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Tessa Hadley’s latest novel is ‘Late in the Day’ (Cape), a story of a group of friends trying to keep themselves together in the face of tragedy. For Tessa, the word ‘nice’ is one she tries not to use in a story or a novel, except when she’s writing dialogue, where it can tell you a lot about a character. Tessa also explains the difficulties of writing ‘nice’ characters, who can be hard to bring to life.

Linguist Lynne Murphy takes us through the complicated history of the word nice, which has changed meaning many times over the years. As an American living in England and the author of The Prodigal Tongue: The Love–Hate Relationship Between British and American English (One World), she also explains why British people might have a problem with that most American of phrases, ‘Have A Nice Day’

Jesse Schwenk is a lecturer and a dramatist and the author of the last in our series of Verb Dramas, produced in conjunction with the Â鶹Éç Writers Room on the theme of ‘space’. Jesse’s play is set in an office, where Ian is a very nice man indeed who might just need a bit of a push in the right direction. ‘A Quark in My Cosmos’ stars James Quinn and Angela Lonsdale. It was directed by Andrew Smith. Please see here for more information on the Â鶹Éç Writer’s Room

Brian Bilston is known as the Twitter poet laureate, and he has just published his first novel, ‘Diary of A Somebody’ (Twitter). Brian tells Ian what he has in common with the Brian Bilston of the diary (chiefly: procrastination), and reads us a brand new specially commissioned poem on the theme of ‘nice’.<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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