Allegedly, it’s Summer time in England… time for our annual leave of absence while we plan next season’s shows. This show is a retrospective, looking back on some of the highlights of our year so far, including Jeffrey Archer, Craig Murray, Kari Herbert and Dr. Huw Lewis-Jones, Nigel West, Bert ...read more →
Author Archive
Fifty Shades of Real
Winner of the Orange Prize for New Writers, tonight’s guest Joanna Kavenna exemplifies much that’s best about new British authors: smart, savvy, sassy and scintillating. “With her pale skin and angular features”, observed one critic, ” she even looks like Virginia Woolf”! Joanna’s latest book, Come To the Edge, is ...read more →
The Tour de France – To The Bitter End
It’s an ultra-sporty show tonight, featuring The Guardian’s Richard Nelsson who has just edited a new book about cycling’s most extreme test of endurance, “The Tour de France: To The Bitter End“. Lance Armstrong looms large in our discussions, of course – but so do Federer, Murray and the wider ...read more →
200th Show Special – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk with Ben Fountain
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 →
Whatever Happened to the Great English Eccentric?
Whatever happened to the great English eccentric? Why are Juliet, Susannah, Piers and Giles most likely to cut you up? And at last – the truth they tried to hide from us for a century about extreme sexual penguin deviancy. It’s all here in tonight’s potpourri of a show, featuring ...read more →
Welcome to Hotel Chernobyl
Pollution Tourism is the next big thing for adventurous travelers, says tonight’s guest Andrew Blackwell. His book Visit Sunny Chernobyl is an account of his vacations in some of the world’s most damaged environments. From India’s most polluted city to the Pacific Ocean’s Great Garbage Patch (an area twice the ...read more →
R.J.Ellory – A Quiet Belief In ‘What-If…’
You’ll recognize him as one of Britain’s leading thriller writers, author of the multi-million seller A Quiet Belief In Angels and ten other award-winner novels. But you may not know much about the extraordinary personal story of tonight’s guest R.J. Ellory – a life that is just as thrilling and ...read more →
Eyes Stop Moving
They’re putting people into MRI scanners to find out which parts of their brains are stimulated by reading. Nothing new to LAD listeners – we covered this in 2010 and to some extent with David Eagleman in 2009 (always on the leading edge, us). But tonight, Dr. Susan O’Doherty tells ...read more →
China Takes The Biscuit (And Everything Else)
What the heck happened? We are now living through – and suffering from – the greatest financial crisis since the 19th century. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Our guest tonight, City Editor of the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer, has written a book which traces our gradual descent ...read more →
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
How do you feel about the future? Fifty years ago, most views would probably have been rosily optimistic: our faith in science to solve the most pressing problems was mostly untarnished, and our belief in politicians to take wise and beneficent decisions not quite threadbare. Today, the clouds of doubt ...read more →
Nigel West: Spies, Lies & Chocolate
This special video edition of Litopia After Dark features acclaimed espionage writer and expert, Nigel West. ”His information is so precise” writes The Sunday Times “that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services.” Nigel’s controversial books invariably hit the headlines. His greatest coup was tracking ...read more →
Said The Cabbie To Jeremy Hunt…
What with Leveson, Hunt, Murdoch… to say nothing of a double-dip recession… there’s way too much bad news around… so enough already! When life gets excessively glum – it’s time for us to dig out Litopia’s infamous Ant Game… which is exactly what we’ve done tonight, for your aural bliss. ...read more →
Philip Reeve: Spike & Spook Go To The Moon
Philip Reeve is one of the godfathers of steampunk (although today he’s somewhat allergic to that word) with his massively successful Mortal Engines series. One of the most enduringly popular of all YA authors, Philip’s fans are everywhere – especially in our chat room tonight, as they bombard him with ...read more →
Our Man In The Cold
Tonight’s show is a real-life thriller: featuring espionage, double-dealing, murder and even a dash of Hollywood. And a British ambassador who sees things he shouldn’t – and decides to tell the world. Sounds like the plot of a movie? Craig Murray‘s amazing story has already been optioned by producers – ...read more →
Papyrus to Pixels
We love to talk about story here on Litopia After Dark – and in particular, the impact that new media is having on its development, production and consumption. Are we entering a Promised Land full of storytelling richness, fuelled by ubiquitous multimedia devices – or is this merely the beginning ...read more →
