Bookclub Folgen

James Naughtie and readers talk to travel writer and literary critic Robert Macfarlane about his book The Wild Places, in which he sets out to discover if there remain any genuinely wild places in Britain and Ireland. It is an account of journeys that he made to the remaining wilderness in the islands. He climbs hills and mountains, walks across moors and bogs, luxuriates beside hidden lochs, swims through caves and disappears into forests, all in search of that special quality of solitude in communion with nature.

James Naughtie and readers meet the best-selling writer CJ Sansom. They discuss Dissolution, the first in his series of Tudor mysteries featuring the investigator Matthew Shardlake. Shardlake is sent to Sussex to investigate a murder in a monastery, just as Henry VIII is beginning his reformation of the Church.

James Naughtie and readers meet Northern Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty to discuss his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Grace Notes, which concerns a young female composer very much in a man's world. Now living in Scotland, MacLaverty returns to his native Belfast especially for the recording of the programme.