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Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams decide which role to play on the toss of a coin in Robert Icke's version of Schiller's Mary Stuart at the Almeida. The director explains why. Just before he died in 2015 the Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass completed his last book. Karen Leeder has been reading the English translation of it. And New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja has been reading a selection of other newly translated fiction. Plus MP Rachel Reeves has written a history of a campaigning MP who played a crucial role in the de-criminalisation of homosexuality, the legalisation of abortion and the abolition of the death penalty and who was also a driving force in the roll-out of comprehensive education. She talks to presenter Anne McElvoy about why the work of Alice Bacon interests her.

Of All That Ends by Günter Grass is out now.
Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon by Rachel Reeves is out now.
Mary Stuart runs at London's Almeida Theatre from December 2nd to January 21st.

Preti Taneja's pick of literature in translation includes:

Istanbul, Istanbul - Burhan Sonmez (Saqi Books)
Eve Out of her Ruins - Ananda Devi (CB Editions)
Trysting - Emanuelle Pagano (And Other Stories)
Panty - Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay (Tilted Axis Press)

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

(Image: Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams / Credit: Miles Aldridge).