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6 November 2023

Stories help us to understand our world. Between the Covers is back for a brand-new series and Anita Rani, Jo Brand, Richard Armitage and Rob Delaney bring an eclectic set of recommendations to episode one: a Salena Godden book of protest-inspired poems; a classic social novel by Elizabeth Gaskell; Irish author Joseph O'Connor’s thriller based on real events in Nazi-occupied Rome; and a collection from master short story writer Alice Munro.

Each week on Between the Covers, host Sara Cox invites her guests to share their favourite titles. In the first episode of the new series, Anita Rani, Jo Brand, Richard Armitage and Rob Delaney reveal their reading recommendations.

Episode one - Favourite books from our guests

The cover says: Pessimism is for Lightweights began life as thirteen pieces of courage and resistance from the pen of the one and only Salena Godden. These are poems written for the women's march, poems that salute peaceful protest, poems on sexism and racism, class discrimination, poverty and homelessness, immigration and identity. This collected edition shows Godden at her inimitable best.

Anita says: Salena Godden is mighty. I came across her because I went to see her perform live at this event of spoken word and poetry. It was electric. When you study English Literature you're given this highfalutin poetry that you really have to get into - that once you understand, you can really appreciate. But actually getting to that point takes a while. This is instant. This is words that just hit you in the gut.

The title Pessimism is for Lightweights comes from an email the writer received whilst Trump was in power in America. It was a phrase that really struck her because at the time, she says, all these writers and thinkers she really respected were giving up and saying everything’s doom and gloom. And she actually thought, ‘well, that's a cop out, actually, and there is more courage in being optimistic and we need people to fight the good fight for everybody’.

I meet a lot of people who say ‘how can I get into reading?’ And this is it, just such powerful words. There’s one poem in there about an experience Godden had when she went to the pub - a racist experience. A woman says to her ‘Get back on the boat’. She puts her rum down, walks up to the racist woman and hugs her and cries on her shoulder. It’s incredible. Read it!

The cover says: September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. He gathers a team to set up an Escape Line. But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical.

Jo says: It’s a novel based on a true story. It’s about an Irish priest in the Vatican during the Second World War, who set up escape routes for prisoners of the Nazis because there’s a specific camp just outside Rome. And he calls his group The Choir and they meet under the auspices of being a choir. And there are a lot of very disparate characters – there’s a countess, and there's also a guy that runs a newspaper stand, and they all have a place.

And, being an Irish writer, the language is really, really special. A bit Joyce-ian but not full-on, full-blown Joyce that makes you go ‘Argh, give me a drink!’. Right up until the end, it is frightening and some of it is hard to read, but it's got wonderful characters and it’s very sensitive... and it's very funny as well.

The cover says: When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction.

Richard says: It was a bit of a vanity choice. I played him [mill-owner John Thornton] and it was a breakout role for me. I remember where I was when I pulled the book off the shelf and I was about to get into the casting process.

There was something about the joining of the South to the North. My mum was called Margaret and my father was called John. She was from the south. He was from the north. They met in the middle.

I just loved the idea of two very stoic people with thick armour. He's an industrial entrepreneur that is immovable, and she has very fixed views. She's a country girl from a very religious background and they meet and fall in love. They both have to drop their armour, compromise, and find a way to join their strong opinions about life.

I think it's not that far away from where the north and south is right now. And it's a book that will always be really close to my heart.

The cover says: The matchless Munro makes art out of everyday lives in this exquisite short story collection. Here are men and women of wildly different times and circumstances, their lives made vividly palpable by the nuance and empathy of Munro's writing. Runaway is about the power and betrayals of love, about lost children, lost chances. There is pain and desolation beneath the surface, like a needle in the heart, which makes these stories more powerful and compelling than anything she has written before.

Rob says: I'm an insane Alice Munro proselytiser. I found her during the pandemic. I mean, I didn't find her - she's won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but I first read her then. And it just changed everything for me. I have read a lot of books but this is just a marker in my book-reading life-path where there's before Alice Munro, and after.

She's my favourite writer ever. It’s such simple, unadorned language. She tells fascinating, incredible stories so clearly and so well. She’s deceptively complex in the way she does time and stuff. Just the master. And now when I write something, I'll do an Alice Munro pass to be like, ‘What would Alice think?’

And it's short stories so you could read one in a day, or half a day, and you've got it in you - and then you have the disease. So go for it!