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Jane Gardam

Kirsty Young interviews novelist Jane Gardam.

Jane Gardam is best known for her trilogy of novels about an ex-colonial QC nicknamed Old Filth. A writer for both adults and children, she has won two Whitbread awards, the Katherine Mansfield Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Born in 1928, she grew up in North Yorkshire where her father was a schoolmaster at a small independent boys' school. Her mother wrote sermons and was an inveterate letter-writer. After graduating, Jane had a number of literary jobs, but gave up working to raise her three young children. Although she wrote poems as a young girl, her writing career didn't begin in earnest until the day her youngest child started school when she began to write her first book.

Since then, she has published more than 30 books, including novels for children and adults as well as short stories and a non-fiction volume about the Yorkshire of her youth.

Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Available now

37 minutes

Last on

Fri 20 Oct 2017 09:00
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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Music Played

  • Gordon MacRae

    Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

    • Oklahoma!.
    • Angel.
    • 3.

  • Extract from Robinson Crusoe

  • Wells Cathedral Choir

    He Who Would Valiant Be

    Conductor: Malcolm Archer.
    • All Things Bright and Beautiful.
    • Hyperion.
    • 6.

  • Gaetano Donizetti

    Ah! Un foco insolito

    Performer: Renato Bruson. Orchestra: Munich Radio Orchestra. Conductor: Roberto Abbado.
    • Don Pasquale.
    • RCA Victor.
    • 6.

  • Maurice Ravel

    L'Enfant et les Sortilèges

    Performer: Magdalena Kožená. Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker. Conductor: Sir Simon Rattle.
    • L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.
    • EMI Classics.
    • 1.

  • Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band

    Cut 'n Run

    • Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band Play Along Series.
    • Silverline.
    • 10.

  • Extract from Dover Beach

  • CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE

    • Robert Parsons

      Ave Maria

      Choir: Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Conductor: Geoffrey Weber.
      • A Caius Christmas.
      • Delphian.
      • 13.

  • BOOK CHOICE

    War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

  • LUXURY ITEM

    Paper and pens

Credits

Presenter Kirsty Young
Interviewed Guest Jane Gardam
Producer Cathy Drysdale

Broadcasts

  • Sun 15 Oct 2017 11:15
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Fri 20 Oct 2017 09:00
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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