Michele Hanson, Roger Highfield

Columnist and author Michele Hanson and Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group Roger Highfield discuss their favourite books with Harriett Gilbert.

Michele's choice reflects her love of eighteen century literature, telling the story of Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope who travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker after whom Tobias Smollett's book is named. Michele explains how her book club "...all hated it, but I think they have no taste."

Roger picks 'The Emperor of All Maladies' by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a lucid and eloquent chronicle of cancer which humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. Roger says the book: "Told stories that I knew very well, and told them in a brilliant gripping way."

Harriett's book is the second George Smiley novel in which he investigates the murder of a woman in a very particularly English public school. On le Carre, Harriett says he "...writes probably the best spy fiction that's ever been written."

Producer: Toby Field.