Woman's Hour - 16/09/2009

Jenni Murray hosts a special edition from the Dublin home of the author Maeve Binchy. The writer of many much-loved pageturners from Light a Penny Candle to Evening Class, Circle of Friends, and Tara Road, Maeve is still topping bestseller lists - most recently with the paperback of Heart and Soul - more than 30 years after her first fiction was published. To mark the publication of her latest collection of short stories, The Return Journey, Jenni hears the writer's warm and witty thoughts on her relationship with her readers, creating believable heroines who don't transform from ugly ducklings into princesses, why she treated her hip operation like a cocktail party and why practising moderation has never been her style. And Maeve even treats Jenni to a ride in her great glass elevator.