“I wanted to know what went on -what really went on – inside Viacom/CBS… about the collaboration between very big business and very big government.”  So says television legend Dan Rather in this special edition of The Debriefer.   ”I knew that a lot had gone on behind the scenes [in ...read more →

Geoff Dyer is the consummate writer’s writer: winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, the US National Book Critics Circle Award the E. M. Forster Award, and more.  The Daily Telegraph newspaper has called him “the best living writer in Britain”.  Zadie Smith believes he is “a national treasure.” This is ...read more →

Join us for our biggest, wildest, craziest and funniest virtual office party ever… featuring the prodigious talents of Professor Elemental and Brian Clegg, together with Ian Winn, Ali Gardner & the combined talents of the chatroom, Dave Bartram, and ringmaster Peter Cox. “What I don’t like about office Christmas parties”, ...read more →

To mark the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, Peter takes tea with Claire Harman, author of the highly acclaimed biography Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.  If you share E. M. Forster’s passion – “I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile ...read more →

It was supposed to be “the war that will end war” – according to the misplaced optimism of British author H.G. Wells, and countless others like him who cheerfully expected “our boys” to be home by Christmas 1914.   Involving all the world’s great powers, more than 70 million combatants, and ...read more →

Having scaled the walls of Faber’s well-manicured garden eleven years ago, Faber chief executive Stephen Page found himself in the broadcast hot-seat, sandwiched between Naked Bookers Philip Jones and Sam Missingham. This show is the first in an occasional series of tête à têtes, devoted to  the illuminati of the ...read more →

Once every generation or two, a book comes along that incarnates our collective experience of war.  Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was one such: Heller’s Catch-22 was another, and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five was one more.  To this distinguished list must be added Ben Fountain‘s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long ...read more →