Whitcoulls Recommends: The Hidden Girl and The Siege

The Hidden Girl by Lucinda Riley. This was, in fact, her very first book written under another name and never made available here in New Zealand. Her son Harry Whitaker, with whom she had a long standing creative partnership, has edited it and given it a whole new life. It's classic Lucinda Riley and her thousands of fans will be thrilled. It’s an epic multi-generational saga which moves from Europe in WW2 to the streets of New York - very typical of the kinds of stories she’s so loved for.

The Siege by Ben McIntyre. An account of the 1980 siege of the Iranian Embassy in London when 6 terrorists took 26 hostages inside the building in a dispute which raged on for more than 6 days. The SAS were eventually called in and stormed the building by abseiling down from the roof and in through the windows and killed five of the terrorists and managed to rescue most - but not all - of the hostages. It was remarkable because it was the first time the SAS’s skills had ever been on such public display and the whole thing was televised and broadcast around the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talk SEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time to talk books and Joan mackenzie joins me. Now,
good morning, Hello, Listender Riley is back with a new book.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
She is now some listeners who are big fans of
Lucinda Riley will know that she sadly is no longer
with us, but she finished her Seven Sisters series, which
is beloved by so many people, with the help of
her son, Harry Whittaker, and he has now gone back
to the very first book that she ever wrote, which
was called Hidden Beauty back in the day, and it

(00:40):
was written under a different name. I assume it was
her maiden name, and he's edited it and just brought
it more into modern consciousness. And so yes, we do.
We have a new Listender Riley, which is very exciting.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Right and so he doesn't get a sort of a
co authored no credit for it.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
And I looked on the cover specifically for that, but no, OK,
which is interesting. I am told that this book has
never been published or available in New Zealand, so for
Liscinda Riley fans, and it's a story that's told essentially
in two timelines. There's a young girl called Leo who's
living in Yorkshire. She has a close but very unequal
relationship with another family in town, and it turns out

(01:18):
that the woman in that house was once a very
famous artist who was a real leader of her generation.
And when that woman's nephew comes to stay, he draws
a beautiful portrait of this girl, Leah, and one day
a bunch of fashionistas see it hanging in a gallery
in New York and they track her down and take
her from Yorkshire to become a supermodel on the international stage. Now,

(01:42):
the other timeline that I referred to is World War
two related. It's about a couple of siblings who come
through the Holocaust and how their life is in some
way aligned to and integrated with the story that's going
on in the modern time with the supermodel classic Lesson
d Riley, it's you know, rags to riches, it's mean

(02:03):
streets to Broadway, it's got everything.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Joan, I'm sure that, like me, you were a young
thing in nineteen eighty. It was once it was a
siege of the Iranian embassy in London, but I can
still remember the images.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I know it was visceral, wasn't it. Yeah, Yeah, very
much so.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
So for anybody who doesn't recall that time in nineteen eighty,
there was a group of six terrorists who went into
the Iranian embassy in London and took twenty six people hostage.
And the thing about it was this grabbed international attention
because it went on for six days and it was
the first time ever that all of the TV cameras
had turned up for such a significant event, which then

(02:44):
played around the world. And because the cameras were there,
what the public got to see was that when the
sas were finally called in to try and bring an
end to this siege, they were up on the roof
of the embassy and they abseiled down and got in
through the windows, and the whole thing was televised worldwide.
I was fascinated that the group of politicians and officials

(03:04):
who were in the situation room at Parliament, we're being
feared information about what was going on by one of
their staff who was on the telephone getting updates, and
he was passing the updates to what they called the
Cobra team. But they had three televisions in the room
and they didn't realize it was on, so they could
have turned the TVs on and seeing what the rest
of the world was looking at, which is quite extraordinary.

(03:27):
But there's some really interesting tidbits in here. Prince Andrew
was twenty years old, there was this crisis going on.
He got in touch and said that he would really
like to come and visit the site and have lunch,
and they managed to dissuade him. But there you go.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
So this is all being captured by Ben McIntire in
a book called The Siege.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yes, and he's done a brilliant job.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Okay, awesome, Thank you so much. I'm very interested in
that because, as I said, I heard this very clear
memory of it and just being quite transfixed by it.
The Siege by Ben McIntire was that book we were
just talking about. And also Liscinder Riley. Her new book
is called The Hidden Girl. Thank you so much, Joan.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
See you for more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.