Ian Mortimer on 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory

George Miller talks to Ian Mortimer about the pivotal year of Henry V’s reign, and finds out what one of our most famous kings was really like.

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An interview with Nicola Upson

George Miller talks to Nicola Upson about her second book, which features the Cornish landscape and its people, the very real ‘golden age’ crime writer Josephine Tey, and the theatre world of 1930s Britain

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The Children’s Invasion Book

In this second short film featuring Faber archivist Robert Brown, he introduces us to another of Faber’s wartime publications – The Children’s Invasion Book. Published in 1944, this book wasn’t a guide to help British children prepare for the possibility of a German invasion of the UK, but a display of the Allied military hardware which was about to be unleashed on D-Day…

Sam Taylor talks about The Island at the End of the World

George Miller talks to Sam Taylor about his post-apocalyptic vision, The Island at the End of the World, and the three very different narrators that it features.

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David Peace on Occupied City

George Miller talks to David Peace about the background to and writing of his latest novel, the second in his Tokyo Trilogy, Occupied City, and we have clips of David Peace reading from the novel too.

Andy Beckett on the 1970s

Andy Beckett’s new book When the Lights Went Out takes a fresh look at the 1970s, a much-maligned decade. Was it really so bad? The author, who writes for the Guardian, reveals more in conversation with George Miller.

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Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst of Oxford University talks about Charles Dickens’ life at the time he started writing his classic Great Expectations, and the reason he started writing the book.

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Charles Darwin and the voyage of the Beagle

James A. Secord talks about the purpose of the famous voyage of the Beagle, on which the young Charles Darwin was exposed to many of the sights and experiences which led him to formulate his ground-breaking theories.

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Tim Bale on the Conservative Party

Tim Bale has published a major new assessment of the Conservative Party’s wilderness years which followed their removal of Margaret Thatcher from the leadership in 1990. It examines why it took the party so long to learn from its mistakes and also why change – when it did eventually come – happened so quickly.

Steven Asma’s monster gallery

George Miller talks to Stephen Asma about On Monsters, his wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters, and we have an exclusive gallery of illustrations from the book too.

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Tobias Jones on The Salati Case

Tobias Jones introduces his first novel, set in the foggy northern city of Parma in winter time, and his detective Castagnetti, and suggests why Italy is hard to beat as a setting for crime fiction.

Three questions for… Mary Beard

Mary Beard is professor of classics at Cambridge University. Last autumn she published the book of her blog A Don’s Life. In the book she reflects on the lot of a classics don at an elite university, the way in which the ancient world is portrayed in the media, the purpose of education and much else besides.

The early years of Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) came from an unlikely background for a future literary celebrity. Unlike most of his fellow writers, he wasn’t from an aristocratic family but a conservative, merchant one. Rosamund Bartlett, who edited and translated the stories in the collection About Love, introduces Chekhov

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Science writer Marcus Chown on extraterrestrial life: “Where is everybody?”

Science writer Marcus Chown responds to the question first posed by Enrico Fermi – the Italian physicist who developed the first nuclear reactor – about the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life: “Where is everybody?”

Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Josephine McDonagh, who has written a new introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, introduces the novel, and talks about Anne’s life and the imaginative world she and her siblings – Emily, Charlotte, and Branwell – inhabited

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Lisa Hilton on the Queens of England

George Miller talks to Lisa Hilton about her history of English queens and the role they have played in shaping the nature of the English monarchy.

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Christopher Potter is here with insights in to the Universe

George Miller talks to Christopher Potter about You are Here: A Portable History of the Universe, a dazzling exploration of the universe and our relationship to it, as seen through the lens of today’s most cutting-edge scientific thinking.

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Hilary Mantel talks about Wolf Hall and winning the Booker

George Miller talks to Hilary Mantel, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2009 with her historical epic, Wolf Hall.

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Graham Farmelo on The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius

Graham Farmelo talks about The Strangest Man, his biography of Paul Dirac, the greatest British physicist since Newton – and one of the strangest geniuses of the 20th century, who may have suffered from autism.

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Jane Austen and making an impression

In the classic Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen invites her readers to form judgments of her characters as they read the book – and then to revise them as the story unfolds. Fiona Stafford explains why this may in part account for the book’s enduring appeal.

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Feeding the 5,000 – an interview with Tristram Stuart

On Wednesday 16th December 2009, Trafalgar Square will host a free feast of biblical proportions: a modern day Feeding the 5000. In this short film, Tristram Stuart, author of Waste, explains the problem – and outlines the solutions.

Three questions for… Julian Baggini

George Miller asks an interviewee three questions – no tricks or surprises, but no forewarning either. This video features philosopher and broadcaster, Julian Baggini, author of The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and A Very Short Introduction to Atheism, among many other titles.