Comments on: BBC Radio 4 Book Club: 179 episodes now available online

BBC Radio 4 Book Club: 179 episodes now available online

Paul Slade — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:44:48 -0800

Book Club. This 30-minute programme's been on Radio 4, the BBC's premier speech radio station, since 1998. Books are announced a month in advance, giving listeners a chance to read the chosen title before the discussion. James Naughtie then interviews the book's author about it in front of an audience of his (or her) readers, who also put questions of their own. My favourites from the programme's archive include Alan Bennet (Writing Home), Clive James (Unreliable Memoirs), Douglas Adams (a 1 hour special on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Elmore Leonard (Rum Punch), James Ellroy (Black Dahlia), PJ O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell) and Stephen Fry (The Hippopotamus). No doubt you'll have your own.

The only snag is that the site's organised by date of broadcast rather than the alphabetical list of authors you really want. The effort required is well worth it, however, and podcasts are also available.

By: Kitteh

Kitteh — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:52:23 -0800

LOVE I've heard ones I liked by Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), Iain Banks, Salman Rushdie...

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:56:03 -0800

If you want to Ctrl-F for your favorite author and/or download files directly, you can go here.

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:19:33 -0800

I love that they put the real dates on these in iTunes, so now I have podcasts from 1998. :7) Thank you, BBC. I can't wait to hear how they manage to talk to Bill Bryson for half an hour without bringing up "Notes From a Small Island"!

By: Charlemagne In Sweatpants

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:50:47 -0800

We were driving home from Byron Bay in the middle of the night, my sorta-girlfriend and I, and we'd been arguing and trying to find good radio. Somehow we stumbled onto the BBC World Service and listened to Paul Auster talk for an hour. Neither of us had read him but it was the perfect tonic to calm our nerves in that country dark.

By: Paul Slade

Paul Slade — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:18:09 -0800

I should have mentioned that the World Service has its own version of this programme too. I think they're entirely separate programmes, though you may find the same authors sometimes featured in both strands.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:58:31 -0800

Hmpfh. "The playlist contains invalid data: after filtering out invalid media and connection objects, there are no connections left." I'm sure this is meaningful to somebody, but all I know is, I can't listen to George MacDonald Fraser.

By: OHenryPacey

OHenryPacey — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:49:37 -0800

It's not by accident, i am certain, that the volume on the bbc's player goes to 11.

By: garrett

garrett — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:45:20 -0800

Not by accident at all.