The Author Archive Podcast

The disgraced royal Andrew Mounbatten Windsor is headline news again.  He invited Jeffrey Epstein to be a guest at Balmoral Castle. What happened while he and his girl friend Ghislaine Maxwell were staying there is now being investigated by the police. When 'Entitled ' was published last year it caused quite a stir, changed the lives of the Duke and Duchess of York for ever .... and became a number one bestseller. The new paperback of Entitled contains a whole chapter of new information and chronicles what has happened in a tumultuous year. Andrew Lownie predicts that there is more information to come. The story continues ...... A gripping conversation.  

TV is full of police dramas, but one of the best was Inspector Morse, invented by Colin Dexter. Colin Dexter was a splendid writer. His creation  Morse is superb on the page and just as gripping on television. I used to meet Colin in the pub on Banbury Road in Oxford, The Dew Drop. He was great company and almost completely unaware of his success and star quality. I recorded this conversation in his house after the publication of The Remorseful Day. He was relaxed and very happy to look back at his life in education and crime writing.

Recently there has been a surge of on line interest in the  anarchic radio comedy The Goon Show. On YouTube there is splendid documentary simply called 'Spike'. Spike was Terence Alan Milligan. His parents were Irish but he was born in India. He was 83 when he died in 2002. In this episode Spike talks to David Freeman about his life in comedy, The Goons, and the mental health problems that dogged his life after he was blown up by a wartime bomb.

The war that is spreading across the Middle East has a religious dimension. American aggression is supported by evangelical Christians, Iran is an Islamic state and Israel has its own Jewish deity. Donald Trump tells his followers that he was chosen by god.  None of the gods seem to be seekers for peace. All seek vengeance and revenge.  In early 2025 a million Hindus tried to bathe in a river at the same time. Why would anyone think this would be a good idea. Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. From his academic standpoint he charts the evolution of religion in all its many guises and forms. Does the professor's analysis explain the enduring but shrinking appeal of non logical beliefs?

Before Patrick Nally created and sold sponsorship packages for FIFA and the Olympic Games, sport had no money. Patrick was in at the beginning creating the money monster that sport has become. He was even responsible for giving the world Sepp Blatter. Was that a good idea? Should Gianni Infantino have a million pound plus salary? In the early days were payments paid in brown envelopes in car parks? It's a jaw dropping story!