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Today on Writers & Company - A look at Henry James in books and movies. Host Eleanor Wachtell talks with three James enthusiasts: Susan Griffin, Sheldon Novick, and Cynthia Ozick.

PART I: Eleanor Wachtel talks with British author William Boyd, whose latest novel - Armadillo - looks at the life of a corrupt insurance adjuster in modern-day London. Boyd discusses the vicissitudes of life, the enduring class system in England, growing up in Africa, lucid dreaming, and the success of his latest book. PART II: Eleanor Wachtel interviews British author Ian McEwan. The discuss Enduring Love - his latest novel about the disastrous consequences of an incident wherein five men…

This week on Writers & Company - Eleanor Wachtel speaks with British author Victoria Glendinning. Famous for her literary biographies, Glendinning has now written a Victorian novel of her own called Electricity.

This week, from England, a surprising and quite brilliant novelist: Edward St Aubyn. He's transformed his own painful upbringing into remarkably entertaining fiction in his Patrick Melrose series.

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel speaks with a remarkable writer and editor: Diana Athill. At 91, she's just published a candid memoir called Somewhere Towards the End. Hear about that work- and the incredible woman behind it.

Eleanor Wachtel speaks with English playwright and novelist Michael Frayn. From his award-winning farce, Noises Off, to Copenhagen, his provocative encounter between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg; from the tragi-comic, Headlong to his latest novel, Spies, Frayn is witty and intelligent.

Host Eleanor Wachtel talks with English writer Tim Lott. From his memoir The Scent of Dried Roses to his latest novel, Rumours of a Hurricane, his is an edgy new voice.

A look at the life of Charles Dickens, the first celebrity novelist, through the eyes of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Jane Smiley.

Part I: An interview with master of language, American poet W.S. Merwin - he has a new book of stories that captures a lost France. Merwin does a reading at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Part II: An interview with England's most successful playwright, Alan Ayckbourn.

This week on Writers and Company, host Eleanor Wachtel talks with Australian author Kate Grenville. Her latest novel, The Secret River, was short-listed for the Booker Prize, and won this year's Commonwealth Prize. It's an evocative story about the early encounters between convicts and settlers and Australia's aboriginal people. Grenville's own great-great-great grandfather was 'transported' from England to Australia as a convict in 1806.

English travel writer Jonathan Raban's portrait of the settlement of the American Plains of Montana. His book is called Bad Land: An American Romance, and last month it won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It's a moving history and meditation on the immigrant experience.

Eleanor talks with the self-ascribed, "quintessentially English" writer, Penelope Lively. The author of a dozen novels - including the Booker Award-winning Moon Tiger - talks about love, romance, the arcadian dream, and growing up in Egypt.

Eleanor Wachtel interviews English playwright and director David Hare live onstage. From postwar disillusion in Plenty, to Oscar Wilde in The Judas Kiss, Hare is a man of political ideas and romantic passion.

From the Toronto International Film Festival, Eleanor Wachtel speaks with the English director about the literary influences in his work, his attraction to road movies, and the making of his latest film, The Wedding Guest.

Eleanor welcomes back one of Britain's wittiest and most audacious writers, Geoff Dyer. His latest book — a collection of essays called White Sands — is a humorous examination of travel, impermanence, and thwarted expectations.