Wild Swimmer, Wild Life

Couriers, Saboteurs & Spies

Acclaimed historian and biographer Helen Fry joins archivist Ross MacFarlane to discuss Helen’s groundbreaking research into the White Lady/theClarence Service, a Belgian intelligence network that provided MI6 with crucial information during both the First and Second World Wars.

Jake Arnott's Adventures in the London Underworld

Crime novelists Jake Arnott and Cathi Unsworth chat about Jake's more than two decade-long literary career. Their conversation inevitably features “The Long Firm”, which was adapted into a hit BBC drama series. He and Cathi will also be discussing his latest novel, “Blood Rival”, a psychological thriller that borrows from the life of the gangster and road rage killer Kenneth Noye.

Soho Night & Day

Geraldine Norman, widow of the writer Frank Norman, joins Joe Daniel, Frank’s grandson, for a discussion with writer/musician Max Décharné about the underrated author of books such as “Banana Boy” and “Stand On Me”. Joe was the driving force behind the recent republication of “Soho Night & Day”, the classic portrait of 1960s Soho – a book that features text by Frank and high contrast black and white photos by Jeffrey Bernard, someone better-known for his journalism and taste for booze.

Adventures in Coding

Andrew Smith, the journalist and bestselling author of “Moondust”, talks to historian Matthew Worley about “Devil in the Stack” – Andrew’s latest nonfiction book. It’s a genre-defying part memoir, part history, and part impassioned essay about computer code and the ways in which it’s reshaping the world and humanity. Supported by the Heritage National Lottery Fund, the Tommy Flowers Foundation, and Fitzrovia Noir.

Wild Swimmer, Wild Life

“Guardian” staff writer Patrick Barkham chats with Ross MacFarlane about “The Swimmer”, Patrick’s appropriately unconventional biography of Roger Deakin. Abandoning his lucrative career as a 1960s Soho advertising executive, Deakin bought a ruined house in rural Suffolk and then reinvented himself first as a documentary film-maker and finally as the author of the bestselling memoir, “Waterlog”, which sparked both the fashions for nature-writing and so-called wild swimming.