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Hilary Mantel CBE has described her 2009 Man Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall as the "The book I was born to write". And joining the audience at the  Rose Theatre in Kingston recently, there was definitely a feeling that this is her moment. Ms. Mantel enjoyed the court in Kingston and the court was happy to lap up every word. We had asked for an interview for this site but sadly had been turned down by the publishers. Opening the book I had just bought before going into the auditorium, I was enthralled within seconds  and just wish I could cancel the next few days to enjoy the writing.

The Kingston event was billed as "in conversation with Richard Cohen" (visiting professor of Creative Writing and Publishing Studies at Kingston University and editor).  However more than once I wished during the 90 minutes that it had indeed been a conversation. A question was asked and then Ms. Mantel was abandoned to the audience until she came to a full stop. Cue next unrelated question. Yes she of course fascinating however there were moment when I would have like the interviewer to press her for more details.

Nonetheless some elements were gripping. We heard (as many may already know) that Ms. Mantel is a cradle Catholic, that she doesn't consider herself  a historian (academics will no doubt collectively sleep more soundly now), that she wanted to recreate the poisonous atmosphere at the court of King Henry VIII, that the role of the historical fiction writer was to fill in the gaps which, like intricate lace making, paint the entire picture ("The gaps where the facts run out" she claimed,)  that in suffering from migraines all her life she often felt the presence of "an other being alongside", that Ivy Compton-Burnett inspired her.  When an audience member asked her whether she had a tragic view of humanity, after a pause she replied "no, a satirical view". These were indeed enlightening moments. However we could have done with a few more.

The "author meets their audience event" has been established for some time now and the numerous literary festivals highlight  the fact that writers need to be performers as well as artists.  Perhaps this also applies to their interviewers.

Interviewed Assaf Gavron this morning about his novel CrocAttack!

It's a novel which breaks every politically correct rule in the book with plenty of black humour and outrageous irony. A young Israeli (nickname Croc) miraculously avoids being killed in 3 suicide attacks in one week.  A Palestinian youth has to listen to the extreme views of his older brother and come to terms with daily killings and suicides.

For much of the book we listen to the Palestinian Fahmi's voice while in a deep coma. You need to get to the end of the book to find out how and why he didn't quite manage to kill himself. But what is also fascinating is Gavron's take on modern celebrity culture. Croc has become a national celebrity and appears on tasteless television programmes just because he has avoided being killed.

The author is on Radio 4's Midweek programme tomorrow. That's live.

We, however need to edit the interview first. It should be ready soon.

Hope you like it.

• UPDATE 05/03/2010

The interview is now ready and uploaded - do listen and then

Tell us what you think...

Having finished Rose Tremain's new book Trespass nearly a fortnight ago, we are waiting very patiently to hear whether or not we have an interview.

It is very curious and highly readable novel. The theme is the Brits taking over property in SW France. Nothing new there of course but this is written from the perspective not just of the Brits but of the French villagers as well. Parts of it reminded me of Adam Thorpe's excellent The Standing Pool which I loved. Mr. Thorpe was one of the early videos on The Interview Online. The reviews are just beginning to come out and we will let you know as soon as possible whether our wishes have been granted.

What is far more definite is an interview with Assaf Gavron tomorrow 2nd March. I'll confess to being a Gavron ignoramus until Croc Attack! landed on my desk.Film rights are already in devlopment with the team behind "Run, Lola Run".

The subject matter might not instantly be seen as laugh a minute, but Gavron has found plenty of deep black humour in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and suicide bombings. The author is in London this week and is being interviewed by BBC World Service's The Strand and Radio 4's Midweek.

We are in good company!

Whilst we mere mortals enjoy A Midsummer Night's Dream as a fantastic frolic in the woods, those with brains on a more spiritual level will have studied all the references to Shakespeare's monarch. While we see mixed up lovers, a fairy queen falling in love with an ass and intellectually-challenged actors trying to put on a play for the Duke, they see the fairy court as homage to Queen Elizabeth I.

Last night's opening of the play at The Rose Theatre in Kingston saw two greats of British theatre Sir Peter Hall and Dame Judi Dench joining forces which according to Stephen Unwin "looks set to become one of the defining theatrical events of 2010"

As Titania, many eyebrows were raised when news emerged that Dame Judi would revisit a role she played with Sir Peter directing back in 1962. Yet with so many reference to the Monarch in the text, and with a suitably regal Oberon you suddenly fail to remember a younger Titania. To hear Shakespeare's verse in Dame Judi's control, there was no doubt that we were in the hands of a master. Judi Dench is always stunning, definitely the best Shakespearean mistress of her generation, arguably the world. The other main star of the show was of course not on stage but in Row D of the stalls and throughout the production Sir Peter's hand was clearly felt. The text is everything. Where in so many productions the verse is hurried to favour the plot, here you knew that every meaning was milked out to make it oh so easily comprehensible to a modern audience.

Perhaps I haven't seen enough Dreams but how refreshing for Bottom and fellow mechanicals not to use yokelspeak but remind us that Shakespeare's rural folk came from Warwickshire and should therefore be Brummies. School productions apart, this was the youngest and thinnest Bottom I'd seen with Oliver Chris in the rôle. Not quite as funny as Bob Barrett's Bottom in Propeller's version seen last year at the Rose but for the best bit of stage "business" he won my heart with the last gesture of the first half - as Titania lovingly leads him complete with ass's head to her bower in darkness at the back of the stage, he looks coquettishly over his right shoulder to the audience. He may well have winked. I was laughing too much to have noticed.

Other lovely performances were offered by Rachael Stirling as Helena, Charles Edwards as Oberon and the experienced James Laurenson as Snout. But as Stephen Unwin says in the interview about the show on this site, Dame Judi loves the Rose and instead of writing a cheque, she's appearing here. When she's on stage "it feels like there's a live tradition going back 400 years and something very precious is happening there"

Interviewing the great Margaret Forster last week felt something like a discussion with a wise, distant aunt who perhaps only turned up for big family reunions once in a blue moon. The sort of individual whom you feel you really would like to see more often.

Of course one is not related to the writer, but her writing about family matters has spanned more than 20 novels and examined just about every possible minutia of domestic life in such a way to make you feel as though you might just be.

Her latest Isa and May is published at the end of this week (4^th February) and looks at the often un-reported relationship between grandmother and granddaughter.

So what did we discuss? Well apart from the grandmother thing, we drifted off into talking about doing research into past lives. Isamay the main character in the novel is doing a PhD into grandmotherhood and needs to find famous individuals. The book is therefore peppered with fascinating detail about such lives as Elizabeth Fry, the great prison reformer, Sarah Bernhardt the actress, George Sand the writer, even Queen Victoria - people not first known for being grandparents.

However we then moved onto to talking about what right do we have as descendants  to research our deceased relatives and invariably pass judgement on  how they led their lives. And what will our own descendants make of and judge our lives?

Well to hear her answers to this fascinating conversation (and I accept no credit as interviewer here), do listen out for the Margaret Forster interview, coming to a computer near you very soon.

04/02/10 The Interview is now live! Have a listen and then join in the discussion. Do we have a right to dig up our grandmothers' past?

There was a lovely T-shirt printed not that long ago which I really wished I had purchased. It simply said something like "So many books - so little time".

Well I certainly feel that at the moment as I browse through the catalogues to decide just how many books and interviews I can tackle while fitting in all the other bits of work which annoyingly get in the way.

The first bit of good news though is to say that it looks as though an interview with the wonderful Margaret Forster is on the cards. I haven't had confirmation yet but  Isa and May is out next month and if Chatto's blurb is to be believed (In this engaging, intriguing novel about a young woman and two grandmothers, Margaret Forster uncovers the shocks that family history reveals.) then it should be a cracking read.

We didn't get an interview with Sarah Waters when The Little Stranger was first published last year. Well to be perfectly honest I thought that the world and her husband would be after her so I took my eye off the ball and suddenly, Bingo!, the paperback version is out. I've just started it and in true Waters' style, it slips down like good wine. Blink, and you've read 100 pages. We will keep you posted if our request for an interview is granted. Meanwhile every available digit is tightly crossed.

Before Spring is out Martin Amis and Roddy Doyle are also publishing, so if I can't find that T-shirt, I may have to print one up of my own.

For regular visitors life has been a tad quiet on www. theinterview.online.co.uk. Two things have kept the staff busy, trying to improve the technical quality of the files (we just weren't happy given the high quality of the interviews) and trying to find some sponsorship deals to keep us going. Whilst the former has been a success - and we do hope you've noticed - the latter is well, ongoing.  Meanwhile though we have some exciting plans for 2010 and we are certainly not despondent.

You will have seen I hope the Ruth Rendell interview and the short version of the Jann Parry. Jann was The Observer's Ballet Critic until she resigned to concentrate on writing. The result is a superb biography of the British Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. Early in 2010 we hope to publish the longer 20 minute interview where she talks about how his widow invited Jann to write the definitive biography, giving her access to private letters and diaries.

It would be really interesting to find out how many of our visitors will have been given Kindles or Sony Readers for Christmas and how they feel about reading a book on an electronic device. Does it really matter two hoots if you don't have that lovely smell of a new book? Do let us know.

The Ruth Rendell interview is well,  "in production" as they might say in the more pretentious editing studios than here at  www.theinterviewonline.co.uk.

It was a joy to meet the great crime writer. I have had the pleasure of interviewing her before at the House of Lords about two years ago.  Working for the RNIB, I was asking her questions about the charity's Right to Read campaign which demands that books be published in all formats (large print, audio etc.) at the same time.

For this interview it was far more leisurely,  taking place at the author's home. Penguin Books are issuing a new edition of the Sherlock Holmes collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Baroness Rendell has written the introduction.

It is always slightly nerve wracking working in some-one else's home. You have to take the time to get the interview you need,  but also you are acutely aware that they probably have other things they would rather be doing on a Thursday morning.  Ms. Rendell (as indeed are most authors) was absolutely charming and even insisted we stay for some tea afterwards. Indeed this is not the royal "we" I am using here since the wonderful Neil Armstrong was filming the interview. By the end of tea we felt we had earned our refreshment, since he managed to cure her oven of the flashing time signal which was hugely annoying. What did we discuss? Well Booker Prize shortlisted books, Earl Grey, the RNIB campaign and ..ovens.

I know I have said it elsewhere, but I am hugely indebted to Neil Armstrong for filming the interview. As an ex-BBC director he has a wealth of experience which he offered pro bono for The Interview Online just for the pleasure of working on the site. Anyone out there need the services of the most delightful and talented video producer…. Click here.

The Ruth Rendell video interview will be ready very soon. In it she talks about her admiration for Conan Doyle and also about the pleasures and the routine of writing, whether under her own name or Barbara Vine

When we haven't got our noses in several books, we try and get to the theatre as much as time and budget allows. We were recently at the Press Night of David Hare's new Play  The Power of Yes at the National Theatre.

This was surely a play that theatre land was waiting for. Following Lucy Prebble huge success at the Royal Court in London with Enron, London's theatre goers were collectively holding their breath to see what veteran playwright David Hare would do with the financial crisi. Yet somehow Hare failed and succeeded in equal measures. On the one hand he managed beautifully to explain the intricacies of the financial disaster in a simple technique of Hare creating himself as a character asking the questions we all needed answered. Where this was a disappointment was the staging. Yes it was simple - 20 actors walking on and off an all but bare stage to explain to the playwright what had happened. What I wanted to know was why I had paid the best part of £30 to hear something which could have been delivered just as well on radio. Indeed at many points in the play David Hare used a clichéd technique employed by lazy radio script writers in the form of simply introducing a speaker (and yes I do mean speaker) as "George Soros (or whoever) again"

That said, it was an entertaining evening. As Michael Billington highlighted in his review, David Hare introduced some lovely touches such as pointing out that those much photographed boxes Lehman Brothers (ex) employees were carrying out of the building contained nothing more significant than sandwiches and Milky Bars which their canteen credit cards still owed them. They were too upmarket to call it looting. Special mention though to Bob Crowley and the design team who invented some innovative effects to highlight the intracte problems of finance.

Does one expect more from theatre? No new playwright would have had this work staged yet if nothing else it does explain the financial crisis particularly well.

At the first night audience I spied ex-CBI chief Howard Davies sharing his thoughts with a small huddle. If one wanted to extend the journalism theme, perhaps a second half would have given him the right to reply.

Sadie Jones was a delightful interviewee and could not have been more generous with her time. Videoing an author is not something where, like audio you can be in and out within the hour - sometimes even half an hour. It takes time to rearrange the furniture and getting the positioning just right.

Quite often when you interview individuals, there is a feeling that you both know you have a professional job to do so let's pretend we're being friendly and get on with it. Others (like Sadie) seem genuinely interested in the site and there is no pretence. We had fun and games trying to decide how to add a bit of colour to the scene and the best on offer was a bowl of beautiful ripe tomatoes, yes tomatoes. Well they looked lovely next to her. However looking at them as I edit, well now I'm not so sure. Please let us know what you think when it's published.

The interview is "in production" which I reckon is probably just a euphemism for "just not ready". But it will be soon.

Meanwhile the excellent news is that Baroness Rendell of Babergh - otherwise known as Ruth Rendell has kindly agreed to an interview later in this month. We have to extend our grateful thanks to Neil Armstrong of www.neilarmstrongfilms.com who has kindly offered to film it for us so that we can concentrate on the questions rather than cue lights.