Award-winning British journalist Ros Atkins joins Georgina Godwin in today’s episode. He is analysis editor and presenter of Outside Source at the BBC but started out at as a news producer on BBC Radio Five Live more than twenty years ago. Ros talks about his book ‘The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence’. He also takes us back to his Cornish roots, as well as his stint at ‘The Sunday Independent’ in South Africa, and reveals how learning a musical instrument and DJing influenced his ideas on what makes for successful communication.

Award-winning British journalist Ros Atkins joins Georgina Godwin in today’s episode. He is analysis editor and presenter of Outside Source at the BBC but started out at as a news producer on BBC Radio Five Live more than twenty years ago. Ros talks about his book ‘The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence’. He also takes us back to his Cornish roots, as well as his stint at ‘The Sunday Independent’ in South Africa, and reveals how learning a musical instrument and DJing influenced his ideas on what makes for successful communication.

Want to know more about the authors behind your favourite books? Tune in to discover the methods of – and inspiration behind – some of the world’s most exciting writers. Every Saturday, Georgina Godwin hosts an in-depth discussion with the person behind the prose. 

Want to know more about the authors behind your favourite books? Tune in to discover the methods of – and inspiration behind – some of the world’s most exciting writers. Every Saturday, Georgina Godwin hosts an in-depth discussion with the person behind the prose.

Want to know more about the authors behind your favourite books? Tune in to discover the methods of – and inspiration behind – some of the world’s most exciting writers. Every Saturday, Georgina Godwin hosts an in-depth discussion with the person behind t

Meet the Writers

Ros Atkins

Award-winning Scottish author and editor at large at the ‘London Review of Books’, Andrew O’Hagan has spent the past decade working on his state-of-the-nation novel, ‘Caledonian Road’. Employing the traditions of Victorian writing, his research took him to the homes of Russian oligarchs, the Old Bailey and even a ship from Venice to Trieste. Here, O’Hagan talks about how libraries “saved” him, ghostwriting Julian Assange’s autobiography and his brief brushes with royalty.

Award-winning Scottish author and editor at large at the ‘London Review of Books’, Andrew O’Hagan has spent the past decade working on his state-of-the-nation novel, ‘Caledonian Road’. Employing the traditions of Victorian writing, his research took him to the homes of Russian oligarchs, the Old Bailey and even a ship from Venice to Trieste. Here, O’Hagan talks about how libraries “saved” him, ghostwriting Julian Assange’s autobiography and his brief brushes with royalty.

Andrew O’Hagan

‘For me, beauty and disgust don’t really exist in binary.’ AK Blakemore’s discovery of tales of The Great Tarare, a French showman with an insatiable appetite, was the perfect setting for her to explore her love of the grotesque and abject. Shortlisted for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize, her novel ‘The Glutton’ explores the almost folkloric life of the soldier-turned-street performer, as he tours around France eating everything from nails and stones to snakes and puppies. Blakemore also talks about her childhood living on the 24th floor of a tower block in southeast London, experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations, and the symbolic power of food in literature.

‘For me, beauty and disgust don’t really exist in binary.’ AK Blakemore’s discovery of tales of The Great Tarare, a French showman with an insatiable appetite, was the perfect setting for her to explore her love of the grotesque and abject. Shortlisted for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize, her novel ‘The Glutton’ explores the almost folkloric life of the soldier-turned-street performer, as he tours around France eating everything from nails and stones to snakes and puppies. Blakemore also talks about her childhood living on the 24th floor of a tower block in southeast London, experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations, and the symbolic power of food in literature.

AK Blakemore

“We left Iraq as Jews, and we arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” Acclaimed historian Avi Shlaim is a man with a complicated backstory as an Arab Jew. He has a very clear-eyed view of events leading up to the current crisis in the Middle East. He traces the origins of the conflict to antisemitism in the UK after the First World War and even to the Jews of Babylon 2,500 years ago. Shlaim tells us why he believes that accusations of antisemitism and anti-Zionism are being used to silence the critique of Israel’s practices, and why he considers Marilyn Monroe a “profound thinker”.

“We left Iraq as Jews, and we arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” Acclaimed historian Avi Shlaim is a man with a complicated backstory as an Arab Jew. He has a very clear-eyed view of events leading up to the current crisis in the Middle East. He traces the origins of the conflict to antisemitism in the UK after the First World War and even to the Jews of Babylon 2,500 years ago. Shlaim tells us why he believes that accusations of antisemitism and anti-Zionism are being used to silence the critique of Israel’s practices, and why he considers Marilyn Monroe a “profound thinker”.

Ros Atkins

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