Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera. Jarman's Garden

Authors Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera are Fellows of the Royal Literature Society who signed the Register on the same day. In the first of a series of conversations with writers who would have been sharing a stage at a literary festival, they talk to Shahidha Bari. Plus a postcard from 2020 New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the saving of Derek Jarman’s house and garden - also the subject of Sunday’s Words and Music which you can find on BBC Sounds and here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jdz0

The Norfolk and Norwich Festival which would have featured the meeting of Romesh and Anne has more author interviews on its website https://nnfestival.org.uk/ Romesh Gunesekera's latest book is Suncatcher. You can hear him discussing it in more detail with William Dalrymple and Susheila Nasta in an episode of Free Thinking called The Shadow of Empire and Colonialism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0f7

Anne Fine's books include Goggle Eyes, The Granny Project, The Jamie Angus Stories, The Tulip Touch, Battle of Wills and her latest Blood Family. You can hear her discussing family life along with Tobias Jones, Tom Shakespeare and Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley in a Free Thinking Festival discussion called The Family is Dead, Long Live the Family https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pswsk

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a series of Essays and postcards from them in playlists on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Producer: Robyn Read