New Writing North

Gillian Slovo talks about her new novel, An Honourable Man. Set in the Sudan and London of 1884, this historical epic is played out against the shambolic end of the British Empire. Slovo draws on the lives of two real men: heroic army man Charles Gordon, and WT Stead, the father of tabloid journalism, for this moving account of military mayhem and political compromise and foreign adventure doomed to failure. Gillian Slovo is a South African-born novelist and memoirist whose work has explored both the personal and political. Her novel Ice Road was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Event recorded Friday 26 2012 at Durham Book Festival. For more information about the festival, see www.durhambookfestival.com.