Two hundred Bookclubs, and yet it feels like only yesterday that we began. The reason, I think, is that every programme feels different. Each author is an original voice, and each group of readers has a different character. You never know quite what to expect.
I’ve been privileged to chair all these programmes, and I’ve been conscious through the years that the idea of the programme – which came from the first producer, Olivia Seligman, in 1998 – was truly in tune with our times. Think of the growth in local book groups over the last few years, and the vitality of literary festivals which have become public forums for books and ideas, where writers and their readers come together. Books so often remind us about what matters in our lives. The idea was beautifully simple: one author, about two dozen readers (not an audience that might give the programme too much formality) and one book, always available in paperback and often one that had been around for many years. We were deliberately avoiding the publicity merry-go-round for new releases.
And how well it worked from the start. Sebastian Faulks kicked us off with Birdsong and within a year the authors had included John le Carré, William Boyd and Joseph Heller. Each year has produced a mix of well-loved classics (Muriel Spark on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Doris Lessing on The Grass is Singing) with bestsellers from our own time. JK Rowling talked about Harry Potter before everyone had heard of him, Elmore Leonard brought us into the world of the gritty American street thriller and we’ve delved into nearly every field of fiction. Douglas Adams on science fiction, PD James, Colin Dexter, Ian Rankin and Ruth Rendell on crime, and writers from every continent – John Irving and Jonathan Franzen among the many Americans, Tom Keneally and Tim Winton from Australia, Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie from India, and many others.
There have been memorable scenes. Clive James talking for the first time about his troubled relationship with his mother, Jan Morris revealing that she’d just contracted a civil partnership with the woman who had been her wife before she had her sex change, Hunter Davies talking about The Beatles in the Cavern in Liverpool, the poet Wendy Cope reading aloud at a recording on the afternoon of 9/11 as the news came in from New York.
From the start, listeners’ enthusiasm was obvious. I was struck by the number of people who’d stop me in the street and confess that they were part of a book group, imparting the news as if they were confessing hip of a secret society. And they spoke ionately about the arguments they’d have in front of the fire on Thursday evenings about their chosen book (or their choice of wine for the evening). That’s why our audience grew so quickly, and why it is so loyal. Through the website, we’re inundated with requests from readers who want to come to a recording. And when they do, I think they almost always enjoy themselves.
We have fun at these recordings. I can only think of two at which an author seemed to take offence at a question (in each case without good reason, in my view) and again and again I’m reminded how refreshing it is for authors to be faced by readers who’ve been reading carefully and who want to get to the heart of the matter.
That’s why the programme has been running monthly without a break for sixteen years. It works.
I hope you enjoy the 200th edition, on Master and Commander, the first of the great historical series by Patrick O’Brian (who died in 2000), with the historical novelist Allan Mallinson as our guide.
All of our 200 programmes are available on the Bookclub website to , our archive has become a magnificent resource.
And next year we can promise you another heady mix of authors, books and readers – from Wilbur Smith to Judith Kerr, AM Homes to Adam Foulds and more. Like a great story, Bookclub rolls on.
Jim Naughtie
Jim Naughtie presents Bookclub on BBC Radio 4
