麻豆约拍

Rana Mitter assesses the shortlist for this year's Booker prize with the critic Alex Clark and talking to Jhumpa Lahiri whose novel, The Lowland, is one of the front runners.

The historian, Joanna Bourke and the former weapons inspector, Paul Schulte will be in the studio to examine the history of chemical warfare and our ambivalence to it.

And the travel writer, Colin Thubron and the biographer, Artemis Cooper, will be on hand to celebrate the publication of the long awaited final instalment of Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of his journey from the Hook of Holland to the Bosphorus and beyond - one of the acknowledged prose masterpieces of the 20th century.

All on Night Waves this evening on Radio 3.