Robert Hudson published his second novel, The Dazzle, in 2013, and he’s working on another one already. It’s about vikings and a bear. It’s set in Norway. On which subject, he and Susannah Pearse are writing a musical adaptation of the brilliant Long Live the Post Horn! by Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth. Is this going to lead to claims of cultural appropriation? Only time will tell but it’s Norway. They’re fine.

With Johnny Flynn, he wrote Magnitsky the Musical, a rollicking tale of tax fraud, oligarchs, sanctions and the rule of law, which won Best Single Drama at the BBC Audio Drama Awards for 2020, and which you can find on BBC Sounds. The bits about Putin being a murdering bully who spreads disinformation to get what he wants are depressingly up-to-date.

Long Live the Post Horn! is the latest of many musicals he’s written with Susannah Pearse. Finally, the BBC saw the light and hosted a starry and lavish Pearse-Hudson festival running on three consecutive Sundays in 2022.* First up was Hall of Mirrors on Radio 3, a story of John Maynard Keynes and how to rebuild the world after a global crisis. Then on 3rd and 10th April was Rossum’s Universal Robots on Radio 4. This is an adaptation of the Karel Capek’s classic RUR, which saw the first use of ‘robot’ and is for fans of comic and hopeful apocalypse fiction everywhere. It’s also about Climate Change and AI so it’s not surprising that some nice theatres are looking keen to take it on…

In 2023 he wrote Plane Speaking, a tragic romcom about plane crashes, corporate fraud and regulatory capture which aerospace engineering twitter and the Daily Mail really enjoyed (not a huge crossover) and which was pick of a lot of papers’ radio weeks.

Sasha Yevtushenko directed all of these and Pete Ringrose did their brilliant sound. They’re great. Paul Chahidi, Clare Foster, Jasmine Hyde and Fenella Woolgar all starred in more than one of them. They’re great too.

His play, Fake, which is about why we fall for con artists and why we’re more likely to love them if they a) are artists and b) con Nazis, had a great reading at the Jermyn St Theatre and will, hopefully, come soon to A Stage Near You.

His musical Damsel in Distress, written with Jeremy Sams and based on a Wodehouse novel and Gershwin songs, was produced in Chichester in 2015. At some point, somewhere, you will be able to see it again. Here are reviews. He also adapted Frank Wildhorn, Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd's Wonderland for its 2017 UK Tour. Also, there’s The Great Lost Bee Play, which everyone wants to read it, if he’ll only finish it.

He hosted many episodes of the Tall Tales Broadcast System’s emergency podcast during the lockdown.

He also– look, who am I trying to kid? I am Robert Hudson. As well as novels and musicals, I write comedy with Marie Phillips. Our Napoleonic-era epistolary equine rom com, Warhorses of Letters, was first broadcast on Radio 4 in Autumn 2011, Series 2 was broadcast in 2012 and Series 3 in 2014. You can buy the book version of Series 1 - which contains extra letters, a bibliographical essay and hoofnotes - at Unbound by clicking this link. Someone has translated it into German. The BBC recordings are available from horrid old Amazon.

If you think this is the only time we have written historical love stories with animals, you didn't hear Some Hay in a Manger on Radio 4 over Christmas 2018. Currently in progress: The Northern Ostrobothnia Project which someone has to broadcast soon because we love it so much.

‘The Great Lost Bee Play?’ I hear you cry. ‘I really want to read that!’ Of course you do. During 2017, I was Leverhulme artist-in-residence with the Chittka Bee Behaviour Lab at Queen Mary, University of London. The plan was to write a play about how bees think and how we think about that. This has taken millions of years (bee years) longer than expected because its designated writing slot got filled with something else and I have been relentlessly busy ever since, but I like my first draft and the lab think my scientists don’t sound insane. Grr (or Bzz). It has become my great white snail, and I will catch it.

My first novel was The Kilburn Social Club; I appear on various Radio 4 and festival panels; I run the bi-monthly comedy night Tall Tales; I’ve taught at universities and, under very special circumstances, I script-doctor, plot-doctor and mentor other writers.

*Not a deliberate festival but the accidental result of it having been impossible to record these shows earlier - stupid covid - and the BBC needing them to be broadcast in the relevant tax year.

For much more content, go to my blog. I haven’t updated it for a while, but if you like interesting facts about dead earls, that’s a search term I’d recommend. Or, if you have a bit of time, look up ‘inspiring photo essay’. Future historians are already saying that my inspiring photo essays were among some of my most important work. What do they know?