11/05/2012 The Review Show

Tonight on The Book Review Show, a quartet of new work from some of

the most successful modern authors. John Irving's latest epic novel of

sex and sexuality, In One Person. Kate Summerscale recounts adultery

Victorian-style in Mrs Robinson's Disgrace. Mark Haddon and his

anticipated new novel, The Red House. I talk to Hilary Mantel

about Bring Up The Bodies, the follow up to her Man Booker winner,

Wolf Hall, delving under the covers to judge all of that, best selling

author, Kate Mosse, literary journalist and broadcaster, John

Mullen, and the inimtable Germaine Greer.

Welcome to the monthly book review special. Tonight we have expert

opinions in the studio. We love to hear your views too. Join on

Twitter or drop an e-mail. First up tonight, the latest novel from a

woman who has become a literary sensation, Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall,

her fictional book about the rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Booker

Prize and sold millions of copies. The new book, Bring Up The Bodies,

the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn, is the second in her Tudor

trilogy. Who would have thought that Thomas Cromwell would be

anything at all. When Wollsey fell, one would have thought as his

servant he would have been ruined. When his wife and daughters died,

you might have thought the loss would kill him. But Henry has

turned to him, Henry has sworn him in, Henry has put his time at his

disposal, and has said to come Master Cromwell, and take his arm,

throne rooms, his path in life made smooth and clear. How do we see the

character of Thomas Cromwell evolve, do you think, between Wolf Hall and

Bring Up The Bodies? There is a very small gap, we leave Wolf Hall

July 1535, the evening of Thomas Moor, he's excuse. We resume

Moore's execution. We resume at Wolf Hall, what happens is he

realises that Henry has fallen in love with the daughter of the house,

storms are clouding Anne Boleyn and it is becoming a political

liability and embarrassment. Cromwell is very quick to see this.

He is now setting a course that will end in the destruction of Anne

Boleyn. Why, do you think, in general, people are so drawn to

this period? I think it is the repositry of all stories. All

themes, all ark types, I think it touches on our collective processes.

Henry is Blue Beards, the wives his victims, Cromwell is a sort of

fixed figure. It is strength and fairytale and yet it is real. It

was enacted not just in sexual politics, but actual politics.

difficult is it to get inside the sexuality Morays of that time,

which -- morays of that time? not particularly difficult at all,

because the missoingnisic slant of the era is apparent in all sorts of

works, in poems, in proz, the woman's is the sin of Eve, she's

the sexual temptrous, the man is innocent she -- temptress, the man

is isn't, this is clear with Anne Boleyn. There is a third book, are

you clear how that will end? It can only end one way. We know the

history! I often end my books with beheadings, readers will have

noticed. I'm afraid the axeman comes for Thomas Cromwell in the

summer of 1540. After his death Henry realises within weeks that he

made a terrible mistake. We don't go there. My trilogy will end as

Cromwell's consciousness ends. Now John, there are high

expectations for Wolf Hall, you were one of the judges which gave

it the Man Booker Prize, does Bring Up The Bodies live up to that?

skwhrus because I was on the panel, but -- not just because I was on

the panel, but I didn't open this book, I couldn't open this book

without thinking, I'm really looking forward to this. Because I

think Hilary Mantel is one of the two or three best writers of

English prose, fictional prose, a prose adapted to whatever uses she

wants to put to it. Writing in English today. It is quite unusual

to be reading this novel, because in all her previous novels they

have been different than the one before. Strikingly different. That

is one of her great qualities. sure her publishers and agents must

be groaning, as soon as she has a successful one she does something

completely different next. It is unusual for her to follow up with a

sequel like this. There are enough subtle changes and developments,

especially in the central character, in his relationship with Anne

Boleyn, and so on, to make it different. But also it has just all

the wonderful stylistic versatility and virtue ostee of the previous

book. One of the difficulties of writing this kind of book is

sustaining any kind of tension, when we Whereareyouknow what

happens to Anne Boleyn? It is one of -- When we know what happens to

Anne Boleyn? Everyone knows that period of history, whether Keith

Starky, or Alison Weir, it has been mined a lot. What I thought was so

extraordinary about the novel, two things I associate with Mantel, one

that there is a lot of set piece work in terms of whether it is the

trial of Anne Boleyn or a hunting incident, or the mistresses being

moved in and out. Things that are self-contained, like little

vignettes, but underlying that is we know where it is going to go.

There is no surprise, but there is the ratchetting all the time of the

tension. It is the way, as she's often said. You can't muck around,

you can't distort the history, but you can choose how much light you

put on something. The order in which you narrate things. That, I

think, along with the fact that I think she's one of the greatest

describers of tiny things, she can take a whole scene by a little

button. That sort of thing. I think it is fabulous. Do you think she

moves beyond the drama of the history of the period? No. I'm

coming at it from a slightly different point of view, I think.

If it's mined this period, it has been mined very shallowly. If we're

thinking of the Starky approach, history as gossip, this is more of

the same. We are talking about these people as if they did not

exist within a very special political and religious context. It

wounds me in a way, because, Anne Boleyn isn't just a nobleman's

daughter, or this besieged figure, who becomes more and more emaciated

and crazy and vindictive. She's a Protestant reformer, she's one of

the most important contributors of books to the royal library. Her

books are now being identified in the British Library. She has a

faction, she is supported. And we mentioned Tindale three or four

times, that's massively important. The central character isn't Anne

Boleyn, it is Thomas Cromwell? is Cromwell, she does this

extraordinary thing, which she does again, of filtering the action

entirely through his consciousness, it is a third person narrative, but

all done through his consciousness. So you judge him, but you're with

him. And that is a really difficult thing to bring off as well as she

does. To get that mixture of sympathy and sometimes horror.

There is a fantastic phase late in the novel, where he's doing the

interrogations of the supposed lovers of Anne Boleyn. They are in

the headlights, they have had it. You're with him doing something

terrible, you are part of it. rational, and yet he's the origin

of every terrible torturer you have ever seen. How does she address

that, with writers of historical fiction, to make the language

archaic or not? The language is an artifice, it is not a way of

producing language appropriate for the story she's telling. It is

Wallis Stephens, it is the she and not the he that said it, it is not

the oldeworlde writing. There is that third person all the way

through, it is he, on Cromwell's shoulder. She never uses his name?

He's horrible and awful. When people say this is the story of the

fall of Anne Boleyn, the point about all the things that Anne

Boleyn is, this is not that book, that is not her project. It is

entirely Cromwell, and it is the awful way in which anything will go,

the sense of how man niplation works. I think -- man niplation

works, -- It is the prose that Hilary Mantel is famous for?

first I thought, mystery, what fun, it is like chocolate syrup poured

over everything. I wallowed in the elusiveness of it. It is very

cinematic, in a way, you have very sharp jump cuts, you see one thing,

then another. You build up the image of the actual situation that

you are in, in that particular episode, with all these little

visual bits pieces. But after a while it began to really annoy me.

For one thing she never contracts, it is a bit like the way people

speak in BBC adaptations of the classics. "I do not", everybody

says, nobody says "I don't", I "I cannot", then you get madness like

"it was not within his remit". "will" move on there, see what I

did. Bring Up The Bodies is out this

week. Families are famously tricky things to manage, just ask Rupert

Murdoch. Family dynamics at the heart of the new novel from Mark

Haddon, another widely popular author. His last book, The Curious

Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time, sat on the best selling list

for months. After the death of his mother, he

asks his estranged sister and her children, and invites them to share

a house for a week with his family. This reveals the hidden strains

geen adults and children alike. When people are on holiday they

haven't got routine and they are thrown back to their resources and

come to the surface things do. I'm not keen on holiday, I like things

to do all the time. "pensiony had a special dispensation to play his

Nintendo because". He wanted to talk about his on going fantasy of

which the teacher killed and ate children in her class. Daisy tried

to talk to allless, who kept -- Alex, who kept looking at Melissa

who ignored him. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-

Time is told from the point of view of a boy who has as perinjures.

There is also the views of the eight members of the extended

family. Writing almost simultaneously from eight points of

view was hard, something I committed to early on. You are

never a single person with your family. You are often the child you

used to be, a parent to someone, quite often you don't really know

who you are, it depends who is in the room. As the holiday progresses,

several different stories emerge from the different view points.

While the three teenagers struggle to navigate the sexual currents of

adulthood. The parents find themselves simply adrift. "mum and

dad were sitting at opposite corners of the table. Why didn't

they love each other? It was easier being here with Louis is a and

Richard, who acted as a kind of padding, at home it was always

cooler in temperature when the two of them were together." People need

to be troubled in whatever way to generate stories, and gain your

interest. As the family members try to come to terms with themselves

and each other, the Red House itself becomes a presence. Haddon

lovingly describes the objects it contain, mute guardians of the past

and present. Towards the end of the book where everyone leaves the

holiday home where they have staying, they haven't really gone,

they have left a few things behind. The house continues as a character

in its own right. Full of all the marks and stains and coasts that

everyone else who has ever been in the house has left behind. Does

Haddon take us on a holiday to remember, or will his technical

experiments leave some readers behind?

To a certain extent, this idea of people trapped in one house, in one

holiday, is a familiar one, do you think that Mark Haddon breathes new

life into the device? Well, mostly. I think he does. I admire him, and

his previous novels as well, in managing to do, as you say,

experimental things, for popular fiction. He's a very popular writer

to be trying to do. Sometimes in this novel, not just the use of the

eight view points, but rapid shifting from viewpoint to

viewpoint, sometimes there are problems with it. I quite admire

the effort to do it. It is an old fashioned thing, actually, the idea

that actually what fiction does is extends your sympathy to all sorts

of characters. It is a George Elliott thing with a sub-Virginia

Woolf thing to it. I was laughing at the word "horror" that you said

it. What I felt, and I think the idea, exactly as you said, the

project, he has done precisely, perfectly, what he set out to do,

in terms of an equal narrative. Nobody feels they are less or more

important. When you are reading it, you realise he's not going that is

the boring one I didn't want to write about. For me, the problem is,

that this sense of the trapped house, I have low tastes. I'm

brought up on Agatha Christie, Mysterious Affair of Styles, if I

read a country house, I want there to be a ghost or murder. There is a

ghost. Kind of a ghost. Everything about it I admired. I thought he

had completely delivered what he said in the film. I wanted more to

happen. I know the point is it is the extraordinaryness of

ordinariness. What about the individual characters. What about

the Melissa character, the teenager? All of the characters are

constructed in a really interesting way. I think maybe the book is a

bit too compressed. Because how have they made up these characters.

They are made up of memories, true and always, they are made up of

what they need, they are made up of the games they play. They are made

up of the roads not taken and things not done. He weaves them

into one strand which is the one character, and weaves it all

together in this family dynamic, in which it is a bit like Chekhov,

nothing is meant to happen, there musn't be the gunshot. If there is,

you have undone everything. It is really about the complexity of the

psychopathology of every day life. You have no sooner decided that a

character is good, when you discover that character is

treacherous at the same time. Melissa is a bully, but she's also

strangely creative, extraordinarily frustrated and manipulative, and

stands in the strange relationship to Louisa, which who has a whole

life that nobody hardly dares to investigate. And it's like living,

but it is deliberately compressed and wrought to this extraordinarily

high standard. I would say, though, ultimately it doesn't work. It is

just a bit too hard on the reader. You need a bit more elbow room.

is funny you say that. Although he does distribute his sympathies very

evenly, and he's very fair, I think. Funnily enough, I think he's better

on teenagers than adults, and actually, the nearest he gets to

the thing you wanted, which is the heror, or something, at the heart

of it -- horror, or something, at the heart of it, is with Angela,

that is something that felt facticious. It doesn't work. She's

revisited by something in the past. It is like he heard a voice in his

head saying something like you said. That was one of the false notes in

it. I think it is partly of the idea that the construct of the

house is character, and requires something extra, whether it is a

Sarah Walters or Alan Holeinghurst extra, it is more than the

architecture of the novel. The point about Chekhov is right, there

is the gunshot, Vanya is it, how can you say that, we won't go with

Chekhov. I think that the sense of the, what is being celebrated is

that everybody can relate to this sort of story. The idea of

mismatched people, coming to the for whatever reason, they want an

epiphany, reconciliation. All of these things do work. I agree the

teenagers are better. I think he's terrific on girls, not just boys. I

think that the twists at the heart of it, which we can't reveal, they

are not quite...I Think we can reveal that there is no murder. The

Red House is available in all good book shops now. From one troubled

family to another. Mrs Robinson's seduction of a younger man in the

1960s was seen as sexy and glamorous, for her earlier name

sake in Victorian Britain, an affair meant disgrace. The story of

that, Mrs Robinson's downfall, has been told by Kate Summerscale, who

shot to fame with her story The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. This is

the story of a well to do Victorian lady, who kept a diary in the 1850,

in which she detailed all her miseries and frustrations with her

life, particularly her husband. She also detailed her several

infatuations with young men that she met. And in 1854, there are a

series of entries which apparently describe her having an affair with

one of these men. And her husband read her diary, confiscated the

diary, took her sons away, sued for divorce, and that was the setting

for one of the first and most notorious divorce cases, when the

new divorce court opened in 1858. As with Summerscale's previous

novel, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, the story of Isabella Robinson

involved meticulous research. found a big cachet of letters

relating to the case in -- cache of letters relating to the case in

Edinburgh, I was able to get behind the trial and the court case, to

see in the protaganist's own words what they were up to and what they

thought they were doing, and how they were presenting their stories.

The events unfold at the time of new divorce laws. And the bare

facts of the story, exposes the shocking Victorian attitudes to

women contained in the legislation. There was a stark double standard

enshrined, by which a husband could win a divorce, simply by proving

his wife had been unfaithful to him. Where as a woman had to prove in

order to win a divorce, that her husband, had not only been

unfaithful, but had also committed another marital crime, such as

beastality, or incest, or brutality towards her. At the time Mrs

Robinson's diaries created a sensation with their called born

pornographic entries. Provoking -- called pornographic entries,

provoking a press reaction that we would recognise today. In court

every word was reported, and with relish and excitement, this kind of

frank discussion of sexual desire in women was not available anywhere

else in the mainstream press. Then, of course, the newspapers would

also run editorals saying that the diary entries were disgusting. And

that the practice of writing such things was horrendous.

I suppose in a way, like Mark Haddon and Hilary Mantel, there are

big he can peck takes of this, because of Kate Summerscale --

expectations of this, because of Kate Summerscale's previous success.

Were you hit by the story? I think so, I got a bit frustrated, because

we start off with Mrs Robinson, we get interested in her when she

starts to keep the diary. But there is a tragic story before that, we

find Kate Summerscale sails over. 19 years old, married to a 43-year-

old widowed, retired naval officer. She is married for four years, has

a child. Then he suddenly becomes insane, and six months later he's

dead. That particular sequence of events suggests something, which

would have been a terrible tragedy and injustice done to this young

woman, at the very beginning of her life. Because the most likely story

there is syphilis, I'm afraid, especially, his naval history and

so on, it all adds up. Then you have all the other odd things that

happen. She marries unsuitably, she says, by this time she's already

fictionalising her life. Her father gives her all this money, which is

meant to make her independent of her husband, and she signs it all

over to him as blank cheques, and you have to think, why does she do

that? That is the stifling relationship at the heart of it,

this woman who could have been financially independent, but isn't.

Owes tofrg her husband, and so turns, -- owes everything to her us,

and turns, whether in fantasy or fact, to another man? There are

lots of other stories glanced at in this book. Unlike you, I found that

one of the things I liked about it. There wasn't room for all the

extraordinary stories of all the strange, offer sexual

irregularities and unhappinesss of all the various relations and

members of the family. Amazing things were going on. That is part

of the effect of the book, what is historically fascinating about this

is, this particular story is one example of something amazing that

is happening in the mid-19th sent treatment because divorce by our

standards doesn't become easy, but suddenly becomes possible. A whole

culture goes into shock about the condition of marriage. And has to

face up to the prevalence of adultery. Even Queen Vicoria says

perhaps people shouldn't get married. Do you think there is

adultery, there is an ambiguity, there is an element of fantasy,

isn't there? I think Kate Summerscale said something really

important in her film. It made me think of the Hilary Mantel, talking

about the seam of misogyny, that is so through everything. Unless you

look through that prisism, none of it makes sense. For me I thought I

was going to be thinking, I wonder did or they didn't they do it. What

I actually started to think was, my God, this is quite appalling. Not

only the things about a wife being a chat tell, and the husband being

able to take everything. But the other things, if the wife loses the

children get taken if they are over a certain age. Every time they talk

about this woman's inner most secrets, whether madness,

deillusion or truth, all the other women are cleared from the court.

You have this idea of a single woman, almost as if she's being

stoned, surrounded only by men. For me, oddly, like the stories within

a story, I found it a horrifying read. We think we know about the

position of women in the mid-19th century, there were still elements

that came as a surprise? Yes, I think we need to know a little bit

more about it. The father who settles money on her, settles it on

her. That is for the heirs of her body. That was to protect her. You

could do that. That had always been an option. But she didn't take it?

She gave it away. You want to know why. Is she guilty about something.

She says that funny thing about that first marriage being something

to do with unconquerable passion. Clearly it is something people

didn't want to happen but it did happen. But is the thing we think

happened, happen. What I found was this crucial of the individual,

clever woman, desperately trying to seek out intellectual company?

is a chronicle of thwarted ap site, isn't it. -- appetite. The appetite

is not just carnal, she is desperate for fiscal love --

physical love, whether she got it or not from the doctor she fell for,

she definitely got it from a tutor of one of the children. She is

recording endlessly the speculations about art and the

landscape. She wants all that. Like some sort of George Elliott heroine.

If you would like to know more about the appetites of Mrs Robinson,

in the Victorian diary, the book is out now. Potentially ruinous,

hidden sexuality, also lies at the heart of the final book tonight. In

his latest model, In One Person, John Irving ifr, whose back

catalogue reads like a best seller list, takes on sexual ambiguity in

small town America. John Irving gained world renown for A Prayer

for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, and Hotel New Hampshire, the

novel, In One Person, looks at the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual

writer, and his coming of age taking place in Vermont. He is torn

between his lust for the librarian Miss Frost, and a manipulative

student. "If an unwanted pregnancy was the abyss an intrepid girl

could fall into. Surely the abyss for a boy like me was to succumb to

homosexual activity. Sor so I believed at the fall of my senior

year at Favourite River Academy, I was 18, but my sexual misgivings

were innumberable. My self-hatred was huge." The first person

narrative goes on to span five decades of American history. And

over the years Billy accrues and reflects on a proliferation of

partners, from a predatory poet, to a Canadian drag Queen and a budding

opera singer. But his fluid sexuality makes him an object of

distrust from childhood to retirement. And the book sees the

return of Irving to his book The World According to Garp. "You're a

transsexual, I said my boy don't name me and make me a catagory

before you get to know me. When she stood up from her desk she seemed

to tower over me. When she opened her arms to me, I didn't hesitate,

I ran to her strong embrace and kissed her". A po lemic against

narrow mindedness, In One Person is considered by Irving to be his most

political book in years. In the wake of recent books from others,

does the theme of sexual prejudice still have bite?

The narrative of a bisexual man is unusual? It is only reading a lot

of the clips that I realised it is. I hadn't talked about it. We were

trying to think of others? could say Orlando, but not really.

I think this is tremendous. It is the idea that some how all these

discussions have been had, and all right thinking people now think

that what matters is you should be yourself, and you should be with

who you want to be, and being honourable and decent is all that

matters. We know this is not the case. Things are going backwards in

many of these areas. What I think he has done with wonderful Billy as

the narrate toe. He's a bt bit goofy, he doesn't always get it

right. He's passionate about his Shakespeare and acting, he wants to

read all the time. It is as much about the power of words and

theatres and as it is about sexuality and intolerance. He

gently takes us by the hand, and takes us through 70 years, is it 70

or 50, I couldn't work it out. was 68? It really succeeded in

saying that there are different ways of seeing these experiences.

There are some people in the gook who define themselves as gay or

bisexual. There is a lot of cross dressing in Vermont t seems to me.

I was surprised by the amount of cross dressing in Vermont,

actually? It is clever and an intimate personal dialogue between

Billy and the reader. Billy's dates coincide exactly with Irving's own

dates. The bisexual man, who is a top and not a bottom. Picture of

dodger. Picture of Catio, and capable of having sex with both men

and women, is a slight low fantastic figure. I can think of

lots of gay men who would say they just didn't buy it. But it gives

him his get-out, it covers his incomprehension about gay sexuality.

Which is incredibly protien, and various, much more so than female

sexuality, which is more emotional and straight laceed in its way.

These guys are creating extraordinary things to do, that

you didn't know you wanted to do until you had tried everything else.

The only thing is underneath the notion of sexuality is a pretty

ordinary one. And the games he plays with the repeated moatity ofs,

like the small breast Moive, and the fact he will refeet his own

catch phrases, I was irritated with the use of -- repeat his on catch

phrases, I was irritated with the use of Shakespeare. Not all readers

will enjoy that. I disagree with one thing you were saying when it

takes you gently by the hand. I think he grabs and yaanks you and

won't let you go. Too much of a pole lemic? Too much of all sorts

of things. He talks a lot this narrator and he talks about the

same things a lot, you must be prepared for that. When it works it

is the fierceness of his intent. The character of his stepfather,

saying to the character at one stage, the trouble with you is you

are intolerant of anybody who is not tolerant. And you feel he's

being made very much a kind of spokesperson for the author himself,

and sometimes I think the fierce passages about AIDS of the 1980s,

that is terrific, sometimes it just goes on too much. I thought that

was incredibly moving the sections on AIDS, and the pace changed

dramatically? I thought that they were terrifically well done. Most

people reading that will have read other fiction covering those areas.

For me it wasn't like I have read this before. The point I made about

gently and repetition, I see it as a deliberate attempt as the

novelist to show that over a life you repeat yourself. You slightly

change your view and then you go back to something else. I see it as

an extraordinarily ambitious thing to do, in a Beckett type way, to

leave all of that in, rather than edit it out. Quite near the end the

point about the label is, when the beautiful boy, that he vanished off,

and he never comes back, but his son comes, and he's angry and will

spoil this play. He says what you are doing is making the disgusting,

the abnormal, normal and ordinary. For me that was the point of the

repetition, was that it makes it ordinary. Shouldn't it be ordinary.

It is not just sex at centre stage, there is the literary world,

constant references to Shakespeare, to Flaubert? And to the fact that

he is a writer. Poor old Madame Bovary has been worked very hard.

What about the club and all of that. Not all of it is entirely

convincing, we are reworking all of the Irving tropes, wrestling. He

has to pull off a movie stunt by doing his famous, whatever that is

called, the duck-under. I will wrestle us away from this item and

move on. Love it, loathe it, or swing both ways possibly, In One

Person is available now. This week saw the announcement of the

shortlist for The Orange Prize. Founded by one of my studio guests,

guess which one. And this year featuring a familiar face amongst

the judge, we asked Natalie to talk us through the runners and riders.

Half Blood Blues is set during the Second World War, by Esi Edugyan,

it is about ultimate betrayal, it is about jazz musicians in Berlin,

and in Paris as the Nazis takeover. As a story it turns on sexual and

artistic jealousy, it is the fact that someone else's talent is so

great it makes you hate them. It is a sign of her brilliance. The

Forgotten Waltz is about an affair, set in Ireland at the time when the

credit crunch is just about to hit and hits. It is a metaphor for

everything that goes wrong in Ireland for the past decade. Gina,

our heroine realises how much money each kiss with this man cost her.

Everyone bought their houses when the economy was at a thriving

height and now they want sell it. The Song of Achilles is by Madeline

Miller, she's the only first-time novelist, but punches her weight

with the others. She has written a very beautiful love story with

Achilles, it is a story we know from the Iliad, but told by the

other point of view. It is incredibly touching and poetic, it

is the only book on the entirety of the Orange sub misses list this

year that made me fry. The next one is Foreign Bodies, about a woman

called Bea, living in New York, where she teaches, and her

extremely demanding brother, Marvyn, demands that she goes over to Paris

to try to bring his son home. It is extremely clever book, never stuffy,

very certificate reebbral, a lot like Henry James. We have State of

Wonder by Ann Patchett, she as an old hand, about a woman called

Marina, a research scientist, and her research colleague is sent to

hout America by their boss to find out what is happening with a

research project, and he disappears, she goes to find him. Painter of

Silence is set in Romania in the 1950s, at the beginning of the book

a deaf mute man arrives at the hospital. He has a terrible story

but has no language to express it. He can only draw and paint and make

imagery of what has happened to him, the language of the book is

incredibly artistic and very beautiful.

That's all for tonight. Thanks to my guests, Germaine Greer, John

Mullen and Kate Mosse. Remember you can find out more about all of

tonight's books and find a longer version of my interview with Hilary

Mantel on the website. Do continue to tweet away. Next week Kirsty

will be here to discuss the latest installment in the 7-up series, and

The Dictator. Jools Holland is up next. To get you into a musical

mood, here is King Creasote and # I won't go too far

# I promise to crawl # Until I'm back on my feet

# If something were wrong # Do you think I'd leave

# If something went wrong # Don't you know that I'd be here

# So who's been unfair # Who causes you sorrow

# Who's been unkind # Who burst your bubble

# Who drags you down # Down