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Novelist, playwright and well-known humourist Michael Frayn dips into some of the finest and funniest columns he has written over the years and talks about his life and work.

Frayn’s latest work is a collection of 110 columns mainly written for The Guardian and The Observer over the last five decades. They are short, surreal and razor-sharp observations on human nature, sex, politics, manners and events of the day.

Frayn first established his reputation as a satirist writing for The Guardian and The Observer in the late 1950s. He went on to publish a number of plays and novels including the farce, Noises Off, dramas, Copenhagen and Democracy, and the novels The Tin Men, winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Spies, winner of the Whitbread Best Novel Award. His most recent novel is Skios. Frayn has also written a number of non-fiction works including a memoir of his childhood and The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe. His screenplays include the film Clockwise starring John Cleese, and he has also adapted and translated Chekov’s major plays. Here he talks to John Thornhill, former deputy editor and now innovation editor of the Financial Times.

Sponsored by The Oxford Times.