Listen to Francis Spufford on BBC Radio 4's Open Book
Francis Spufford talked to author Elizabeth Day about Light Perpetual for BBC Radio 4’s Open Book.
Speaking about what he set out to do with the novel, he said: ‘I wanted to show that life is gratuitous, I wanted to take it away and then by giving it back again keep us aware on some level that it was an arbitrary and fragile possession. I wanted us not to take it for granted as a secure possession. I wanted to make things fragile, and then, as the lives of my five characters went on, I wanted the reader to be able to forget about that.’
Spufford was joined by Professor David Edgerton, who cast a historian’s eye over the period the novel is set.
Open Book, BBC Radio 4
