Today's Rosebud is an enormously entertaining talk given by Gyles at the Henley Literary Festival. Ostensibly about Gyles's books - Prose and Cons, a History of the English Language in Just a Minute, and Breaking the Code: Gyles's diaries from his days as an MP - this talk is actually much more than that. In true Gyles style, it is full of amazing anecdotes, beginning with some brilliant stories about Dame Maggie Smith, who died the day before this talk was given. Sit back, relax, and enjoy...

Sir Matthew Bourne's reimaginings of classic works like Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Carmen have become legendary, and have transformed our ideas of what dance, and what theatre, are capable of. In this in-depth conversation, Gyles finds out about Sir Matthew's origin story, from his childhood days putting on shows for the neighbours on his street, to his teenage years, spent autograph-hunting in London's West End with his best friend, Simon. Matthew also talks about his circuitous route to...

Another treat for you today, as Gyles carries on reading from his childhood diaries and discusses things with Harriet. In this chapter we join Gyles as he prepares to leave his prep school, Betteshanger, in Kent. Gyles performs in Twelfth Night, strikes up a friendship with the man who works the school boiler, becomes a prefect and spends his easter holidays being a waiter in a hotel in Bournemouth. Quite a busy schedule for someone who is only just 13! We hope you enjoy these diary...

This week we welcome the singers Michael Ball and Alfie Boe. Ball and Boe have been singing together for ten years, and are about to release their sixth album, but in this conversation Gyles takes them right back to the beginning. We hear about Alfie's childhood, growing up as the youngest in a family of nine in a council house in the north-west, about how he was discovered as he sang to himself at work as a mechanic, about his first girlfriend and the death of his father. Michael tells Gyles...

Today on More Rosebud Gyles talks to the American actress, singer-songwriter and star of Downton Abbey Elizabeth McGovern. In this conversation they talk about Elizabeth's childhood in a Bohemian and bookish household - first in Illinois and then in Los Angeles. They talk about the formative friendship of her adolescence. They talk about her sudden rise to fame: she was discovered as a teenager and cast in Robert Redford's Oscar-winning debut, Ordinary People; and they talk about the effect...

This week we welcome the restaurateur, entrepreneur, cook, writer and judge of Great British Bake Off Prue Leith onto Rosebud. Prue tells Gyles about her childhood, growing up under apartheid in South Africa; she reveals how she joined the boy scouts, became president of the tree-climbing club, and confronted the headmistress at her religious school with a shocking revelation. She and Gyles talk about her year in Paris learning French, the lightbulb moment in which she discovered her love of...

Exciting news: it's time for the next instalment of Gyles's schoolboy diaries. In this episode, the young GB goes on his holidays, to Germany and then, unaccompanied, to Paris. We also hear about his attempts to smuggle a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover into his boarding school. P.S Harriet got a bit of ahead of herself and released this on a Monday instead of a Tuesday by mistake! Enjoy it a day early, your special Rosebud bonus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Alan Titchmarsh has been gardening since he was a child, and in this special episode of Rosebud (recorded live in Salisbury in aid of Arundells, the former home of Sir Edward Heath) he tells Gyles about how he grew his first flowers from a packet of seeds bought at Woolworths. Alan also talks about leaving school at 15, his first kiss and the only lie he ever told. The episode ends with a treat: Alan reads one of his poems to Gyles and the audience. Alan Titchmarsh is one of our best-loved...

On today's episode of More Rosebud, we meet the bestselling writer and literary powerhouse Kate Mosse. Kate's historical novels have been global hits, and her much-loved classic Labyrinth is 20 next year. She talks to Gyles about her new book, The Map of Bones, the final novel in her series The Joubert Family Chronicles, which, it turns out, is set in a town in South Africa where Gyles once considered buying a house! But more than that, Gyles and Kate discuss Kate's first memories, her...

This week we are extremely lucky to welcome Timothy Spall onto Rosebud, in what is a rare podcast interview with the great man. Tim is one of our most distinctive, and distinguished, actors - a star of TV and films such as Auf Wiedersehn, Pet, Mr Turner, Harry Potter and Secrets and Lies. You may also have seen his recent Bafta-winning performance alongside fellow Rosebud alumni Anne Reid and Sheila Hancock in The Sixth Commandment. In this wide-ranging and evocative interview, Timothy takes...

It's time for episode two of Gyles's childhood diaries. It's 1960, he's eleven going on twelve, and still a pupil at boarding school in Kent. We hear about how Gyles met T.S. Eliot and got the Archbishop of Canterbury's autograph. We hear about his hatred of games and his sudden attack of appendicitis. We also hear about Gyles's English teacher, whose behaviour towards Gyles becomes increasingly inappropriate. Listeners should be aware that there is some discussion of issues relating to the...

Rick Stein is one of Britain's best-loved chefs. He's also a highly successful businessman, restaurateur, writer and TV presenter, who has single-handedly put Padstow on the map. HIs warm, down-to-earth manner and infectious curiosity about food have made him a star. What you may not know is that, surprise surprise, he and Gyles know each other - they were actually at Oxford University together in the 60s. But Rick's route to Oxford was highly unconventional, and in this conversation he tells...

We’ve got a very different kind of guest this week. It’s Lisa Squire, the mother of Libby Squire, who was born on the 1st January 1998 and tragically lost her life on the 1st February 2019 in Hull, when she was a student at university. She was missing for seven agonising weeks, and her body was eventually washed up in the Humber estuary in March of 2019. It was later found that she had been raped and murdered. In this conversation, Lisa and Gyles remember Libby, and tell her story in full:...

Dame Harriet Walter is one of the UK's most distinguished stage actresses, and an award-winning star of Ted Lasso and Succession. In this candid interview, she talks to Gyles about her parents' divorce, her teenage struggles with mental health, and her famous uncle, Christopher Lee. She describes her first experiences of acting at school, and how her headteacher spotted her talent and encouraged it. Make sure you listen to the end, to hear Harriet amaze Gyles with some Shakespeare....

This is the first of our episodes in which Gyles reads from his childhood diaries, and Gyles and Harriet discuss the events therein. In this episode, Gyles starts reading from the beginning: Tuesday 28th April 1959, his first day at Betteshanger School in Kent, and ends on 31st December 1959. How did Gyles settle into school? Did he get a part in the school play, Tom Sawyer? Did he like his teachers? And what were his top 10 TV shows of 1959? Listen to find out about all this and more. We'll...

Get ready for a really wonderful edition of Rosebud, with the poet and performer Pam Ayres. Pam makes Gyles laugh and cry with the stories from her fascinating life. Pam paints vivid pictures of her childhood, growing up in relative poverty in a big family in an insular village in rural Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). All the family's food was grown in the back garden, there was no hot water, the family shared beds and the toilet was a bucket. She tells Gyles about the games she played, the...

Our guest on this episode of More Rosebud is Petroc Trelawney, the broadcaster and writer who is best known as a presenter on BBC Radio 3. Petroc is also an author who is talking to Gyles about his new book 'Trelawney's Cornwall' and about his childhood, growing up on the remote Lizard peninsula. This a moving and open interview, in which Petroc talks about the death of his mother from cancer when he was 12, about the way life in his family of boys changed after that, about the difficulties...

Sandi Toksvig is someone we've wanted to have on Rosebud for a long time... so we're really delighted that she's today's guest! Sandi talks to Gyles about her amazing father, the most famous man in Denmark; she tells Gyles about her fascinating childhood, spent in Africa, the USA and the UK. She talks about playing hooky from school, about getting found out and being sent to boarding school, where she spent four miserable years. She shocks Gyles with her description of the prejudice she...

This is a very special conversation, recorded in March 2022, between Gyles and two great stars, who were also great friends: Dame Maggie Smith and Kathleen Turner. Maggie and Kathleen talk about how they met, at the stage door in a back alley in the West End, how they started out as actresses, about their breakthrough roles, and about the guardian angels who helped them along the way... and about much more besides. This is one of Maggie Smith's last interviews, and was produced and recorded...

Gyles's guest this week is Tom Parker Bowles, food writer, critic, son of Queen Camilla and step-son of King Charles III. Tom tells Gyles about his idyllic country childhood, being stung by wasps, eating sweets and messing about with friends. He talks about the terrible food at his prep school and the much more delicious things on offer in the tuck shop at Eton, where he went next. He tells Gyles about his new book - Cooking and the Crown - and explains how his family have managed to stay...

Rochelle Humes: popstar, business woman, TV personality, wife and mother. Gyles and Rochelle know each other from This Morning, but in this chat Gyles finds out much more about the person behind the success story. Rochelle tells him about her childhood, growing up in a single parent family in Essex. She tells him about her early experiences on stage in the West End, and how she auditioned for S Club Juniors and became famous as a tweenager. She talks about her time in The Saturdays and tells...

It's a big moment for Rosebud, because in this episode Gyles talks to Stephen Fry about his first memories. As you can imagine, this is a brilliant conversation, as Stephen tells Gyles about his parents and their remarkable marriage, his childhood, schooldays, how he went slightly "off the rails" as a teenager and then got things back on track at Cambridge. There are various detours, via Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare and Derek Nimmo's nose. Thank you to Stephen for his warmth and generosity in...

On 8th September 2024, it is the second anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. In memory of that day, and of the Queen, our guest today is Terry Pendry. Terry worked with Queen Elizabeth II for over 28 years, as her Stud Groom and Manager at Windsor Castle. Terry's relationship with the Queen was unique, because he rode with her every morning when she was at Windsor. This is when the Queen was able to relax, and talk about her passions - for horses, dogs, animals and the countryside....

Rosebud is a year old, so it's time for something a little bit different: to round off our first year, Gyles is talking to Professor Jon Simons - who is a world expert in memory, and the head of a specialist research lab at Cambridge University called The Cambridge Memory Lab. What is memory? Where are memories stored, and how are they formed? Why do we remember some things and not others? How far back is it posslble to remember? And what can we do to improve our memories as we age? These,...