Darke Matter: Rick Gekoski

Booker Prize judge, writer, broadcaster, rare book dealer and all-round polymath Rick Gekoski, whom Tatler once described as “think Bill Bryson, only on books”, has in recent years turned his versatile hand to fiction. First up was novel Darke (published when he was 72) about how we choose to live, and how we choose to die, filtered through recluse James Darke. Sebastian Barry labelled it a “wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante” and Colm Toibin declared Gekoski to be a supreme example of a natural and gifted storyteller. Follow-up Darke Matter has been described by The Times as “even more stylish, funny and daring ...it enthusiastically embraces so many subjects, from the nothingness-but-everythingness of words to how foie gras should never come out of a tin”. Gekoski discusses his late incarnation as a novelist with Catriona Ferguson.