To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency?

John Yorke’s groundbreaking bestseller, Into the Woods, revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative. Through these terrains, Yorke seeks out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too.

Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew. (Penguin Random House)

John and Jack meet at The Fig and Walnut in Bloomsbury.

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TV producer and script editor John Yorke appeared on The Booking Club’s Live show at The Battle of Ideas Festival last year, where we spoke along side Nick Wallis and Maxie Allen about the longevity of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. As I say in the forthcoming episode, British listeners of The Booking Club will have heard and seen an awful lot of John’s work over the years. John Yorke is the man who commissioned the TV drama Waterloo Road. He turned the BBC Radio 4 serialisation of GK Chesterton’s Father Brown books into the hit TV detective show starring Mark Williams.He developed and, with some serious graft I imagine, redeveloped the original script for Life on Mars, after it was rejected by Channel 4 and later taken up by the BBC. Life on Mars is now a bona fide classic.He was the brain behind the script of some of the most iconic episodes of Eastenders back in the 2000s. One such episode, a finale remembered as the cliff-hanger Who Shot Phil? aired in 2001. It attracted 20,000,000 UK viewers. The population of the UK in 2001 was around 59 million. Let that sink in. UEFA had to move a semi final match to avoid competition with that one episode. Other TV and radio shows John has either commissioned or produced include Wolf Hall, Shameless, Spooks, The Wine Show and that evergreen staple of BBC radio programming, The Archers. Thanks to John for a great recording this week at The Fig and Walnut in Bloomsbury. This episode is fast-approaching. John’s new book 📚Trip to the Moon: Understanding the True Power of Storytelling📚 is OUT NOW.

'Nearly Departed' is novelist Lucas Oakeley's first work of fiction. When not writing novels, Lucas is a food journalist and book influencer tirelessly recommending books for boys and advocating for men in general to choose reading over watching YouTube Shorts, flirting with ChatGPT or disappearing down another Reddit hole.Starting the new year over a gorgeous Ethiopian plate, he and Jack discuss men, love and modern book culture.They meet at Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell, South London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod