Christopher Koch, Christmas Fiction Picks, and Classics for Children

Available for over a year

Christopher Koch The Australian novelist is best known in this country for The Year of Living Dangerously, which was made into a major Hollywood film. His latest novel is set in the Cold War, and is a spy drama following the lives of childhood friends who are obsessed with secrecy. Christopher Koch tells Mariella Frostrup how a mysterious friend provoked his interest in the subject, and why the island of Tasmania holds such fascination for writers. Christmas Fiction Picks Mariella is joined by the novelists Kate Mosse and Toby Litt to recommend some of the year's best fiction, from crime to verse novels, suitable as Christmas presents or just holiday reading. Classics for Children As a new series of simplified Dickens novels is published, Open Book investigates the history of retelling great literature for children. The writer Gill Tavner and illustrator Marcia Williams talk about their different approaches to adapting Dickens, and Kim Reynolds, Professor of Children's Literature at Newcastle University, talks about the seventeenth-century origins of the practice.