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A new production of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, directed by Fiona Shaw, is making its Glyndebourne Festival debut, having premiered in the 2013 Glyndebourne Tour. The opera has often been described as Britten’s ‘problem piece,’ and this production is the first at Glyndebourne since Britten’s chamber opera had its premiere there in 1946. Jenni speaks to the award winning actress and theatre director Fiona Shaw -  known for roles including Electra, Hedda Gabler, Medea and Richard II - about what attracted her to this opera and how she interpreted it for modern day audiences.

Bridget Christie is an award winning comedian who is taking her new show to the Edinburgh festival this year. Fresh from writing A Book For Her, Bridget joins Jenni to talk comedy, feminism, and how it’s possible to talk about the biggest issues facing women today with a sense of humour.

A Book For Her by Bridget Christie is published by Century

Bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Deborah Moggach shows us that you’re never too old to get into trouble, or fall in love, in her new book ‘Something to Hide’. Taking the reader across the globe from London, to Texas, to West Africa and China she illustrates how we all keep secrets from our loved ones – for better or worse. She talks to Jenni about her writing career and finding love later on in life.  

In February of this year, Bonya Ahmed and her husband Avijit Roy went to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka to attend a book fair. They are both of Bangladeshi origin, although they’d moved to the States and Roy was well known as a humanist blogger. Both had been born into Muslim families, but had made their atheism public. As they left the book fair they were attacked by a group of what the police described as religious extremists with machetes. Avijit was killed and Bonya seriously injured. She’s in London at the invitation of the British Humanist Association to give their annual Voltaire Lecture this evening.