Open Book - 10/01/2010

Mariella Frostrup talks to the novelist and biographer Edmund White about two new books: his collection of short fiction, Chaos, and City Boy, a memoir of his life in New York in the 1960s and 70s. He talks about his attitude to mortality, and remembers coming of age as a gay writer at the time of the Stonewall riots. As last year's reference books are superseded by the 2010 editions, Open Book talks to the author of Schott's Almanac 2010, Ben Schott, the writer Kevin Jackson and the editor of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Camilla Rockwood, who reveal why they enjoy curling up with a reference book. And in this week's Reading Clinic, Michael Carlson chooses some titles for an Open Book listener who's in search of 1920s gangster fiction.