Midweek - 13/05/2009

Libby Purves is joined by Nigel Taylor, Hala Jaber, Allegra Huston and Peter Baxter. Nigel Taylor is the curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He joined Kew as a horticultural taxonomist in 1977 and became curator in 1995. He is fascinated by its history and is a keen tour guide in the gardens, which celebrates its 250th anniversary this year. Hala Jaber is a British-Lebanese journalist who has been Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times in London since 2004. While reporting on the Iraq war she was asked to find an orphan to front a fundraising campaign by the paper. In her book The Flying Carpet to Baghdad she tells how her search led her to two orphaned sisters - the only survivors of a missile strike that killed their parents and five siblings - and how she set out to save them. The Flying Carpet to Baghdad is published by MacMillan. In her new book, Love Child, Allegra Huston tells of her discovery that she was not the daughter of film director John Huston, but in fact the daughter of British Lord, John Julius Norwich. She led a peripatetic and insecure childhood, variously looked after by nannies, relatives, and her sister Anjelica. Peter Baxter was the producer of BBC Radio 4's Test Match Special for 34 years until his retirement in 2007. In his behind-the-scenes memoirs, Inside the Box: My Life with Test Match Special, he gives an insight into the friendships, rivalries, humour and events over the last three decades. Inside the Box is published by Quiller Publishing.