Radio Gorgeous

  Michelle Paver Thin Air A Ghost Story GORGEOUS READS with Donna Freed “I scared myself when I was writing it!” Michelle Paver’s classic Gothic ghost story is set on Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas in 1935, the twilight of the Empire but the golden age of mountaineering. It has all the elements of the perfect…

Shari Lapena The Couple Next Door Sainsbury’s Magazine AUTHOR with Donna Freed    From bankruptcy lawyer, to English teacher to literary novelist, Shari Lapena has written her first thriller. If ever there was an embodiment of the poem: Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Practice to Deceive! Shari burrows into the…

  Podcast Length: 11 Minutes 12 seconds I Call Myself a Feminist! Part 1   Martha Mosse, award winning feminist performance artist, TED talker and daughter of novelist & Bailey’s Prize founder Kate Mosse has co-edited and contributed to a collection of essays by women under the age of 25 who proudly proclaim to the…

Fear of Dying Erica Jong Reviews Her Life Fabulous and almost totally fearless Erica Jong talks hot pants, poetry as an antidote to fame, the formula for being fearless and why grannies ought to be in charge of when we go to war. Her latest book, Fear of Dying, reintroduces Fear of Flying’s Isadora Wing…

Ingrid von Oelhafen, Hitler’s Forgotten Children: My Life inside the Lebensborn with Donna Freed The Nazis didn’t invent genocide but their clinical approach is enduringly horrifying. Less known but perhaps even more chilling was the Lebensborn project founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935 to create an Aryan super race. When the programme of racially pure…

The Last Treasure Hunt – Jane Alexander The Last Treasure Hunt explores our obsession with fame and celebrity with great intelligence and sly wit: it’s a modern media morality tale with bite. Jane Alexander’s The Last Treasure Hunt asks the question: how far would you go for fame and fortune? Jane talks to Donna about…

    The UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER – KATE MAYFIELD Kate Mayfield’s family could hardly shun death as it put food on the table. As The Undertaker’s Daughter she was fully steeped in the rituals of death amidst the stifling atmosphere of the rural American South, untouched by the encroaching Civil Rights Movement. She introduces us to…

Award winning, Dutch playwright and author Esther Gerritsen, talks about her latest novel, Craving. You’d think it would be natural for a daughter to come to care for her terminally ill mother. However, if your daughter is Coco, her arrival at your death bed is more than a little complicated. ‏@WorldEdBooks www.worldeditions.org Here at Radio…

HELEN LEDERER – LOSING IT Funny lady, Helen Lederer has turned her talented hand to writing with the hilarious result: Losing It. Broke, fat and a washed-up has been, Millie clutches at the chance to be the front woman for a new diet pill. Incredibly, this doesn’t solve all her problems! Helen on the BOOK…

Journalist and author Valerie Grove delved into the correspondence and diaries of beloved author Laurie Lee. Lee created many myths about himself and Grove reveals, the sometimes more fascinating truths beneath the legend. Want more Author of the week? Join our mailout www.radiogorgeous.com  

  Food writer, journalist and broadcaster Elisabeth Luard is as passionate about food as we are about moisturiser and speaks to our simple hearts with her encyclopedic knowledge of European Peasant Cookery.  @elisabethluard elisabethluard.com/ Love this? Sign up for more PODCASTS for WOMEN radiogorgeous.com

Marina Keegan The Opposite of Loneliness Essay A talented writer who had interned at both the Paris Review and The New Yorker, Marina Keegan had also worked for literary critic Harold Bloom while at Yale University. One of her plays had been accepted at a major festival and she had a staff job waiting for her at The New…

    Kristin Hannah – Author of the Week on Literary Lusts Donna has tea at the Corinthia Hotel in London with best selling American author Kristin Hannah.They swap stories about writing with their mothers and their own maternal fears as well as dealing with Dad’s dating.   kristinhannah.com Kristin has 105,249 likes on FACEBOOK!…

  Vivienne Westwood Book with Ian Kelly   Author of the Week: Ian Kelly is an award winning author and actor and dapper dan who spent a year with Vivienne Westwood, co-writing her authorised biography.  www.viviennewestwood.com/ coolearth.org/ . iankelly.net LOVE this podcast? Support us sign up to GORGEOUS MAIL radiogorgeous.com

  Blake Lavak’s Own That Guy in 60 Days is a dating guide for women. He councils us to take the bull by the horns or the tuna by the tail as it were. We push single gal Mandy Lax into the dating pool with Blake. NOTE: This is not so much a guide to…

  Isabel Wolff GHOSTWRITTEN Man Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North tells the story of the prisoners of war working on the Burma Death Railway but Isabel Wolff’s Ghostwritten tells the story of Klara, one of the many Dutch colonials interred on Java during the Japanese occupation. It is…

Andree’s War is the story Francelle Bradford White’s mother who was a founding member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of Paris. She was passing documents under the Nazi’s nose while working at Police Headquarters. Francelle wrote Andree’s story as a way of connecting with her as Andree now has Alzheimer’s.All proceeds of…

Juliet West Before The Fall Working as a journalist, Juliet West uncovered the story of Before the Fall at the National Archives at Kew. Her heroine works at a cafe on the Isle of Dogs during WWI and has an affair with a man with “reserved occupation” and therefore unable to enlist as a soldier….

  Author of the Week: Rose Boyt Hows Your Father Rose Boyt initially wrote Hows Your Father while her own father, Lucian Freud, was alive but rewrote it after his death. Hows Your Father is the rollicking tale of four generations of a Hackney family as they lurch through a life of fierce love, drugs,…

Dusty Springfield – An Intimate Portrait by Karen Bartlett  Born to seemingly conventional parents – accountant father and Irish housewife mother – Dusty also seemed quite conventional and unremarkable until at 16 she transformed her look and launched herself on the world with determined, blond ambition. She was a pioneer of so much we now…