99. Books About The Beatles

In a live recording from the 2019 Port Eliot Festival, John and Andy are joined by the grand old men of music writing, David Hepworth and Mark Ellen. David Hepworth was born on July 27th 1950. Since this makes him twelve when the Beatles first came along and still an attractively boyish nineteen when they broke up, this, as far as pop music is concerned, is the winning ticket in the lottery of life. After a career which involved school teaching and spells inside the music business he began writing for the music papers in the 70s. During the 80s and 90s he was editorial director of the publisher of such music magazines as Smash Hits, Q and MOJO while also doing his time as a presenter of BBC TV's Whistle Test. During Live Aid he was sworn at by Bob Geldof in front of earth's largest TV audience. His books include 1971: Never A Dull Moment and A Fabulous Creation: How The LP Saved Our Lives. Mark Ellen spent his teenage years sitting in fields at the feet of hairy rock voyagers like Atomic Rooster and began writing for the NME in the late ‘70s. He was an editor-in-chief at the publishers EMAP, helped launch MOJO, edited Smash Hits, Q, Select and The Word, worked for BBC television and radio and for VH1, and now writes and witters about a range of stuff but mainly music. His 2014 memoir of his life in music, Rock Stars Stole My Life!, is now considered a classic of the genre. The pair are co-hosts of the A Word in Your Ear podcast, one of the original inspirations for Backlisted.

Books mentioned:

The Beatles - The Beatles Anthology
Michael Braun - Love Me Do: The Beatles’ Progress
Ian McDonald - Revolution in the Head
Joe Orton - Head to Toe & Up Against It
David Hepworth - 1971: Never A Dull Moment; A Fabulous Creation: How The LP Saved Our Lives
Mark Ellen - Rock Stars Stole My Life
Barry Miles - The Zapple Diaries: The Rise and Fall of The Last Beatles Label
Derek Taylor - As Time Goes By
Nick Cohen - Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom : Pop from the Beginning

Other links:

Andy’s ‘Shabby Road’ literary fundraiser - link for tickets
Frank Sidebottom’s version of ‘Flying’ (featuring Beatles recap)
Beatles fans in New York, 1964
’Maxwell's Silver Hammer’ - Decca and the Dectones
’I Am The Walrus’ - The Beatles
Up Against It (1997 radio production)
All Things Must Pass - George Harrison

98. Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker

For this episode Andy & John welcome back two guests. Max Porter is a writer editor and former bookseller. His first book Grief is the Thing with Feathers (published by Faber) won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmith’s Award, has been translated into 29 languages and adapted for the stage; his second book, Lanny, has been longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. He previously joined us on Backlisted to discuss Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth.

 Max is joined by Una McCormack, a New York Times bestselling author of science fiction novels, including a series of tie-in novels for Star Trek and Doctor Who  and The Undefeated, a space opera published in May by Tor.com. She also teaches and mentors creative writing students at Anglia Ruskin University has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She has appeared on three previous Backlisted episodes, discussing books by Georgette Heyer, Anita Brookner and J.R.R. Tolkien.

 The book they have chosen to discuss is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1980. The novel is now widely considered to be a post-war masterpiece. Anthony Burgess included it in his list of the 99 best novels published in the English language since 1939 saying ‘this is what literature is meant to be.’ Harold Bloom included it in his book The Western Canon, an examination of the work of 26 writers central to the development of Western literature. Hugh Kenner called it a book ‘where at first sight all the words are wrong, and at a second sight not a sentence is to be missed.’ John Leonard, writing in the New York Times said it was a book ‘designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid.’

Books mentioned:

Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker; Turtle Diary; Pilgermann; The Moment Under the Moment
Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers; Lanny
Una McCormack - The Undefeated
David Jones - In Parenthesis
Anthony Burgess - Ninety-nine Novels - The Best in English since 1939 - A Personal Choice
Harold Bloom - The Western Canon
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn
Will Self - The Book of Dave
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake
William Golding - The Inheritors

Other links:

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - ‘Old Fart at Play’ (from Trout Mask Replica, 1969)
Russell Hoban lecture (1990)
Rowan Williams on Riddley Walker in the New York Times (May 2019)
Riddley Walker Annotations -useful reference site
Russell Hoban Official Website
The Head of Orpheus - A Russell Hoban Reference Page

97. Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man

For this episode John and Andy are joined by Sam Leith, the literary editor of the Spectator and host of their books podcast. Sam’s most recent book is Write To The Point: How To Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page, and he's currently trying to write a month-by-month chronicle of 2019 in rhyme royal. They are also joined by Jennifer Lucy Allan, a writer on sound and music, who has just submitted a PhD on foghorns, which she will be turning into a book for Lee Brackstone’s new imprint at Orion. She runs the record label Arc Light Editions, is an occasional presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and writes regularly for The Wire, the Guardian, The Quietus and others. The book they are discussing is The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, a collection of science fiction short stories first published in the US by Doubleday in 1951. The episode also features Andy’s enthusiasm for On Chapel Sands, the book that Laura Cumming has been waiting her whole career to write (published by Chatto & Windus) and John being deeply impressed by Jay Bernard’s Surge (also published by Chatto) a collection of poetry written to remember and respond to the death of 13 young people of colour in the New Cross Fire of 1981.

Books mentioned:

Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Laura Cumming - On Chapel Sands
Jay Bernard - Surge
Sam Leith - Write To The Point: How To Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page
Raymond Antrobus - The Perseverance
H.P. Lovecraft -The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
Ian MacEwan - Machines Like Me
H.G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
Jean-Paul Sarte - Nausea
J.G. Ballard - The Complete Short Stories: Vol 1

Other links:

Ray Bradbury interviews by Groucho Marx in 1956
Ray Bradbury on BBC World Service, Meridian (1989)
Ray Bradbury - Text of ‘Skeleton’ (1945)
The Martian Chronicles TV series (1980)
’Fuck Me Ray Bradbury’ by Rachel Bloom
The New Cross Fire 1981 (Wikipedia)
Andy’s review of On Chapel Sands in The Spectator
Backlisted Bookseller of the Week: Foyles Westfield Stratford City

96. D.E. Stevenson - Miss Buncle's Book

For this episode John and Andy are joined  by the novelist Shelley Harris. Shelley is the author of two novels: her debut, Jubilee (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and a Richard and Judy selection. Her second, Vigilante (also from Weidenfeld), about a feminist wannabe superhero, was described by The Times as ‘entertainment wrapped round a tense thriller’. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Reading and is working on her third novel. Her favourite book is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay but the book she has chosen for Backlisted is  Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson first published by Herbert Jenkins in 1934, and republished in an exquisite new edition by Persephone Books in 2008. This episode also features Andy being intrigued by Sam Riviere’s 81 Austerities (Faber 2012), a collection that wrests poetry of the fragmentary world of social media, and John wallows in the soil and sadness of How to Catch a Mole by Marc Hamer, published by Harvill Secker.

Books mentioned:

D.E. Stevenson – Miss Buncle’s Book; Miss Buncle Married;The Two Mrs Abbotts
Shelley Harris – Jubilee; Vigilante
Sam Riviere – 81 Austerities; Kim Kardashian’s Marriage; Safe Mode
Marc Hamer – How to Catch a Mole
Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay
Paul Kingsnorth – The Wake
Alice Jolly – Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
Arthur Machen – The Great God Pan
Sylvia Townsend Warner – Lolly Willowes
Kenneth Grahame – The Wind in the Willows
Elizabeth Jenkins – The Tortoise and the Hare
Charles Williams – Descent into Hell

‘Village’ books:
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Ronald Blythe – Akenfield
John Wyndham – The Midwich Cuckoos
Miss Read – The School at Thrush Green
Agatha Christie  - 4.50 from Paddington
Penelope Fitzgerald – The Bookshop

Other links:

 The Kinks – ‘Village Green’ 
Opening voiceover from Went the Day Well
Deadwood on DVD
Interview with David Milch in the New Yorker (May, 2019)
Mark Rylance reading from The Wake

95. Italo Calvino - The Baron in the Trees

For this episode Andy and John are joined by Caspar Henderson, a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, New Scientist, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. From 2002 to 2005 he was a senior editor at OpenDemocracy. He received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors in 2009 and the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award in 2010. His first book The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, a bestiary for the 21st Century, was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books and earned him the epithet the zoological Borges’; his second The New Map of Wonders received  a set of tremendous reviews moving one critic to write that it created ‘a new vision of science illuminated by a rich range of literature, philosophy, art, and music.’
The book under discussion is The Baron in the Trees, the early novel by Italo Calvino, first published as Il Barone Rampante by Einaudi in 1957. Most English readers will have discovered it as the middle part of a trilogy of tales called Our Ancestors, along with the The Cloven Viscount and The Non-Existent Knight. This episode also features John’s excitement at Kate Clanchy’s powerful book about teaching, Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me (published by Picador) and Andy shares his enthusiasm for reading Auden’s 1965 collection About the House (published in the UK by Faber in 1966) in his ongoing reading of individual collections of poems. He reads from ‘The Cave of Making’ - a poem written in memory of Auden’s friend and fellow poet Louis MacNeice.

Book mentioned:

Italo Calvino - The Baron in the Trees; Our Ancestors; If On a WInter’s Night a Traveller; Invisible Cities; Cosmicomics; Six Memos for the Next Millennium; Mr Palomar; Why Read the Classics?
Caspar Henderson - The Book of Barely Imagined Beings; A New Map of Wonders
Kate Clanchy - Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Lived Backwards
W.H. Auden - About the House; Collected Poems
Anonymous - La Vida de la Lazarillo de Tormes
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
Voltaire - Candide
Jaroslav Hašek - The Good Soldier Švejk

Other links:

A picture of Kazuo Ishiguro as a student
Italo Calvino interviewed on French TV in 1960
Salman Rushdie review of Calvino in translation (LRB, September 1981)
Ian Thomson on the 30th anniversary of Calvino’s death - Daily Telegraph, September 2015
Italo Calvino interviewed on Bookmark in 1985

94. Alan Isler - The Prince of West End Avenue

In this episode John and Andy are joined by William Sutcliffe, the author of twelve novels, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced? and The Wall, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. William has written for adults, young adults and children, and his books have been translated into twenty-eight languages. His 2008 novel Whatever Makes You Happy has just been filmed by Netflix, starring Patricia Arquette and Angela Bassett, and will be released in August under the title Otherhood. His latest novel, The Gifted, The Talented and Me (published by Bloomsbury) was described by The Times as ‘dangerously funny’ and by the Guardian as ‘refreshingly hilarious’. William is joined by Samantha Ellis, returning to Backlisted for a second time after her key early episode Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend-Warner. Samantha writes books, plays and films. Her sparkling 2016 play How to Date a Feminist has been produced in Poland and Mexico, with another 4 productions in Germany alone; and her reading memoir How to be a Heroine (which came out of an argument with her best friend over which literary heroine she liked best, Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw) was published by Chatto in 2014, and her latest book Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life, an attempt to get to know the ‘other’ Brontë sister, who turns out be a radical pioneer, with a lot to teach us about how to find our way in the world. Samantha also worked as a script editor and writer on the two Paddington movies. The book under discussion is The Prince of West End Avenue, the first novel by Alan Isler, originally published by independent US publisher Bridge Works in 1994. It went on to win National Jewish Book Award, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The episode also contains Andy’s favourite paragraph of the year in his discussion of Claire Dederer’s Love & Trouble: Memoirs of a Former Wild Girl (published by Tinder Press) and John discovering the incandescent philosophical tales of Luis Sagasti in Fireflies (translated by Fionn Petch) and published by the excellent Charco Press.

Books mentioned:

Alan Isler - The Prince of West End Avenue
William Sutcliffe - Are You Experienced?; Whatever Makes You Happy; The Gifted, The Talented and Me; The Wall
Samantha Ellis - How to be a Heroine; Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life
Kate Lister - A Curious History of Sex
Eve Babitz - Sex & Rage: Advice to Young Ladies Eager for a Good Time
Claire Dederer - Love & Trouble: Memoirs of a Former Wild Girl
Luis Sagasti - Fireflies
Carlo Ginzburg - The Cheese & the Worms
Nina Stibbe - Paradise Lodge
B.S. Johnson - House Mother Normal
Liz Jensen - War Crimes for the Home
Kingsley Amis - Ending Up
Tove Jansson - Sun City
Adam Biles - Feeding Time

Other links:

Andy Miller - ‘My Many years of Reading Dangerously’ on Boundless
Alan Isler interviewed at John Adams Institute in 1997
Penelope Fitzgerald on Alan Isler on A Good Read (1998)

93. Toni Morrison - Beloved

In this episode Andy and John are joined by  Preti Taneja a novelist and teacher in prisons and in universities. Her novel We That Are Young  published by the excellent Galley Beggar Press won the 2018 Desmond Elliot Prize for the best debut of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the ‘Books are my Bag Readers Choice’ Awards, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize and for Europe’s most prestigious award for a work of world literature, the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into seven languages to date and will soon be a major international TV series from Gaumont. Fellow writer Mark Haddon, wrote that ‘it does what all the best novels do. It expands the possibilities of the form.’ The book under discussion is Beloved by Toni Morrison, first published in 1987 by Knopf, it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, among many other prizes. In 2006, the New York Times declared Beloved the best work of American fiction of the previous twenty-five years.
In this episode John also enthuses about Lisa Blower’s sparkling story collection It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s published by Myriad Editions and Andy discovers the perfect holiday read in Paraic O’Donnell’s The House on Vesper Sands. published by Weidenfeld.

Book mentioned:

Toni Morrison - Beloved;Beloved audio book (read by Toni Morrison); Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations; The Bluest Eye; Song of Solomon
Preti Taneja - We That Are Young
Lisa Blower - It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s
Paraic O’Donnell - The House on Vesper Sands
Kit de Waal (ed) - Common People
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
William Faulkner - Light in August; Absalom, Absalom
Gayl Jones - Corregidora

Other links:

Toni Morrison interviews b Charlie Rose (1993)
Toni Morrison interviewed by the Paris Review (1993)
Beloved movie DVD (1998)

92. G.B. Edwards - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

This episode was recorded live at the 2019 Guernsey Literary Festival in the church of St James in St Peter Port. John and Andy are joined by Will Smith, the former stand-up comedian and now screenwriter and novelist. Will was the co-writer of HBO comedy Veep for which he won two Emmys and two Writers Guild of America awards. He contributed to The Thick of It as both an actor and writer and is the author of Mainlander a thriller set in Jersey (where he grew up) and which the Independent described as 'John le Carré meets Middlemarch'. The book under discussion is the great novel of Guernsey, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards, Edwards’ only novel which was published posthumously in 1981.

Both NYRB Classics and Blue Ormer books have kindly offered Backlisted listeners 30% off The Book of Ebeneezer Le Page and Genius Friend by Edward Chaney if you order direct from their websites and enter the discount code ‘Backlisted’ at check out.

Books mentioned:

G.B. Edwards - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (special Backlisted offer from NYRB Classics)
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page audiobook (read by Roy Dotrice)
Edward Chaney - Genius Friend: G.B. Edwards & The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
(special Backlisted offer from Blue Ormer books)
Will Smith - Mainlander
Victor Hugo - The Toilers of the Sea; Les Miserables
James Joyce - Dubliners
J.D Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Philip Roth - Sabbath’s Theater
W.H. Hudson - A Shepherd’s Life
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Graham Swift - Waterland
Samuel Beckett - Krapp’s Last Tape
Allan Gurganus - The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
Robert Tresell - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Salman Rushdie - Midnight’s Children

Other links:

The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray
Pure DC performing ‘Whole Lotta Ebenezer Le Page’ live on Guernsey
Ebenezer Le Page on Twitter

91. Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year

For this episode, Andy and John are joined by James Hannah, whose first novel, The A to Z of You and Me, was published by Doubleday in 2015, and was listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction. A second novel is in preparation. He has a Masters in Samuel Beckett Studies from the University of Reading, home of the Beckett International Foundation. He also discovered and popularised the Toblorange. He is joined by Jo Waugh. Jo is a senior lecturer in nineteenth-century literature at York St John University. She directs a module there called ‘Sick Novels: Literature and Disease' on which students this year read Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. She’s interested in contagion narratives generally, and has written about rabies in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. She also co-hosts the podcast, ‘Smith and Waugh Talk About Satire’, in which she and Dr Adam Smith discuss the history, form, function, and future of satire. They are here to talk about A Journal of the Plague Year  by Daniel Defoe first published in 1722, but set in 1665. The episode also features Andy falling in love with Crusoe’s Daughter by Jane Gardam and John being mesmerised by Tishani Doshi’s Small Days and Nights.

Books mentioned

Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year; Robinson Crusoe; Moll Flanders
James Hannah - The A to Z of You and Me,
Jane Gardam - Crusoe’s Daughter
Tishani Doshi - Small Days and Nights
Samuel Pepys - The Diaries

Other links

Scott Walker theme tune
Backlisted Live at Gurnsey Literary Festival
Backlisted Live at Unbound Literary Festival a Second Home
Smith and Waugh Talk About Satire podcast
Secret Army: The Complete Series (DVD)

90. Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

Joining John and Andy for this episode are the writer William Atkins whose first book, The Moor was shortlisted for the Thwaites Wainwright Prize and whose second The Immeasurable World: Jouneys in Desert Places won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year  in 2018, both were published by Faber. He is a former editorial director of Macmillan, and his journalism has appeared in the Guardian and Granta. He is joined by Backlisted regular, Lissa Evans, writer, producer, director and author of three children’s book and five novels, including most recently, Old Baggage, published by Doubleday, and a book we can now happily call a no 1 bestseller. This is Lissa’s fouth appearance on Backlisted, a new record (she appeared previously on episodes 1 - J.L. Carr; 36 - Patrick Hamilton and 78 - Edith Wharton).

The book William and Lissa are talking about is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, first published in Dickens’ own periodical ‘All the Year Round’, from 1st December 1860 to 3rd August 1861, in 35 weekly instalments You also hear about Lanny by former Backlisted guest Max Porter (John’s favourite new novel of the year so far) and an intense and powerful reading by Andy from Ali Smith’s latest Spring.

Books mentioned:

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations (Norton Critical Edition - a rich collection of essays and critical texts)
William Atkins - The Moor; The Immeasurable World: Jouneys in Desert Places
Lissa Evans - Old Baggage
Ali Smith -Spring; Autumn; Winter
Max Porter - Lanny; Grief is the Thing with Feathers
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
Angus Wilson - The World of Charles Dickens
Alec Guiness - Blessings in Disguise
John Sutherland - Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?

Other links:

Dodson and Fogg by the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra
Great Expectations - David Lean (DVD)
Charles Dickens by George Orwell
’Charles Dickens’ by Horrible Histories
Howard Jacobson on Great Expectations in the Guardian (Jan, 2012)

89. Peter Guralnick - Last Train to Memphis / Careless Love

Joining Andy and John on this episode are David Keenan, the novelist, one-time musician, and critic whose work, in particular for the The Wire, has introduced a wider audience to experimental rock, noise, folk, industrial and psychedelic music. He has also published books on England’s esoteric underground, tarot and two highly acclaimed novels, both published by Faber: the first, This Is Memorial Device, winner of the 2018 Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Prize and earlier this year, For The Good Times, described by Suzanne Moore as ‘Occult, transformative, difficult, fantastic’. He once claimed his favourite Beatle was Yoko. He is joined by Bethan Roberts, the author of five novels, including Mother Island (published by Chatto & Windus) which won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015 and her latest, Graceland, inspired by the relationship between Elvis and his mother Gladys, also published by Chatto in February, and which the Financial Times claimed ‘prompted the reader to burst into song’. Bethangrew up in a house filled with Elvis’s music and, according to her publisher, ‘first became captivated by the story of Elvis and Gladys as a girl, poring over her mother’s scrapbooks and annuals.’
In a rare departure form Backlisted tradition, David and Bethan are talking about two books, Peter Guralnick’s epic account of the life of Elvis Presley - Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, published by Little Brown in 1994 and 1999 respectively. We’ll also hear how Andy has come to terms with Trollope through his 800 page ‘fluently written’ masterpiece, The Way We Live Now and John remembers the centenarian archaeologist and poet, Nancy Sandars. But mostly its Elvis, and Guralnick, and you even get our four favourite Elvis songs, Desert Island Discs style.

Book mentioned:

Peter Guralnick - Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley; Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley; Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians; Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll; Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom
Bethan Roberts - Graceland; Mother Island
David Keenan - This Is Memorial Device; For the Good Times; To Run Wild In It: A Handbook of Autonomic Tarot
Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now
Nancy Sandars - Grandmother’s Steps; The Epic of Gilgamesh
Lester Bangs - Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Nick Tosches - Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
Elaine Dundy - Elvis & Gladys
Hick Hornby - High Fidelity

Other links:

Special theme music - ‘Tupelo’ by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Elvis’s first appearance at the Louisiana Hayride in 1954
Peter Guralnick interview with Conan O’Brien (2013)
David’s Elvis track - ‘Blue Moon’
Bethan’s Elvis Track - ‘Milky White Way’
John’s Elvis Track - ‘Always on My Mind’
First live performance of ‘Suspicious Minds’
Andy’s Elvis Track - ‘It’s Your Baby Your Rock It’
Elvis’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956
King Creole (1958) DVD

88. Penelope Fitzgerald - Human Voices

In this episode Andy and John  are joined by Georgina Morley, Non-Fiction Editorial Director at Picador but who cut her teeth as  Editorial Assistant to Peter Carson, then Editor in Chief of Penguin (where she learned more in two years than she had in three at university). After Penguin, she became a Commissioning Editor at Transworld, then joined Macmillan as Non-Fiction Editorial Director in 1994.  Her list focuses on serious non-fiction -   mostly history and historical biography with occasional forays into narrative non-fiction and memoir.  The authors she has worked with include Adam Hochschild, Michael Burleigh, Robert Service, David Olusoga, Roberto Saviano, Jon Krakauer, Jane Glover, Judith Mackrell and Catherine Nixey.  Most recently, she has worked with David Nott, the trauma surgeon whose book War Doctor is (a) a good deed in a naughty world and (b) seems to be doing quite well. She is joined by Lucy Scholes, a guest on two previous episodes (one on the joys of Barbara Comyns and the other on Anita Brookner). Lucy writes about books, film and art for the Financial Times, the NYR Daily, the New York TimesBook Review and Granta among other publications. She is the Managing Editor of the new literary magazine, The Second Shelf and writes a monthly column for the Paris Review about out-of-print and forgotten books that deserve not to be. The book under discussion is Penelope Fitzgerald’s Human Voices, her fourth novel, set in Broadcasting House during the Second World War. Before that, John extols the virtues of The Good Immigrant USA (edited by Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman) and Andy is impressed by Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall. 

Books mentioned:

Penelope Fitzgerald – Human Voices; The Beginning of Spring; Offshore; The Blue Flower; At Freddies; The Bookshop; The Golden Child'; A House of Air (contains ‘Curriculum Vitae’)
Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman – The Good Immigrant USA
Sarah Moss – Ghost Wall
Hermione Lee – Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
Penelope Fitzgerald – So I Have Thought of You: Selected Letters
Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code
Muriel Spark – Memento Mori

Other links:

Penelope Fitzgerald on Mastermind (2018)
Penelope Fitzgerald on Meridian (1998)
Jeffrey Archer on Penelope Fitzgerald on A Good Read (2018)
Barneys, Books & Bust-ups: 50 years of the Booker Prize (BBC)

87. Bruce Chatwin - Utz

John and Andy are joined by Jonathan Wilson, sports writer and author of eleven books, including Inverting the Pyramid, a history of football tactics that was named Football Book of the Year in 2009. His most recent book is The Barcelona Legacy: Guardiola, Mourinho and the Fight for Football's Soul published by Blink in 2018 and which is appearing in paperback in April. Jonathan is also the editor of The Blizzard, a quarterly journal of football writing. He is joined by Rachael Kerr, a publisher an editor who has worked for Cape, Picador, Harvill and Unbound. Rachael has previously appeared on the Charles Sprawson and D.H. Lawrence episodes of Backlisted. She is also married to John. The book that Jonathan and Rachael are here to talk about is Utz, the last novel and penultimate book by Bruce Chatwin, first published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. The discussion also discloses Andy’s bafflement at Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat and John’s admiration for Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions.

Books mentioned:

Bruce Chatwin - Utz; The Songlines; On the Black Hill; The Viceroy of Ouidah; What Am I Doing Here; In Patagonia
Valeria Luiselli - Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions; Faces in the Crowd
Elizabeth Smart - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Jonathan Wilson - Inverting the Pyramid; The Barcelona Legacy: Guardiola, Mourinho and the Fight for Football's Soul
Nicholas Shakespeare - Bruce Chatwin
Nicholas Shakespeare & Elizabeth Chatwin (eds) - Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Susannah Clapp - With Chatwin
Jonathan Chatwin - Anywhere Out of the World: The Work of Bruce Chatwin
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Beginning of Spring
Peter Carey - Oscar & Lucinda
David Lodge - Nice Work
Marina Warner - The Lost Father

Other links:

‘Remembering Bruce Chatwin’ (BBC World Service 1991)
BBC Radio 4 Adaptation of Utz
Blake Morrison’s Guardian review of Under the Sun (2010)
Susannah Clapp remembers Chatwin in the Guardian (2017)

86. Rebecca West - The Return of the Soldier

In this episode of Backlisted John and Andy welcome back Alice Jolly, novelist, playwright and memoirist, who has won both the Royal Society of Literature’s V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize for short stories and the PEN/ Ackerley Prize for non-fiction for Dead Babies & Seaside Towns, and whose latest book, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile, was John’s favourite novel of last year. Alice first appeared on Backlisted in February 2016 to discuss Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire. She is joined by Amanda Craig, writer and critic and author of seven novels including A Vicious Circle and most recently the brilliant state of the nation novel, The Lie of the Land, published by Little Brown in 2017 and serialised that year as a Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’. The book that Alice & Amanda have chosen to here talk about is The Return of the Soldier, the first novel by Rebecca West, first published in 1918, when she was 24. The discussion beforehand includes John’s passionate admiration for Julia Blackburn’s latest book Time Song: In Search of Doggerland and Andy’s report back on finally tracking down a copy of cult author Alexander Baron’s second Harryboy Boas novel, Strip Jack Naked.

Books mentioned:

Rebecca West - The Return of the Soldier, The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, Cousin Rosamund, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, The Meaning of Treason, St Augustine
Alice Jolly - Dead Babies & Seaside Towns, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
Amanda Craig - A Vicious Circle, The Lie of the Land
Julian Blackburn - Time Song: In Search of Doggerland
Alexander Baron - Strip Jack Naked
Chris Sullivan - Rebel, Rebel: The Mavericks that Made the Modern World
Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall
Tara Westover - Educated
Sofka Zinovieff - Putney
Sayaka Murata - Convenience Store Woman
Lissa Evans - Old Baggage
Alan Bennett - Smut: Two Unseemly Stories
Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming Pool Library
Tim Krabbé - The Rider
L.P. Hartley - The Go-Between
J.L. Carr - A Month in the Country
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace

Other links:

Rebecca West interviewed by Ludovic Kennedy in 1976
Rebecca West interviewed by Marina Warner in The Paris Review (1983)
The Return of the Soldier movie (1982) on YouTube
Andy Miller & Alex Preston at the Faversham Literary Festival - 24 Feb 2019
Rachel Malik’s blog on class in The Return of the Soldier

85. Angus Wilson - Hemlock and After

Joining Andy and John on this episode of Backlisted is Dickon Edwards, a London-based writer, dandy, occasional DJ, and erstwhile musician. In the 1990s and 2000s he toured and released albums with the bands Orlando and Fosca. He has kept an online diary, The Diary at the Centre of the Earth, since 1997: in 2017 it was recognised as the longest running of its kind by the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s College London. He is currently balancing freelance arts journalism with researching for a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. His PhD topic is 'Ronald Firbank and the Legacy of Camp Modernism' The book that Dickon is here to talk about Hemlock and After  the first novel by Angus Wilson, first published by Secker & Warburg in 1952. The discussion also considers the short but beautiful Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger and a Jane Austen novel (Northanger Abbey) that Andy can finally get on with.

Books mentioned:

Angus Wilson - Hemlock and After; The Wrong Set; Anglo-Saxon Attitudes; Such Darling Dodos; Late Call; No Laughing Matter
Nathalie Léger - Suite for Barbara Loden
Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters
Susan Sontag - Notes on Camp

Other links:

The Diary at the Centre of the Earth
Les Fugitives
Wanda by Barbara Loden
Angus Wilson, Meridian, BBC World Service interview, 1983
Angus Wilson: A Celebration, Royal Society of Literature (Nov, 2013)
An interview with Angus Wilson (The Iowa Review 1972)
Angus Wilson interviewed inThe Paris Review, 1957
Gay is the Word bookshop

84. Jilly Cooper - Imogen

Joining Andy and John in this episode are Daisy Buchanan, writer, feminist, host of the brilliant You’re Booked podcast & regular contributor across TV and radio, from Woman's Hour & BBC Breakfast to the Guardian, Telegraph, Grazia, and The Pool. Daisy’s latest book is How to Be a Grown Up is soon to be followed by The Sisterhood: A Love Letter to the Women Who Have Shaped Me, published by Headline in March. She is joined by Dr. Ian Patterson, a poet and retired academic who taught English for 20 years at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Ian’s latest poetry collection, Bound to Be, was published by Equipage in 2017. His poem ‘The Plenty of Nothing’ (an elegy for his late wife, the writer Jenny Diski) was the the winner of the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. The main book under discussion is is Imogen  by Jilly Cooper, first published by Arlington Books in 1978, the fifth in her now legendary series of 7 ‘romances’ published between 1975 and 1981.  Also in this episode, Andy overcomes his horror of football to praise J.L. Carr’s 1975 classic How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup while John toasts the memory of the great children’s author and illustrator, John Burningham.

Books mentioned:

Jilly Cooper - Imogen; Harriet: Octavia; Prudence; Rivals; Riders; The Common Years; Turn Right at the Spotted Dog (journalism)
Daisy Buchanan - How to Be a Grown Up; The Sisterhood: A Love Letter to the Women Who Have Shaped Me
Ian Patterson - Bound to Be
J.L. Carr - How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup
John Burningham - John Burningham; Champagne; Courtney; Borka: The Adventures of a Goose with No Feathers; Oi! Get Off Our Train; John Norman Patrick MacHennessy: The Boy Who Was Always Late
John Williams - Stoner
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Other links:

You’re Booked podcast
Ian Patterson on Jilly Cooper in London Review of Books (18 May, 2017)
Jilly Cooper compared to Dickens & Trollope - Daily Telegraph (12 May 2017)
Jilly Cooper on The Late, Late Show (2016)
Jilly Cooper on Desert Island Discs (2016)
Andy Miller & Andrew Sean Greer in conversation - tickets
Sentimental Garbage podcast

83. D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow

Joining John & Andy for this episode are two returning guests: Rachael Kerr, publisher and editor, former Publicity Director of Jonathan Cape, Marketing Director of Picador and Harvill and now editor at large for Unbound, who joined us for the Charles Sprawson episode; and Catherine Taylor, writer and critic, who contributes regularly to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Economist, the TLS, the New Statesmen & the Irish Times, and is a judge for the 2019 Republic of Consciouness Prize and commercial director for the brilliant Brixton Review of Books. Catherine last joined us to talk eloquently about Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift. But the book they are here to talk about today is The Rainbow  by D.H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen in 1915, which with its sequel Women in Love, is widely to be considered to be Lawrence’s crowning achievement as a writer. As you would expect, the debate is vigorous: Lawrence is a writer who continues to divide readers and the four participants cover the ground from qualified enthusiasm to sympathetic scepticism.

On New Year’s Day we asked our Twitter followers for any outstanding ‘old’ books they had read in 2018 and would like to recommend. We were overwhelmed by the response: 137 titles were recommended - many of which we had never heard of before - so we’ve decided to publish the full list (title, author and the Twitter handle of the person who recommended it) as useful reference. It’s pasted directly below the Soundcloud link.

Books mentioned:

Henry Green - Doting
Sarah Perry - Melmoth
John Higgs - Watling Street
Eric Karpeles - Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to ‘In Search of Lost Time’
Michael Diamond & Adam Horowitz - Beastie Boys Book
Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy
D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow; Women in Love; Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Studies in Classic American Literature; The Complete Poems
Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage
Helen Dunmore - Zennor in Darkness
F.R. Leavis - D.H. Lawrence, Novelist
Raymond Williams - The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence
Kate Millett - Sexual Politics
John Carey - The Intellectuals & the Masses
Philip Larkin - Selected Letters 1940-1985

Other links:

Jack Nicholson’s toast to D.H. Lawrence in Easy Rider
Anthony Burgess on The South Bank Show (1985)
Aldous Huxley on his friendship with Lawrence in 196

‘Old’ Books Recommended by Backlisted’s Twitter Followers in 2018:

Gone to Earth- Mary Webb @davidjamesevans
National Velvet- Enid Bagnold @camdenksb
Family Lexicon- Natalia Ginzburg @tiziana_z
A Jest of God- Margaret Laurence @smithben
The Queen of the Tambourine- Jane Gardam @smithben @blogmywiki
Slipstream: A Memoir- Elizabeth Jane Howard @nerichardson
Palladian- Elizabeth Taylor @LizBasile6
That They May Face the Rising Sun- John McGahern @clarehuggett
Narrow Boat– L.T.C. Rolt @HisSingingViola
Angel- Elizabeth Taylor @cindyfried
A Portrait of a Lady- Henry James @cindyfried
My Àntonia- Willa Cather @cindyfried
Bid Me to Live- H.D. @Lokster71
They Were Sisters- Dorothy Whipple @marytmulligan1 @A_CherryWriter
True Grit- Charles Portis @Vitrarius
The House of Broken Angels- Luís Alberto Urrea @trottthoughts
Cassandra at the Wedding- Dorothy Baker @stuck_inabook
Stoner- John Edward Williams @MarkVent
The Wall- Marlen Haushofer (tr. Shaun Whiteside) @ClaireFuller2
Anna Kavan @ANMudd
The Spare Room- Helen Garner @lizinwales
Kingdoms of Elfin- Sylvia Townsend Warner @desperatereader
Mythago Wood- Robert Holdstock @GreenCorrie
Excellent Women- Barbara Pym @mllesrot
Patricia Brent, Spinster- Herbert Jenkins @stuck_inabook
Rogue Male- Geoffrey Household @mrstrfusis
The End of the Affair- Graham Greene  @mrstrfusis
The Far Pavilions- M.M.Kaye  @mrstrfusis
Middlemarch- George Eliot  @mrstrfusis
Zuleika Dobson- Max Beerbohm  @mrstrfusis
Train Dreams- Denis Johnson @WillGore
So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away– Richard Brautigan @WillGore
The Dragon Slayer- Rosemary Sutcliff @SimonGuy64
Precious Bane- Mary Webb @JoBrowningWroe
Stig of the Dump- Clive King @piedwarbler1
A Quartet in Autumn- Barbara Pym @Steviebab @Jacquiek111
A Burnt-Out Case- Graham Greene @Steviebab
The Little Madeleine- Mrs Robert Henry @FoodwiseWomen
The Loved One- Evelyn Waugh @Schoolbookclubs
The Ice Palace- Tarjei Vesaas (tr. Elizabeth Rokkan) @squarecorners
Ice- Anna Kavan @FarSouthProject
School For Love- Olivia Manning @janefd
Theatre - W. Somerset Maugham @MsPGraceMiles
The L-Shaped Room- Lynne Reid Banks @urban_formation
Just William- Richmal Crompton @RyeLimit
William Trevor @BrabazonColin
Thunder and Lightnings- Jan Mark @BrabazonColin
South Riding- Winifred Holtby @moonlight_reads
Living Alone- Stella Benson @lgc27
A Short History of a Small Place- T. R. Pearson @andrewlake
The Devil's Candy- Julie Salamon @will_leitch
The Long Ships- Frans G. Bengtsson @WolfandRhys
In a Summer Season- Elizabeth Taylor @lgc27
Sleepless Nights- Elizabeth Hardwick @MizJoanna
The Boarding-House- William Trevor @JacquiWine
The Grass- Claude Simon @DentataHeritage
L'Assommoir- Emile Zola @Helannsta
Cosmicomics- Italo Calvino @For_the_Wynn
The Bastable Novels- E. Nesbit @oddbohemian
The Journal of a Disappointed Man- W.N.P. Barbellion @Matthew__Adams
Persuasion- Jane Austen @JanetEmson
The Man with the Golden Arm- Nelson Algren @ian_peddie
The Diary of a Provincial Lady- E.M. Delafield @LevParikian
The Bridge of Beyond- Simone Schwarz-Bart @JoelPinckney
Of Human Bondage- W.Someset Maugham @TheHumanKakapo
Act One- Moss Hart @tottaylor1
Act Two- Kitty Carlisle Hart @tottaylor1
I Capture the Castle- Dodie Smith @RobinMuir1
Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel- William Trevor @mumthrax
Wise Blood- Flannery O'Connor @thegiddygambler
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness- Richard Yates @paulslr70
Reunion- Fred Uhlman  @BenMyers1
Hard Rain Falling- Don Carpenter @BenMyers1
Swords and Crowns and Rings- Ruth Park @JudyAuthor
The Levant Trilogy- Olivia Manning @Whyjay99
Lobsters on the Agenda- Naomi Mitchison @citizenveurm
Memento Mori- Muriel Spark @BeerRover
Consider The Lilies- Iain Crichton-Smith @SteveHimmer
The Humbler Creation- Pamela Hansford Johnson @CSRaphael1
A Handful of Dust- Evelyn Waugh @LondonLee62
The Kon-Tiki Expedition- Thor Heyerdahl @JillHopper1
Naples 44- Norman Lewis @ashley1thomas
Clinging to the Wreckage- John Mortimer @rcscribbler
The Hours Before Dawn- Celia Fremlin @darrenmjones
Fair Stood the Wind for France- H.E. Bates @WoodgatePaul
A Place of Greater Safety- Hilary Mantel @barbflipflop29
The War Between the Tates- Alison Lurie @nphegarty
A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole @cornishop
Jamaica Inn- Daphne Du Maurier @SimonOHagan
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie- Muriel Spark @boucher_clare
The Leopard - Lampedusa @RachelGrunert
My Cousin Rachel-Daphne de Maurier @ginafordthomas
What’s Not Yours is Not Yours- Helen Oyeyemi @catfarmUK
The Fashion in Shrouds- Margery Allingham @KateRLTB
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day- Winifred Watson @StephClayton5
The Eyes of the Overworld - Jack Vance @ReneKita
Titus Groan& Gormenghast- Mervyn Peake @colyerh
The Vet’s Daughter- Barbara Comyns   @liz_lizanderson
A Certain Smile- Françoise Sagan @MaxCairnduff
A Time of Gifts- Patrick Leigh Fermor @MrsColvey
Capital - Maureen Duffy @kerstanmac
Good Behaviour- Molly Keane @BrigidRodgers
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald @lucindapreston
The Private Sector- Joseph Hone @lordcroquer
Thérèse Raquin- Emile Zola @AlwaysLearnWeb
Wives and Daughters- Elizabeth Gaskell @Karen_BooksChoc
Lud-In-The-Mist- Hope Mirrlees @lucyfishwife
Birdsong- Sebastian Faulks @KeeveMusic
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley @MargoJMilne
Collected Short Stories (Vol. 1)– W. Somerset Maugham @MatLee
The Black Prince- Iris Murdoch @Tiny_Camels
1982, Janine- Alasdair Gray @audlaza69
A Brief History Of Seven Killings- Marlon James @audlaza69
The Invention of Morel -Adolfo Casares @audlaza69
A Legacy of Spies- John le Carré @andyinfinity
Mr Norris Changes Trains- Christopher Isherwood @tann1812
Gone With the Wind- Margaret Mitchell @ThamesJackie
We Who Are About To...- Joanna Russ @annawillis101
The Door- Magda Szabó (tr.Len Rox) @Stirlingwriter
Plainsong- Kent Haruf @JulieRandles4
The Dark Is Rising- Susan Cooper  @JulieRandles4
The Go-Between- L.P. Hartley @RachelMalik99
The Quest for Corvo - A.J.A. Symons @dancall
The Bloody Chamber- Angela Carter @Gargarin
Death and the Penguin- Andrey Kurkov ( tr. George Bird) @RobinMuir1
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Bronte @v_dodd
Sunlight on a Broken Column- Attia Hosain @Sharonmx5
The Snows of Yesteryear- Gregor von Rezzori @Sarah_Woolford
Gantenbein- Max Frisch @Navifax
Mrs Bridge- Evan S. Connell @jamesdoeser
Gaudy Night- Dorothy L. Sayers @Sarah_Woolford
The Bottle Factory Outing- Beryl Bainbridge @bookworm_north
Border Districts- Gerald Murnane @irnewton
The Priory- Dorothy Whipple @A_CherryWriter
The Haunting of Hill House- Shirley Jackson @aoifemrtn
Told by an Idiot- Rose Macaulay @ManiPillai1886
Return to Yesterday- Ford Madox Ford @blogmywik

82. Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

Joining John and Andy for this live Christmas special recorded at the London Review Bookshop are Hilary Spurling, one of this country’s most respected biographers and literary editors, whose books have won multiple awards including the 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year for Matisse the Master, the second volume of her life of the artist. She is also the official biographer of the novelist Anthony Powell, and her Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time was published to universal acclaim last year. Hilary is also the author of Invitation to the Dance, a handbook for readers of the 12-volume novel sequence that the author himself described as a ‘master-key’. She is joined by Philip Hensher, the novelist and critic. Philip’s novel The Northern Clemency was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and Scenes from Early Life won the Ondaatje Prize in 2013. Earlier this year Penguin released The Penguin Book of the Contemporary Book of the British Short Story edited by Philip and 4th Estate released his latest novel, The Friendly Ones, described by The Times as ‘the book you should give someone who thinks they don’t like novels.’ Hilary and Philip are here to talk to about Books Do Furnish a Room, the tenth novel in Anthony Powell’s magnificent roman fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time, this volume first published by Heinemann in 1971.

Books mentioned:

Hilary Spurling - Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time; An Invitation to the Dance: A Handbook to A Dance to the Music of Time; Matisse the Master; The Girl From the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell
Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency; Scenes from Early Life; The Penguin Book of the Contemporary Book of the British Short Story; The Friendly Ones.
Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish A Room; A Dance to the Music of Time: Volume 4
Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time

Other links:

Anthony Powell on Desert Island Discs
Powell on The Anatomy of Melacholy discussed in the New Yorker
John Peel on Desert Island Discs
Anthony Powell’s house in The World of Interiors
The Anthony Powell Society on Twitter

81. Harpo Marx - Harpo Speaks!

For this Backlisted, Andy and John are joined by Dan Schreiber, writer, producer, comedian, QI elf, co-creator of the award-winning podcast, No Such Thing as A Fish and co-author of The Book of the Year 2018. The book Dan has chosen is Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx & Rowland Barber, first published in 1962. This episode also contains the team’s Christmas book recommendations.

Books mentioned:

Harpo Marx & Rowland Barber - Harpo Speaks!
Anthony Powell - A Dance to the Music of Time - Fourth Movement (Audiobook)
Chris Heath - Pet Shop Boys, Literally; Pet Shop Boys versus America
Sally Rooney - Normal People
Anna Burns - Milkman
Neil Tennant - One Hundred Lyrics and One Poem
Penelope Fitzgerald - Human Voices; The Beginning of Spring
Alice Jolly - Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
Dans Schreiber et al - The Book of the Year 2018
Rocky Graziano & Rowland Barber - Somebody Up There Likes Me
Rowland Barber - The Night they Raided Minsky’s
Groucho Marx - Groucho & Me
Syd Little - Little Goes a Long Way
Dave Hill - So Here It Is
Bob Monkhouse - Crying With Laughter
Steve Martin - Born Standing Up
Max Wall - The Fool on the Hill
Brian Blessed - Absolute Pandemonium

Other links:

The Wallace Collection
No Such Thing as a Fish Podcast
The Museum of Curiosity
Harpo playing ‘I Got Rhythm’
Harpo speaking
Harpo doing a ‘Gookie’
Harpo meets Groucho on You Bet Your Life
The Marx Brothers - Duck Soup (DVD)
The Marx Brothers Collection (DVD)

80. Elizabeth Jenkins - The Tortoise and the Hare

Joining Andy and John in this episode is Carmen Callil, the legendary publisher and writer, who is best know for founding the Virago Press in 1972. Once described by the Guardian as ‘part-Lebanese, part-Irish and wholly Australian’, Carmen settled in London in 1964 advertising herself in The Times as ‘Australian, B.A. wants job in book publishing’. After changing a generation’s taste through her publishing at Virago, and in particular the Virago Modern Classics, which continues to bring back into print hundreds of neglected women writers, Carmen went on to run Chatto & Windus and became a global Editor-at-Large for Random House. In 2006 she published Bad Faith: A History of Family & Fatherland, which Hilary Spurling called ‘a work of phenomenally thorough, generous and humane scholarship’. Appointed DBE in 2017, she was also awarded the Benson Medal in the same year, awarded to mark ‘meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles-lettres’. The book under discussion is one of her favourite novels, The Tortoise & the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins, first published by Gollancz in 1954 and triumphantly reissued by Virago Modern Classics in 1983.

Also in this episode we explore the new audio version of one our favourite writer’s best novels - The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, famously published in a box containing 27 randomly ordered sections in 1969.

And last but very much not least: this episode also features our very first canine guest - Effie, Carmen’s extremely well-behaved border terrier.

Books mentioned:

B.S. Johnson - The Unfortunates; Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry
Jonathan Coe - Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
Elizabeth Jenkins - The Tortoise & the Hare; The View from Downshire Hill; Harriet; Doctor Gully; Jane Austen
Carmen Callil - Bad Faith: A History of Family & Fatherland
Antonia White - A Frost in May
May Sinclair - The Life & Death of Harriet Frean
Storm Jameson - Journey from the North
Rosamond Lehmann - The Weather in the Streets
Elizabeth Taylor - Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Anita Brookner - A Start in Life

Other links:

The Second Shelf bookshop
Foyles Bookshop- South Bank Centre
The Unfortunates on Alexa
Elizabeth Jenkins - Obituary in the Daily Telegraph ( Sep 2010)