Monday 6 September 2010

Bookhugger column #6: Novelists talking on telly

My Bookhugger column last month (last week, frankly) was inspired by the wonderful BBC4 archive series In Their Own Words, culled from the Corporation's back-catalogue of interviews with major British 20th-century novelists. Television does indeed compel us to look at books, so long as the programme-making and writing in question have sufficient spark. It took a while for TV to 'do' book-chat without too many excruciating pauses, but P.G.Wodehouse, here c. mid-1950s, biting amiably but hard on the end of every query, shows himself to be ahead of his time, whatever the culture once thought.

No comments: