Podcasts about Hawthornden Prize

The complete audiobook is available for purchase at Audible.com: https://n9.cl/fue3r The Land By Vita Sackville-West Narrated by Patrick Barker Vita Sackville-West's book length poem celebrates the landscapes and produce of the Weald of Kent. Divided into four parts—Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn—it paints a vivid picture of the Kentish countryside across the year and the farming practices of the Kentish folk eking out a living on its unpredictable clayey soils. Published in 1926, the poem was a great success, winning the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and going through six print runs in three years.

Best-selling Author Tessa Hadley on getting published in her 40s and beyond, the craft of literary fiction, developing character and conflict, and the importance of conflict.*ABOUT TESSA HADLEY:Tessa Hadley is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels, including Clever Girl and Free Love, as well as four short story collections, most recently Bad Dreams and Other Stories, which won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her latest book is the novella The Party. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker and Granta, and she has won the Windham Campbell Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. After two decades of struggling to publish, she landed her first book deal at 46 and has since become one of the most respected literary fiction writers of our time.*RESOURCES & LINKS

Tune in to the first of our 'In Conversation' podcast episodes, where we speak to all six of this year's shortlisted authors about their extraordinary works of non-fiction. First up, Georgina Godwin speaks to Sue Prideaux, author of 'Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin'. Prideaux's award-winning works have captivated readers worldwide. From her James Tait Black Memorial Prize-winning biography of Edvard Munch to her Duff Cooper Prize-winning book on Strindberg, and her celebrated Nietzsche biography, 'I Am Dynamite!', which received the Hawthornden Prize and The Times Biography of the Year in 2018. In her latest work, 'Wild Thing', Prideaux brings to life the vibrant and tumultuous journey of Paul Gauguin. From his privileged start in Peru to his rebellious adventures in France, she offers a nuanced view of Gauguin, celebrating his creative genius while not shying away from his flaws. Listen now to hear all about it. This podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. To keep up with all of our Prize news all year round, follow @BGPrize on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.

Tessa Hadley (winner of a 2016 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction) joins Michael Kelleher for the final episode of this winter mini-season to talk about Ivan Turgenev's First Love, translated by Isaiah Berlin. Reading list:  First Love by Ivan Turgenev, tr. by Isaiah Berlin • The Odyssey by Homer • "A Nest of Gentlefolk" by Ivan Turgenev • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Tessa Hadley is the author of three previous collections of stories and eight novels. She was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Hawthornden Prize, and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and has been a finalist for the Story Prize. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and reviews for The Guardian and the London Review of Books. She lives in Cardiff, Wales. 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.

In September 2021, The Shaking Bog Festival had the immense pleasure of welcoming renowned poet Michael Longley to the Glencree Valley, County Wicklow. This Christmas offering looks back to the archive and presents the full version of this memorable reading and conversation with Dr Margaret Kelleher. We hope it might be something to sink into and provide solace and hope as the solstice comes in and the new year dawns. Produced by The Shaking Bog in collaboration with Coillte Nature and Mermaid Arts Centre. Written & presented by Catherine Nunes, edited by Bjorn MacGiolla, mixed and recorded by Steve McGrath, with theme music composed by Ray Harmon. Further information: Michael Longley - One of Northern Ireland's foremost contemporary poets, Michael Longley was born on July 27, 1939. He is renowned for the quiet beauty of his compact, meditative lyrics. He is the author of many poetry collections, including Angel Hill (2017); The Stairwell (2015), which received the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Ghost Orchid (2012); The Weather in Japan (2000), which won the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize; and Gorse Fires (1991), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize. In 2001 Longley was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. “Longley's poems count the phenomena of the natural world with the particular deliberate pleasure of a lover's fingers wandering along the bumpy path of the vertebrae.” – Seamus Heaney Professor Margaret Kelleher MRIA - is Professor and Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin. She is a Board Member of the Museum of Literature Ireland and was academic lead for UCD in the foundation of this landmark public humanities initiative and collaboration with the National Library of Ireland. From October 2023 she will hold the Parnell Fellowship in Irish Studies at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. Margaret is former Chair of the Board of the Irish Film Institute. In Spring 2020 she was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Glucksman House, New York University, and from September 2022 to May 2023 she was a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.

In his essay, Paradoxopolis, Ian Duhig is inspired by a painting by 'Leeds's Lost Modernist', the reclusive Joash Woodrow, and the former local synagogue, now the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, both sited on the road north out of Leeds, built by Blind Jack Metcalf, iconic Leeds roadmaker of the Victorian era. Ian says: "When I first moved here about 50 years ago, Leeds was still advertising itself as The Motorway City of the Seventies and as much as its natural resources of clay and coal, its central location between London and Scotland. and England's east and west coasts, was a major influence on its development. Immigrants, itinerant labour and roadmakers have built this city and its economy, something I propose to show by inviting you all to join me now on a virtual poetic journey through it on one road, Blind Jack Metcalf's due north where we will come to understand something of that extraordinary civil engineer and what Virginia Woolf meant when she once wrote in a TLS review: “Personally, we should be willing to read one volume about every street in the city, and should still ask for more”.The essay touches on the many different populations that have lived and still live in Leeds - Jewish, Irish, Caribbean, Indian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese and their rich cultural manifestations. Ian Duhig became a full-time writer after working with homeless people for fifteen years. He has published eight collections of poetry, held several fellowships including at Trinity College Dublin, won the Forward Best Poem Prize once, the National Poetry Competition twice and been shortlisted four times for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His New and Selected Poems was awarded the 2022 Hawthornden Prize for Literature. He is currently finishing his next book of poetry, ‘An Arbitrary Light Bulb', due from Picador in 2024.Writer/reader, Ian Duhig Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly ThomasLooking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.

This edition of The Verb is another chance to hear an extended interview with the prize winning novelist Hilary Mantel who died last year. The programme looks at her life in writing, from her struggle to publish the first book she ever wrote, the historical epic A Place of Greater Safety to the phenomenal success of her Thomas Cromwell books Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, both of which won the Booker Prize. We learn about the themes which run through all her work: the pursuit of power, fame and how it changes us, the collective versus the individual voice, and ghosts (which for Mantel are choices not made, both in her life and in her writing). She sheds light on her relationship with Thomas Cromwell, how she avoids pastiche when writing historical dialogue, and explains how working on the RSC adaptations of her Thomas Cromwell books influenced the final book in the trilogy, ‘The Mirror and The Light' which at the time of recording was yet to be published. Hilary Mantel published her first novel Every Day is Mother's Day in 1985. She won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Fludd, and the Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love. Her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost won the MIND Book of the Year award. Mantel is the first British writer to win the Booker Prize twice. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

Simon and Rachel speak with the novelist and travel writer Colin Thubron. Colin worked in publishing in London and New York before writing his first travel book, "Mirror to Damascus", in 1967. Other early books continued to focus on the Middle East, but later he was drawn towards the Soviet Union and Communist China. In 1982 Colin travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey described in "Among the Russians". His best-known travel books include "Behind the Wall" (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), "In Siberia" (which won the Prix Bouvier) and "Shadow of the Silk Road". Colin has also written eight novels, and between 2008 and 2017 he served as president of the Royal Society of Literature. We spoke to Colin about exploring Russia, China and central Asia, his latest book, "The Amur River", and his parallel career as a fiction writer. This episode was produced in conjunction with the London edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival, and is sponsored by Curtis Brown Creative, the writing school attached to the major literary agency. CBC has provided an exclusive discount for Always Take Notes listeners. You can use the code ATN20 for £20 off the full price of Writing a Memoir, or any other four- or six-week online writing course. You can find us online at alwaystakenotes.com, on Twitter @takenotesalways and on Instagram @alwaystakenotes. Our crowdfunding page is patreon.com/alwaystakenotes. Always Take Notes is presented by Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd, and produced by Artemis Irvine. Our music is by Jessica Dannheisser and our logo was designed by James Edgar.

Michael Longley is one of Northern Ireland's foremost contemporary poets. His debut collection, 'No Continuing City', was published to acclaim in 1969 and since then he has published many more collections of verse, including 'Gorse Fires', which won the Whitbread Prize, and 'The Weather in Japan', which won the T.S. Eliot prize and the Hawthornden Prize. His major themes are war, nature and love. Perhaps his best-known poem is 'Ceasefire', which, like many of his poems was inspired by The Iliad and was first published in the Irish Times in 1994 thr week the ceasefire was announced. Michael lives in Belfast, but spends much of his time in Carrigskeewaun, which provides the backdrop for many of his nature poems. But for Michael, the love poem is the most important. If poetry is a wheel, as he says 'The hub of the wheel is love' Ian visits Michael at home in Belfast for a conversation that ranges over a career in poetry that spans over 50 years. Michael published 'The Candlelight Master' in 2020 and later this year will see publication of his latest collection 'The Slain Birds'. Together they talk about form, trees, writers block, the passing of time and the joy of grandchildren. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Vita Sackville-West, an English poet, novelist, journalist, diarist, member of the Bloomsbury Group, and muse of Virginia Woolf, was born Victoria Mary Sackville-West in Knole, Kent, England on March 9, 1892. West was the author of seventeen novels and nine works of nonfiction, particularly books about gardening. By the time she was eighteen, she had written eight novels and five plays. She published her first poetry collection, Poems of West and East (John Lane Company), a volume of twenty-one poems, in October 1917. Her other works of poetry include her Collected Poems (Hogarth Press, 1933) and the pastoral epic The Land (William Heinemann Ltd., 1926), both of which separately won the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature. She also translated a volume of Rainer Maria Rilke's elegies into English. In the 1940s, West was named Companion of Honor for her contributions to literature. West died at home at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, England on June 2, 1962.From https://poets.org/poet/vita-sackville-west. For more information about Vita Sackville-West:Twelve Days: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/twelve-days-vita-sackville-west/1120454882“The Fabulous Forgotten Life of Vita-Sackville West”: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/03/31/the-fabulous-forgotten-life-of-vita-sackville-west/“Who Was Vita Sackville-West?”: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/who-was-vita-sackville-west

Your last encounter with a poem may well have taken place in a grim classroom, perhaps a painful dissection of WB Yeats or Matthew Arnold. Poetry can be something entirely different, however, and prize-winning poet John McCullough gives us poetry that is a source of joy, mindfulness and sheer fun. John McCullough “guides us through a world of déjà vu, doubt and rapture” (Helen Mort). His poetry gives us “fresh insight into vulnerability and suffering”, according to the judges of the Costa Poetry Award.  His poems reference Kate Bush, Lady Gaga, birdlife, Grindr and My Little Pony, while exploring love, loneliness and issues like homelessness and homophobia.  In this episode Andrew and John talk about the ways poetry can make your life richer, deeper and more meaningful. Poetry helps us live in the moment, it offers a rest from relentless rational thinking and it helps us to process our experiences and make sense of them. John McCullough's latest book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds, won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. He has also won the Polari First Book Prize and his collections have been named Books of the Year in The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer. He is featured regularly in magazines such as Poetry London, Poetry Review and The New Statesman. Most recently, his poem 'Flower of Sulphur' was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. John lives in Hove with his partner and two cats, and teaches creative writing at the Open University and the University of Brighton.    Follow Up Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50. Read Reckless Paper Birds, John McCullough's Hawthornden Prize winning collection. Find out about John McCullough's other books. Follow John McCullough on Twitter @JohnMcCullough_ and Instagram @mrjohnmccullough Get Andrew's advice on creating change in your life and relationships in his book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and Be Stronger, Wiser and Happier. Listen to Andrew's interview with author Josh Cohen on “How to Live: What You Can Learn From Your Favourite Literary Character”. Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Planet Poetry is swooping through the air with Hawthornden Prize winner John McCullough tucked under its origami wing. John entices us with his three poetry collections: The Frost Fairs (Salt Publishing), Spacecraft and Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins), and praises the virtues of playful language and learning your craft. We'll take in roof-removing storms, vanished Old English letters and Lady Gaga.  Plus Peter is enticed into Babylonian shenanigans by The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Robin beguiles us with how to extricate yourself  a magical debut collection from Laura Theis. 

To reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in life and society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift as one of Northern Ireland’s foremost living poets. He is known, in part, as a poet of “the Troubles” — the violent 30-year conflict between Protestants and Catholics, English and Irish. And he is a gentle voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the everyday, never-finished work of social healing.Michael Longley has written more than 20 books of poetry including Collected Poems, Gorse Fires, The Stairwell and his most recent collection, The Candlelight Master. He was the professor of poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010 and is a winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He was also the international winner of the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize — and that same year was honored with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Michael Longley — The Vitality of Ordinary Things." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

To reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in life and society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift as one of Northern Ireland’s foremost living poets. He is known, in part, as a poet of “the Troubles” — the violent 30-year conflict between Protestants and Catholics, English and Irish. And he is a gentle voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the everyday, never-finished work of social healing.Michael Longley has written more than 20 books of poetry including Collected Poems, Gorse Fires, The Stairwell and his most recent collection, The Candlelight Master. He was the professor of poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010 and is a winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He was also the international winner of the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize — and that same year was honored with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired November 3, 2016.

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, mais conhecida por Vita Sackville-West, foi uma poeta, romancista e paisagista inglesa. O seu longo poema narrativo, The Land, valeu-lhe o prémio Hawthornden Prize em 1927

Tim Pears, a writer rooted in the landscape of Devon, takes Slightly Foxed to the West Country. From working at his local library and reading an author a week instead of taking his A Levels to winning the Hawthornden Prize for his first novel, by way of spells as a farm labourer, nursing assistant and night porter, Tim Pears has written eleven novels, watched blacksmiths at work, walked the routes of his characters, balanced research with imagination and chronicled the past as a realist rather than a romantic. We also travel through the magazine’s archives, along the rivers Taw and Torridge, to uncover the man behind Tarka the Otter, and there are the usual recommendations for reading off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 41 minutes; 20 seconds) Books Mentioned Please note that while many of these titles by other publishers are available to buy from the Slightly Foxed shop, there may be delays in obtaining them from our distributor. We may also be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch (mailto:anna@foxedquarterly.com) with Anna for more information. Books by Tim Pears - In the Place of Fallen Leaves (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/tim-pears-in-the-place-of-fallen-leaves/) (5:18) - In the Light of Morning is out of print (13:22) - The West Country Trilogy: The Horseman (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/tim-pears-horseman/) , The Wanderers (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/tim-pears-wanderers/) and The Redeemed  (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/tim-pears-redeemed/) (14:14) Other Books - Slightly Foxed Issue 66 (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightly-foxed-issue-66-published-1-jun-2020/) (1:23) - Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/penelope-chetwode-two-middle-aged-ladies-andalusia/) , Penelope Chetwode (1:29) - The Past Is Myself (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/christabel-bielenberg-the-past-is-myself-plain-foxed-edition/) , Christabel Bielenberg: Plain Foxed Edition (1:50) - The Empress of Ireland (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/christopher-robbins-the-empress-of-ireland/) , Christopher Robbins: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 51 (2:00) -Tarka the Otter (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/henry-williamson-tarka-the-otter/) , Henry Williamson (27:15) - Omer Pasha Latas: Marshal to the Sultan (https://www.nyrb.com/products/omer-pasha-latas?_pos=1&_sid=dd45bae37&_ss=r&variant=6835865583668) , Ivo Andrić (34:14) - Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner is out of print (36:14) Related Slightly Foxed Articles - Tarka the Rotter (https://foxedquarterly.com/henry-williamson-tarka-the-otter-literary-review/) , Jonathan Law on Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter in Issue 35 (27:15) - Surprised by Joy (https://foxedquarterly.com/sylvia-townsend-warner-diaries-literary-review/) , Jonathan Law on The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner in Issue 48 (36:14) Other Links - Sign up to the free Slightly Foxed email newsletter here (http://eepurl.com/dmxw1T) to receive articles from the quarterly, extracts from books, latest releases, event invitations, news from behind the scenes at SF and other bookish content several times a month. View past newsletters (https://foxedquarterly.com/category/newsletters/) - Tim Pears: A writer and his dog (https://timpears.com/story/) (25:21) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable (https://www.podcastable.co.uk/)

Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl and The Past, and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and other magazines. Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn't afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness. Late in the Day explores the tangled webs at the centre of our most intimate relationships, to expose how beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives lie infinite alternate configurations. Ingeniously moving between past and present and through the intricacies of her characters' thoughts and interactions, Tessa Hadley once again shows that she has ‘become one of this country's great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.' (Anthony Quinn Guardian) Recorded 17 September 2019

In an ongoing collaboration with BBC Radio 3, Wellcome Collection's Reading Room is the setting for a series of 'The Essay' devoted to the bodily organs. 'Body of Essays' invites five writers to ruminate on a different organ of the body. This strange proposition has a mysterious allure: the organs are hidden, buried from view, and yet are at the very core of our physical functioning as well as our mental and emotional world. Suctioned together in dark flesh, the organs can be all the more puzzling and intriguing. William Fiennes is recipient of the Hawthornden Prize and Somerset Maugham Award for his book The Snow Geese, and more recently a tender account of growing up in the family estate with his epileptic brother Richard in The Music Room. A sufferer of Crohn's disease, William focuses on his bowel.

With the U.S. still in the shadow of a potential border wall and the fraught discussions surrounding Brexit still circulating among headlines, journalist and novelist John Lanchester presented us with a satirical and frighteningly timely new novel—The Wall. The story follows Joseph Kavanagh, a Defender on the enormous concrete wall his island nation has built to keep the Others—desperate souls trapped outside the wall amid the rising seas—at bay. We follow him through the cold, loneliness, and fear that arise as he tries to fulfill his duties, we share in the contemplations of the consequences of his post, and we witness the dark part of him that wonders if it might be more interesting if something really did happen to him in the line of duty. Sit in with Lanchester for a compelling reflection on the issues of our time—rising waters, rising fear, rising political division—and a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival. John Lanchester is the author of five novels, including the best-selling Debt to Pleasure and Capital, as well as several works of nonfiction, including I.O.U. and How to Speak Money. His books have won the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. Listen to an exclusive interview with Town Hall correspondent Katy Sewall and John Lanchester on In The Moment, Episode 29.  Recorded live at Seattle University by Town Hall Seattle on March 20, 2019. 

John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He has worked as a football reporter, obituary writer, book editor, restaurant critic, and deputy editor of the London Review of Books, where he is a contributing editor. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He has written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips and Fragrant Harbour, and Capital, and two works of non-fiction: Family Romance, a memoir; and Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, about the global financial crisis. His books have won the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Prize, E.M Forster Award, and the Premi Libreter, been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and been translated into twenty-five languages. His latest novel is The Wall. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kirsty Young's castaway is military historian, Sir Antony Beevor. His books about some of the key battles of the Second World War are best-sellers and have been credited with reinvigorating the whole genre. There was little indication of this future success while he was boarder at Winchester public school where he failed to pass either his History or his English A levels. During the five years he spent in the army, including two years at Sandhurst for officer training, he studied history under the great military historian, John Keegan. On deciding he wanted to be a writer, his first three novels had limited success, and he was encouraged by his publishers to draw on his experience of army life and turn his talents to military history. His ground-breaking work Stalingrad was based on what he discovered in the Russian military archives and won him the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize. In his book Berlin: the Downfall 1945, he wrote about the mass rapes of German women committed by the Red Army at the end of the war. He was knighted in the 2017 New Year honours list. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper.Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway is military historian, Sir Antony Beevor. His books about some of the key battles of the Second World War are best-sellers and have been credited with reinvigorating the whole genre. There was little indication of this future success while he was boarder at Winchester public school where he failed to pass either his History or his English A levels. During the five years he spent in the army, including two years at Sandhurst for officer training, he studied history under the great military historian, John Keegan. On deciding he wanted to be a writer, his first three novels had limited success, and he was encouraged by his publishers to draw on his experience of army life and turn his talents to military history. His ground-breaking work Stalingrad was based on what he discovered in the Russian military archives and won him the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize. In his book Berlin: the Downfall 1945, he wrote about the mass rapes of German women committed by the Red Army at the end of the war. He was knighted in the 2017 New Year honours list. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper. Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Journalist John Lanchester talks about the future of money and tells us all about bitcoin and getting to grips with the language of money. John Lanchester has worked as a football reporter, obituary writer, book editor, restaurant critic, and deputy editor of the London Review of Books, where he is a contributing editor. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He has written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips and Fragrant Harbour, and Capital, and two works of non-fiction: Family Romance, a memoir; and Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, about the global financial crisis. His books have won the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Prize, E.M Forster Award, and the Premi Llibreter, been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and been translated into twenty-five languages. 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

The award-winning author and memoirist Candia McWilliam attests to the edifying power of fiction and biography in the third lecture in the Weinrebe series from the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. The award-winning author and memoirist Candia McWilliam attests to the edifying power of fiction and biography to help us see the world through the eyes of others, in the third lecture in the Weinrebe series from the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. McWilliam overcame writer's block following a period of near-blindness brought on by the rare illness blepharospasm to write the Hawthornden Prize-winning memoir What to Look For in Winter. Wolfson College President and OCLW Director Hermione Lee, in her introduction to the lecture, described her voice as "subtle, original and sharp", and her memoir as remarkable for its candour and lack of sef-pity, "told with eloquence, truthfulness and comic brio".

Take a magic-carpet ride along the length of the most storied of ancient trade routes, the Silk Road, with Colin Thubron, one of the world's greatest living travel writers. Mr. Thubron describes his journey of some 7000 miles-by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, camel, and foot-out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, which led to his bestselling book, Shadow of the Silk Road. Colin Thubron is Britain's most distinguished travel writer, an award-winning author whose books cover Asia and Russia. His first books were about the Middle East-Damascus, Lebanon, and Cyprus. In 1982 he traveled in the Soviet Union, pursued by the KGB. From these early experiences developed his great travel books on the landmass that makes up Russia and Asia: Among the Russians (1983); Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (1987), which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Lost Heart of Asia (1994); In Siberia (1999), Shadow of the Silk Road (2006); and most recently, To a Mountain in Tibet (2011). Mr. Thubron has also written several novels, including Emperor (1978), set in A.D. 312; A Cruel Madness (1984), winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award; Falling (1989); Turning Back the Sun (1991), a haunting tale of love and exile; Distance (1996); and To the Last City (2002), which tells the story of a group of travellers in Peru. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1969 and currently its president, Colin Thubron is a regular contributor and reviewer for The Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Spectator. In 2007, he was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth.