems timely that Dirk

Gently is back on BBC Four, reunited Stephen Mangan and Darren

Boyd. Why do you think it is a bomb. I didn't say it was, I said it was

a suspicious package. If we think it is a bomb we should call the

bomb squad. It could be the local bomb squad who sent it to me,

accidentally kill a man's wife and he might thank me, accidentally

combust a man's sniffer dog and you will give never forgive you. Dirk

gets his theories from quantum physics, it makes for a tricky

process. He's not one to hone down on the fine details of finger

prints and boring things like evidence. Douglas Adams, the

originate for of hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy, died at the

age of 49, his peculiarly British way of writing science fiction

introduced the genre to a British audience. There is a lot of ideas

in the book, the ideas of us as a nation, our foibles, our paradoxs.

In his humour you are always looking to translate. It is a fine

line, they are detective shows, you want an element of drama, Spence

and tension. It is an interesting conundrum when you are filming, how

much do you go for the comedy and the drama. Our director, Tom

Shankland, has shot the three episodes as dramas. Rather than

adapting the original text verbatum, the writing team have taken a more

fluid approach to the scripts? books as written are almost

unfilmable. Trying to turn them into a neat, one-hour television

with a beginning, milledle and end and a story that is -- middle and

end, and a story that is self- contained, is impossible. You

wouldn't do justice to the books with that. Who is sending me a

Valentine's card in April, what has led this woman to fall complete low

and hopelessly in love with me. Will this latest TV installment of

an Adams text, assuage the concerns of his fan base, or is it an

abridgement too far. We have had the one episode, two

more to come. In 2010 when they made the pilot on this, on BBC Four

it got three quarters of a million. There is no question of doing a

series. They are funny physical comedians, the pilot you are

referring to was the most successful effort. It was a cheaper

and shonky thing, blowing it up it has become more glossy, it has lost

some of the charm the pilot had. It is the struggle Stephen Mangan says

you have, it is essentially how do you turn Douglas Adams, essentially

a huge brain, coming up with flights of fancy for its own

amusement, how do you make 60 minutes of TV out of that. I think

it is impossible. The thing to do would be to make it funny. I don't

think there is enough jokes in it. Do you think the spirit of Douglas

Adams is alive in this? I don't think he has much to do with

Douglas Adams. I enjoyed it, has a lot to do with past Taoiseachs of

things we are used to -- pastiches of things we are used to. Pastiches

of Sherlock, Spooks and Doctor Who. It is entertaining rips and par

December on some of the cliches of detective -- parody on some of the

cliches on detective and drama like Sherlock. I think you are riot,

Darren Boyd and Stephen Mangan are ter -- right, Darren Boyd and

Stephen Mangan are terrific together, you want them to build

the relationship over a longer period of time? For me it didn't

make me laugh. I felt it wanted to and was trying to. It is low-energy

and drawing the oxygen out of it, you have Stephen Mangan, not high

energy either, up against the dramas you have mentioned. We have

a high-energy, central figure, who carries one of theseam belief lent

things, is he a genius -- ambivalent things, is he a genius

or not at all In a drama you have to care about the characters, do

they care about the characters, or are they all puppets, an hour is a

long time to spend with puppets. is dark in episode two? They were

trying to open it up emotionally. I noticed because you have Bill

Pattinson coming in, suddenly a different approach to acting, a

more dramatic approach to acting, it thraers -- flares up and that

seems to do more. Maybe it is because it has this conceit, all

parts of direction unknown to these. That is fine and silly, but it

seems to me, however Silvio the plot, it should have had -- silly

the plot, it should have had a silly logical. It should have been

logical at some point? The trouble is. A witness box web of

interconnecting events? I don't think Douglas Adams is a profound

thinker. Steady, steady. everything is connected it becomes

a meaningless thing. It is these kinds of things. That is the thing

I really missed, Douglas Adams was a very serious writer, he did very

melodious dialogue. He cared about the human commission and was

compassionate and dark in some of the ideas he did. None that have

was there. He had a real focus, it was insane, but he was really

focused on how terrible human beings could be and they needed to

be saved from themselves. Read Douglas Adams if you can, the first

episode is on the iPlayer, episode two is on Monday.

Today marked the beginning of Glasgow's festival, Aye Write, it

features a host of talent, with Natalie Haines and Alex Preston and

MartyFeldman. We thought it would be rude not to ask Karen Cunningham

about the best of the festival. aim to bring the best of Scottish

writing to the city. We are not like any other book festival, we

are based in the Mitchell Library, one of Europe's largest reference

libraries. It is a fantastic cultural programme, people are

finding it harder to engage with the formal political process, so it

is coming to a book festival like Aye Write gives them an opportunity

to debate, to discuss, to argue, and to be there with like-minded

people. One of our events this year is Scotland's book shelf, which is

mass reading campaign. We will have 20,000 copies of a free book to

give away, and a free downloadable e bok available, that will

encourage people to -- e-book, available that will encourage

people to read about Scotland's heritage. We have managed to bring

in a last-minute event, that is John Ashton's book on Al-Megrahi,

and we know it will be a particular relevance to a Scottish audience.

One of the special events at Aye Write we are bringing together for

the first time. The three Poet Laureates, from Wales, Scotland and

the UK laureate, they all happen to be women, that will be a really

special event. Aye Write runs until the 17th of

March, that is all we have time for, don't forget to look at the website.

We are looking forward to the literary riches on display by way

of Twitter. Thanks to my guests. Next week we will be reviewing the

new ITV series, Titanic, the latest crime fiction phantom, with guests

including historian BettanHug hes and Ian Rankin. Taking us into the

interview is another BBC Introducing acts, this time it is

Dear Prudence with Valentine. # I want to place

# Always out to die # The colours blink

# And leave me black # Do I know

# Filling every corner of my mind # I know that you hear it too

# Valentine # With a heart as black as white

# Through lonely eyes # We watch you from the outside

# Valentine # Just let the roses die

# Keep us alive # And I will keep you safe

# My Valentine # Dear heart

# The missing page # In the golden fairytale

# A memory to thank to tell # Why

# Those dancing # Whispers in the dark

# But I know that you see them too # Valentine

# With a heart as black as white # Through lonely eyes

# With worlds from outside # Valentine

# And just let the roses die # Keep us alive

# And I'll keep you safe # My Valentine

# Lips fade # On the fringes

# On sidelines # I'll hold you close

# And we can disappear # Oh oh oh

# Oh Valentine # With a heart as black as white

# Through lonely eyes # With what you do