S2 Ep14: Robert Webb, writer and performer

06/05/20 • 39 min

This week, from my living room in London, I speak to Robert Webb in his loft study (also in London). By the time Robert published his memoir How Not To Be A Boy in 2017, he’d already achieved huge success as an actor and performer (memorably, of course, in Peep Show). We discuss that book and his new novel Come Again; how his instinct to entertain translates from the screen to the page, and how years of writing comedy sketches gave him insight into characterisation.

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S2 Ep13: Kiley Reid, novelist

Kiley Reid joins me for this episode of In Writing, recorded when she visited London in February to promote her bestselling debut novel Such A Fun Age. Kiley is a graduate of the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she shaped this novel, and we talk about how the feedback of other writers helped her hone it, how to flesh out fiction with well-researched fact, and why it’s essential to “write to your obsessions”.

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S2 Ep15: Alexandra Shulman, editor, novelist and memoirist

Alexandra Shulman joins me this week to talk about life on both sides of the divide: editor and writer. At the helm of Vogue, she spent 25 years herding journalists. Now she has a column in the Mail on Sunday and has this year published a book that blends memoir with fashion history, Clothes and Other Things that Matter. We talk about the article that changed her career, the challenge of writing two novels with a full-time job, and the value of storytelling in journalism.