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Octavia Bright explores Ancient Greece through the writing of the English author Mary Renault.

Born in 1905, Renault worked as a nurse before she began writing romantic fiction, but made her name with historical novels like The Charioteer, The Bull From the Sea, and the Alexander trilogy. The world she created was a cultural golden age and turned myths ridden with drama, cruelty, sex, and death into compelling human stories,
Octavia is joined by classicist Bettany Hughes, who has written the introduction for the latest edition of The King Must Die, writer Kamila Shamsie, whose retelling of Antigone, the novel Home Fire, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018, and the academic and novelist Okechukwu Nzelu to discuss the qualities and enduring appeal of her writing.

Book List – Sunday 21 August and Thursday 25 August

The King Must Die by Mary Renault
The Bull From the Sea by Mary Renault
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
Funeral Games by Mary Renault
Purposes of Love by Mary Renault
Kind Are Her Answers by Mary Renault
The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault
Return to Night by Mary Renault
North Face by Mary Renault
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
Lion in the Gateway by Mary Renault
The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault
The Praise Singer by Mary Renault