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Episode details

Radio 4,13 Jul 2008,30 mins

Patrick McGrath, Herman Melville' Israel Potter, and Bethan Robert

Open Book

Available for over a year

Patrick McGrath Author Patrick McGrath joins Open Book to discuss his new novel, Trauma, set in 1970s New York. His novels are often centred around characters with unstable minds. Mariella asks Patrick whether this is the result of growing up in the shadow of Broadmoor Hospital, where his father was superintendent. Herman Melville Moby Dick is now the best known of Herman Melville’s books. However, Melville’s Israel Potter, a historical novel first published in 1856, has now been republished. The novelist Benjamin Markovits talk to Mariella about Melville, who worked for the Customs Revenue in New York for the latter part of his life, and died in relative obscurity. Upstairs Downstairs Bethan Robert’s second novel, The Good Plain Cook, follows the fortunes of a young woman entering domestic service in the 1930s. Why are authors drawn to write about the relationships between the upper classes and their servants? Kathryn Hughes and Bethan Roberts join Mariella to talk about the lure of upstairs/downstairs.

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