Sarah Dunant - In The Name of The Family

Historical fiction has long been immensely popular and Sarah’s most recent novels have been set in during the Italian renaissance. They weave cutting edge historical scholarship into fiction, have become international best sellers, translated into thirty languages.

The role of history is not linear and while we may think of the past as something that is "over", every generation of historians asks different questions of it, and in this way different pasts are (re)discovered. Over the last twenty years, Sarah's laser focus on the Italian renaissance has questioned the roll call of famous male names, considering too the role of women - be they rulers, writers, painters, thinkers, nuns or courtesans. She has revealed the influential role of women often overlooked, under written or rendered invisible in dominant historical narratives.

Sarah and Angela discuss the revelations of history and how to turn dry facts and scholarly research into red hot story-telling.