31. Alan Garner - Red Shift

Critic and author Erica Wagner and novelist S.F. Said join John and Andy on the Backlisted podcastto discuss 'Red Shift', the fifth novel by Alan Garner. Also discussed: 'Brave New Weed' by Joe Dolce (no, not that one) and 'Nomad' by Alan Partridge (yes, that one).

Books Mentioned:

• Mark Danielewski - House of Leaves

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• S. F. Said - Varjak Paw, Phoenix

• Alan Garner - Red Shift, The Owl Service, Boneland, The Weirdstone of Brisingaman, Moon of Gomrath, Stone Book Quartet, Elidor, Strandloper

• Erica Wagner - First Light

• Joe Dolce - Brave New Weed

• Alan Partridge - Nomad, I Partridge

• Martin Amis - The Information

• Malcolm Lowry - Under The Volcano

Other Links:

• Backlisted Twitter

• Georgette Heyer podcast

• Derek Raymond podcast

• The Fall

• Nomad reading

• Cover Kids Books

• Red Shift film

30. Georgette Heyer - Venetia

This episode of the Backlisted podcast sees John and Andy joined by Una McCormack and Cathy Rentzenbrink to discuss Venetia, one of the Regency Romance novels by Georgette Heyer. Includes mild language and various Georgian terms for drunkenness.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Cathy Rentzenbrick - The Last Act of Love: The Story of My Brother and His Sister

• Georgette Heyer - Venetia, The Talisman Ring, Black Sheep, These Old Shades, Envious Casca, The Black Moth, Penhallow, Frederica, False Colours, Friday's Child

• Anita Brookner - A Start In Life

• Samantha Ellis - How to Be a Heroine, Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life

• Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

• Peter Ackroyd - Dickens

• Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

• L. P. Jacks - Mad Shepards

• A. S. Byatt - Possession

• Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot

Other Links:

• La La Land

• Jacques Demy films

• To Walk Invisible (Sally Wainwright)

• Regency Romance

• Patrick O'Brian

29. Memento Mori - Muriel Spark

John Grindrod, author of Concretopia, joins John Mitchinson and Andy Miller to discuss Memento Mori, the third novel by Muriel Spark. They also pay tribute to the author and agent David Miller, who passed away recently, and read a short story in his memory.

Books Mentioned:

• John Grindrod - Concretopia, Outskirts

• Muriel Spark - Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Driver's Seat, The Comforters, Curriculum Vitae, A Far Cry from Kensington, Loitering With Intent, The Public Image, The Very Fine Clock, Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Girls of Slender Means

• David Miller - That Glimpse of Truth, Today

• William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow

• Joseph Conrad - Tomorrow

• Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils

• James Joyce - Finnegans Wake

• Thomas Mann - BuddenBrooks

• Penelope Mortimer - The Pumpkin Eater

Other Links: 

• Braga

• A Good Read

• Ali Smith on Spark

• Driver's Seat film

• Nasty Habits

• Momento Mori film

28. Derek Raymond - A State of Denmark

In a bid to get our fear and creeping dread about the state of the world in early for 2017, author Travis Elborough (A Walk in The Park, The Bus We Loved, and The Long Player Goodbye) joins us to discuss A State of Denmark, the dystopian vision of England by Derek Raymond (aka Robin Cook). Worst. Happy New Year. Programme. Ever. Enjoy!

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Travis Elborough - A Walk in The Park, An Atlas of Improbable Places, The Bus We Loved, The Long Player Goodbye

• Derek Raymond - A State of Denmark, Crust On Its Uppers, He Died With His Eyes Open

• Oliver Rowe - Food For All Seasons

• Shaun Usher - Letters of Note

• Nigel Slater - The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen

• Mollie Panter-Downes - Good Evening Mrs Craven

• Gillian Freeman - The Leader

• Robert Muller - After All, This Is England

• Peter Van Greenaway - The Man Who Held the Queen to Ransome And Sent Parliament Packing

• Arthur Wise - Who Killed Enoch Powell?

• Jay Arnott - The Long Firm

Other Links:

• Lissa Evans podcast

• Lloyd Shepherd podcast

• Rachel Cooke’s Shelf Life

• Absolute Beginners

27. Jane Gardam - A Long Way from Verona

John and Andy are joined by Laura Cumming, the art critic for the Observer and author of The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez, and Hilary Murray Hill, CEO of Hachette Children's Books, to talk bout Jane Gardam's debut novel A Long Way From Verona.

Books Mentioned:

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd - The Meaning of Liff
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Laura Cumming - The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez
Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising
John Cheever - Christmas is a Sad Season For the Poor
Magnus Mills - Hark the Herald
Angus Wilson - Christmas Day at the Workhouse
Candia McWilliam - What to Look For in Winter
Shena Mackay - An Advent Calendar, Redhill Rococo
E. F. Benson - Between the Lights
A. E. Ellis - The Rack
Dan Rhodes - When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow
Betsy Byars - The Eighteenth Emergency
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Other Links:

• Jane Gardam 2013 interview

• Velazquez

• Barbara Cummings podcast

26. William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow

Costa First Book nominee for My Name Is Leon, Kit de Waal joins John & Andy to discuss So Long, See You Tomorrow, the final novel by author and New Yorker literary editor, William Maxwell.

Books Mentioned:

Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Kit de Waal - My Name is Leon
John Williams - Stoner
William Maxwell - So Long See You Tomorrow, All the Days and Nights, Time Will Darken It, They Came Like Swallows, Ancestors: A Family History, The Outermost Dream
Brian Bilston - You Took the Last Bus Home: The Poems of Brian Bilston
Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners

Other Links:

• Twitter’s Poet Laureate

• Colin MacInnes podcast

• Paris Review

• “As I Get Older…”

25. J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights

Monocle culture editor Robert Bound joins John and Andy to discuss J.G. Ballard's Spanish set thriller Cocaine Nights. Also, The Ballard-Bond connection, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, and the phrase you never want to hear John Mitchinson say in person…

Books mentioned:

• J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights, Crash, Empire of the Sun, The Atrocity Exhibition, High Rise, The Terminal Beach, Extreme Metaphors, Miracles of Life, Super-Cannes, Millennium People, The Kindness of Women

• Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad, Zone One, John Henry Days

• Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong

• Donna Tartt - The Secret History

• Paul Beatty - The sellout

• Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac

• Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express

Other links:

• JG Ballard obituary in the Guardian

• Atrocity Exhibition by Joy Division (Spotify)

• Interview with Jonathan Meades in The White Review

• Paris Review interview

• Now and again I open Crash. I think, my god, this is horrific

• Ballardian website

• JG Ballard on Desert Island Discs

24. Robert Aickman - Cold Hand In Mine

In a special Halloween edition, John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by Andrew Male to discuss Cold Hand In Mine, a book of 'strange stories' by British writer Robert Aickman

Books Mentioned:

Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine, The Unsettled Dust, Dark Entries, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Hospice, The Trains, Your Tiny Hand is Frozen, The Attempted Rescue, The Wine-Dark Sea
Ali Smith - Autumn
Thomas Firminger Thiselton - British Popular Customs: Present and Past: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People: Arranged According to the Calender of the Year
Edward Gorey - The Gashlycrumb Tinies
Elizabeth Jane Howard and Robert Aickman - We Are For the Dark

Other Links:

• Raymond Chandler podcast

• Pauline Boty

• Baudrillard

• Reece Shearsmith

• David Seabrook podcast

• Mass observation podcast

23. Stevie Smith - The Holiday

Recorded live at the Durham Book Festival 2016, John and Andy are joined by Sally Bayley (author of Girl with Dove and The Private Life of the Diary) to discuss Stevie Smith's third and final novel The Holiday.

Books Mentioned:

Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Sally Bayley - Private Life of the Diary
David Szalay - All That Man Is
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
Chris Wilson - The Glue Ponys
Gisela Elsner - Offside
Anita Brookner - Hotel Du Lac
J. G. Ballard - Empire of the Sun
Stevie Smith - The Holiday, Not Waving But Drowning, Novel On Yellow Paper, I Remember
Nigel Balchin - Darkness Falls from the Air
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Other Links:

• Durham Book Festival

• Not Waving But Drowning

• Parrots Ate Them All

• Eliot on Blake

22. Randall Jarrell - The Animal Family

Novelist, editor and critic Erica Wagner joins the Backlisted team to discuss one of her favourite books - The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. Revolt Into Style, George Melly's groundbreaking discourse on pop culture, and Exmoor Village, a Mass Observation publication from 1947.

Books Mentioned:

Randall Jarrell - The Animal Family, Fly by Night, The Woman at the Washington Zoo, Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, Pictures From an Institution
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
W. J. Turner - Exmoor Village
George Melly - Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain, Rum Bum and Concertina
Richard Hoggart - The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life
Maurice Sendak - Where the Wild Things Are
Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin
Brian Selznick - The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Marvels, Wonderstruck
Selma Lanes - The Art of Maurice Sendak
Nikolai Gogol - The Nose

Other Links:

• John Hinde

• Britain In Pictures

• Absolute Beginners

• The Revenant

• Maurice Sendak

• NY Times review

21. Summer Reading Special - What We Read On Our Holidays

In a special edition of the podcast Andy, John, Mathew and Matt discuss amongst other things which festivals work, why books win prizes, and why changing the name of a certain Swallows And Amazons character is a shame. HP Lovecraft, Greek philosophers and Calvin & Hobbes are also touched upon.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Anita Brookner - Family and Friends

• Elizabeth Taylor - A View of the Harbour, Angel

• Erskine Childers - Riddle of the Sands

• Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris - The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse

• Marlon James - Brief History of Seven Killings

• Garth Risk - City on Fire

• Ian McEwan - Amsterdam

• F. Scott Fitzgerald -The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Rupert Thompson - Katherine Carlyle, This Party’s Got to Stop

• Terry Pratchett - Mort

• Patrick Modiano - Book of Lifetime: Honeymoon

• Paul Beatty - The Sellout

Other Links:

• Beerbods

• Riddle of the Sands

• Number 6

• The Prisoner

• Fort Process

• Port Elliot

• Don’t Look Back

20. Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners

Slang lexicographer extraordinaire Jonathon Green joins John and Andy in this episode to discuss Absolute Beginners, the classic novel of London teenage life set around Soho and Notting Hill.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Jonathan Green - Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Days In the Life: Voices from the English Underground, Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made, Odd Job Man: Some Confessions of a Slang Lexicographer

• Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners, The London Novels, Platform, City of Spades

• Paul Kingsnorth - Beast, The Wake

• Cormac McCarthy - The Road

• Derek Raymond - The Crust on its Uppers

• Tony Gould - Inside Outsider: The Life and Times of Colin MacInnes

• Dominic Sandbrook - Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles

Other Links:

• Mister Slang

• The Blue Lamp

• 1986 Film adaptation

• Hubert Selby Jr

• Quadrophenia

• Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones

• Raymond Chandler

19. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Crack Up

In a special edition recorded at Port Eliot Festival, the Backlisted team welcome comedy writer Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show, Fresh Meat, The Thick Of It, Four Lions) to discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumously published collection of essays, The Crack-Up.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Jesse Armstrong - Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Crack Up, Echoes of the Jazz Age, My Lost City, The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Financing Finnegan, The Vegetable, The Pat Hobby Stories

• William Golding - Darkness Visible

Other Links:

• Peep Show

• Fresh Meat

• Four Lions

• That Mitchell and Webb Look

• Niels Bohr

• The Divine Comedy

• Hemingway to Fitzgerald

• The Thick of It

18. Hubert Selby Jr. - Last Exit to Brooklyn

Author and poet Saleena Godden joins John Mitchinson, Andy Miller and Mathew Clayton to discuss Hubert Selby Jr's legendary transgressive novel of dead end life in working class 50's Brooklyn. WARNING: contains obligatory reference the The Fall.

Books Mentioned:

• Salena Godden - Springfield Road

• Hubert Selby Jr - Last Exit To Brooklyn, The Queen Is Dead, Requiem for a Dream, The Demon

• William Golding - The Spire, Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors

• Sylvia Townsend Warner - The Corner That Held Them

• Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea

• Joseph Heller - Catch 22

• Francis Spufford - The Child That Books Built, Golden Hill, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination

• George Eliot - Middlemarch

• D. H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley’s Lover

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

Other Links:

• QI manifesto

• Jean Rhys

• Sylvia Townsend Warner

• Monty Python and The Holy Grail

• BBC The Living and the Dead

• Lou Reed - Street Hassle

• Gene Pitney

17. Denton Welch - Maiden Voyage

Richard King, author of How Soon Is Now and Original Rockers, visits Backlisted to talk about Maiden Voyage, an extraordinarily vivid memoir by Denton Welch of his early life in England and China.

Books Mentioned:

• David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Richard King - Original Rockers, How Soon Is Now

• Denton Welch - Maiden Voyage, In Youth Is Pleasure, The Journals of Denton Welch, A Voice Through a Cloud

• Jay Griffiths - Wild: An Elemental Journey, Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression

• Kay Redfield Jamison - Unquiet Mind

• Sjon - Moonstone

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

• Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper

• Derek Jarman - Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman

Other Links

• Wode

• Stanley Spencer

• Quoted biography

• Sussex County Magazine

16. Jill TweeDIE - Letters from a Fainthearted Feminist

Writer and journalist Alex Clark joins John Mitchinson and Andy Miller in a stormy (and then hammery) podcast to discuss Letters From A Fainthearted Feminist, a collection of very funny columns by Jill Tweedie, originally published in the Guardian.

Books Mentioned:

• Jill Tweedy - Letters From a Fainthearted Feminist, Eating Children, Internal Affairs, Bliss

• Emeric Pressburger - The Glass Pearls

• Alexander Masters - A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash, Stuart: A Life Backwards, Simon: The Genius in My Basement

• Shirley Conran - Lace

• E. M. Delafield - Diary of a Provincial Lady

• Bridget Christie - A Book For Her

• Claire Longrigg - Mafia Women

Other Links:

• German literary houses

• Attila the stockbroker

• Powell and Pressburger films

• A Life Backwards film

• Ban Ki-Moon

15. Erskine Childers - THE Riddle of the Sands

Author Lloyd Shepherd joins the Backlisted crew in their small but functional vessel to discuss what some regard as the first ever spy novel The Riddle Of The Sands and the extraordinary life of it's author Erskine Childers. You can read more about Lloyd's plans to recreate the books journey at The Riddle Of The Sands Adventure Club page here: unbound.co.uk/books/riddle-of-the-sands

Books mentioned:

• Erskine Childers - Riddle of the Sands, War and the Arme Blanche, German Influence on British Cavalry, The Framework of Home Rule

• Lloyd Shepherd - The Detective and the Devil

• Ann Wroe - Six Facets of Light

• Joanne Harris - Chocolat, Different Class

• Arthur Ransome - We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea

• John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps

• George Tomkyns Chesney -The Battle of Dorking

Other links:

• Riddle of the Sands 1979 Trailer

• Riddle of the Sands film- Part 1 Part 2

• Arena series

• Winston Churchill- “No man has done more harm or shown more genuine malice or endeavoured to bring a greater curse upon the common people of Ireland than this strange being, actuated by a deadly and malignant hatred for the land of his birth”

• George Bradshaw- Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide
  

14. Barbara Comyns - The Vet's Daughter

Writer, academic and contributing editor of Bookanista Lucy Scholes joins Andy, John and Mathew on the pod to talk The Vet's Daughter, the extraordinary novel of an extraordinary girl in late Victorian South London. Also, how some books just shouldn't be turned into musicals, and the best name for a dog ever.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Barbara Comyns - The Vet’s Daughter, Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, Sisters by a River, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, Out of The Red Into the Blue, The Skin Chairs, Birds in Tiny Cages, Touch of Mistletoe

• Lucy Scholes - Barbara Comyns: A Writer Lost in Time

• Shelagh Delaney - Sweetly Sings the Donkey

• Barry Hines - First Signs, A Kestrel For a Knave, The Game Keeper

• Halldor Laxness - Salka Valka

• Joseph Heller - Something Happened, Catch 22

• Ian McGuire - The North Water

• Shirley Barrett - Rush Oh!

• Laurent Binet - HHhH

• Barry Unsworth - Sacred Hunger

Other Links:

• Guardian review

• Lolly Willowes

13. Jones and Palin - Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls

Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, the creators of the Grown Up Ladybird series of picture books, join Andy Miller and Mathew Clayton to discuss Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls by Michael Palin and Terry Jones

Books mentioned: 

• David Niven - Bring on the Empty Horses

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley - The Hipster, The Mid-Life Crisis, The Hangover, Dating, The Shed,How It Works: The Husband, How It Works: The Wife, How It Works: The Mum

• Terry Jones and Michael Palin - Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls / Dr. Fegg’s Encyclopedia of All World Knowledge

• David Seabrook - All the Devils are Here

• Cormac McCarthy - Border Trilogy

• Halldór Laxness - The Fish Can Sing, Salka Valka

• Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy

• Elizabeth Taylor - The Flypaper, Tales of the Unexpected

• Justin Martell - The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim

• W. H. Auden - Letters from Iceland

• Douglas Adams and John Lloyd - The Meaning of Liff

• L Du Garde Peach- King John and Magna Carta

• Methuen - Monty Python’s Big Red Book

Other links:

• Framley Examiner

• Carlos EzquerraMonty Python

• A Touch of Cloth

• Not the Nine O’Clock News

• White Album

12. Nigel Balchin - Darkness Falls from the Air

Journalist, broadcaster and former editrice of The Erotic Review Rowan Pelling joins John, Andy and Mathew on the show to explain her love of Nigel Balchin's novel of the London Blitz, Darkness Falls From The Air.

Books Mentioned:

• Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously

• Nigel Balchin - Darkness Falls From the Air, Small Back Room, Mine Own Executioner, Lord I Was Afraid, Kings of Infinite Space, A Way Through the Wood

• Rowan Pelling - The Erotic Review Bedside Companion

• E. M. Delafield - Diary of a Provincial Lady

• George and Weedon Grossmith - Diary of a Nobody

• Erica Wagner - First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner

• Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Owl Service, Red Shift, Stone Book Quartet

• Graham Greene - The End of the Affair, The Ministry of Fear

• Clive James - The Effective Intelligence of Nigel Balchin

Other Links:

• Diary of a Provincial Lady BBC Radio 4

• Owl Service TV adaptation

• The Singer Not The Song

• Cleopatra

• The Man Who Never Was

• Just William