Jo Hamya says:

‘In these early stages, it’s been great fun to disagree with roughly half of everything James says and an even greater joy to discover our common ground, or else bring each other round to a new point of view. The Booker Prizes have given us wonderful scope to approach their history and library: my hope is that our podcast is a nuanced, candid, easy place to spend time in. I can’t wait for listeners to think and gossip with us.’

James Walton says:

‘There’s no denying that Jo and I were thrown together by the Booker Prizes in a strange kind of blind date. But even after the first recording it felt surprisingly clear that they must have known what they were doing, because working together is proving a joy: informative, stimulating and, most of all, fun. I much look forward to being joined by our listeners who will no doubt keep us on our toes. Here’s hoping they’ll enjoy the podcast – and side with me in any disputes (good-natured ones, obviously).’

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Jo Hamya is the author of Three Rooms (Jonathan Cape, 2021) and The Hypocrite (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024). Her writing has been praised by the Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and the TLS, among others. She is currently completing a doctorate on the impact of social media on 21st century notions of literary value. In her spare time, she works as a freelance book reviewer.

James Walton has written and hosted 17 series of the Radio 4 literary quiz show The Write Stuff and has appeared on Pick of the Week, Woman’s Hour, A Good Read and Saturday Review. His book reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Spectator, the Times and several other publications. He writes a weekly quiz in the FT Magazine, is a television critic for the Spectator and is the author of the anthology The Faber Book of Smoking (2000) and the Penguin Book Quiz (2019).

The podcast is produced by Daddy’s SuperYacht Productions, a British Podcast Award winning production company specialising in digital content.