Having won nine BAFTAs for Best Entertainment Performance, and Best Entertainment Programme, and the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards in 2017, Graham Norton is one of the UK's most treasured comedians and presenters. He presents The Graham Norton Show on BBC1, a show on Virgin Radio every Saturday and Sunday, and is a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

Graham is the author of three novels; the most recent, Home Stretch became an instant bestseller when published in hardback in 2020 in the UK and Ireland and earned Norton dazzling reviews as well as winning the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction. It spent 15 weeks at the top of the Irish Bestseller Chart. Graham’s previous two novels, Holding and A Keeper, were also instant bestsellers both in the UK and Ireland. Holding won the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction while A Keeper was shortlisted for the Specsavers Popular Fiction Award, and the Irish Book Award in the Popular Fiction category.

Home Stretch

Graham Norton

Episode 1: Denise Mina

Denise Mina is the author of the Garnethill trilogy, the Paddy Meehan series and the Alex Morrow series. Her prolific crime writing has earned her a place in the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame, and her latest book The Less Dead was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Novel Award. She is also the winner of the 2017 McIllvanney Prize for Scottish crime novel of the year, the John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel, and has twice received the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Her previous novel, Conviction, was selected as Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick for December 2019.

The Less Dead

Denise Mina

Episode 2: Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is the author of the award-winning novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time alongside three collections of essays Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations, and a short-story collection, Grand Union. She lives in London.

Intimations

Zadie Smith

Episode 3: Andrew O’Hagan

Andrew O'Hagan was born in Glasgow. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and he won the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mayflies

Andrew O'Hagan

Episode 4: Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied politics and philosophy at Oxford University before moving to New York in the mid-90s. His first novel Dead I Well May Be (loosely based on his experiences as an illegal immigrant in the US) was published in 2003. In 2012 after moving to Australia with his wife and children he began publication of the critically acclaimed Sean Duffy series. In 2019 after giving up writing Adrian had a global hit with his standalone novel The Chain.

Adrian's books have won the Edgar Award, the Ned Kelly Award (three times), The Anthony Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

The Cold, Cold Ground

Adrian McKinty

Episode 4: Ben Aaronovitch

Before becoming a bestselling author, Ben Aaronovitch was a screenwriter for Doctor Who and a bookseller at Waterstones. He now writes full time, and every book in his Rivers of London series has been a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. He is published in 14 languages and has sold more than two million copies around the world.

Ben is also a trustee on the board of Cityread London and is a long-time supporter of Nigeria's premiere arts and cultural festival, The Aké Festival. He still lives in London, the city he likes to refer to as 'the capital of the world'.

Rivers of London

Ben Aaronovitch

Episode 5: Max Porter

Max Porter is the author of The Death of Francis Bacon, praised as ‘a miniature masterpiece’, by the Daily Mail. His Sunday Times bestseller Lanny was long-listed for the 2019 Booker Prize and the 2019 Wainwright Prize, shortlisted for the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize and shortlisted for both Waterstones and Foyles Book of the Year 2019.

His first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers also won numerous prizes while the Complicité and Wayward’s production ,directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy, was performed in Dublin, London and New York.

Max lives in Bath with his family.

Lanny

Max Porter

Episode 6: Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is the bestselling author and creator of books, graphic novels, short stories, film and television for all ages, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, Coraline, The Graveyard Book and the Sandman comic series. His fiction has received Newbery, Carnegie, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. He was the writer and showrunner for the mini-series adaptation of Good Omens, based on the book he co-authored with Sir Terry Pratchett. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

The Sandman

Neil Gaiman

Episode 7: Edna O’Brien

Edna O’Brien is a bestselling novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer. She has written more than twenty works of fiction and is the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O’Connor Prize and the PEN/Nabokov Award For Achievement in International Literature. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she has lived in London for many years.

Girl

Edna O'Brien

Episode 8: Sarah Waters

Welsh author Sarah Waters' novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch have all attracted prizes: she won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Fingersmith and The Night Watch were both shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes, and Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith have all been adapted for television. Her recent book The Little Stranger was a bestselling hardback and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters

Episode 8: Marian Keyes

Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man and more, including her latest Number One bestseller, Grown Ups. She has also published two collections of journalism, Making it up as I Go Along and Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition.

Grown Ups

Marian Keyes

Episode 8: Richard Osman

Richard Osman is an author, producer and television presenter. The Thursday Murder Club is his first novel. He is well known for TV shows including Pointless and Richard Osman’s House of Games. As the creative director of Endemol UK, Richard has worked as an executive producer on numerous shows including Deal Or No Deal and 8 Out of 10 Cats. He is also a regular on panel and game shows such as Have I Got News For You, Would I Lie To You and Taskmaster.

The Thursday Murder Club

Richard Osman

Episode 9: Albert French

American author Albert French was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1943. After a six-year career in the military which included serving in Vietnam, Albert trained himself as a photographer and worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette before publishing the Pittsburgh Preview for more than a decade. He later turned to writing, drawing on Black American experiences of the rural South, releasing Billy, his first novel in 1995.

Episode 10: Elif Batuman

Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010 and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Idiot

Elif Batuman

Episode 1: Maxine Peake

RADA trained Maxine Peake has enjoyed a prolific career on stage and screen. First coming to our attention in Dinnerladies, her YV work includes Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, Shameless and Funny Cow for which she was nominated as Best Actress at the British Independent Film Awards. She has starred in BBC dramas including Silk, The Hollow Crown and The Village, for which she was nominated as Best Leading Actress at the BAFTA TV Awards.

Her theatre work includes the iconic role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Sarah Frankcom, Happy Days, The Skriker and Hamlet at the Royal Exchange where Maxine is an Artist in Residence. Notably, Maxine portrayed Myra Hindley in See No Evil. Recently Maxine starred in Julia Leigh’s one-woman-play of her memoir, Avalanche: A Love Story at the Barbican. Her critically acclaimed writing includes plays Queens Of The Coal Age and Beryl.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

Episode 2: Juliet Stevenson

Juliet Stevenson trained at RADA and has been nominated for many Olivier and BAFTA awards. Juliet’s stage work includes The Doctor for which she has been nominated for an Olivier Award while her television work includes shows such as Riviera, Atlantis and One of Us. Her film work includes her role in Truly, Madly, Deeply as well as Red Mercury, , and much more.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Episode 3: Stephen Mangan

Stephen is a Cambridge University and RADA graduate. In 2008 he played the title role in The Norman Conquests at The Old Vic and then on Broadway. He was nominated for a Tony Award while the play won Best Revival. Other theatre credits include Jeeves and Wooster (Duke of York’s Theatre), Hayfever (Savoy Theatre) and The Birthday Party (Harold Pinter Theatre).

On TV, Stephen played the lead role of Sean Lincoln in the Emmy, BAFTA and Golden Globe-nominated comedy series Episodes. He also has a regular role in BBC1’s drama The Split, Sky One comedy Bliss and the Channel 4 comedy Hang Ups which he also co-wrote. Stephen’s film credits include Billy Elliot, Birthday Girl and Rush.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4

Sue Townsend

Episode 4: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is an award-winning film, television, theatre and voice actor. His film and TV work includes Mary Poppins Returns, Dr. Strange and The Split. On stage he has played leads at the National, Royal Court, Young Vic, and Royal Exchange theatres and recently played Laertes opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet, at the Barbican Theatre. In the original production of Tina: The Tina Turner the Musical Kobna played Ike Turner, for which he won the Laurence Olivier award for Best Actor in a Musical. He has voiced all of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London audiobook series and many BBC and independent radio plays.

Kobna is a trustee of the Young Vic Theatre, an associate director of the National Theatre, on the Creative Council of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a Patron of Inc Arts, and on the advisory of Guildford School of acting. In 2020 he was awarded an MBE for services to drama.

Rivers of London

Ben Aaronovitch

Episode 5: Kerry Fox

Originally from New Zealand, award-winning Kerry can be seen in Mercedes Grower’s dark anti-rom-com Brakes and appeared with Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters in Channel 4’s National Treasure. Kerry also worked alongside Kate Winslet in Toni Collette’s The Dressmaker and starred in critically acclaimed Patrick's Day.

She is also an accomplished theatre actress having appeared on stage throughout Australia and London, most recently stepping onto the West End stage for the role of Big Moma in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof alongside Colm Meaney and Sienna Miller.

Elizabeth Costello

J. M. Coetzee

Episode 6: Adjoa Andoh

Adjoa won global acclaim as Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, a role that saw her nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress at the NAACP Image Awards. You may have seen her as Dr Isaccs in thriller Fractured, or as tough cop DI Nina Rosen in Silent Witness. Adjoa is renowned for starring roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The National Theatre, and the iconic Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, where in 2019 she conceived, co-directed, and played Richard II in the UK's first all-women-of-colour production. She made her Hollywood debut in 2009 starring alongside Morgan Freeman in Invictus. She has been a BBC radio actor for over 30 years and is an award-winning narrator of more than 150 audiobooks. Adjoa is an Associate Artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Senior Associate Artist at The Bush Theatre and a Fairtrade Ambassador.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Alexander McCall Smith

Episode 7: Matt Lucas

Matt Lucas is an actor, comedian, writer and presenter of The Great British Bake Of. He is perhaps best known for the multi BAFTA award-winning Little Britain. Matt’s film credits include Alice in Wonderland, Bridesmaids and Paddington and TV credits include Shooting Stars, Doctor Who, The Wind in the Willows and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His memoir, Little Me, was published in 2017. During lockdown, Matt’s Baked Potato song became a viral sensation, raising over £1 million for FeedNHS and launching a series of bestselling children’s books including Thank you, Baked Potato and Merry Christmas Baked Potato.

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

Episode 9: Adam Buxton

Adam Buxton is a British comedian, podcaster, actor and director who has appeared in films such as Hot Fuzz, Stardust and Son Of Rambow as well as a variety of UK TV shows. He is the host of The Adam Buxton Podcast, in which celebrity interviews are bookended with walks in the Norfolk countryside where he lives with his wife, three children and dog. Since 2007 he has hosted BUG, a regular live show that combines music videos and original comedy and now a TV series. With lifelong friend and director Joe Cornish Adam he also is one half of TV, radio and podcast duo Adam & Joe. In 2020 Adam released his first book, Ramble Book.

Ramble Book

Adam Buxton

Episode 10: Joanne Froggatt

Joanne Froggatt is a Golden Globe and BIFA-award winner and three times Emmy nominee. Joanne is also much-loved for her performance as lady’s maid Anna Bates in Downton Abbey and has also won acclaim for her ‘Meryl-Streep level performance’ in TV drama Liar. Joanne won a British Independent Film Award for her film debut in In Our Name. Her film credits include Crooked Somebody, Mary Shelley and One Last Thing as well as Sony Picture's adaptation of the international bestseller A Street Cat Named Bob and the adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Filth.

Silent Child

Sarah A. Denzil