13th December 2024
Trade Interview
Speirs on looking for a new challenge after 34 years as BBC head of books
From Open Book to reviving the short story and receiving an MBE, Di Speirs discusses her illustrious career as she bids farewell to the BBC
T
he news that BBC head of books, Di Speirs, was due to leave the corporation after 34 years, was greeted as the end of an era. Indeed, the announcement of her departure
coincided with the end of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, the Sunday night “magazine programme” looking at new books and lost classics, which ran for 26 years until October. One publicist, writing for these pages, described the end of Open Book as “a tragedy”. Speirs, who leaves the BBC in April, told
The Bookseller: “It’s sad when something good comes to an end. I’m very proud of what every- one who worked on Open Book did over 26 years in terms of supporting books that other- wise wouldn’t have got much traction. Times change, and the BBC’s needs and its audiences’ needs become different. The BBC must change the way it does things, or things it does. It hasn’t given up on books, and that’s what the new show will be about.” The Sunday night afternoon vacuum left
by Open Book is being filled by Take Four Books, a half-hour show presented by author and broadcaster James Crawford, who inter- views authors about their new work and three other books that have influenced them and their writing. Take Four Books is recorded by the BBC in
Scotland. Speirs said she and “the whole of the team” were offered the opportunity to relocate from London to Glasgow, but she decided to take redundancy instead. “The BBC is very generous in its redundancy,” she said. “I’m very bad at saying goodbye, so it’s probably a good thing for me that this has happened.” Originally from Edinburgh, Speirs has lived
in London since taking her first broadcasting job in the London bureau of Australian Broadcasting. Having studied medieval history at St Andrews, she worked in theatre for around five years in Manchester and then Liverpool. “When I went to Australian Broadcasting, I knew absolutely nothing,” she said. “The bureau
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Trade Interview
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