Author Hilary Mantel will talk about her new Booker Prize-winning historical novel 'Wolf Hall' on Insight Radio today, and our ongoing fascination with 'the soap opera that was Henry VIII's reign'.
She'll also explain why Henry's third wife Jane Seymour wasn't the dumb blonde she seemed.
In a literary coup for the station, Mantel has been interviewed along with writers Sarah Waters, Simon Mawer and Adam Foulds - all short-listed for this year's award - in a special Booker Prize edition of the 'Talking Books' programme (at 2pm and 10pm).
Insight Radio, the Glasgow-based radio station of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), transmits across the UK on SKY 0188, Freesat 777, online, and on 101 FM in the Glasgow area.
For the first time this year, the books short-listed for the Man Booker Prize were immediately available to blind and partially sighted people in braille, large print and audio formats.
Hilary Mantel won critical praise for writing 'a rich, absorbingly readable historical novel' which offers a different slant on the way some readers may henceforth think about Thomas Cromwell, Henry's scheming Lord Chancellor.
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Also featured on the programme, Sarah Waters will chat about 'The Little Stranger', a chilling ghost story by the author of 'Tipping the Velvet' and 'Fingersmith', and recount how strange it was to hear a male narrator reading her work
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Simon Mawer will tell us about the real building on which his novel 'The Glass Room' is based, geographically fixed but undergoing a number of political shifts around its glass walls
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Adam Foulds will talk about 'The Quickening Maze', set in an asylum in 1840 where poet John Clare spent time with a young Alfred Tennyson, and talk about his rise into the literary spotlight.
Hilary and Simon will also talk about writing characters with sight loss. All four authors will tell listeners what they feel they would personally lose the most if they lost their sight.
This year, the Man Booker Prize required publishers to provide an electronic file of each long-listed title to RNIB, so that production of the short-listed books into audio and other accessible formats was possible as soon as the announcement was made. Man Group plc Charitable Trust has paid for the production of the audio versions in previous years and the Booker Prize Foundation has paid for the braille and giant print versions.
Press Release issued: 24 December 2009.