Open Book - 08/11/2009

Mariella Frostrup announces the hotly-anticipated result of Neglected Classics, Open Book's quest for literature's most unfairly overlooked masterpiece - and the winner joins her to celebrate victory. John Mullan and Jenny Hartley also survey the hundreds of other books mentioned by listeners in response to the vote. Plus, Mariella talks to the Australian novelist David Malouf, whose novel Ransom is based on an incident from the Trojan War. He explains how a story he first heard aged nine in wartime Canberra made a lifelong impression on him, and why he thinks Australia's greatest writer is Shakespeare. And the gothic fiction expert Robert Mighall discusses the Terrific Register, a collection of exciting, odd and sometimes gory stories which was the favourite reading material of the young Charles Dickens.