Jesse Norman on the political rivalry that shaped an era

Jesse Norman is the MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire and the author of acclaimed biographies of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith. His novel, The Winding Stair, is an epic tale of jealousy and intrigue in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, which holds a darkened mirror to our own contemporary politics. The Winding Stair whirls around two founders of our modern world – the scholar Francis Bacon and the attorney Edward Coke – and their struggle for power and the favour of the monarch. In this episode, we chat about how Jesse navigated the historical fiction genre, and we unpack some of the main characters, whilst reflecting on the novel’s parallels with modern-day British politics. Get your copy of The Winding Stair here: www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/the-winding-stair Music Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3788-funkorama Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/