The Wildest Dream is a major drama documentary about the final climb of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine on Everest in June 1924. Climbers Leo Houlding and Conrad Anker retraced Mallory and Irvine’s steps, reaching the summit in June 2007. Julie will be interviewed about Sandy Irvine in the film.

Julie is currently developing a number of programme ideas with Chrome Radio on topics such as traction engines, the Olympic Games and her most recent publication, Stranger in the House.

A few years ago Julie Summers travelled to the provincial town of Kanchanaburi, 90 miles west of Bangkok, to visit the bridge which her grandfather and 2,500 of his men had built over a period of six months from October 1942 to April 1943. He was the real life colonel on whom the character of Colonel Nicholson was loosely based.

Listen to Julie in conversation with John McCarthy talking about her experience of walking in her grandfather’s shoes. A clip from Anton Lesser’s evocative reading of The Colonel of Tamarkan introduces the conversation.

At the end of World War Two millions of men returned home, many of them changed forever. Greeting them were women equally changed, by the privations of the Home Front and the trauma of the Blitz. A million children under five were re-united with fathers they’d never met. Many families were placed under huge strain as they grappled to adjust to life post war. In her book ‘Stranger in the House’ Julie Summers spoke to over a hundred women about how they coped when the men came home.

Jenni is joined by writer Julie Summers and her mother Gillian.

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Radio 4 broadcast a selection of listeners' responses to this programme on the 4th September. To listen to this programme, click here.

Presented by Andrew Marr.

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This 45 minute documentary focuses on life in the POW camps along the Thailand-Burma railway and looks at the role played by the chaplains and religion during the three and a half years of captivity. The programme draws on the leadership and example of Lt. Col. Philip Toosey and excerpts from THE COLONEL OF TAMARKAN, PHILIP TOOSEY AND THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI will be used throughout. It will be presented by Terry Waite who drew on his own experiences of captivity when talking to the book’s author, Julie Summers, the lead interviewee for the programme, about her grandfather’s time in the POW camps. Terry Waite saw many parallels and was moved by the account of Toosey’s return to Britain after the war. They shared, by all accounts, the same traumas readjusting to life after captivity. Terry Waite summed up Philip Toosey as ‘a great man. A great leader, a man of stature and an inspiration to his men.’

Julie appeared on Battle of the Books to defend Heinrich Harrer’s The White Spider against Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void.

Presented by Jenni Murray

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Julie is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Oxford, BBC Radio Merseyside and has done a number of local radio interviews in connection with her books.

Also: GMTV, BBC and ITV for a number of interviews in the 1990s.