The 2024 UK general election is just days away. Speaking to Georgina Godwin is an expert on many aspects of UK government and politics, in particular, the support systems to ministers and prime ministers. Alun Evans CBE, a civil servant for more than three decades, lifts the lid on what’s happening behind the door of 10 Downing Street during important transitions in politics through his new book, ‘The Intimacy of Power: An insight into private office, Whitehall’s most sensitive network’.

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Today’s guest is perhaps the only playwright and novelist to have been an international athlete, teacher of those on death row at San Quentin prison in California and a tree surgeon – and he only began writing in his thirties. He won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwright’s Award for ‘If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep’ at the Royal Court and his play ‘Lampedusa’ has been performed in 40 countries. His debut novel is ‘Three Burials’, a satire on the refugee crisis.

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Taking home this year’s prize is US writer and journalist V V Ganeshananthan for her second novel, ‘Brotherless Night’, which took her almost two decades to complete. Her debut novel, ‘Love Marriage’, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2009. ‘Brotherless Night’ is the story of Sashi, a 16-year-old aspiring doctor, growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the 1980s. The novel vividly and compassionately centres erased and marginalised stories – Tamil women, students, teachers, ordinary civilians – exploring the moral nuances of violence and terrorism against a backdrop of oppression and exile.

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