Brighton Festival 2016 saw us work with Guardian Live in a special partnership to deliver the Books and Debate programme with an impressive line-up of writers and commentators including former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, Orange prize winner Lionel Shriver and two Booker prize winners, Marlon James and Howard Jacobson.

Charlotte Brontë at 200 saw Tracy Chevalier and Esther Freud read stories inspired by Brontë’s most famous line: ‘Reader, I married him’ .

There are few more celebrated lines in literature than Jane Eyre’s: “Reader, I married him.” So, in celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of its author, Charlotte Brontë, novelist Tracy Chevalier commissioned contemporary writers to create their own stories in response to it. Twenty-one agreed, among them Esther Freud, who joined Tracy for a Guardian Live event at the Brighton festival. They read their own contributions to the collection and explore why Brontë and her most celebrated work still means so much to so many.

Listen to the full podcast here.