When Thomas Keneally discovered a cache of journals from Australian nurses who looked after the wounded of the first world war, he realised he had found a novel in waiting. He tells us about the stories behind The Daughters of Mars, and explains why, years after winning the Booker prize with Schindler's Ark, he keeps being drawn back to the subject of war.
Then we look at how people with mental problems were treated in Victorian England. Historian Sarah Wise introduces some of the characters who feature in her book, and tells us why their stories must be heard today.
Finally, we turn to Brooke Magnanti, who found notoriety when she outed herself as the call-girl diarist Belle de Jour in 2009. But it wasn't her blogging which earned her a place on the judging panel for the Wellcome prize for medicine in literature, it was a background which includes a PhD in pathology. She talks us through the shortlist for the prize, and muses about why medical stories are so popular today in both fiction and non-fiction.
Reading list
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (Sceptre)
Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise (Bodley Head)
Wellcome prize shortlist
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by John Coates (Fourth Estate)
The Train in the Night by Nick Coleman (Jonathan Cape)
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif (Jonathan Cape)
Perfect People by Peter James (Macmillan)
Merivel by Rose Tremain (Chatto and Windus)
Circulation by Thomas Wright (Chatto and Windus)
