The Faber Podcast

It's 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been blissfully married for six years. But a murderer in their midst has other ideas ... 'Death Comes to Pemberley' is a brilliant new 'sequel' to Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' - but one with a deadly twist. In this extended interview, P. D. James shares her appreciation for Austen, and discusses the challenge of taking such a beloved work of fiction in a wholly unexpected direction ... .

Recorded at Topping's in Bath, shortly before a packed event, author Sebastian Barry discussed his latest novel, 'On Canaan's Side', with interviewer George Miller. It's a riveting, 30-minute conversation covering the shadow of events from Sebastian's own family's past in his fiction, and the repercussions of some quite extraordinary events. .

In the second part of October's Faber Podcast, Nicholas Rankin discusses his new book, 'Ian Fleming’s Commandos', a gripping account of 30 Assault Unit, which was set up by the future author of James Bond when he worked in naval intelligence during World War Two. This hush-hush band of never more than 300 men amounted to a private army that was never quite approved of by the top brass. In the interview Nicholas talks about how they came to be formed, what their brief was and discusses some of their greatest successes. .

In the first part of October's Faber Podcast interviewer George Miller talks to biographer and historian Tim Jeal about 'Explorers of the Nile', his account of the extraordinary quest by a small band of Victorian explorers who underwent almost unimaginable privations in order to be the first Westerner to reach the source of the White Nile.

In this extended interview, Michael Frayn talks about his childhood in leafy Surrey during the war and his relationship with his father, so memorably and movingly portrayed in his memoir, My Father’s Fortune. He also talks about the impact of the loss of his mother when he was twelve and his early ambitions to be a writer.

In our August podcast George Miller discusses gothic fiction with Richard T. Kelly, author of the spine-chilling The Possessions of Doctor Forrest>. First he talks to Matthew Hollis about his new book, Now All Roads Lead to France, in which he gives us the final years in the life of war poet Edward Thomas, 'the man with the keys to the Paradise of English Poetry'.

The author of several previous novels, Steve Sem-Sandberg has achieved international acclaim for his detailed, vivid and profoundly affecting portrait of the ghetto in the Polish city of Lodz in 'The Emperor of Lies'.Sebastian Barry called the book ‘monumental’; Carmen Callil compared his achievement in bringing a whole society to life to Dickens. It's an extraordinary work of fiction, and we were delighted to get the chance to have the author tell us more.

For this latest Faber Podcast we are joined by Jane Harris, whose second novel 'Gillespie and I' - a mysterious and enthralling tale set in Victorian Glasgow - was published recently, and by journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Glancey, who sheds light on the little-known region in northern India striving for independence for the past half-century, Nagaland.

'I need to make these two men one: the warm, embracing man I adored, and the indifferent, sometimes self-centered, occasionally cruel man who could drink too much, could be crushing, contemptuous, defeating, deadening - this is hard.' So says Judy Golding, writing about her father, William Golding, as she publishes her extraordinary memoir, 'The Children of Lovers' in the year of the centenary of the Nobel Laureate's birth.