Radio Gorgeous

  In Venus & Aphrodite: History of a Goddess, Bettany Hughes delves into the origins of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love – born in Cypress and the product of blood, guts, incest, patricide, love, lust and sex. She not only is the emblem of love and sex but also our very thirst and drive for life….

THE PRIVILEGED Emily Hourican – a smart read & a great crack with Josephine Pembroke on Radio Gorgeous Three friends meet an an all girls school from different backgrounds, two of them are mesmerised by Amanda, tall, beautiful, vague and charismatic. Everyone Amanda meets falls for her and her looks propel her into a life…

Portland Place SARAH SHAW – SECRET DIARY of a BBC Secretary on Radio Gorgeous “Savile was a creep, just horrid.” Sarah Shaw’s 1971 diary  Sarah Shaw started off writing a blog about her life as a secretary at the BBC in the early 70’s. Then a publisher snaffled her and here is the book for us…

KNICKERS models own – Wear Charity Shop Clothes for a Year CAROLINE JONES with Katy Davis on RADIO GORGEOUS & Raise Money for Cancer Research Caroline’s mother died of cancer and instead of moping around. She tootled over to her favourite Cancer Research Shop and photographed herself in a different pre-loved outfit every day for…

    Gorgeous Reads: Sainsbury’s Magazine Books Page Selection: Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War   Helen used her home town of Rye as a microcosm of England in the glorious summer before WW1, the dawning of war and its devastating aftermath. A beautiful romance with the deft touch and wit of Jane Austen;…

  Keiko Itoh MY SHANGHAI Author of The Week Keiko Itoh’s grew up listening to her mother’s magical stories of Shanghai and it was only later that she realised that these were the war years. Her mother, a debutante who came out in the last London season, moved to Shanghai as a young wife and…

    Irenosen Okojie Butterfly Fish Podcast Length: 24:54 Butterfly Fish is a beautiful, haunting novel that weaves together the story of a young, fragile Londoner, Joy, with that of a mysterious female who reveals herself to Joy through a series of clues. Binding them together is a mysterious artefact Joy inherited from her mother,…

Journalist and broadcaster Rosie Millard has turned novelist. With no time to do additional research, Rosie Millard set her novel in a milieu she knows, a pretty London square very much like her own. Although she is a bit like the thin, blonde Jane (she was the one who called her a massive bitch!) she…

Ruth Dugdall Nowhere Girl

Being a trailing spouse has its benefits: when Ruth Dugdall, former probation officer and mother of two moved to Luxembourg for her husband’s job, she realised that Luxembourg was a potential kidnapping haven (surrounded as it is by 4 countries and sea) and conceived of her 5th book. She also talks about how the Luke Bitmead Bursary changed her life.

http://www.ruthdugdall.com/

Follow Ruth @RuthDugdall

If you love crime listen to this: http://bit.ly/S1c6sv

Rachel Johnson’s Fresh Hell

Third in her Notting Hill trilogy finds journalist Mimi Fleming returning from the country to her old square. While she was a wellie wearing country bumpkin, her neighbours have groomed and slimmed and become even younger looking. They are busy living in her house, installing double-basements and banker bashing while she is in an ex-council maisonette and falling desperately and inappropriately in lust with a younger woman. Scenes from Rachel’s own life?

https://twitter.com/RachelSJohnson

If you enjoyed this you may like this http://radiogorgeous.com/podcasts/gill-hornby-all-together-now/

Agoraphobia – is it madness? Whispers Through A Megaphone by Rachel Elliot   How do you deal with everyday madness, is everyone as mad as you feel? Rachel Elliott explores our coping and curbing techniques through the stories of her two protagonists, Miriam, who hasn’t left her house in 3 years and Ralph, a psychotherapist who is…

Would you ever contact a problem page? Bel Mooney from the Daily Mail –  Life Lines Health and Wellbeing: Bel Mooney’s Lifelines: Words to Help You Through Bel Mooney is many things and Agony Aunt is the least of it. However, as a journalist of longstanding she does write an advice column for the Daily…

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah – Tells the tale of a WOMAN on Death Row Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University and the University of Zimbabwe. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won the Guardian First Book Prize in 2009. The Book of Memory is the story…

  Rules For Thursday Lovers by YANA STAJNO  What does a bored, ignored, middle-aged wife and mother do? Take a lover? Too much trouble on one’s own, wouldn’t it be better to share one with a friend? What could possibly go wrong with that? Josephine explores the possibilities of Rules For Thursday’s Lover with Yana. Yana…

The A to Zen of Yoga by Sarah Tucker Wellbeing: Sara Tucker, our intrepid travel journalist, is also an experienced yogi. She has written the A to Zen of Yoga, a practical guide for the inflexible and non-spiritual to the bendy mystics among us. The book is organised around the different postures and what they can do…

Nicki Bannerman talks with Sally Pacholok who is an extraordinary nurse. In 1985  Sally  diagnosed herself with a lack  of vitamin B12, after her doctors had failed to identify her condition.  As a result, she is passionate about the need to educate the public about the dangerous consequences of this hidden and all-too-common disease. The right…

  Julia Roberts Presenter from QVC Life’s a Beach Then….. Despite childhood polio and now leukemia, Julia Roberts will not be kept down! Every challenge is met by yet another achievement: given polio she became a dancer, given leukemia she became a novelist. She is one of the founding presenters of QVC, a job she…

The Helios Disaster by Linda Boström Knausgaard – like the Greek goddess Athena, Linda’s protagonist Anna is born out of her father’s head but soon becomes seperated from him. The book explores religion, madness, time, language, and evokes the utterly eerie Helios airplane disaster of 2005.She lives with her husband, uber confessional Norwegian novelist Karl…

Ageism, Madonna and Us. And  our GORGEOUS GOSSIP guest is  Annette Gordon – Author How to Be An Older Woman. Ageism & Madonna: 00.00 How To Be AN OLDER Woman: 9.54 Ageism affects you at all ages. Madonna has been talking to everyone about her issues – so we challenge her and talk about the…

Girls Will Be Girls – Emer O Toole Emer O Toole discovered early on that the veneer of gender can be very thin; somewhat like the dress we saw white/gold or black/blue, our eye fills in what we expect to see. In her book Girls Will Be Girls, she encourages us to be brave (braver…