217. Agatha Christie - Endless Night

At long last, it's our Agatha Christie show! We are joined by Caroline Crampton, writer and host of the Shedunnit podcast, and Laura Thompson, author and Christie biographer, for an investigation of Endless Night (1967), a late entry in the Queen of Crime's extensive catalogue and perhaps her last truly great novel of suspense and surprise. NB. Whilst we refrain from revealing the killer's identity (just about), there are enough clues sprinkled throughout the podcast that listeners may be advised to read the book first; you don't need to be Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple to work out whodunnit. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London, on 17th July 2024. If you would like to hear more, including some excellent contributions from members of the audience, subscribe to our Patreon at the Locklistener level or above; we will be making this part of our conversation available next weekend as a bonus podcast. 

Books mentioned
Agatha Christie - Endless Night; Giants Bread (as Mary Westmacott); The Rose & the Yew Tree (as Mary Westmacott); Third Girl; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Witness for the Prosecution; Five Little Pigs
Caroline Crampton - The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary; A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria; Agatha Christie’s England
Laura Thompson - A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan; Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters; The Last Landlady; Au Revoir Now Darlint: The Letters of Edith Thompson; Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life
Pierre Bayard - Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

Other links
Shedunnit podcast
ITV Marple series - Endless Night - watch via https://www.itv.com/watch/agatha-christie's-marple/L1286/1a5576a0015

216. Catherine Storr - Marianne Dreams

Children's writer Rachael King and novelist Richard Blandford join John and Andy for a discussion of Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, the eerie, disturbing tale of two sick children who meet in a realm of nightmares. First published in 1958, the book is now considered by critics to be a sui genesis classic. Storr was a prolific author, with dozens of titles to her name; her work for children often mixes fantasy and horror with her extensive professional knowledge of child psychology. In 1972, Marianne Dreams was adapted for television as Escape Into Night; in 1988, a film version entitled Paperhouse was released; and in 1999 the author herself turned the novel into an opera libretto. What is it about this story that speaks to successive generations of readers, viewers and listeners? Only the stones - and our guests - know for sure... 

Books mentioned
Catherine Storr - Marianne Dreams 
Rachael King - The Grimmelings
Richard Blanford - My Life In Orbit

Other links
Paperhouse
Escape Into Night (Youtube)

215. Joan Barfoot - Gaining Ground

Author Rose Ruane (This is Yesterday, Birding) picks Gaining Ground AKA Abra (1978) by Canadian feminist writer Joan Barfoot. One day, seemingly on a whim, a woman walks out of her home and her marriage, forsaking her family for a life of near-solitude and self-sufficiency. Many years later, her daughter, now grown-up, comes to find her and to ask a simple question: why? But there are no easy answers... In a long and distinguished literary career, Barfoot has won the Marian Engel Award and been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, for Critical Injuries (2002). Her debut novel, however, seems to have vanished almost as thoroughly as its female protagonist; as you will hear from our discussion, we think the book richly deserves to be rediscovered.  

Backlisted will be live at Foyles in London on 17th July with guests Caroline Crampton and Andrew Male - on Agatha Christie's Endless Night - tickets are available now via the Foyles website.

Books mentioned
Joan Barfoot - Gaining Ground; Abra; Critical Injuries
Rose Ruane - This is Yesterday; Birding
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar

214. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Dr Martin Shaw and Dr Laura Varnam (hwaet Laura!) join Andy and John to discuss this late 14th-century chivalric romance - or subversion thereof - written in Middle English alliterative verse, author unknown. We discuss the poem's chequered history and a variety of translations by Simon Armitage, J.R.R. Tolkien, Marie Borroff and Dr Shaw himself. We also take a look at some of the film, TV and radio adaptations of the poem, the most recent of which is The Green Knight (2021), starring Dev Patel. This show was recorded in front of a live audience at Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London, on 12th June 2024. Locklisted subscribers will be able to hear more Gawain chat next weekend, including some terrific contributions and questions from members of the audience. In other words, it's a bumper bonus Backlisted bonanza from the blokes and broads who brought you Beowulf.

Books mentioned
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Simon Armitage edition; J.R.R. Tolkien edition
Dr Martin Shaw - Bardskull

Other links
The Green Knight (2021)
Backlisted Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/backlisted

213. The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts by Douglas Adams

The work of Douglas Adams - comic genius, futurologist and erstwhile hitchhiker - is the subject of this episode of Backlisted, in particular The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts, first published by Pan Books in 1985. H2G2, as it is known to fans, was a cultural phenomenon in the true sense of that degraded term: first a hit radio show, then a bestselling novel, then a double LP, then a stage adaptation, then a second radio series, then another novel, then a video game, then a TV series, then another LP, then a third novel… you get the idea. We have chosen the scripts of the original radio series as our entry point into the Hitchhiker multiverse because each of us brings our own unique, informed perspective to the saga: longtime Adams fan Joel Morris has written a new book entitled Be Funny or Die:  How Comedy Works and Why It Matters; author Gail Renard was a friend and colleague of Douglas’s and an eyewitness to the irresistible and highly improbable success of Hitchhiker; as a publisher, John has worked on several books by or about the great man; and Andy cheerfully admits to having borrowed many of his best ideas from The Guide. Please consider this, then, our loving tribute to a true giant of literature, comedy, technology and being an actual giant, Douglas having been one of the only people in history tall enough to break his nose with his own knee. 

Books mentioned
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts
Joel Morris - Be Funny or Die:  How Comedy Works and Why It Matters
Gail Renard - Give Me A Chance
Kevin Jon Davies (ed.) - 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams

Other links 
Gail Renard website - http://www.gailrenard.com/
Joel Morris - https://x.com/gralefrit
The Comfort Blanket podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/5qfcU1fgkeOLMadWjQA5Ix
The Rule of Three podcast - https://www.ruleofthreepod.com/

212. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Novelist Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient, The Fury) joins Andy and John to discuss Ford Madox Ford's classic novel The Good Soldier (1915), a tale of passion in which, owing to a narrator of almost comic unreliability, nothing can be taken for granted. It is a book that seems to change on every reading, both a kaleidoscopic psychological drama and 'the saddest story I have ever heard'. During his lifetime 'Fordie' was, variously, a prolific author, a publisher of historical note, a notable polyamorist and a serial liar; we consider the extent to which the character of John Dowell in The Good Soldier may be considered a self-portrait.

This episode was recorded live on stage at Foyles, Charing Cross Road in London on the evening of 15th May 2024 and is the first date of a monthly residency. Tickets for the 12th June show, on the subject of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are available now here.

Books mentioned
Ford Maddox Ford - The Good Soldier; Parade’s End
Alex Michaelides - The Silent Patient; The Fury

Other links
Alex Michaelides Website - https://www.alexmichaelides.com/
Foyles Backlisted Live Event 12th June Tickets - https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/backlisted-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight

211. Book Recommendations

This episode is a little different from a regular Backlisted, the next episode of which has been delayed through illness (though given that its subject is the radio scripts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, this tardiness may not come as a complete surprise). A conversation about shelftalkers in bookshops leads to a broader discussion about where we get our book recommendations and Andy runs a quiz based on the principle of algorithmic recommendation. There is also a discussion inspired by Thomas Bernhard’s pitch black 1980’s novel The Cheap Eaters (translated by Douglas Robertson) and John Boorman and Bill Stairs’ 1974 novelisation of the cult film, Zardoz.

Books mentioned
Kevin Barry - Night Boat to Tangier; Beatlebone
Thomas Bernhard - The Cheap Eaters
Duncan Sprott - The Clopton Hercules
Georg Perac - A Void
John Boorman - Zardoz
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

210 - Sarah Orne Jewett - A Marsh Island

For this episode we are joined by the writer, Noreen Masud, author of the acclaimed memoir, A Flat Place (currently shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction). The book she has chosen to discuss is A Marsh Island, a 19th century American novel by Sarah Orne Jowett, who is usually considered one of the foremost proponents of American regionalism – an assumption this episode investigates. The book was first serialised in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1885 and published by Houghton Mifflin later that year. The story centres on Dick Dale, a wealthy young urban bohemian artist who finds himself billeted with a traditional farming family in the middle of New England’s Great Salt Marsh. His impact on the small community over the course of a harvest provides what plot there is – but the novel is rich in atmosphere and interior reflection, exploring the complex tensions between rural and urban ways of life in late 19th century East Coast America. It was written at a moment in Jewett’s own life when she had just begun an unconventional relationship with another woman and the episode also explores how that plays out in the subversive presentation of the relationships in the novel.

Books mentioned
Sarah Orne Jewett - A Marsh Island; A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches; An Arrow in a Sunbeam; The Life of Nancy; Deephaven and Selected Stories; The Tory Lover; A Country Doctor; The Country of the Pointed Firs
Noreen Masud - A Flat Place; Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language

Other links
Noreen’s website - https://www.noreenmasud.com/

A reminder that Backlisted will be doing a series of live shows at Foyles in central London. Kicking off this May 15th with a discussion of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier with guest speaker Alex Michaelides and we would love to see you there!

Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/backlisted-live-the-good-soldier-with-alex-michaelides-tickets-875897080747?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

209. P.D. James - The Children of Men


Novelist Andrew Hunter Murray and biographer Laura Thompson join us to discuss The Children of Men (1992), a dystopian thriller by the late P.D. James. The author is probably best remembered as one of Britain's greatest exponents of detective fiction, an heir to the Golden Age of female novelists such as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers et al. In The Children of Men, however, James depicts a nightmare near-future in which the world is literally coming to an end. The book became a bestseller; in 2006, it was adapted for the big screen by the Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. We look at the ways in which James explored issues that seem eerily contemporary: the societal impact of an uncontrolled virus, falling fertility rates, an ageing population, the rise of populism and accompanying exploitation of migrant labour. She also knew how to grip her readers to the very last page. Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, lived a long and remarkable life and it was a pleasure for all of us to revisit her work and biography in this episode. 

Books mentioned
P.D. James - The Children of Men; An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
Andrew Hunter Murray - The Last Day; Sanctuary; A Beginners Guide to Breaking and Entering; QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance
Laura Thompson - Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters; A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan; Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life; Rex v Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders; The Last Landlady: An English Memoir; The Dogs

Other links
Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/page-94-the-private-eye-podcast/id973958702
No Such Thing as a Fish - https://www.nosuchthingasafish.com/
Meeting P. D. James’s Legendary Detective Adam Dalgliesh - https://www.faber.co.uk/product-category/fiction/crime-and-thriller/adam-dalgliesh-mysteries/page/2/
Prev. Backlisted episodes ft. Laura Thompson - episode 4, Nancy Mitford The Blessing; episode 112, Antonia White Frost in May

208. Anne Sexton - All My Pretty Ones

Award-winning poet Emily Berry joins us to consider the work and troubled life of Anne Sexton. We focus on her brilliant second collection All My Pretty Ones (1962). Sexton was a trailblazing American poet of the so-called 'confessional' school of the 1960s, one whose writing continues to provoke controversy and debate; her friends and contemporaries included Sylvia Plath and John Berryman. We hear from Sexton herself, in recordings of readings and interviews, and fronting own experimental jazz-rock ensemble, Anne Sexton and Her Kind, and also from her daughter Linda.

Please note: Anne Sexton was an unflinching chronicler of her own struggle with mental illness, and this episode contains extensive discussion of suicide and sexual abuse.

Books mentioned
Anne Sexton - All My Pretty Ones; Mercies: Selected Poems; No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Prose; Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
Emily Berry - Dear Boy,  Stranger Baby, Unexhausted Time; The Breakfast Bible; ‘The White Review: The Secret Country of Her Mind’

Other links
Emily Berry website - https://www.emilyberry.co.uk/
Sleep World app - https://sleepworlds.com/
The New School of Confessional Poetry - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/151109/an-introduction-to-confessional-poetry
Anne Sexton and Her Kind Sound Recordings, 1968-1971 - https://library.harvard.edu/collections/anne-sexton-and-her-kind-sound-recordings-1968-1971
Anne Sexton at home reading Wanting to Die - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM6nWRXCQD8

207. Coffee Table Books

This fully illustrated, lavishly produced episode of Backlisted represents the last word in coffee table books. Join John, Andy and Nicky as we dip into the origin, design and continuing appeal of specialist hardcover publishing, via some of our favourite cookery books, exhibition catalogues and sumptuous volumes simply too beautiful to leave on the shelf. Thank you to our Patrons for their contributions to our virtual quarto library; as you will hear, we loved making this show, which is as deep as it is long. And remember: a coffee table book is for life, not just for Christmas.

Books mentioned
Robert Carrier - Great Dishes of the World 
Marguerite Patten - Everyday Cookbook in Colour
Reader's Digest - Folklore Myths and legends of Britain
Basil Spence, Henk Snoek - Out of the Ashes: A Progress through Coventry Cathedral
The Beatles: Get Back also available via Rough Trades Book
Jenny Lister (ed.) - Mary Quant
Ansel Adams - This is the American Earth
Sandy Lesberg - Assassination in our Time

Other links
Don McCullin - https://donmccullin.com/
Paul Hamlyn - https://www.phf.org.uk/about-phf/paul-hamlyn/

206. Michael Powell - A Life in Movies

This episode of Backlisted is devoted to A Life in Movies (1986), the first volume of memoirs of the filmmaker Michael Powell who, with his partner Emeric Pressburger, is responsible for some of the finest, most magical and soulful films ever to come out of the UK: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, and many more. Joining us for a discussion of Powell's life and work - and his vision of cinema as a space in which all the other arts may find expression - are memoirist and critic James Cook and film writer and academic Melanie Williams. We focus on four productions of the Archers that between them tell the story of Powell and Pressburger's achievement: The Spy in Black, A Matter of Life and Death, "I Know Where I'm Going!" and Gone to Earth. If you have yet to see these films, or any of Michael Powell's work, set aside some time for your next personal obsession. You'll be glad you did.

Books mentioned
Michael Powell - A Life in Movies
James Cook - Memory Songs: A Personal Journey Into the Music that Shaped the 90s; In Her Room: How Music Helped Me Connect With My Autistic Daughter
Melanie Williams - Ealing Revisited (editor): David Lean; Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question; Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered; A Taste of Honey: BFI Film Classics
David Niven - The Moon’s a Balloon

Films mentioned
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Peeping Tom
Black Narcissus
The Red Shoes
The Spy in Black
A Matter of Life and Death
"I Know Where I'm Going!"
Gone to Earth

Other links
Review 31 website
A Taste of Honey - The Royal Exchange, Manchester
Criterion Channel

205. George Melly - Scouse Mouse

This episode was recorded in the great city of Liverpool and celebrates the life and work of a great Liverpudlian: George Melly, sometime writer, jazz and blues singer, artist, critic, lecturer and aficionado of surrealism. We are joined by two resident experts: the writer Jeff Young and the playwright and screenwriter, Lizzie Nunnery. The book under discussion is Melly’s Scouse Mouse, which is chronologically the first part of Melly’s memoirs. It was first published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1984 and was the third to be released despite covering the first fourteen years of Melly’s life, painting a vivid portrait of growing up in a middle-class Liverpool family, tinged with eccentricity and theatricality, and his painful experiences at boarding school. Subtitled ‘I Never Got Over It’, it was preceded by Rum, Bum & Concertina, an account of his time in the navy, published in 1977, and Owning Up, which covers his years as an aspiring musician in the jazz world of the 1950s, first published in 1965. The final volume, Slowing Down was published in 2005, two years before Melly died.

Scouse Mouse was Melly’s personal favourite of the four: ‘I don’t know why the events of over sixty years ago should be so much clearer than those of yesterday afternoon, but they are.’ He also adopted that ever-useful motto for the memoirist: ‘Life is lived forwards but understood backwards.’ How much this classic childhood memoir helps us understand the outrageous, complex and multi-faceted life of the grown-up George Melly is just one of the things the panel explore. They also revisit his brilliant book on the pop culture of the 1960s, Revolt Into Style, a book Andy first discussed back on episode 22 on Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family.

This podcast was filmed and will be available as a video on our Youtube channel from Monday 19th Feb. We will also be posting an extra half hour of this episode on the Patreon next weekend for subscribers only.

Books mentioned
George Melly - Owning Up: The Trilogy (ft. Scouse Mouse, Rum, Bum & Concertina and Owning Up - also available at Foyles bookshop if sold out on Hive);  Slowing Down; Revolt Into Style
Jeff Young - Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay; Deliria
Lizzie Nunnery - Intemperance; Unprotected; Heavy Weather; Narvik; Another World (short film); With Love (forthcoming film); Daphne: A Fire in Malta (BBC Radio 4)

Other links
Background Reading on George Melly - https://heritage.humanists.uk/george-melly/
Chris Wade - The Life and Work of George Melly
George Melly - At The Tate, St. Ives (as heard BBC Radio 2, 1995) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QIMx2qazwU
1982 interview with George Melly on The Importance of Art - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crt-AazOHdg

204. Love on the Dole - Walter Greenwood

We are joined by the writer Andrew Hankinson to discuss Walter Greenwood’s classic novel of Northern working-class life. First published in 1933, Love on the Dole, revolves explores the fortunes of the Hardcastle family, who live in industrial Salford in the 1930s, just as the Depression is beginning to bite. Greenwood’s authentic portrayal of the corrosive effects of mass unemployment and poverty was well received by critics, but it wasn’t until the 1934 stage version had become a hit, that the book became a bestseller. It is estimated that a million people has seen the play by the end of 1935 and the book has remained in print ever since. However, it had to wait until 1941 before being made into a classic film which featured Deborah Kerr in her first starring role. We discuss the books connections to other working-class novels, its wider cultural impact and its influence on the gritty social dramas of the 1960s, the interesting differences between the book and the film adaptation, and we ask why, despite the classic status accorded to Love on the Dole, Greenwood himself and his nine other novels have faded into obscurity.

Books mentioned
Walter Greenwood - Love on the Dole; Standing Room Only; Cure for Love
Andrew Hankinson - You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]; Don’t Applaud. Either Laugh Or Don’t
Chris Hopkins - Walter Greenwood's 'Love on the Dole': Novel, Play, Film
John Healy - The Grass Arena
Alan Sillitoe - The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
George Orwell - The Road To Wigan Pier
Shelagh Delaney - A Taste of Honey
Robert Tressell - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Other links
Background reading on Walter Greenwood (Chris Hopkins’ website) - https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/
Logroll podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/logroll/id1588244277; https://open.spotify.com/show/1qQ3kqM8Ws8DpgKmNOYr4o
Watch Love on the Dole - BFI Player; Amazon Prime
Watch The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner - Amazon Prime

203. Margaret Laurence - The Stone Angel

For this first episode of 2024 we are joined by the chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings to discuss a novel by her fellow Canadian, Margaret Laurence. First published in 1964, The Stone Angel is a landmark in modern Canadian fiction. The narrator is the unforgettable Hagar Shipley, a spiky, sharp-tongued, proud and profane ninety-year-old who is trying to resist her family’s attempts to transfer her into a nursing home. This battle is interwoven with memories of her long and difficult life, much of it spent in the Manitoban prairie town of Manawaka, a place closely based on Laurence’s own home town of Neepawa and which would provide the setting for three more novels and a collection of stories. We discuss the book’s place in the Canadian pantheon and speculate on why it hasn’t become an established classic outside Canada (it is no longer in print with Virago). We also discover some unexpected coincidences among Margaret Laurence’s neighbours during the years she lived in England in the late sixties and early seventies. This is a book that deserves to find many more new readers.

Also here’s a reminder that if you'd like to sign up to our monthly newsletter which features book recommendations from our guests and as well as the three of us, please click here.

Books Mentioned
Margaret Laurence - The Stone Angel; A Jest of God; The Diviners; Recognition and Revelation: Short Non-Fiction Writings
Lennie Goodings - A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago

Other Links
Poet in the City - https://www.poetinthecity.co.uk/
Virago Press - https://www.virago.co.uk

202. Backlisted Christmas Special - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

For this year’s Backlisted Christmas Special we are joined by the poet and novelist Clare Pollard and our producer Nicky Birch to discuss not just a book, but adaptations of a book – and there are hundreds to choose from – and all have contributed to making it perhaps the most famous Christmas story of them all: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Written in six weeks in 1843, it was a massive and immediate success, selling out its first run of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. It has been in print ever since and has come to define the festive period for millions of readers, listeners and viewers. We explore why and how this fable – terrifying in parts, warm and reassuring in others – has exerted such a hold on our collective imagination. We each pick a favourite version (you’ll have to listen to find out which) but also range over others from Richard Williams’ celebrated 1971 animation to those featuring Mister Magoo and Ebeneezer Blackadder. Plus Andy has compiled a special festive playlist for you to listen to over the mulled wine and marzipan fruits. There never was such an episode! 

And finally, on this most special of days, we’d like thank you all for your support during the year and to wish you: A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Books mentioned
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Clare Pollard - Incarnation; The Modern Fairies; Fierce Bad Rabbits; Delphi
Chris Priestley - The Last of the Spirits

Other links
Mister Magoos Christmas Carol (1962)
A Christmas Carol (Richard Williams Productions, 1971)
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol
Scrooge The Musical with Albert Finney
Scrooged - The Movie
A Muppet Christmas Carol - stream via Disney; Apple TV
Andy’s festive playlist

201. Basil Bunting - Briggflatts

Today’s episode focuses on a single long poem – Briggflatts by the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting. It was recorded live in St Mary’s Church, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, as part of the Woodstock Poetry Festival. Andy and John are joined by Neil Astley, the founder of Bloodaxe Books, who knew and published Bunting, and Kirsten Norrie, a poet and composer who writes and performs under her Highland name, MacGillivray. The episode begins and ends with recordings made in 1977 of Bunting reading from the poem, which was first published in 1966. Until that time, Bunting, who in the 1930s had been a friend to W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, was living in semi-obscurity in rural Northumbria. It was his live readings of the poem, subtitled ‘An Autobiography’ at the medieval Mordern Tower in Newcastle that transformed his reputation. We discuss his remarkable and sometimes controversial life – before his exile he was at various times a music critic, a sailor, a balloon operator, a wing commander, a military interpreter, a foreign correspondent, and a spy – and its relationship to his work, and particularly Briggflatts, now regarded as one of the greatest English poems of the 20th century.

Books mentioned
Basil Bunting - Briggflatts; Basil Bunting: Complete Poems
Neil Astley - Staying Alive; The Sheep Who Changed the World
Kirsten Norrie - Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire; The Last Wolf of Scotland; Scottish Lost Boys (forthcoming November 2024); An American Book of the Dead (forthcoming 2025)
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater; Bedouin of the London Evening

Other links
Basil Bunting reading from Briggflatts (Bloodaxe Books)
A World of My Own: Basil Bunting (A film by Jeremy Lack, 1969)

200. Nevil Shute - Trustee From the Toolroom

For our 200th episode, we are joined by Richard Osman: television presenter, longtime Backlisted listener, and one of the bestselling authors in the world today. We discuss Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), the final novel by Nevil Shute Norway, whose other books include A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957), widely read in his lifetime but now somewhat forgotten or ignored. How did Shute's long and distinguished stint as an aeronautical engineer fit with his parallel career as a prominent and much-loved author? And what do his tales of ordinary people doing extraordinary things have to offer us in the 21st century? Richard also shares with John and Andy what he's been reading this week; and if you've been with us from the start, you will appreciate his choices all the more.

Books mentioned:
Nevil Shute - Trustee from the Toolroom; A Town Like Alice; On the Beach; In the Wet; Slide Rule: An Autobigraphy
Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club; The Man Who Died Twice; The Bullet That Missed; The Last Devil to Die
J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country
Alan Partridge - A Big Beacon; A Big Beacon (audiobook)
Barbara Pym - Quartet in Autumn

Other links:
Great Lives (BBC R4) - Nevil Shute with Adam Hart-Davis and Heather Mayfield, (Nevil Shute’s daughter)
The Nevil Shute Norway Foundation

199. Samuel Beckett - Plays, Essays, Novels and Stories:

© Henri Cartier-Bresson | Magnum Photos

In this episode, we feature the life and work of Samuel Beckett, one of the most important and influential voices of 20th century literature. We discuss Beckett’s writing across five decades, including his essays, short stories, novels and plays: ‘Dante… Bruno. Vico… Joyce’; More Pricks Than Kicks; The Unnamable; Krapp’s Last Tape; and the late masterpiece Company. And we also ruminate on the fact that Backlisted has now been going on (it must go on, it can’t go on, it’ll go on) for eight years, notching up nearly 200 episodes. We hope you enjoy this memorable and moving recording AKA Spool #199.

Books mentioned
Samuel Beckett - Our Examination Round Our Factification For Incamination of Work in Progress; The Unnamable; Krapp’s Last Tape; Waiting for Godot; Not I; Company; More Pricks Than Kicks

198. M. R. James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Pour yourself a glass of sherry and light a candle, as we dedicate this year's Halloween special to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), the first collection by M.R. James, probably the most celebrated and influential exponent of the weird tale. With the help of undead guests Andrew Male and Laura Varnam we illuminate the life and work of a strange and singular author, one whose writings, like the engraving in 'The Mezzotint', have truly taken on a life of their own.

Books mentioned
M.R. James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; A Warning to the Curious; Lost Hearts; Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book; The Five Jars; A Thin Ghost and Others; A Warning to the Curious; Curious Warnings
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Gate of Angels

Other links
Dr Laura Varnam - https://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/academics/laura-varnam/
Andrew Male - https://t.co/GAk77aIlb1
MR James's ghost stories: celebrate Halloween the old-fashioned way - https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/31/mr-james-ghost-stories-halloween
The Haunting of M.R. James BBC Radio 4 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001l7c
The M.R. James BBC Radio Collection - https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-M-R-James-BBC-Radio-Collection-Audiobook/1787538990