Arts & Ideas - AS Byatt and The Children's Book

AS Byatt and The Children's Book

Download AS Byatt and The Children's Book

The perfect childhood and the failure of utopian experiments in living in Edwardian England were explored by AS Byatt in her 2009 novel The Children's Book. In this conversation with Matthew Sweet recorded in that year, they discuss her writing life, mythologising childhood and her meetings with Iris Murdoch, about whom she wrote two critical studies. A lecturer in English literature, AS Byatt's books drew on a wide range of reading and visiting art galleries and museums. In 1990 she won the Booker prize for her novel Possession.

You can find other conversations with writers on the Free Thinking programme website in a collection called Prose, Poetry and Drama


Published on Friday, 24th November 2023.

Available Podcasts from Arts & Ideas

Subscribe to Arts & Ideas

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the Arts & Ideas webpage.