Cassie McCullough

This will be huge.

I think people will have to make up their own minds.

I'm Cassie McCullough here with Kate Evans and time now to meet today's guests.

Petronella McGovern is with us, a writer whose latest novel is called The Good Teacher.

Hello, Petronella.

Hello.

What's The Good Teacher about?

Gosh, that's a great question.

What do you think it is?

Well, let's get on with our books.

Sometimes we find it easy to get connections between the books in any given show, but not today, perhaps, Kate.

And now she's decided to do a new translation from oldie English of an old story known as Beowulf.

Now, of course, you probably studied it at school.

It's a famous epic poem with vengeance and swords and heroes and monsters.

And it's been translated literally hundreds of times.

And most recently, perhaps before this, was about 20 years ago, Seamus Heaney, the Irish Nobel Prize winning poet,

poet did his version of it.

But Louise Darsons, perhaps you can explain to us what Beowulf is and why it's so important.

Yeah, I really like those kennings too.

And it's just one of the great features of this piece of work historically.