Lord John Bird and Lucy Kellaway

Lively conversation around three book choices. Presenter Harriett Gilbert talks to two guests about books they love.

SEVERED HEAD by Iris Murdoch, chosen by Lucy Kellaway
LITTLE BOY LOST by Marghanita Laski, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman, chosen by John Bird

Lucy Kellaway, former Financial Times journalist turned secondary school teacher and founder of the charity Now Teach, chooses a slim novel by author-philosopher Iris Murdoch. Severed Head (1961) centres on the marriage and affairs of Martin Lynch-Gibbon and his circle of friends and family.

Lord Bird MBE, more commonly known as John Bird, founder of The Big Issue and now a crossbench peer campaigning on homelessness and poverty prevention in the House of Lords, picks the American poet Walt Whitman's memoir Specimen Days (1882). Written when Whitman was in his sixties, it details, in fragmentary form, his experiences of the Civil War and his love of the natural world.

Presenter Harriett Gilbert brings Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1949), which follows Hilary Wainwright's search for his lost son amid the ruins of post-war France.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol
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