Open Book - 29/11/2009

Mariella talks to Jeanette Winterson, best known for novels including Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and Lighthousekeeping, about a pair of books she has written for children. The Battle of the Sun is the sequel to the bestselling Tanglewreck. She explains her fascination with Elizabethan London and why a childhood spent almost without books turned her into a storyteller. Two other top children's authors, Meg Rosoff and Philip Ardagh, recommend their favourite titles of 2009, from picture books to novels for young adults. Mariella also talks to the distinguished Shakespeare scholar Sir Frank Kermode. His new book, published in the week of his 90th birthday, returns to one of his first loves, the novels of EM Forster. He explains his admiration for - and reservations about - Forster's work.