No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by The Satanic Verses. Furore aside, it is a marvellously erudite study of good and evil. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales star in Ladies of Letters and Ladies of More Letters, the two popular BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour series. Patricia Routledge is Vera Small and Prunella Scales is her friend (or maybe enemy), Irene Spencer. The two pass their time in regular correspondence and not an event goes by that is left unrecorded by the ladies of letters. Firstly there are the usual family problems to...