Library Podcast

Welcome to dlr Libraries Podcast page, a new service from DLR Libraries. If you missed some of our events over the past few months you can now get a chance to hear them as they happened thanks to our podcasting page.

Here you can browse the complete collection of podcasts in the series. Each one may be played on the page, or downloaded and saved. Click here to listen via our dlr soundcloud page.

Our Podcast

Margaret Drabble in conversation with Niall MacMonagle
21 December 2016

Dame Margaret Drabble is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, and most recently, the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Her glittering new novel, The Dark Flood Rises, holds our hand as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The question of what constitutes a good death and how we understand it if we have lived well preoccupy this dark and enthralling novel. With characteristic wit and caustic prose, The Dark Flood Rises dazzles, entertains and poses the big existential questions in equal measure.

Recorded at the Pavilion Theatre on Wednesday 23 November 2016

Listen back here: https://soundcloud.com/dlr-soundcloud/margaret-drabble-mp3

Robert Harris in conversation with Hugh Linehan
24 November 2016

Pavilion Theatre, Tue 4 Oct 2016.

Described as 'the UK’s supreme exponent of the literary thriller', Robert Harris is the author of ten bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy and historical and political thrillers such as Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, and An Officer and A Spy.

His latest novel, set in Papal Rome, carries all the hallmarks of Harris’s exhilarating storytelling style. In Conclave, the Pope has died and behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and twenty Cardinals from all over the globe prepare to cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.

Listen back here: https://soundcloud.com/dlr-soundcloud/robert-harris

Margaret Atwood in conversation with Declan Hughes
24 November 2016

Margaret Atwood has consistently named Shakespeare as one of the most important influences on her work. ‘The Tempest is, in some ways, an early multi-media musical,’ she says. ‘If Shakespeare were working today he’d be using every special effect technology now makes available. But The Tempest is especially intriguing because of the many questions it leaves unanswered. What a strenuous pleasure it has been to wrestle with it!’

Published as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare’s modern interpretations series, Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, revenge and second chances.  Atwood leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.   

Recorded at the Pavilion Theatre, Sunday 9th October 2016

Listen back at:https://soundcloud.com/dlr-soundcloud/margaret-atwood

01 November 2016

Sebastian Barry in conversation with Joseph O'Connor

Sebastian Barry returns with a wonderful new novel set in mid-19th Century America. Having signed up for the US army in the 1850s, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, go on to fight in the Indian wars and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they both see.

Moving from the plains of the West to Tennessee, Days Without End is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and a fresh look at some of the most fateful years in America's past, this is a novel never to be forgotten.

Recorded at the Pavilion Theatre on the 1st November 2016

Listen back here: https://soundcloud.com/dlr-soundcloud/sebastian-barry-in-conversation-with-joseph-oconnor

Patrick Deeley in conversation with Selina Guinness
28 September 2016

Patrick Deeley has published six highly acclaimed collections of poems. His evocative, lyrical memoir of grief, love and renewal, The Hurley Maker’s Son, has become a major bestseller. Deeley's train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced.

In a style reminiscent of John McGahern’s Memoir, Deeley’s beautifully paced prose captures the rhythms, struggles and rough edges of a rural life that was already dying even as he grew. This is an enchanting, beautifully written account of family, love, loss, and the unstoppable march of time

This podcast was recorded in dlr LexIcon Studio, 22nd September 2016

Listen here; https://soundcloud.com/dlr-soundcloud/patrick-deeleymp3