The Write Stuff: Waugh Episode

BBC Radio 4 will later this week rebroadcast a 2000 episode of the long-running literary panel series The Write Stuff. The program will be devoted to the life and works of Evelyn Waugh. As described on its Wikipedia page:

Each week, the programme has an “Author of the Week” […] Each programme begins with the panellists reading favourite extracts from the author’s writing, and the first round is a series of questions about the author’s life and works. The programme normally ends with panellists having to write a pastiche (or parody; the programme uses the terms interchangeably) based on that week’s author of the week. Walton [the presenter] describes these as ‘the most popular bit of the programme’ Walton sets a topic that would be so out of style of the author in question that a pastiche would be humorous. For example, when Robert Burns was the author of the week, contestants were asked to write a poem, in the style of Burns, celebrating something typically English; when Philip Roth was the author of the week, contestants were asked how he might have written a children’s story. Faulks has published a collection of his parodies as a book, Pistache.

The Waugh episode was originally broadcast on 4 June 2000 in Series 3, episode 6. In this episode, the presenter, James Walton and regular team captains, novelist Sebastian Faulks and journalist John Walsh, were joined as panelists by actress Imogen Stubbs and novelist Louise Doughty. The episode will be broadcast this Thursday (31 October 2019) at o900 on BBC Radio 4 Extra. It will be available worldwide on the internet thereafter.

Over the years, other writers of Waugh’s generation who were discussed in the series included Nancy Mitford, Graham Greene, John Betjeman, Ian Fleming and P G Wodehouse. The episode relating to Kingsley Amis, which was also broadcast in 2000, is currently available on the internet. A complete list of episodes, including details such as subjects and panel members, is available on Wikipedia.

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