The Writers Studio Season 2, featuring Margaret Drabble

You can't really go wrong when you've got a speaker as eloquent and erudite as Margaret Drabble. Her answers are so rounded and poised you feel that every word is a gem of originality. Of course, she's a doyen of the literary festival and there's certainly no question she wouldn't have heard before. And if there is a duff question or a non-sequitur thrown at her she's able to deflect it with consummate ease.

There were a couple of irritating questions like a ridiculously open ended one on links between literature and the law which would have taken a whole programme to shed any reasonable light on. There were moments when one wished the interviewer would have gone further with a particular line of discussion but despite that there were some interesting moments. Questions on 'the anxiety of influence', 'the multiplicity of perspectives' and 'cultural appropriation' all received interesting answers and makes one realise how difficult it must be to write truly original material. Drabble herself believes it's not possible however hard one might try. It was also interesting to hear that, in Drabble's days studying English at Cambridge in the 1960s, Virginia Woolf was never even mentioned and her books were hardly in print. Oh, how times change.

This is standard literary festival stuff but lovely to see it being given an hour long radio slot. Drabble herself must relish such an opportunity because these days it's rare to hear on the airwaves. I notice that this is a series and that writers such as Umberto Eco, James Ellroy and Bret Easton Ellis are also involved. Taken together it's no doubt a good option for all stations and listeners interested in the art of writing.

It would need a little editing if to be re-broadcast. It's plainly recorded prior to the last US presidential election and Alan Hollinghurst had just won the Booker prize.

Of course, one still skims the surface of Drabble's mind but it's a journey worth taking all the same.