Victoria Hislop
Series 3: Episode 14 - we snooped into Victoria Hislop’s bedroom to see what she reads in bed. All in the name of research, of course.
Rose Tremain: A Road Home
Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter. Readers will become totally involved with his story, as he struggles with the mysterious rituals of 'Englishness', and the fashions and fads of the London scene. We see the road Lev travels through Lev's eyes, and we share his dilemmas: the intimacy of his friendships, old and new; his joys and sufferings; his aspirations and his hopes of finding his way home, wherever home may be.
Alain de Botton: The Art Of Travel
With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers - including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh - Alain de Botton's bestselling "The Art of Travel" provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel mini-bars, airports to sight-seeing. The perfect antidote to those guides that tell us what to do when we get there, "The Art of Travel" tries to explain why we really went in the first place - and helpfully suggests how we might be happier on our journeys.
Paul Preston: We Saw Spain Die
Based on a huge trove of diary and personal letter material regarding principally British and American, but also Russian and French, correspondents, "We Saw Spain Die" is a study of how the war correspondent came of age. It examines the problems - political, professional and personal, faced by some of the century's greatest war correspondents both within Spain and also in America, Britain, France and Russia. It throws light not just on the Spanish Civil War but also on internal politics within all those countries. The most powerful message is that it re-vindicates a number of America's greatest liberal journalists.
