Deborah Moggach, OBE FRSL, acclaimed English novelist and screenwriter, author of nineteen novels, including, Tulip Fever and, Foolish Things (famously filmed as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) joined Lucinda Hawksley and Humphrey Hawksley for a hilarious Book Chat, celebrating both her latest book, the Black Dress, and the official founding of the Goldster Book Club.

A child's bones discovered near a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk coast. One of UK's most loved crime writers, Elly Griffiths, creator of the Ruth Galloway series and the Stephens and Mephisto Mysteries

Becoming is the impelling and inspiring story of a girl from the South Side of Chicago who became the First Lady of the United States of America. Humphrey Hawksley discusses the lives of the Obamas, their struggles, their triumphs and problems leading a sometimes divided country - and how despite the politics and pressures and the chaos of the White House, Michelle Obama could fulfill her duties and remain a firm mother of her children.

Roger Moorhouse is one of the most prominent historians of the 2nd World War writing today, but delves into the hidden events that are not usually found in our history books - the true story of the carve up of Poland by the Nazi-Russian pact, the secret genocides, and the highs and lows of living in Nazi Berlin in victory and defeat. Humphrey Hawksley's discussion with Roger had everybody both fascinated and appalled, in one of the most impelling Book Chats we have had.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which weaves a coming of age novel with a murder mystery among beautiful descriptions of nature. Kya, “the marsh girl”, abandoned by adults, has grown up alone in the South Carolina swampland, becoming an expert on its flora and fauna. Into this world crash two young men. When one is murdered, attention turns to Kya.

Lucinda Hawksley ‘s guest, Lesley Downer, historian, journalist and author, fell in love with Japan when she visited in 1978 and it has absorbed her life ever since. Her magnificent quartet of novels, the Shogun Quartet, bring alive the world of the samurai, even as Japan was modernizing. She spent six months living with and working with geishas in their traditional profession, which she immortalized in her book ‘Geisha’ . One of her books inspired a TV documentary on Northern Japan, and she has recently appeared on Netflix’s Age of Samurai-Battle for Japan.

Robert Harris described this novel as "an enthralling story of love and loss." A widow in rural Suffolk hires a local archaeologist to explore the mysterious mounds on her farm, and stumbles on the greatest Anglo Saxon discovery in Britain, the Sutton Hoo treasures. The wonder and ramifications of the dig affect the lives of all who participated. It has recently become a film, starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James. Humphrey discusses the strange emotions and life changing events in John Preston's vivid recreation of the historical events.

Martine Bailey, author of historical mysteries which she wraps in fantastic detail on people, households, society, and cooking such that Fay Weldon described her as Culinary Gothic. Martine is superb in placing a murder at the heart of a captivating brew of sin, science, predictions, riddles, and superstitions. Her latest book, The Prophet, is set in Cheshire in the spring of 1753 where Tabitha De Vallory, expecting her first child, believes everything is perfect – until a girl is slaughtered on the family’s estate...

Humphrey Hawksley discusses the American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee . Published in 1960, the story is set in the Depression-era South with lawyer Atticus Finch defending a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The narrator is Finch’s daughter, Scout, whom we see losing her childhood innocence as events unfold. This masterpiece of brilliant story-telling, published sixty years ago, takes on the issues of race and American society that remain so relevant today.

Hallie Rubenhold’s books have inspired the TV series The Scandalous Lady W and Harlots and she has worked as a historical consultant for other period dramas. An excellent researcher, she has unearthed fascinating stories as she probed into the darker sides of 18th and 19th Century life. The Five was the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Lucinda Hawkelsy talks to Hallie about her varied career – and what it has been like to haveincurred the wrath of so many self-styled, misogynistic ‘Ripperologists’!

Flora Fraser is an author and historian whose books include biographies of Lady Emma Hamilton, Queen Caroline, the daughters of King George III, Pauline Bonaparte and George and Martha Washington. She is currently writing a biography of her namesake, the Scottish heroine Flora Macdonald. Flora has also worked as a researcher for the fascinating other writers in her family: her grandmother, Elizabeth Longford, and her mother, Lady Antonia Fraser.

The legendary Sunday Times Insight team turns its skills to the pandemic in Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Coronavirus. Months of digging by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott has given us an inside story that is both thrilling and appalling. Andrew Marr calls it a ‘devastating piece of journalism’. Piers Morgan says the book exposes a ‘scandal’ and Robert Peston declares that he is ‘literally gobsmacked.’ We all have our individual Covid experiences in a year that the hospitals have been crammed and infection rates among the highest in the world. Are the author’s right in describing the government response as botched? Or are they writing with the luxury of hindsight? Join Humphrey for this distinctive Goldster Book Club to discuss investigative journalism on a crisis that has impacted all our lives.

When Ian Rankin brought his fictional detective John Rebus out of retirement, it was akin to the return of Sherlock Holmes from the dead. In A Song for Dark Times, the case is personal: Rebus gets a phone call from his daughter in the middle of the night – her husband has been missing for two days. Rebus is chillingly aware that, in cases like this one, the spouse is always the police’s first suspect.

Widowland has been described as the most important feminist novel for decades. The author is Jane Thynne, writing under the pen name of C. J. Carey, widely acclaimed for her 1930s Clara Vine novels set in pre-war Berlin and Paris. Here she gives us a richly imagined an chillingly realistic alternative history. Great Britain has forges a Grand Alliance with Nazi Germany. Childless women have been banned to ghetto called Widowland.

Reading Hamnet during a pandemic is an extraordinary experience, as its characters are people living in fear of a deadly illness. In plague-ridden Elizabethan England, three children are born to the insightful and mysterious Agnes (believed locally to be a witch) and her unnamed husband, a playwright. Their twins, Judith and Hamnet, share a bond that will ensure the survival of one – but will that lead to death of the other?

Graham Greene’s 1955 novel of love and betrayal set in in the last days of French Indo-China. A jaded British journalist, Thomas Fowler loses his girlfriend, Phuong, to an idealistic young American CIA agent, blinded by American exceptionalism, who cannot see the calamities he is bringing on the Vietnamese. The book has been praised as a prediction of the later Vietnam War. The theme of the book is universal, however, as Greene uses his own war correspondent experience to describe the human cost in the degradation and folly of war.

Tim Marshall will discuss the Power of Geography, Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of the World his latest best-selling analysis of global affairs. This is the much-awaited sequel to Prisoners of Geography Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World which became an immediate international best-seller for its clarity and insight. Tim is a former Sky Diplomatic Editor skilled at compressing complex issues for a television audience of millions.

Professor Sir Muir Gray is reframing the public conversation about getting old. He is the co-author of two hilarious but insightful books aptly named Sod 60 and Sod 70, both subtitled, The Guide to Living Well. . His other books include Midlife: Look Younger, Live Longer, Feel Better, Antidote to Ageing and Sod Sitting, Get Moving!: Getting Active in Your 60s, 70s and Beyond. No spring chicken himself, Sir Muir identified elements of the ageing process way back in 1985 when, as a younger man, he wrote his perceptive book Prevention of Disease in Old Age. Whether dealing with dementia, apathy or physical frailty, Sir Muir’s initial prescription is good diet, mental stimulation and exercise. This is also the mantra underpinning everything Goldster stands for. How is it, Sir Muir asks, that we know ‘old’ sixty-year-olds and ‘spritely’ 80-year-olds? He has a Seventies Manifesto as a Call to Arms. Become more active, mentally and physically, get more involved; help other people more and you will succeed in gaining better health. And get ‘attitude’ which means, not only are you positive, but also you know what you want and people shouldn’t mess with you. 

In December 1841, eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are amongst those caught up in the Siege of Leningrad – trapped within the faded glamour of the Hermitage, the former winter palace of the Tsars. Three decades later, Galina makes a shocking discovery. That day she begins work on a painting which will tie her to the past while helping her to try and make sense of her future. 

You may not know it, but if you’ve seen the film Victoria & Abdul, you’re already aware of Shrabani Basu’s work, because the film was inspired by her book. Shrabani is a journalist, a Sunday Times best-selling author and a consultant for TV and radio programmes. Her other books include Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan and Curry: The Story of the Nation’s Favourite Dish, as well her new book, The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer about the real-life mystery that obsessed Arthur Conan Doyle long after he created Sherlock Holmes. 

Derek Niemann is a freelance writer and editor specialising in natural history and life writing. In 2012, he interrupted a career writing about bees and butterflies to begin researching and writing a family history story that was published in 2015 as A Nazi in the Family, based on the SS grandfather he never knew. His last non-fiction book A Tale of Trees: The battle to save Britain’s ancient woodland was published in October 2016. Derek’s other non-fiction title was Birds in a Cage (Short Books, 2011), telling the story of four Prisoner of War birdwatchers in World War II. Derek is a fortnightly contributor to the world’s longest-running newspaper column, the Guardian Country Diary. Formerly he was children’s magazines editor for the RSPB (1998-2014), has written a number of wildlife books for children and is a feature writer for both WWF and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. Derek is also a creative writing tutor and course director at Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education.

Frances Evesham sets all her cosy crimes novels in Somerset – the county in which she lives and writes. It was her love of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes that led Frances to create her own series of adventures, featuring very human, and modern, amateur sleuths. She is the author of the bestselling Exham-on-Sea series of murder mysteries and her new series: the Ham Hill murder mysteries.

As I Walked Out One Summer’s Morning by Laurie Lee is an auto-biographical account of youth with brilliant writing, captivating story-telling, observations on destitution in Britain in the 1930s and Spain heading toward war. Lee was 19-years-old – ‘still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune…excited, vain glorious knowing I had far to go; but not, as yet, how far. It was bright Sunday morning in early June, the right time to be leaving home.’ At the end of this magnificent book, Lee is signing up to fight fascism in the Spanish civil war.

Humphrey Hawksley meets Author and Crime writer, Mark Sanderson, a literary critic reads dozens and dozens of new titles from which he must choose five or six only as his current picks. Authors and publishers bite their nails as to whether their books will make it into his Crime Time reviews. Mark lives on both sides of the fence. He is an acclaimed crime writer himself, with books like Snow Hill and The Whispering Gallery.