BBC Radio 3

Matthew Sweet is a writer and broadcaster with a doctorate in Wilkie Collins from Oxford University. He has been a director’s assistant at the RSC, a columnist for The Big Issue and film critic of the Independent on Sunday.

He is a presenter for BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves, a reporter for The Culture Show on BBC2, and a panellist for Newsnight Review. He was also the co-host of BBC2’s Edinburgh Show, on which he took tango lessons and compared leg-hair with Russell Brand.

He is the author of Inventing the Victorians and Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema – which he adapted as a film for BBC Four (“the best documentary I’ve seen all year” – Daily Telegraph). He’s also edited and introduced the work of Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, George Eliot and Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

His TV films and series include Silent Britain (BBC Four) Checking into History (Channel Four), British Cinema Forever (BBC2) and A Brief History of Fun (Channel Four). He is also responsible for the Doctor Who audio play Year of the Pig.

He is currently working on The West End Front, a history of London’s grand hotels during the Second World War, and very keen to hear from octogenarian guests, wine waiters and chambermaids.