Explore every episode of the podcast Talking Books with Suzie Wilde & Tim O'Kelly

In this edition Suzie, Tim and the team review their best books of 2024 as well as what is coming up shortly.

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Suzie and Tim discuss books for Christmas and there are interviews with Tom Parker-Bowles, author of Cooking and the Crown and Petroc Trelawny, Radio 3 presenter and author of Trelawny's Cornwall, a Journey through Western Lands

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Instantly recognisable from her trademark collection of black hats, British author Frances Hardinge is one of the most acclaimed and inventive writers of her generation.  This month's edition features an interview with her.

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Suzie and Tim discuss this months books and interview Elle M Keating, author of Poison Summer.

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This month there is no guest interview but there are many interesting books reviewed by Tim and Suzie

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Suzie Wilde and Tim O'Kelly host the books and writing programme made in Petersfield.

This month's interview is with best-selling author Michelle Magorian who lives locally.  

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Ever wondered why insomnia might make you want to murder your husband? Or have another reason? Find out how not to do it when Katie Marsh talks to Tim and Suzie about the first book in her new cozy crime series.

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This month we have two interview, both with local authors.

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This month, the interview is with Claire Fuller, a prize-winning author and short fiction writer. Also, Tim and Suzie share their favourite reads and review what is coming up

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This month there are two guests, Greg Mosse and Gethyn Jones.

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The interview this month is with Kathryn Evans and Sue Wallman, successful young adult authors.

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Suzie and Tim talk about Suzie's visit to the Cymera Festival in Edinburgh and what is current in the book world.

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This month Tim and Suzie give a heads-up for Christmas presents and there is also a great interview with Katherine McInnes who has written Behind Everest. She has used the name Kate Nicholson for that book for reasons that will become clear.

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The guest this month is Frances Liardet, the interview having been recorded at her book launch last month.  

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Our guest this month is Candy Gourlay, talking about her Sunday Times book of the month Wild Song.  We praised the first book, Bone Talk, and and in Wild Song we pick up the story again of young Filipino Luki in 1904.

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• Suzie: We don’t have an author guest this month ...
• Tim: We have two! John has cleverly extracted Kate Mosse’s interview with you at the launch of Landfall and we’re including highlights
• Suzie: That’s brilliant!

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Suzie's book launch for Landfall and a celebration of the trilogy.  Warning of small incident of strong language.

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This month the interview is with Eva Wong Nava, and award-winning author while Suzie and Tim discuss what is exciting at the moment.

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Bad weather and bad colds have changed this month’s edition, so we’ll have to wait until next month to welcome our guest Eva Wong Nava.  Instead we’re going to replay our first two interviews back in October 2020, but we still discuss what is new in the literary world.

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This month - talking about Christmas books.

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This month the Nigel Richardson, author of The Accidental Detectorist is interviewed by Suzie and Tim.

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This month the guest is Greg Mosse, author of The Coming Darkness.

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Without a guest this month, Suzie and Tim take the opportunity to have a more in depth discussion about the world of books

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This month is slightly different.  Tim has Covid so there is nor chat between Tim and Suzie so they have both recorded separately.  There is still much of interest and plenty of book recommendations.

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Suzie and Tim review books they have read and those coming up.  The interview this month is With Katherine McInnes who wrote Snow Widows, published recently.

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This month we are joined by author Camilla Chester, described as ‘a dog walker who writes’ by her publisher. Camilla's latest book, Call me Lion, has just been published.

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This month we have two guests, Wendy Smith as promised last month, come to talk about her brilliantly named book club ‘Reading between the Wines’. She’s also Fundraising Manager for The Rosemary Foundation Hospice at Home, and we did an event here with author David Jarrett, whose book 33 Meditations on Death has sold really well

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This month's guest is David Fennell whose crime novels are discussed in this edition.  The interview makes a minor reference to scenes of fictional violence which could be upsetting to some listeners.

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In addition to talking through what has been read, what is coming up shortly and then a back-listed book, we have an interview with Ben Dark.  Ben is a head gardener, journalist and landscape historian working at the top of British horticulture. He's been described as 'the future of horticulture' by Horticulture Week, and more importantly 'the millennial Monty' by Gardeners' World Magazine.

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This month's guests are Martin Muncaster and Sir Vince Cable, both of whom have books published recently

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February 2022 Talking Books with Suzie Wilde and Tim O'Kelly with an interview with best selling authors Elly Griffiths and Lesley Thomson

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Suzie and Tim choose their favourite books from 2021, endeavour to lighten a dark January and look forward to what will be coming in 2022.  An unusual interview this month as John Welsman asks Tim O'Kelly about his life in books.

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This months Talking Books features an interview with Gyles Brandreth who knows Petersfield well having been a pupil at Bedales.  His autobiography is now available.

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This month I’m talking to bestselling author Sophie Kinsella. She has sold over 45 million copies of her books in more than 60 countries, and she has been translated into over 40 languages. 

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This is the month when all the big names release their latest books.  Tim is on the case with great suggestions and Suzie revisits her interview with rising thriller star David Fennell.  Next month is the show's 50th so listen out for ideas.

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Our guest is JOHN MICKLEWRIGHT talking about his book The Opening Country. He tells Tim about walking from Portsmouth to the Alps, following in the footsteps of his father and inspired by John Buchan.

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Our guest, Jennifer Selway lives in Petersfield.  She has a book just out - The Making of Horror movies: Key Figures who Established the Genre

She was Executive Editor of the Daily Express and before that was a journalist on The Observer. Now has a weekly opinion column in Sunday Express. 

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Nigel Farndale’s new novel, The Dictator's Muse, is set in the 1930s. He will be talking about it - and the connection with Mick Jagger! 

He is the bestselling author of, amongst others, The Blasphemer, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce, shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. And I’m in awe of the interviews he has conducted over the years, from Gillian Anderson to Kirsty Young, with every letter of the alphabet between, in sport, politics and culture.

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We’re joined this month by Katie Marsh, whose latest book  Unbreak Your Heart was our top selling book last month.  She’s a Petersfield author whose books sell all over the world.  After a ten year career in the NHS she left to take up writing full time.

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This month we are talking to Lissa Evans, about her new book, out in paperback this month.

Lissa Evans writes for both adults and children when she's not guesting on Backlisted Pod. Her recent novel, V for Victory - which is out in paperback from Black Swan in June - is set in London at the end of the Second World War and completes a loose historical trilogy which began with Old Baggage and Crooked Heart. Both hilarious and tragic.

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It’s another YA special, with Sue Wallman -  a prize-winning author of YA thrillers. Her debut, Lying about Last Summer, was Winner of Zoella Book Club 2016 and she has since published another three, all winning awards and Dead Popular was WHSmith Book of the Month 2019.

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We are back in person at One Tree Books, ready for the bookshop to reopen to customers on 12 April. Besides my backlisted choice (this month: Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs) Tim will have his list of what’s coming out this month and I'll be talking to author Roger Morgan-Grenville. He was a soldier in the Royal Green Jackets for 9 years and led the first expedition to successfully retrace Shackleton's  journey across the island of South Georgia. He was also a founder and first head fundraiser for the charity Help for Heroes.  But he typically describes himself as ‘a passionate, but talentless, cricketer’

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Guest is Tim Bouquet, who grew up on his father’s farm at Butser. Mother still lives in Petersfield. He is a ghost-writer and biographer who makes dry material page-turners. Tim O’Kelly talks to him about his stunning book on Philip Jackson (sculpture studio in Midhurst; was Stroud at the start of his career) and the angel Gabriel in Harting church. But where did Writer Tim start - and how does he meet so many Indian billionaires? How did the Renault boss Ghosn escape? My Backlisted choice is Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming: published in 1954! With all the attitudes and some words we no longer use. The extract is really good writing, though, and won’t offend anyone. 

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Our guest this month is Kathryn Evans, who has been an actor, a waitress, a celery cutter and newspaper deliverer - she's even scrubbed the decks of the Mary Rose. Now she combines being an author with being a mum, running a farm, volunteering as co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI, and fencing competitively

Her debut More of Me won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award - the first YA novel ever to do so. It also won the 2017 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for GB and Ireland. Beauty Sleep is her latest novel, which was shortlisted for the STEAM prize and won the 2020 CrimeFest Award for a YA novel.

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Special guest Thomas Harding, a bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 16 languages. He has written for the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of HANNS AND RUDOLF which won the JQ-Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction; THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award; and BLOOD ON THE PAGE which won the Crime Writers’ Association “Golden Dagger Award for Non-Fiction”. His recent books include LEGACY, FUTURE HISTORY, and a picture book version of THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE. 

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The August edition of Talking Books continues our best summer reading - but without Tim! Suzie is joined by Sally and Anna from One Tree Books for a lively chat and a rerun of Tim’s interview with Angela Harding, the illustrator of one of their picks. You can also hear the winning entries to the Eco Fair’s writing competition.

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Tim and Suzie are joined in One Tree Books by bestselling author Kate Mosse.

Suzie’s backlisted choice is Kate’s ghostly Christmas love story, set after the horrors of the First World War, The Winter Ghosts.

With a short extract read by son, actor Felix Mosse. She is published in over 40 countries. Playwright, broadcaster, defender of live theatre and libraries; champion of women's creativity.

Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction - the largest annual celebration of women's writing in the world - and sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World - and she was awarded an OBE in 2013.

Settle with a comforting drink and join Suzie and Kate as they catch up with news.

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Tim and Suzie start their fortnightly catch up. bite-size chunks so you can have a cuppa, grab a biscuit, whatever. It’s pure pleasure – so join in twitter, FB or online.

Starting with tv:

Valhalla Rising

The Crown: fascination with 1980s! memories? Hatreds?

Bake Off, Strictly and Master Chef Professionals – appeal?

series/box sets: Life on Mars = Ashes to Ashes, Spooks

Black Books  - Bill Bailey Tamsin Greig Dylan Moran Graham Linehan

Schitt’s Creek

Films? Rams 

Reading as mild sedative? Olive, Mabel and Me – Andrew Cotter

The Sentinel -Lee and Andrew? Child

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Tim’s top picks for Christmas presents and a socially distanced interview with Niall Edworthy, the author of Main Battle Tank  and over a dozen other books under a variety of noms de plume, covering military history, biography, sport, general humour, wildlife and gardening.  WILL, the Will Greenwood autobiography, was shortlisted for the 2005 Sports Book Awards in the Best Autobiography category. His first novel, Otto Eckhart’s Ordeal, is recently published. Suzie is raving about her current read about a rock group in the Sixties and her Backlisted brings some much-needed laughter.

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Suzie Wilde and Tim O'Kelly discuss how they organise their bookshelves and the books they have been reading.

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