In this month's book club podcast, Margaret Drabble talks about how her background in academia led to the "strange mixture of formality and informality" in the voice of The Millstone's narrator, Rosamund - and expresses her view that Rosamund's mix of confidence and uncertainty is actually very common.
She also discusses the pleasures and pitfalls of writing a sometimes-unsympathetic character, the place of literary references in her work, and the degree to which they need to be highlighted, the role that choice plays in her story, and why her novels eschew chapters.
