Fresh from winning the TS Eliot prize for poetry, Sinéad Morrissey joins us in the studio to read from her collection, Parallax. One of its poems recounts going into labour with her first child – so why is the actor David Niven getting in on the action?
We also discuss literary heroines with Samantha Ellis, whose new memoir investigates her obsession with some of fiction's most celebrated characters. She explains how she learned to love her inner Jane Eyre, and why Anne of Green Gables turned out to be a terrible disappointment.
Reading list
Parallax by Sinead Morrissey (Carcanet)
How to be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis (Chatto & Windus)