Podcasts about costa biography award

Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On this week's episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel Call Me Ishmaelle. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we're joined by novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo to discuss her latest novel, Call Me Ishmaelle. A bold reimagining of Moby-Dick, Guo's novel audaciously swaps the gender of Melville's narrator and plunges into a world of hidden identities, maritime adventure, and cultural collision.With host Adam Biles, Guo reflects on her personal and literary journey—from her early, abandoned encounters with Moby-Dick in Chinese to her deep dive into American whaling history and the Civil War. She shares insights on writing in a second language, the challenge of adapting a literary classic, and the influence of Taoism and Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle on her storytelling.Buy Call Me Ishmaelle: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/call-me-ishmaelle-2*Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike chats with Olivia Laing, winner of a 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, about the strange and confounding (and wonderful) pleasures of Charlotte Brontë's Villette. READING LIST: Villette by Charlotte Brontë • Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy • The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Olivia Laing is the author of several books of nonfiction and fiction including The Garden Against Time and the forthcoming The Silver Book. The Lonely City (2016) was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and has been translated into 14 languages. The Trip to Echo Spring (2013) was a finalist for both the Costa Biography Award and the Gordon Burn PrizeLaing lives in Cambridge, England, and writes on art and culture for many publications, including The Guardian, The New Statesman, and The New York Times. Her debut novel Crudo was published by Picador and W. W. Norton & Company in June 2018. The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a co-production between The Windham-Campbell Prizes and Literary Hub. Music by Dani Lencioni, production by Drew Broussard, hosted by Michael Kelleher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's poem comes from Matthew Hollis' remarkable collection, Earth House, which blends explorations of the four cardinal directions and original translations of Anglo-Saxon verse from the Exeter Book. Matthew Hollis was born in Norwich in 1971, and now lives in London. His debut Ground Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is co-editor of Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) and 101 Poems Against War (Faber & Faber, 2003), and editor of Selected Poems of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, 2011). Now All Roads Lead to France: the Last Years of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, UK, 2011; Norton, US, 2012) won the Costa Biography Award and the H. W. Fisher Biography Prize, was Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He has published the handmade and letterpress pamphlets Stones (Incline Press, 2016), East (Clutag Press, 2016), Leaves (Hazel Press, 2020) and Havener (Bonnefant Press, 2022). Leaves was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2021. He is the author of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2022). He was Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber from 2012 to 2023. His second book-length collection, Earth House, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023 and was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023.-bio via Bloodaxe Books Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

With David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore. In Principle of Charity on the Couch, Lloyd has an unfiltered conversation with the guests, throws them curveballs, and gets into the personal side of Principle of Charity.David Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter. In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK's first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock'n'Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don't Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David's most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year.Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller.CREDITSYour hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics CentreFind Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked inFind Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and XFind Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram Find Danielle at danielleharvey.com.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we spend time with David Baddiel and Simon Sebag Montefiore and ask - ​​Where do Jews really come from? Are they white or people of colour? And how should we deal with the ethnic diversity within Jewish populations, with differences between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews? Questions around whether Jews are white or people of colour has become a fraught issue. In an ideal world (or the ideal for at least most of us in the multicultural liberal west,) it shouldn't matter. However, race, ethnicity and politics have always been intertwined, and this question takes us to some surprising places in the battle of racial politics. In particular, both the far right and now the progressive left are drawing a lot of meaning from the question ‘are Jews white or people of colour?', with Jews seemingly on the wrong side of each of their equations. They are non-white for the far right, and quintessentially white for the progressive left. To help answer this question and more, we have two guests with very different lenses. Our first, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is one of the world's leading historians. He outlines the historical, archaeological and genetic consensus, and any counterviews, on where Jews come from and how Jewish populations have moved through the ages. We also have author, comedian and documentarian David Baddiel to help with the cultural and political significance of this question, and to explore whether Jews are privileged enough to be ‘deemed' white, regardless of their Middle Eastern heritage. BIOSDavid Baddiel is a comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter. In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena in the UK's first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock'n'Roll”. Alongside The Lightning Seeds, the pair also wrote the seminal football anthem Three Lions. David has made several acclaimed documentaries, including the 2016 travel documentary David Baddiel On The Silk Road (Discovery) and in 2017, The Trouble with Dad (Channel4). More recently he created and presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and Social Media, Anger and Us on BBC Two.Recently he published the Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction polemic Jews Don't Count, and due to the success of this book, David has also written and presented a documentary under the same title for Channel 4, which was released in late 2022. David's most recent non-fiction book, The God Desire, was published earlier this year. Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY - A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST won the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. His latest book is THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY which has been a NYT and Sunday Times top ten bestseller. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building upon Kew's commitment to re-examine the history of its collections, this discussion explores the colonial legacies of botany and botanic gardens, featuring a panel of leading writers and thinkers in this area. All too often history shows us that the origins of botanic gardens are intertwined with the histories of colonialism, imperialism and enslavement. How can understanding these connections pave the way to a more inclusive future? Given this legacy, what is the role that botanic gardens play today in supporting and addressing climate justice? Speakers Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist and best-selling author. His acclaimed books include The Boy with the Topknot and Empireland, which inspired the Channel 4 series Empire State of Mind. His highly anticipated new book, Empireworld, traces the legacies of the British empire around the world. Andrea Wulf is an award-winning author of several books, including The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession and the international bestseller The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World which is published in 27 languages. A New York Times bestseller, it also won fifteen international literary awards, including the Royal Society Science Book Prize, Costa Biography Award and the LA Times Book Prize. Her latest book Magnificent Rebels was published under great acclaim in autumn 2022. Andrea is a member of PEN American Center and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Emma Nicolson is Head of Art at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where she spearheads a transformative arts strategy, integrating nature, science, and environmental concerns. Initiating projects like Climate House and collaborating with institutions like Serpentine Galleries, Emma engages audiences with climate and ecological issues. With a background as the founding director of ATLAS Arts and senior roles at institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Emma has a proven passion for collaborative, audience-building initiatives. Chaired by Rosie Boycott, Crossbench Peer, Food Campaigner, and co-founder of 5x15. This talk is part of a series of activities planned by RBG Kew, aligning with its objectives under its Manifesto for Change and History, Equity, and Inclusion Plan. As part of its own journey of introspection and exploration, Kew Gardens looks to promote open dialogue, platform diverse perspectives and foster learning from the rich tapestry of voices that surround these matters. Kew is not only a botanic garden; it is a leading centre of plant and fungal science and a repository of history, a living testament to the relationships between humans and plants over centuries. In examining the history of its collections, the RBG Kew aims to enrich the stories it tells its visitors, providing different layers of information on plant history and the pivotal role of botanic gardens. Responsible investing at Rathbones Investment Management We see it as our responsibility to invest for everyone's tomorrow. That means doing the right thing for our clients and for others too. Keeping the future in mind when we make decisions today. Looking beyond the short term for the most sustainable outcome. This is how we build enduring value for our clients, make a wider contribution to society and create a lasting legacy. Recordings of Rathbones and 5x15's online series The Earth Convention can be viewed on 5x15's Youtube channel. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

In July, 5x15 is thrilled to welcome the highly acclaimed and best-selling authors Polly Morland and Rachel Clarke, for a vital conversation about medicine, the NHS and the fascinating story behind Morland's new book A FORTUNATE WOMAN: A Country Doctor's Story, a Sunday Times bestseller that was shortlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Polly Morland was clearing her late mother's house when she found a battered paperback fallen behind the family bookshelf. Opening it, she was astonished to see reproduced in it an old photograph of the remote, wooded valley in which she lives. The book was A Fortunate Man, John Berger's classic 1967 account of a country doctor working in the same valley more than half a century earlier. This chance discovery led Morland to the remarkable doctor who serves that valley community today, a woman whose own medical vocation was inspired by reading the very same book as a teenager. A Fortunate Woman tells her compelling story, and how the tale of the old doctor has threaded through her own life in magical ways. Working within a community she loves, she is a rarity in contemporary medicine: a modern doctor who knows her patients inside out, the lives of this ancient, wild place entwined with her own. Praise for Polly Morland and A FORTUNATE WOMAN 'I was consoled & compelled by this book's steady gaze on healing & caring. The writing is beautiful.' - SARAH MOSS 'This book deepens our understanding of the life and thoughts of a modern doctor, and the modern NHS, and it expands movingly to chronicle a community and a landscape.' - KATHLEEN JAMIE, New Statesman 'The best book I've read about general practice for a long time. Astonishingly perceptive, it shows how a committed GP can keep human values alive in an increasingly impersonal NHS – and why we urgently need more like her.' - ROGER NEIGHBOUR, Past President, Royal College of General Practitioners Polly Morland is a writer and documentary maker. She worked for fifteen years in television, producing and directing documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery. She is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines and is the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in the School of Journalism, Media & Culture at Cardiff University. She is the author of several books, including The Society of Timid Souls: Or, How to Be Brave, which won the Guardian First Book Award and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. A Fortunate Woman was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2022. Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a television journalist and documentary maker. She now specialises in palliative medicine, caring deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible - and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change. Rachel is the author of three Sunday Times bestselling books. Breathtaking reveals what life was really like inside the NHS during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Dear Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize, is based on her work in a hospice. It explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. Your Life in My Hands documents life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online! Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

SJ PARRIS chats to Paul Burke about ALCHEMY, Giordano Bruno, religion, heresy, politics,  science and alchemy in the sixteenth century world, Hilary Mantel & Sophia 1599. ALCHEMY: Prague, 1588.A COURT IN TURMOILThe Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, wants to expand the boundaries of human knowledge, and his court is a haven for scientists, astrologers and alchemists. His abiding passion is the feverish search for the philosopher's stone and thus immortality. The Catholic Church fears he has pushed too far, into the forbidden realm of heresy – and the greatest powers in Christendom are concerned about the imperial line of succession.A MURDERED ALCHEMISTGiordano Bruno is sent to his court by Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's spymaster. His task: to contact the famous English alchemist and mystic John Dee, another of Walsingham's spies. But Bruno's arrival in Prague coincides with the brutal murder of a rival alchemist – and John Dee himself has disappeared.AN UNFORGIVING ENEMYOrdered by the emperor to find the killer, Bruno's investigations bring him face to face with an old enemy from the Inquisition. But could the real danger lie elsewhere? Amidst the jostling factions at court and the religious tensions brewing in the city, Bruno has to track down a murderer as elusive as the elixir of life itself.SJ PARRIS is the pen name of Stephanie Merritt who began reviewing books for national newspapers while she was reading English literature at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduating, she went on to become Deputy Literary Editor of The Observer in 1999. She continues to work as a feature writer and critic for the Guardian and the Observer and from 2007-2008 she curated and produced the Talks and Debates program on issues in contemporary arts and politics at London's Soho Theatre. She has appeared as a panelist on various Radio Four shows and on BBC2's Newsnight Review, and is a regular chair and presenter at the Hay Festival and the National Theatre. She has been a judge for the Costa Biography Award, the Orange New Writing Award and the Perrier Comedy Award. She lives in the south of England with her son.RecommendationsThe Name of the Rose Umberto EcoHilary Mantel A Perfect Spy John le Carré THE FRAUD ZADIE SMITHPaul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023.Produced by Junkyard DogMusic courtesy of Southgate and LeighCrime TimeCrime Time FM is the official podcast ofGwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023CrimeFest 2023&CWA Daggers 2023

  950,000 years ago a family of five walked along the beach and left their prints behind. Now, we can view that poignant portrait etched in time — fossils of footprints on the beach — and think of our own families and what memory we might leave in our wake. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these familiar footprints serve as an inspiration for his latest research in world history — one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us. In his book The World, Montefiore chronicles the world's great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the families at the heart of the human drama. These families are diverse and span across space and time. Montefiore tells the stories of the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. He ties in modern names such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. These powerful families represent the story of humanity, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. Montefiore's work encourages us to pause and consider our own footprints — and how they might connect to narratives of the future. Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian of Russia and the Middle East whose books are published in more than forty languages. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards, and Young Stalin won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Award, and le Grande Prix de la biographie politique. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London. The World The Elliott Bay Book Company

Like all of Xiaolu Guo's work RADICAL is difficult to describe because it's difficult to categorise. It might be called a memoir, but it's form makes it unlike any memoir readers may have encountered before. It's also a fascinating reflection on language, on literature, on memory, on vagrancy, on art, on nature and on what makes a home. But perhaps the central circle in this Venn diagram of concerns is “love”, it's different forms, how it arrives, what it does to us, and how it fares under imposed separation.Buy Radical here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7669745/guo-xiaolu-radicalXiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join 5x15 in September to hear about acclaimed biographer Andrea Wulf's thrilling, and timely, story of a group of friends who changed the world in conversation with broadcaster Kirsty Lang. In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends from the small German town of Jena changed the world. They were the first Romantics, and their ideas transformed society and shaped the way we lead our lives today. In Magnificent Rebels, Andrea Wulf, the Costa Prize-winning author of The Invention of Nature, tells the riveting story of this revolutionary band of poets, novelists and philosophers. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. And through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heart-breaking grief and radical ideas, they launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time. The lives of these Magnificent Rebels are as relevant today as ever as we, like they, walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community, and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. Andrea Wulf was born in India, moved to Germany as a child, and now lives in London. She is the award-winning author of five books. Her previous book, The Invention of Nature, was an international bestseller and won more than 10 awards, including the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016, Costa Biography Award 2015, the Inaugural James Wright Award for Nature Writing 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016. Andrea has written for many newspapers including the Guardian, LA Times and New York Times. She was the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013 and a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. She appears regularly on TV and radio. Kirsty Lang is a writer, broadcaster and former foreign correspondent. A familiar voice on BBC Radio 4 Kirsty has been a presenter on Front Row, The World Tonight and Last Word. This year she took over as the first female host of the fiendishly difficult Round Britain Quiz, the longest running game show in Europe. She is also Chair of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Newcastle and a regular contributor to the Sunday Times Culture magazine. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lea Ypi's memoir of growing up in communist Albania, FREE, is an unforgettable coming-of-age story exploring the meaning of freedom in all its forms. It was hailed by Phillipe Sands as ‘a lyrical memoir, of deep and affecting power, of the sweet smell of humanity mingled with flesh, blood and hope' and was shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award and the 2021 Baille Gifford Prize. Lea Ypi is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, and Political Science and Adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University. She speaks six languages and lives in London. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

On a sunlit evening in 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially-made surgeon's blades.The murders ended what should have been a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations. A new spirit of goodwill had been burgeoning between Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland's leader Charles Stewart Parnell, with both men forging in secret a pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland – with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone's protégé, to play an instrumental role.The impact of the Phoenix Park murders was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the pact, almost brought down the government and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the twentieth century.Julie Kavanagh is a renowned journalist, former New Yorker London editor, former arts editor of Harpers & Queen and Costa Biography Award finalist.Roy Foster is a distinguished Irish historian and academic. He was the Carroll Professor of Irish History from 1991 until 2016 at Hertford College, Oxford.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On a sunlit evening in 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially-made surgeon's blades.The murders ended what should have been a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations. A new spirit of goodwill had been burgeoning between Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland's leader Charles Stewart Parnell, with both men forging in secret a pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland – with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone's protégé, to play an instrumental role.The impact of the Phoenix Park murders was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the pact, almost brought down the government and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the twentieth century.Julie Kavanagh is a renowned journalist, former New Yorker London editor, former arts editor of Harpers & Queen and Costa Biography Award finalist.Roy Foster is a distinguished Irish historian and academic. He was the Carroll Professor of Irish History from 1991 until 2016 at Hertford College, Oxford.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the Valentine's week episode of our podcast, we were joined by Xiaolu Guo to discuss her intense, fragmentary meditation on the nature of love, A Lover's Discourse.Buy A Lover's Discourse here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781529112481/a-lovers-discourseBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café's Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop's non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch.Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together.Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.*Xiaolu Guo was born in south China. She studied at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before moving to London in 2002. Her books include Village of Stone which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and I Am China which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Jhalak Prize and the Rathbones Folio Award 2018, and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. In 2013 Xiaolu was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese, and documentaries about China and Britain. She was a judge for the Booker Prize in 2019, and is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Arifa Akbar is chief theatre critic of The Guardian and author of Consumed, which has just been shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Arifa has been arts correspondent and literary editor of The Independent. She has written for newspapers and magazines ranging from The Observer to the FT and is a trustee of the Orwell Foundation and English PEN. In this podcast, she talks about the role of instinct in our careers, the power of the deadline and her journey from childhood poverty to one of the most powerful roles in arts journalism.

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), award-winning poet, lyricist, musician, and activist Benjamin Zephaniah speaks out candidly about the writer's responsibility to step outside the medium of literature and engage in political activism: “You can't just be a poet or writer and say your activism is simply writing about these things; you have to do something as well, especially if your public profile can be put to good use.” In conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Malachi McIntosh, he will address the complex relationship of authorship and activism in a celebrity-driven media culture and the ways in which his celebrity persona relates to his activist agenda. The conversation will tie in with contemporary debates about the role of literature and the celebrity author as a social commentator. Pre-recorded introduction: Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author and editor of over twenty books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial: Resistance in Interaction (2002), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century critical readings (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). She is the award-winning author of five novels, including Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015), and two collections of short stories, most recently To the Volcano, and other stories (2019). Boehmer is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and principal investigator of Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. Speakers: Benjamin Zephaniah is one of Britain's most eminent contemporary poets, best known for his compelling spoken-word and recorded performances. An award-winning playwright, novelist, children's author, and musician, he is also a committed political activist and outspoken campaigner for human and animal rights. He appears regularly on radio and TV, literary festivals, and has also taken part in plays and films. He continues to record and perform with his reggae band, recently releasing the album Revolutionary Minds. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Malachi McIntosh is editor and publishing director of Wasafiri. He previously co-led the Runnymede Trust's award-winning Our Migration Story project and spent four years as a lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). His fiction and non-fiction have been published widely, including in the Caribbean Review of Books, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The Guardian, The Journal of Romance Studies, Research in African Literatures, and The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature. Q and A Chaired by Professor Wes Williams, TORCH Director. The event is organised in association with the Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project and The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) and forms part of the webinar series Art and Action: Literary Authorship, Politics, and Celebrity Culture.

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), award-winning poet, lyricist, musician, and activist Benjamin Zephaniah speaks out candidly about the writer's responsibility to step outside the medium of literature and engage in political activism: “You can't just be a poet or writer and say your activism is simply writing about these things; you have to do something as well, especially if your public profile can be put to good use.” In conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Malachi McIntosh, he will address the complex relationship of authorship and activism in a celebrity-driven media culture and the ways in which his celebrity persona relates to his activist agenda. The conversation will tie in with contemporary debates about the role of literature and the celebrity author as a social commentator. Pre-recorded introduction: Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author and editor of over twenty books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial: Resistance in Interaction (2002), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century critical readings (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). She is the award-winning author of five novels, including Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015), and two collections of short stories, most recently To the Volcano, and other stories (2019). Boehmer is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and principal investigator of Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. Speakers: Benjamin Zephaniah is one of Britain's most eminent contemporary poets, best known for his compelling spoken-word and recorded performances. An award-winning playwright, novelist, children's author, and musician, he is also a committed political activist and outspoken campaigner for human and animal rights. He appears regularly on radio and TV, literary festivals, and has also taken part in plays and films. He continues to record and perform with his reggae band, recently releasing the album Revolutionary Minds. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Malachi McIntosh is editor and publishing director of Wasafiri. He previously co-led the Runnymede Trust's award-winning Our Migration Story project and spent four years as a lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). His fiction and non-fiction have been published widely, including in the Caribbean Review of Books, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The Guardian, The Journal of Romance Studies, Research in African Literatures, and The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature. Q and A Chaired by Professor Wes Williams, TORCH Director. The event is organised in association with the Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project and The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) and forms part of the webinar series Art and Action: Literary Authorship, Politics, and Celebrity Culture.

Edmund de Waal is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. His interventions have been made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide, including The British Museum, London, The Frick Collection, New York and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. His memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, won the RSL Ondaatje prize and the Costa Biography Award, was named as one of the books of the decade by the Sunday Times and of the 21st century by the Guardian. It was the Independent Bookseller Book of the Decade and has been translated into 29 languages. In 2015 he was awarded the Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction by Yale University. The White Road, a journey into the history of porcelain, was published to great acclaim in 2015. His new book is Letters to Camondo. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Special guest Thomas Harding, a bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 16 languages. He has written for the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of HANNS AND RUDOLF which won the JQ-Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction; THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award; and BLOOD ON THE PAGE which won the Crime Writers’ Association “Golden Dagger Award for Non-Fiction”. His recent books include LEGACY, FUTURE HISTORY, and a picture book version of THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jack Fairweather, author of the Costa Biography Award-winning book The Volunteer, tells the story of the Polish resistance leader Witold Pilecki who allowed himself to be arrested by the Nazis in order to gather intelligence from Auschwitz. Historyextra.com/podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Suzannah Lipscomb (Chair of Costa Biography Award) announces the category winners of the five 2019 Costa Book Awards exclusively on Front Row and Stig talks live to the winner of the Best Biography. Twenty years after the success of his debut film American Beauty, Sam Mendes has once again taken the top prize at the Golden Globes with his First World War epic 1917. He explains how his grandfather’s experience as a messenger on the Western Front inspired the film, which is filmed as if it’s one continuous shot. Presenter Stig Abell Producer Simon Richardson

Hugh Jackman on his film The Front Runner, in which he plays Democratic contender Gary Hart, who in 1987 was ahead in the polls before an alleged affair shot down his chances of becoming US President.The winner of the Costa Biography Award, announced on Front Row this week, is The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es. The author discusses his book which tells the story of a 9-year-old Jewish Dutch girl, Hesseline – or Lien – who was handed by her parents to Bart van Es's grandparents in 1942 to be fostered and kept safe during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Lien is now 85 and living in Amsterdam, and together they recount a remarkable story of tragedy and survival.As Italy decides not to lend three Leonardo Da Vinci paintings to the Louvre in Paris for their blockbuster exhibition of the old master's work, art journalist Anna Somers Cocks reports on how much loans of this kind are used as symbolic political gestures.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hannah Robins

Keggie Carew’s memoir, Dadland (2016), won the Costa Biography Award 2017 for its spellbinding account of her unorthodox, engaging, complicated father. Appropriately, the book’s subtitle is ‘a journey into uncharted territory’, and this is the subject of Keggie’s evening event. Writing about a close family member brings with it difficult decisions about what to share. Keggie shares a tale of biography, history, and personal anecdote.

Rebecca Stott's book In the Days of Rain tells the story of her family's membership of and escape from the Exclusive Brethren. Reviewing the book for the Church Times, Malcolm Doney described it as “a dark journey into indoctrination, cruelty, and control”, and a “powerful and compelling” read. It was awarded the Costa Biography Award and is available in paperback from the Church House Bookshop for £9.99. Rebecca Stott will be in conversation with Malcolm Doney at this weekend's Greenbelt Festival. Ed Thornton spoke to Rebecca Stott about the book.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. Her novel Eileen was awarded the 2016 Pen/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her short fiction has earned her the Paris Review Plimpton Prize, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and an O. Henry Award. Her collection Homesick for Another World was published in January 2017. McGlue was her debut novel, and the winner of the Fence Modern Prize for Prose and the Believer Book Award, and is being published in the U.K. for the first time. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike, a biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, the Costa Biography Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award. Her other books are Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions which was published in 1990 to wide acclaim, and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen, published in 2004, which garnered similar praise.... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Keggie Carew discusses her book 'Dadland', a story about a madcap English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, and dementia. The novel centres upon her father Tom Carew, an enigmatic, unorthodox character, who was an undercover guerrilla agent during the Second World War.'Dadland' is the winner of the Costa Biography Award 2016 and a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller.

Keggie Carew on a daughter’s journey into her father’s past. A story of war and grief, jealousy and madness, mischief and fierce love. Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story and soon finds herself in a far more astonishing and consuming place than she had bargained for. Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her childhood and the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. Part-detective story, part-memoir, part-history book, it is a celebration of the technicolour life an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable man. Keggie Carew has lived in London, West Cork, Barcelona, Texas and New Zealand. Before writing, her career was in contemporary art. Dadland is her debut book. It won the 2016 Costa Biography Award. Recorded live at 5x15 Bristol in March 2017. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. Her work appears in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, Frieze and New York Times. She's a Yaddo and MacDowell Fellow and was 2014 Eccles Writer in Residence at the British Library. Her first book, To the River, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year. The Trip to Echo Spring was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Award and the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize. Her latest book The Lonely City has been shortlisted for the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize. Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York, Harper's, the Believer, Artforum, and the Nation, among many other publications. Educated at Yale and Berkeley, he is the co-editor, with Rebecca Solnit, of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, and a visiting scholar at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. He is the author of... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer and director Damien Chazelle on the Hollywood musical La La Land, hotly tipped as the frontrunner for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, and only his second feature film. Since the death of Carrie Fisher and - just a day later - her mother Debbie Reynolds, a documentary charting their complex relationship called Bright Lights has inadvertently become a touching memorial to the two actresses. Tim Robey reviews.A new BBC film examining the last five years of David Bowie's life is to be screened on BBC2 on Saturday, marking the first anniversary of the singer's death and featuring unseen footage. John talks to director Francis Whately.The winner of the 2016 Costa Biography Award is Dadland by Keggie Carew, which charts her father's activities as an SOE operative behind enemy lines at the D-Day landings and his descent into dementia later in life. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman.

The art critic and writer John Berger has died. He changed our perception of art with his 1972 BBC TV series and book Ways of Seeing. An accomplished poet and playwright, he also wrote several novels including the Booker Prize-winning G which tells the story of a Casanova-like figure who gradually comes to political consciousness. Writer Lisa Appignanesi assesses his work.What were "the most enjoyable" books published in 2016? Chair of Judges, historian Kate Williams reveals that the Costa Book Awards category winners are: Francis Spufford for the First Novel Award; Keggie Carew who wins the Costa Biography Award; Alice Oswald who wins the Poetry Award; Brian Conaghan for the Children's Book Award; Sebastian Barry who wins the Costa Novel Award. He tells us about writing Days Without End. Chris Lang, the creator of the ITV hit drama Unforgotten, began his career in the mid-1980s as part of a comedy trio, The Jockeys of Norfolk, alongside Hugh Grant. As the new series of Unforgotten begins, Chris discusses the screenwriter's art of wrong-footing the audience. Presented by Samira Ahmed. Produced by Angie Nehring.

A talk by Edmund de Waal on his installation 'A Local History' for the Alison Richard Building. A Local History A local history is an installation of three vitrines filled with porcelain, sunk below the paving outside the Alison Richard Building on the Sidgwick Site of Cambridge University. These vitrines are meant to be discovered, to be happened upon as you come and go across the site. They are there to make you pause momentarily. They are not sculpture as a Grand Statement. If you find them and look down through the gridded glass you will see piles of porcelain dishes, cylinders arranged in rows, and aluminium boxes filled with shards. The dishes are taken from moulds that I made from a Chinese Ming Dynasty dish, a plate from the French Sèvres porcelain factory, and a Staffordshire serving dish. These three dishes are iconic in form: they exemplify porcelain from three of the greatest places where it has been manufactured over the last thousand years. You will see that these pieces are glazed in whites, creams and celadons, and that there are also glimpses of gilding. Gold was used to highlight the value of porcelain, a material so prized that it was often called white gold. It was also used in Chinese and Japanese art when a vessel had been broken: to mend the porcelain with a seam of golden lacquer emphasized that it had been used and appreciated. I hope the flashes of gold, the fragments of broken vessels and the memories of ancient dishes act as a kind of palimpsest: a writing, erasing, and rewriting using objects. If you look up inside the atrium of the building you will see another vitrine, this time full of shelves holding celadon vessels. This vitrine, atlas, is my record of lost pots. It holds 120 lids from lidded jars that I have made over the last twenty years and broken because they were not quite right, because the glaze ran, because of a crack along a rim. If the structure of the vitrine looks familiar, it is because it is a gentle echo of a manuscript page with texts, footnotes and commentaries in intimate conjunction. All these vitrines are a kind of archive. They record my thinking about the history of porcelain, my travels, my love of fragments, my obsession with shadows, my reading. They are for this particular place – a threshold into a building, and a threshold into a site full of libraries and archives, and the people who care about libraries and archives. About Edmund de Waal Edmund de Waal is one of the world’s leading artists working in ceramics today. He is best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, with interventions at Waddesdon Manor, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain and MIMA. Much of his recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections: how objects are kept together, lost, stolen, or dispersed. Increasingly, Edmund’s work has come from a dialogue between minimalism, sound and space, seen in his two permanent installations: Signs & Wonders at the V&A and a sounding line at Chatsworth House. In September 2012, Edmund will take his work beyond the museum space in his first piece of public sculpture, a local history, to be installed at the new Alison Richard’s Building at the University of Cambridge. Other future projects include working with the Chinese porcelain collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum, for an exhibition opening in February 2013, and a collaborative project with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Edmund is also widely known as a writer. In 2010, Chatto & Windus published his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which has become an international bestseller. It has won many literary prizes, including the Costa Biography Award, the Galaxy New Writer of the Year Book Award and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. By 2013, it will be published in over twenty-three languages. In 2011 Edmund was commissioned by Phaidon to write The Pot Book, a colour-illustrated anthology of 300 ceramic vessels. His other publications include a monograph on Bernard Leach (1997) and a survey of 20th Century Ceramics (2003). Edmund was appointed a Trustee of the V&A and awarded an OBE for his services to art in 2011. In June 2012, he was made a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art. Edmund was born in Nottingham in 1964. During his school years in Canterbury, he was apprenticed to the potter Geoffrey Whiting. After reading English at Cambridge, Edmund spent a further year studying at the Mejiro Ceramics Studio in Tokyo. He lives and works in London.