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Writers {2}
Writers confirmed for the Lit Sutra programme include Jake Arnott, Woodrow Phoenix, Tony Lee (2009); Ian Rankin, Claire Tomalin, Michael Frayn, Geoff Dyer, China Mieville, Mark Billingham, Shrabani Basu, Denise Mina, Andy Diggle, Melvin Burgess, Colin Bateman, Robert Lewis (2010)
Shrabani Basu
Shrabani Basu is a journalist and historian. She is the London correspondent of the Calcutta-based Ananda Bazar Patrika group and writes for The Telegraph and other publications. Her books include the critically acclaimed Spy Princess, a biography of the Second World War heroine, Noor Inayat Khan, soon to be made into a film, and Curry, The Story of the Nation’s Favourite Dish, a look at the history of curry in Britain. Her latest book Victoria & Abdul is to be published in 2010. It is the story of Queen Victoria and her controversial relationship with her Indian secretary, Abdul Karim.
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in 1958 and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His first book, Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger, was published in 1986. His first novel was The Colour of Memory (1989), set in Brixton, south London, in the 1980s.
His non-fiction includes a book about jazz entitled But Beautiful (1991), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Missing of the Somme (1994), which was adapted for BBC Radio 3 and broadcast on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the battle of the Somme; a book about D. H. Lawrence entitled Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (1997), which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (USA); and a collection of essays, Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures, 1984-99, published in 1999.
He is also the author of three novels including The Search (1993), a complex narrative about a woman's search for her missing husband, and Paris Trance (1998), chronicling the sex and drug-fuelled adventures of two couples living in Paris.
Recent books are Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It (2003) and The Ongoing Moment (2005), an idiosyncratic history of photography. His latest work is Jeff in Venice, Death in Varansi (2009), winner of the 2009 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
Bibliography
Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger (Pluto) 1986
The Colour of Memory (Cape) 1989
But Beautiful (Cape) 1991
The Search (Hamish Hamilton) 1993
The Missing of the Somme (Hamish Hamilton) 1994
Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (Little, Brown) 1997
Paris Trance (Abacus) 1998
Anglo-English Attitudes: Essay, Reviews, Misadventures, 1984-99 (Abacus) 1999
What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (editor with Margaret Sartor) (W. W. Norton) 2000
The Selected Essays of John Berger (editor) (Bloomsbury) 2001
Granta 79: Celebrity (contributor: 'An Infamous Night Out in Amsterdam') (Granta) 2002
Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It (Little, Brown) 2003
The Ongoing Moment (Little, Brown) 2005
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (Canongate) 2009
Michael Frayn
His plays include Alphabetical Order (1975), Clouds (1976), Donkeys' Years (1977), Make or Break (1980), Noises Off (1982) and Benefactors (1984). Copenhagen (1998), about the 1941 meeting between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr, first staged at the Royal National Theatre in London, won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (USA). His play Democracy (2003), is set in 1960s Berlin. His latest play for the Royal National Theatre is Afterlife (2008).
His latest books are Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre 1970-2008 (2008), and Travels with a Typewriter (2009).
He has also translated a number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy. His films for television include First and Last (1989), for which he won an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel A Landing on the Sun. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Clockwise (1986), a comedy starring John Cleese.
Michael Frayn is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
Bibliography
The Day of the Dog (articles reprinted from The Guardian) (Collins) 1962
The Book of Fub (articles reprinted from The Guardian) (Collins) 1963
On the Outskirts (articles reprinted from The Observer) (Collins) 1964
The Tin Men (Collins) 1965
The Russian Interpreter (Collins) 1966
At Bay in Gear Street (articles reprinted from The Observer) (Collins) 1967
Towards the End of the Morning (Collins) 1967
A Very Private Life (Collins) 1968
The Two of Us (four one-act plays for two actors) (Fontana) 1970
Sweet Dreams (Collins) 1973
Constructions (Wildwood House) 1974
Alphabetical Order and Donkeys' Years (plays) (Eyre Methuen) 1977
Clouds (Methuen) 1977
Make and Break (Methuen) 1980
Noises Off (Methuen) 1982
The Original Michael Frayn (Salamander) 1983
Benefactors (play) (Methuen) 1984
Wild Honey (after Chekhov) (Samuel French) 1984
Clockwise: A Screenplay (Methuen) 1986
Plays: One (Methuen) 1986
Balmoral (Methuen) 1987
First and Last (Methuen) 1989
The Trick of It (Viking) 1989
Jamie on a Flying Visit; and Birthday (Methuen) 1990
Listen to This: Sketches and Monologues (Methuen) 1990
Look Look (Methuen) 1990
A Landing on the Sun (Viking) 1991
Audience (one-act play) (Samuel French) 1991
Plays: Two (Methuen) 1991
Here (Methuen) 1993
Now You Know (Viking) 1993
Now You Know (play adaptation) (Methuen) 1995
Speak After the Beep: Studies in the Art of Communicating with Inanimate and Semi-animate Objects (Methuen) 1995
Alarms and Excursions: More Plays than One (Methuen) 1998
Copenhagen (Methuen) 1998
Headlong (Faber and Faber) 1999
Celia's Secret: An Investigation (with David Burke) (Faber and Faber) 2000
Plays: Three (Methuen) 2000
The Additional Michael Frayn (Methuen) 2000
Spies (Faber and Faber) 2002
Democracy (Methuen) 2003
The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe (Faber and Faber) 2006
Afterlife (Methuen Drama) 2008
Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre 1970 – 2008 (Faber and Faber) 2008
Travels with a Typewriter: A Reporter at Large (Faber and Faber) 2009
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh and has since been employed as grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist and punk musician. He was a prize-winning poet and short-story writer before turning to novels with The Flood, followed by Knots & Crosses, the first of his powerful Inspector Rebus novels, in 1987.
Ian has won many writing awards, including the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black & Blue (1997), the Mystery Writers of America ‘Edgar’ Award for Best Novel for Resurrection Men (2004) – which also won the Deutsche Krimi Prize, Germany’s most prestigious award for crime fiction – and he has twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger Award (1994 and 1996). In 2005 he received the CWA Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, the British Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year for Fleshmarket Close and France’s most prestigious award for crime fiction, the Grand Prix du Roman Policier, for Set in Darkness. In 2007 he repeated his success at the British Book Awards, winning the Crime Thriller of the Year for The Naming of the Dead. This year Ian was rewarded for his outstanding contribution to the cultural and social landscape of Edinburgh when he became the first recipient of the Edinburgh Award and was also appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Abertay Dundee, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University. He has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, is a past winner of the prestigious Chandler-Fulbright Award and was recently elected Edinburgh University’s Alumnus of the Year. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Edinburgh. Ian was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Birthday Honours List in June 2003.
Bibliography
Inspector Rebus Novels:
Knots & Crosses - 1987
Hide & Seek – 1990
Tooth & Nail - 1992, previously published as Wolfman
A Good Hanging and Other Stories (Orion reissue) 1998
Strip Jack (Orion) 1992
The Black Book (Orion) 1993
Mortal Causes (Orion) 1994
Let It Bleed (Orion) 1995
Black & Blue (Orion) 1997
The Hanging Garden (Orion) 1998
Death Is Not The End (novella, Orion) 1998
Dead Souls (Orion) 1999
Set in Darkness (Orion) 2000
The Falls (Orion) 2001
Resurrection Men (Orion) 2002
Beggars Banquet (short stories, Orion) 2002
A Question of Blood (Orion) 2003
Fleshmarket Close (Orion) 2004
The Naming of the Dead (Orion) 2006
Exit Music (Orion) 2007
Other novels:
The Flood (republished by Orion) 2005
Watchman (republished by Orion) 2004
Westwind - 1990
Doors Open (Orion) 2008
A Cool Head (Quick Read, Orion) 2009
The Complaints (Orion) 2009
Writing as Jack Harvey:
Witch Hunt – 1993
Bleeding Hearts – 1994
Blood Hunt – 1995
Non-fiction:
Rebus’s Scotland - 2005
Graphic Novel:
Dark Entries (Vertigo Crime) 2009
Claire Tomalin is the author of highly acclaimed biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft, Katherine Mansfield and Jane Austen. Her account of Charles Dickens' relationship with the actress Nelly Ternan, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, was published in 1990 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography), the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Hawthornden Prize. It was followed by Mrs Jordan's Profession (1994), a biography of the actress Dora Jordan, consort to William IV.
Her play The Winter Wife (1991) is based on her own biography of Katherine Mansfield, and she edited the first edition of a previously undiscovered manuscript by Mary Shelley, Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot, first published in 1998. A collection of book reviews and journalism, Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades, was published in 1999.
Claire Tomalin lives in London with her husband, the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn. Her biography of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys (2002) won the Samuel Pepys Award, and the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award. Her book Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man (2006), was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Biography of the Year. Most recently she has selected and edited two books of poetry: The Poems of Thomas Hardy (2007), and The Poems of John Milton (2008). She is currently writing a critical life of Charles Dickens.
Bibliography
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) 1974
Shelley and His World (Thames & Hudson) 1980
Parents and Children (editor) (Oxford University Press) 1981
Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (Viking) 1987
The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (Viking) 1990
The Winter Wife (play) (Nick Hern Books) 1991
Mrs Jordan's Profession (Viking) 1994
Jane Austen: A Life (Viking) 1997
Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot by Mary Shelley (editor) (Viking) 1998
Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades (Viking) 1999
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (Viking) 2002
Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man (Viking) 2006
The Poems of Thomas Hardy (editor) (Penguin) 2007
The Poems of John Milton (editor) (Penguin) 2008
