Breaking News: Join Ian Rankin in the Author to Author Special - 28th October @ 6pm

The Goldster Book Club

Who doesn't love reading a good book? Our Book Club shows you how much more you could enjoy finding out – such as the author's reasons for writing it, the issues raised within it and the discussions that can follow afterwards. This is why, every Friday, the Goldster Book Club takes you behind the curtains of the literary world. With the help of two well-known and well-connected authors, we'll put you in touch with great reads you may not have thought of, and insightful authors you may not have heard of – as well as those you’ve already got on your wish list. We'll also reveal things such as how The Times crime critic whittles down a summer shortlist or how a leading publisher deals with a superstar like Elton John. We alternate between live book discussions and live author interviews (or chats with people inside the publishing industry). Our Book Club is designed to keep the mind active and to give the soul a lift, which in turn helps you to age more healthily - the whole ethos behind Goldster.

HUMPHREY HAWKSLEY

Humphrey is an award-winning foreign correspondent, whose BBC assignments have taken him to crises all over the world. He is also the best-selling author of both fiction and non-fiction titles. One, Dragonfire, outsold Harry Potter when published in India. His non-fiction Asian Waters tackles the rise of China and his latest thriller Man on Fire originated when reporting from America’s remote border with Russia.

LUCINDA HAWKSLEY

Lucinda is the author of more than twenty books, with subjects ranging from biographies, to the history of art, social history and literary history. She’s also a public speaker, a TV and radio broadcaster, a university lecturer and an award-winning travel writer. A bonus literary endorsement is that she's the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens.

WHAT'S COMING UP

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Liz Jensen

21 October 2021 - 12pm

Liz Jensen is the best-selling author of eight novels including the eco-thrillers The Rapture and The Uninvited, and the The Ninth Life of Louis Drax. Critics have described her as one of today’s most innovative writers whose novels capture the terrain between realism and science fiction and Louis Drax was adapted by Hollywood into a box-office feature film starring Jamie Dornan.Much of Liz’s work revolves around the environment and impact of climate change. She is a founder member of Extinction Rebellion’s Writers Rebel, a literary movement which includes writers such as Margaret Drabble, Ben Okri. Amitav Ghosh and Zadie Smith. Her son, Raph, became a leading figure of Extinction Rebellion under the name of Iggy Fox, planning and leading key protests in London. In February last year, Raph, suddenly died while filming an environmental campaign in South Africa. Liz abandoned the latest novel she was writing to work on a book about grief. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Liz Jensen was a print and radio journalist in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She then spent four years as a freelance writer, translator and sculptor in France, and ten as a BBC producer. Liz lives in Copenhagen where she shares her life with Danish writer Carsten Jensen, author of the critically-acclaimed We, The Drowned, which she co-translated into English as Emma Ryder. Her work has been short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Award, nominated three times for the Women’s Fiction prize, adapted for theatre and radio, and translated into twenty languages.

Sue Teddern - Inside Story

22 October 2021 - 12pm

Until the runaway success of her debut novel, Annie Stanley, All At Sea, Sue Teddern was better known as a writer of radio dramas. Her first scriptwriting credit was on The Archers, since then she has worked on Sad Girl, The Charm Factory, soloparentpals.com (which ran for five series), In Mates and her recent success Cooking in a Bedsitter, a witty love story inspired by Katherine Whitehorn’s iconic 1960s cookbook. When she left school, Sue wanted to be a window dresser, an ambition she achieved – but didn’t make her happy. It was then that she realised what she really wanted to be was a writer. So she started working as a writing articles– do you remember the magazines Honey, My Guy, Mizz, Women’s Journal and 19? If you ever read those, the chances are, you’ve read some of Sue’s work. She has also written for The Guardian, Ideal Home and City Limits and became an interviewer for the Radio Times. As a lover of comedy, her favourite interviews remain those she did with Victoria Wood and French & Saunders. From journalism she moved into scriptwriting. In addition to her radio dramas, she worked on the TV comedies, including Birds of a Feather and Happy Together. She also created and wrote the ITV series Homefront, about the lives of army families. Join me and Sue Teddern on Friday 22 October, when I’ll be asking Sue about her scriptwriting, Annie Stanley and her upcoming second novel, The Year of Bad Choices, which will be out next year.

Alison Bruce

28 October 2021 - 12pm

Alison Bruce is the author of nine crime novels and two non-fiction titles. Her first novel, Cambridge Blue (2008), was described by Publishers Weekly as an ‘assured debut’ and introduced both detective, DC Gary Goodhew, and her trademark Cambridge setting. She went on to write six further novels in the DC Goodhew series before writing the psychological thriller I Did It for Us (2018).

Her latest novel, The Moment Before Impact, is described by Ian Rankin as ‘tense, twisty, terrific’.The other books in the DC Goodhew series are The Siren (2010), The Calling (2011), The Silence (2012), The Backs (2013), The Promise (2016) and Cambridge Black (2017). Other works include, two true crime books and a selection of short stories.

Her work has attracted both critical acclaim and a loyal readership. In 2013 and 2016 Alison was short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award. Alison was awarded a first in BSc (Hons) in Crime and Investigation at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge which included subject areas such as: crime scene investigation, policing practice, major investigations, mass fatality incidents, fire investigation, forensic pathology and forensic anthropology. This included practical skills such as: lifting fingermarks, bone identification, testing for bodily fluids and recovering trace evidence.

Alison is currently working on the UK’s largest policing professionalism contract which is delivering policing degrees to the Metropolitan Police and to seven police forces including Cambridgeshire. Alison never underestimates her readers and aims to challenge them with expertly crafted plots, vivid characters and the kind of realism which will put them in the front row of an investigation.

Mavis Cheek

29 October 2021 - 12pm

Mavis Cheek, the author of 16 critically acclaimed novels, was described by the Observer as “the spokeswoman for a generation”. She writes wittily and brilliantly about what it’s like to be a woman living and ageing amongst arbitrary and ever-changing social rules. In the 1960s, Mavis left school at the age of 16 and started working with an art publisher named Electo Editions, who also set up a very trendy gallery. This drew Mavis into a world of such glittering artistic names as Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield and Gillian Ayres. Twelve years later, Mavis went to college, after which she embarked on what has been a very successful writing career. Mavis’s first novel, Pause Between Acts, was published in 1988 and immediately won the “She / John Menzies First Novel Prize”. Since that time she has produced a prolific array of books, and has the enviable ability to craft something new and fun every time. Her novels include the hilarious Janice Gentle Gets Sexy, about shy and retiring romance author who hires a busty model to perform her publicity work, Amenable Women, which follows the lives of two women living 500 years apart, Aunt Margaret’s Lover, in which a middle-aged woman decides it’s time to have some fun, Three Men on a Plane, in which the heroine finds herself on a plane with three of her lovers, and Patrick Parker’s Progress, a comedy inspired by an obsession with the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Come along on Friday 29 October, as I chat to Mavis about her novels and the events which have inspired them. Join us to discover more about her novels, all of which are the perfect antidote for any of life’s ills.

Julie Summers

11 November 2021 - 12pm

Julie Summers is one of Britain’s foremost social historians. The author of fourteen works of non-fiction, including the best-selling book Jambusters, she was listed as one of only four women in the top fifty historians in Britain in 2015. Jambusters inspired the ITV drama series Home Fires, which ran for two seasons in 2015-16 and had a regular television audience of over six million.

Born on the Wirral and brought up in Cheshire, Julie spent the first half of her career working in the art world. However she had always wanted to be a writer and when the opportunity arose to work on a biography of her great uncle, Sandy Irvine, she took it with relish. Fearless on Everest was published in 2000 and was followed by The Colonel of Tamarkan (2005), a biography of Brigadier Sir Philip Toosey, the ‘real’ colonel who built the Bridge on the River Kwai. Since then she has been exploring the impact of the Second World War on people’s lives, with particular focus on women and children on the Home Front. Stranger in the House looked at how women coped when the men came home from the war, while When the Children Came Home examined the impact of evacuation on family life in the war’s aftermath. This area has been largely ignored by historians but it represents some of the most important and challenging aspects of the war. Our Uninvited Guests: The Secret Lives of Britain’s Country Houses 1939 – 45 was published in March 2018. It offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life in some of Britain’s greatest country houses that were occupied by people who would never otherwise have set foot in such opulent surroundings.

Her book Dressed for War is a biography of the wartime editor of Vogue, Audrey Withers and was published in February of this year. It has been optioned by Gaumont TV who are developing a drama series. In May 2021 she published We are the Legion, a book to celebrate the 100^thanniversary of the founding of the Royal British Legion. This lavishly illustrated books covers the Legion’s history and its most recent work on behalf of the Armed Forces Community. Responsible for everything from Remembrance to Welfare, Campaigning to Pensions, the Legion is the country’s foremost military charity with caring for a community of 6.5 million men, women and children.

Julie is the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

The Inside Story

Have you ever wished that you were a fly on the wall listening to your favourite authors chatting among themselves about their books and ideas, or laughing about their experiences? Or been curious about the publishing world that prints and promotes the best sellers we love? Every fortnight, our Inside Story feature, previously called the Book Chat, brings a famous author, translator or publisher to talk to our two in-house authors and presenters, Lucinda Hawksley and Humphrey Hawksley. Authors of thrillers and murder mysteries alternate with historians, journalists and critics. We sometimes have the chance to meet the authors themselves whose books we have discussed or intend to discuss. Join us for an hour on alternate Fridays, and put forward the questions you've been dying to ask.