Simon Mayo's Books of the Year

Latest Episodes:

Q&A with Robert Harris (Act of Oblivion, Fatherland, Enigma) Sep 13, 2022

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The last book you really, really enjoyed Which idea in a book do you wish you’d come up? Do you work best with deadlines? Short Chapters v Long Chapters. Discuss! Favourite TV or film adaptation of a book? How many books do you read a month? If you could go back to university, what would you study? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Harris: Act of Oblivion Sep 07, 2022

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1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive. Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other. It is the thrilling new novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland, Enigma, V2) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q&A with Simon Mayo: Tick Tock Aug 24, 2022

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One of the greatest authors of his generation answers questions about his favourite books and authors - including Lee Child, Michael Connelly, JK Rowling and Philip Pullman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Mayo gets interviewed by broadcasting legend Tom Bradby Aug 17, 2022

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Best selling author, multi award winning broadcaster and lifelong Torchy fan SIMON MAYO is interviewed by ITN's Tom Bradby about his new thriller Tick Tock. It starts quietly enough. A tick-tick-ticking you can hear in your ear. Tinnitus, you think. It will pass. But it doesn't. It gets worse - and then you pass it on. Before you know it, it spreads. Elsewhere across the globe, it emerges: small outbreaks at first, but then suddenly it's a plague - and only days later it is killing people. In an increasingly affected north London school, teacher Kit Chaplin is struggling to understand what he is witnessing. Even Lilly Slater, his partner and an eminent vaccinologist, can't work out what's happening. As it spreads, little by little, they are inexorably drawn into the mystery behind the illness. And what they discover will change the world as they know it... Exciting and urgently contemporary, this piercingly insightful novel tells the story of a global catastrophe through the eyes of the three people at the heart of the storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Freedland: The Escape Artist Jul 28, 2022

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Simon and Matt chat to Jonathan Freedland about his new book The Escape Artist. In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Vrba's mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust. In the death factory of Auschwitz, Vrba had become an eyewitness to almost every chilling stage of the Nazis' process of industrialised murder. The more he saw, the more determined he became to warn the Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. A brilliant student of science and mathematics, he committed each detail to memory, risking everything to collect the first data of the Final Solution. After his escape, that information would form a priceless thirty-two-page report that would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope and eventually save over 200,000 lives. But the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, he kept running - from his past, from his home country, from his adopted country, even from his own name. Few knew of the truly extraordinary deed he had done. Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba's heroism can be known - and he can take his place alongside those whose stories define history's darkest chapter. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and former foreign correspondent. He was named Columnist of the Year in 2002, Commentator of the Year in 2016 and won an Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2014. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is the author of 11 books, two of them non-fiction, including his first book, the award-winning Bring Home the Revolution. He has written nine thrillers under the name Sam Bourne, including The Righteous Men which was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q&A with Mick Herron (Slow Horses, Bad Actors) May 30, 2022

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Mick Herron chats about some of his favourite books and authors which include Francis Spufford, John Steinbeck, Gorky Park and The Wind In The Willows Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mick Herron (Bad Actors) May 23, 2022

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In 2010, with Slow Horses, Mick Herron began a spy series, entitled Slough House, featuring MI5 agents who have been exiled from the mainstream for various offences. With the follow up Dead Lions, he won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award. It has recently been turned in to a series on Apple TV featuring Gary Oldman. Bad Actors is the latest in the series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q&A with Tom Bradby (Yesterday's Spy) May 16, 2022

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Tom Bradby chats about some of his favourite authors including Len Deighton, Delia Owens, Thomas Harris and Simon Mayo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Bradby: Yesterday's Spy May 12, 2022

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Tom Bradby is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He has written nine previous novels, including top-ten bestselling Secret Service, and its two sequels, Double Agent and Triple Cross. As a broadcaster, he is best known as the current Anchor of ITV's News at Ten. He has been with ITN for thirty years and was successively Ireland Correspondent, Political Correspondent, Asia Correspondent (during which time he was shot and seriously injured whilst covering a riot in Jakarta), Royal Correspondent, UK Editor and Political Editor- a job he held for a decade - before being made the Anchor of News at Ten in 2015 His latest novel is Yesterday's Spy. Set against the backdrop of one of the defining events of the Cold War. Nothing good ever comes from a midnight phone call. For washed-up spy Harry Tower, it is the worst news at the worst possible time. His son, Sean, has gone missing in troubled Iran after writing an exposé about government corruption. Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right. When Harry arrives in Tehran, he finds a city on the cusp of revolution. Foreign powers are jockeying for influence, money and, most importantly, oil. The CIA are conspiring to undermine the government with an impending coup, and there are dark mutterings about opium smuggling. But the reasons for Sean's disappearance may be even more sinister than Harry first suspected. Before long, he is on the run - not only from a faceless enemy, but from his own past. Which will catch up with him first? , Yesterday’s Spy is a story that is rich in intrigue and history and will keep readers guessing until the final pages. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q&A with Claire Powell (At The Table) Apr 20, 2022

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Claire Powell tackles our Q&A about the books she loved as a child, books that cheer her up and her favourite book shops. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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