119. Lal Děd - I, Lalla

Joining Andy and John for this episode is the poet, novelist and dancer, Tishani Doshi. Tishani’s most recent books are Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, published in the UK in 2017 by Bloodaxe Books, and which was  shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award; and a novel, Small Days and Nights, published by Bloomsbury and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize (and which John talked about on the Defoe episode, number 91). Tishani worked for 15 years as the lead dancer with the Chandralekha group in Madras, India, a contemporary dance company using Indian forms.  Born to a Welsh mother and Guajarati father, she now lives mostly on a beach in Tamil Nadu - but spends a fair bit time of wandering. She is a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University in Abu Dhabi and has a new book of poems due out with Bloodaxe in spring 2021: A God at the Door.

 The book Tishani has chosen to talk about is I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Děd – a collection of poems by the 14th century female mystic known variously as Lalla, Lal Děd, Lalleshwari, or Lal’arifa and specifically in the modern translation by the Indian poet Ranjit Hoskote published as a Penguin Classic in 2013.

 In addition John has been reading Hurricane Season, the powerful novel by the Mexican author Fernanda Melchor, while Andy discusses Summer by Ali Smith, the final instalment of her seasonal quartet. 

Books mentioned:

Lal Děd - I, Lalla (translated by Ranjit Hoskote)
Tishani Doshi - Girls are Coming Out of the Woods; Small Days & Nights
Ali Smith - Summer; Spring; Winter; Autumn
Fernanda Melchor - Hurricane Season
Ranjit Hotsoke - The Atlas of Lost Beliefs

Other links:

A selection of vakhs with introduction by Ranjit Hoskote
Cosmos & other poems by Tishani Doshi from the Granta ‘Membranes’ issue
Paul Horn - ‘Cosmic Consciousness’
Singing Om - George Harrison from Wonderwall Music

118. Backlisted - Summer Reading 2020

This is the summer reading episode of Backlisted showcasing the books Andy, John & Nicky have been reading during lockdown. This episode features both newly recorded material and excerpts from Locklisted, the bonus podcast exclusively available to Patreon supporters.

We would also like to thank the listeners who sent in their own versions of the Backlisted theme tune that feature in the episode:

’Bachlisted’ by Nick Riddle
’Synthlisted’ by Neil Christie
’NickDrakelisted’ by James Hannah
’Harplisted’ by Claire Parsons

Books mentioned:

A Helping Hand - Celia Dale
The Hours Before Dawn - Celia Fremlin
A Small Place - Jamaica Kincaid
A Boy in the Water - Tom Gregory
The Anthill - Julianne Pachico
That Reminds Me - Derek Owusu;
The Ice Palace - Tarjei Vesaas
A Winter Book - Tove Jansson
Moonstone: the Boy Who Never Was - Sjon
English Climate: Wartime Stories - Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Corner That Held Them - Sylvia Townsend Warner

Other links:

‘Swimming the Channel’ - Victoria Wood As Seen on TV (1985)

117. William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience

Joining John and Andy today is John Williams, the daily books editor and a staff writer at the New York Times, where he has worked since 2011. Before that, John spent several years on the editorial side of book publishing, and founded and ran the website The Second Pass, which was built partly on the love of older and more obscure books.

The book under discussion is The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, brother of Henry, professor of philosophy at Harvard, who delivered twenty hour-long talks as part of the prestigious Gifford lecture series at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902. The texts of these were gathered together and first published in book form in 1902 by Longmans, Green & Co, with the subtitle A Study in Human Nature. An immediate bestseller, it is a landmark book that continues to to influence our attitudes to, and understanding of, religious experience in all its diverse kinds.

Books mentioned:

William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience; The Varieties of Religious Experience (audio book read by John Pruden); The Will to Believe; A Pluralistic Universe
Eve Babitz - Eve’s Hollywood
J.D. Salinger - For Esmé, With Love & Squalor (Nine Stories); Franny & Zooey; Uncollected Stories (PDF)

Other links:

The Second Pass archive site
Backlisted no 57 on Á Rebours by J.-K. Husymans
’My Sweet Lord’ - George Harrison
’God’ - John Lennon
Mary Midgley on Desert Island Discs
’Cosmically Conscious’ - Paul McCartney
I Think Therefore I Rock’n’Roll’ - Ringo Starr

116. M.F.K. Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf

For this episode Andy and John are joined by the writers Dan Richards and Felicity Cloake. Dan’s first book, Holloway was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane & illustrated by Stanley Donwood. It was self-published in 2012, picked up by Faber in 2013 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. His fourth book, Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth, was published by Canongate in April, 2019. Dan has written about travel, literature, art and music for publications including the Economist, Guardian, Telegraph, Monocle, Slightly Foxed, and The Quietus. He loves oysters and M.F.K Fisher.

Felicity Cloake is a food writer and the award-winning author of the Guardian’s long-running ‘How to Make the Perfect’ series and the New Statesman’s food column, as well as five cookbooks, including the André Simon award shortlisted The A-Z of Eating, and a culinary travelogue, One More Croissant for the Road, which was recently shortlisted for a Fortnum & Mason award. She has been obsessed with M.F.K. Fisher for at least a decade, and wrote the foreword to the 2019 Daunt Books reissue of Consider the Oyster, though in truth she hasn’t eaten many oysters since consuming one the size of her hand in Brittany.

The book under discussion is M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, her classic guide to surviving the privations of war, first published in the United States by Duell, Sloan & Pearce in 1942, (allegedly) first published in the UK as a part of The Art of Eating by Faber & Faber in 1963, and released earlier this year in a handsome new paperback edition by Daunt Books.

Also featured in this episode is Andy revisiting Becky Brown’s brilliant pitch for the thrilling ‘man on the run’ novel Figures in a Landscape by Barry England (which didn’t make the final cut of the Barbara Pym episode, while John delights in the smells and sounds of Roman London in Bernadine Evaristo’s 2001 verse novel, The Emperor’s Babe (Penguin).

Books mentioned:

M.F.K. Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf; Consider the Oyster; The Gastronomical Me; An Alphabet for Gourmets
Felicity Cloake - One More Croissant for the Road; The A-Z of Eating
Dan Richards - Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth; Holloway
Bernadine Evaristo - The Emperor’s Babe; Girl Women Other
Barry England - Figures in a Landscape
Geoffrey Household - Rogue Male
Edouard De Pomiane - Cooking With Pomiane
Craig Brown - One Two, Three Four - The Beatles in Time

Other links:

Alan Bennett on M.F.K. Fisher in the London Review of Books (Jan 2001)
Jazz Company - ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’
Howlin’ Wolf - ‘The Wolf at Your Door’
M.F.K Fisher on how she got her nom de plume
Dan Richards’ How to Cook a Wolf playlist

115. George & Weedon Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody

In this episode, John, Andy & Nicky are joined by Laura Cumming & Edward Higgins. Laura first appeared in December 2016 to discuss Jane Gardam’s A Long Way from Verona. She is the Observer's art critic and wrote The Vanishing Man, a book about Velazquez which we discussed in the B.S. Johnson episode, and most recently a memoir about her mother's strange early life, On Chapel Sands, which Andy talked about in the episode on Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. Edward is the author of one novel, Conversations with Spirits, published by Unbound in 2013 and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Bluffer's Guides, and the current Editor-in-Chief of a free app called Sidekick, helping people with mental health issues. Last year, he wrote introductions and annotations for the book under discussion today and has just released a new podcast called Laars Head's Supernormal.

The main book featured is The Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith, first serialised in Punch magazine in 1888 – 1889 and published in volume form by J.W. Arrowsmith in 1892. It has been in print ever since. Before that, Andy extols the mellow intoxications offered by Maurice Gorham’s The Local (with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone) and John enjoys the subversive comic elan of Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier published by the always-excellent Influx Press.

Books mentioned:

George & Weedon Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody; The Diary of a Nobody (with Edward Higgin’s notes)
Stephen Wade - A Victorian Somebody: The Life of George Grossmith
Edward Higgins - Conversations with Spirits
Laura Cumming - The Vanishing Man; On Chapel Sands
Maurice Gorham - The Local
Clive King - Stig of the Dump (illustrated by Edward Ardizzone)
Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier
George Saunders - Tenth of December
Andrew Sean Greer - Less
Francis Plug - How to Be a Public Author
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
George Orwell - Coming Up for Air

Other links:

‘See Me Dance the Polka’ performed by Leon Berger and Selwyn Tillett
Arthur Lowe reads from The Diary of a Nobody
Ken Russell discussing The Diary of a Nobody on A Good Read
Susannah Pearse & John Finnemore's musical adaptation of The Diary of a Nobody

114. William Golding - The Inheritors

BACKLISTED ON PATREON

Joining John and Andy in this episode are multiple returnees and Official Friends of Backlisted: Dr Una McComack and Andrew Male. Una is a bestselling writer of science fiction. Her most recent novel, The Last Best Hope, is a spin-off from the TV series Star Trek: Picard. She is particularly interested in women's science fiction and this is her fifth appearance on Backlisted: her previous episodes were no 30 (Venetia by Georgette Heyer), no 49 (Look at Me by Anita Brookner); no 71 (The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien) and no 98 (Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban).  Andrew Male is the senior associate editor of MOJO magazine and writes on TV, books and film for the Guardian, Sight & Sound and the Sunday Times. This Andrew’s sixth appearance (a new record). He joined us for episode 10 (The High Window by Raymond Chandler); episode 24 (Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman); episode 52 (We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson; episode 78 (Ghosts by Edith Wharton) and episode 104 (The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier) – these last four being Hallowe’en specials

The book they are here to talk about is The Inheritors by William Golding, his second published novel (after Lord of the Flies) and first released by Faber & Faber in 1955. And it is one of the titles on the list Andy and I made when we first met to talk about Backlisted and the kind of books we’d like to feature. This episode also features Andy enjoying Square Haunting by Francesca Wade and John highlights a pre-order promotion to help Bloodaxe Books get their brilliant new anthology Staying Human out in time for National Poetry Day.

Books mentioned:

William Golding - The Inheritors; Lord of the Flies; The Spire; Pincher Martin
Francesca Wade - Square Haunting
Hope Mirelees - Lud-in-the-Mist; Paris
Neil Astley (ed) - Staying Human
John Carey - William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies; William Golding: The Man and His Books
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
John Wyndham - The Chrysalids
H.G. Wells - The Grisly Folk
Judy Golding - The Children of Lovers
Cormac McCarthy - The Road

Other links:

William Golding official website
The Mandalorian on Disney+
Brigadoon (rental)
Charles Monteith on Lord of the Flies
Penelope Lively on The Inheritors
William Golding on The South Bank Show (1981)
Neanderthal Man by James Last & His Orchestra
The sound Neanderthals might have made

113. Margaret Kennedy - The Constant Nymph

SUPPORT BACKLISTED ON PATREON

Andy and John are joined by publisher Alexandra Pringle, the Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing for 20 years and now Executive Publisher. She began her career on the art magazine Art Monthly and joined Virago Press in 1978 where she edited the Virago Modern Classics series, becoming Editorial Director in 1984. In 1990 she moved to Hamish Hamilton as Editorial Director and four years later left publishing to become a literary agent. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999. Her list of authors includes Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Esther Freud, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sheila Hancock, Khaled Hosseini, Celia Imrie, George Saunders, Kamila Shamsie, Patti Smith, Kate Summerscale and Barbara Trapido. She is a Patron of Index on Censorship, a Trustee of Giffords Circus and the charity Reprieve, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The main book under discussion is The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy, her second novel (out of fourteen) first published by William Heinnemann in 1924  re-issued by Vintage in 2014 and adapted for the screen no fewer than three times.

Before that Andy continues his exploration of British modernism with Alexandra Harris’s Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists & the Imagination from Virgina Woolf to John Piper while John grapples with time through the subtle, eloquent prism of Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time.

Books mentioned:

Margaret Kennedy - The Constant Nymph; Troy Chimneys; Lucy Carmichael
Alexandra Harris - Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists & the Imagination from Virgina Woolf to John Piper; Weatherland: Writer & Artists under English Skies
Carlo Rovelli - The Order of Time
J.A. Baker - The Peregrine
Hetty Saunders - My House of Sky: The Life of J.A. Baker
Rosamund Lehmann - Dusty Answer
Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
Elaine Dundy - The Dud Avocado
Rafeella Barker - Come and Tell Me Some Lies
Esther Freud - Hideous Kinky
Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers
Sofka Zinovieff - Putney
Barbara Comyns - The Vet’s Daughter; Their Spoons Came From Woolworth’s
Rose Macaulay - The World My Wilderness
Edith Wharton - The Children
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Emily Eden - The Semi-Detached House; The Semi-Attached Couple
Jane & Mary Findlater - Crossrigs

Other links:

Gifford’s Circus
Front Row BBCR4 discussion of The Constant Nymph featuring Dr Anne Manuel
Clothes in Books: The Constant Nymph
Penelope Fitzgerald on The Constant Nymph (LRB 1983)
The Constant Nymph (1943) movie

112. Antonia White - Frost in May

SUPPORT BACKLISTED ON PATREON

In this episode, Andy and John are joined by Laura Thompson, who joined us on the fourth ever Backlisted to discuss The Blessing by Nancy Mitford. Laura is the Somerset Maugham-winning author of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller The Six about the Mitford sisters, and two books about real-life murders: the Lord Lucan story and the Thompson-Bywaters case. Most recently she published The Last Landlady with Unbound, a memoir of her publican grandmother, and an updated reissue of her Agatha Christie biography, which was Edgar-nominated last year.

She writes occasionally for the TLS and for Harper's Bazaar, and is a fervent lover of animals, the Rolling Stones and the real Elizabeth Taylor.

The second guest is Erica Wagner, now making her fourth appearance (she was previously on Backlisted to talk about Alan Garner’s Red Shift, Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family and Denis Johnson’s story collection, Jesus’ Son). Erica is an author and critic, reader and listener. Her latest book is Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge, published by Bloomsbury; she is the author of a novel, Seizure (published by Faber) and with storyteller Abbi Patrix and musician Linda Edsjö (ED-heu) the creator of Pas de Deux/A Concert of Stories. She was literary editor of The Times for seventeen years, and is now a contributing writer for the New Statesman and literary editor for Harper's Bazaar. She is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, and when not doing any of the above, knits, cooks, bakes sourdough bread and watches Star Trek (usually not all at once, however).

The main book under discussion is Frost in May by Antonia White first published by Harmsworth in 1933 but re-issued by Virago in 1978 as the very first Virago Modern Classic. Before that Andy looks at the exquisite Mainstone Press edition of John Piper’s Brighton Aquatints, with text by Alan Powers and John gets excited by Once a Year, a 1977 photographic record of traditional British customs by Homer Sykes, reissued in 2016 by Dewi Lewis Publishing.

Books mentioned:

Antonia White - Frost in May; The Lost Traveller; The Sugar House; Beyond the Glass; The Hound & the Falcon: The Story of a Reconversion to Catholic Faith
Laura Thompson - The Last Landlady; The Six; Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life; Rex v Edith Thomson
Erica Wagner - Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge; Seizure
Alan Powers (ed) - John Piper’s Brighton Aquatints
Homer Sykes - Once a Year: Some Traditional British Customs
Jane Dunn - Antonia White: A Life
Susan Chitty - Now to My Mother: A Very Personal Memoir of Antonia White
Lyndall Hopkinson - Nothing to Forgive: A Daughter's Life of Antonia White

Other links:

Mavis Nicholson interviews Antonia White (1978)
Listing info on BBC2 adaptation of Frost in May (1982)
Hermione Lee on Antonia White in the Literary Review (Oct, 1979)
Carmen Callil on Frost in May

111. John Irving - The World According to Garp

SUPPORT BACKLISTED ON PATREON

For this episode, Andy and John are joined once again by Nikita Lalwani and Matt Thorne, who were last here on episode 63 to talk about the terrifying Something Happened by Joseph Heller. 

Nikita is the author of three novels including her latest, You People, just out from Viking and which Andy talked about on episode 110. It’s also been optioned for television by World Productions, creators of The Bodyguard and In the Line of Duty. Nikita is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and her work has been translated into sixteen languages.

Matt Thorne is also a novelist, with six books under his belt, including Eight Minutes Idle, which was adapted into a film by BBC Films.  He has also written three children’s books and his most recent book was a critical study of the pop star Prince published by Faber.

The book they have chosen to discuss is is another masterpiece of post-war American fiction: The World According to Garp by John Irving first published in 1978 by Dutton in the US and by Victor Gollancz in the UK. 

Also in this episode John remembers the writer and artist Tim Robinson who spent five decades mapping and recording the Aran Islands, the first of which is Stones of Arran: Pilgrimage and Andy enjoys Bob Dylan’s new book-friendly single, ‘I Contain Multitudes’

Books mentioned:

John Irving - The World According to Garp; A Prayer for Owen Meany; The Cider House Rules; The Hotel New Hampshire; Until I Find You; Last Night in Twisted River
Joseph Heller - Something Happened
Nikita Lalwani - You People; Gifted
Matt Thorne - Eight Minutes Idle; Prince
Nigel Pennick - Witchcraft & Secret Societies of Rural England
Tim Robinson - Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage
Shena MacKay - Heligoland
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

Other links:

Bob Dylan - ‘I Contain Multitudes’
Bob Dylan - ‘Murder Most Foul’
Excerpts form The World According to John Irving (2012)
John Irving interviewed by Tom Power on CBC (2018)
The Paris Review: The Art of Fiction #93 - John Irving

110. W.N.P. Barbellion - The Journal of a Disappointed Man

SUPPORT BACKLISTED ON PATREON

For this episode John and Andy are joined by the writers Claire Fuller and William Atkins. Claire didn’t start writing fiction until she was 40. Her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize, her second, Swimming Lessons was shortlisted for the Encore prize, and her third, Bitter Orange is longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Claire also writes flash fiction and short stories. Many have been shortlisted in competitions and she has won the BBC Opening Lines short story competition, and the Royal Academy / Pin Drop prize. Her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground will be published in 2021. William Atkins was previously a guest on Backlisted for our episode on Great Expectations. He is the author of The Moor, about England’s moorlands, and The Immeasurable World, a travel book about the world’s deserts, which won last year’s Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award. He also writes for the Guardian, the FT, Harper’s and Granta. 

The book they are hear to discuss is one of Andy’s favourites: The Journal of Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion published in 1919 by Chatto & Windus, Barbellion being the pseudonym of the writer and natural historian, Bruce Frederick Cummings. Songs of disappointment punctuate the discussion. Before that John discusses one of the great modern reference books, The Oxford Companion to Food edited by Alan Davidson and Andy enjoys You People the new novel by Nikita Lalwani, set in a London pizza restaurant staffed mostly by illegal immigrants.

Books mentioned:

W.N.P. Barbellion - The Diary of a Disappointed Man; The Journal of a Disappointed Man (e-book); Enjoying Life & Other Literary Remains; The Last Diary
Claire Fuller - Our Endless Numbered Days; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; Unsettled Ground
William Atkins - The Moor; The Immeasurable World
Alan Davidson - The Oxford Companion to Food; North Atlantic Seafood; Mediterranean Seafood; Seafood of South-East Asi
Edward St Aubyn - The Patrick Melrose Novels

Other links:

The Quotable Barbellion - quotes, reviews & bibliography
Alex Jennings reading Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn 
Bob Dylan - It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Half Man Half Biscuit - National Shite Day

109. Barbara Pym - Excellent Women

SUPPORT BACKLISTED ON PATREON

Joining John and Andy for this first episode in our new season of the podcast are Becky Brown and Norah Perkins, the joint custodians of the Curtis Brown Heritage list of literary estates, where they look after the works and legacies of over 150 writers including Iris Murdoch, Stella Gibbons, Douglas Adams, Elizabeth Bowen, Gerald and Lawrence Durrell, Margaret Kennedy and Laurie Lee. They have been friends for seven years and colleagues for three. Becky edits anthologies in her spare time with the next one, Classic Cat Stories, coming out from Macmillan later this year. Norah divides her spare time between the garden and the (very slow) restoration of a Victorian printing press.

The book they have chosen to discuss is one that many Backlisted listeners will be delighted by: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, first published in 1952 by Jonathan Cape, and reissued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2009. Also in this episode John finds the matter of ancient myth can be transformed into resonant contemporary poetry in the right hands - those of Mathew Francis in this case, in his new version of The Mabinogi (Faber). And Andy tests our guests’ professional mettle by getting them to pitch some books that believe deserve closer attention from contemporary readers.

Books mentioned:

Barbara Pym - Excellent Women; Some Tame Gazelle; No Fond Return of Love; Crampton Hodnet; Quartet in Autumn; A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries & Letters
Hazel Holt - A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym
Mathew Francis - The Mabinogi
Alan Garner - The Owl Service
Patrick Hamilton - Monday Morning; Craven House
Margert Kennedy - Troy Chimneys
Pamela Frankel - A Wreath for the Enemy
Barry England - Figures in the Landscape
Celia Dale - A Helping Hand
Philips Larkin - Selected Letters

Other links:

Easy Rider (YouTube)
Backlisted on The Tortoise & the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
Backlisted on Lost Horizon by James Hilton
Backlisted on Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
Barbara Pym on Desert Island Discs (August 1978)
Miss Pym’s Day Out on YouTube
Reputations Revisted in the TLS (1977)
Backlisted on Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch

108. Marcel Proust - À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

For this Christmas edition, recorded live at the London Library, John and Andy are the guests and the chair is the writer, Lissa Evans. Lissa is the author of several novels including Old Baggage, Crooked Heart and Their Finest Hour and a Half. She has appeared on Backlisted four times as a guest, including the very first one on J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country and the episode on The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton.

For this festive edition the main book under discussion is Marcel Proust’s À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, known by its English title as either Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time, depending on preference and translation. Before that Andy reports back on his recent re-reading of Ulysses, while John delights in the original quick cooking classic, Cooking in Ten Minutes by Edouard de Pomiane. There are also expert Proustian cameos from Professor Sarah Churchwell, and translator, Shaun Whiteside and a rousing version of ‘The Twelve Days of Proustmas’, an Andy Miller original. And there’s a link to our Proust playlist - featuring many excellent suggestions from listeners.

Books mentioned:

Marcel Proust - Swann’s Way; Within a Budding Grove; The Guermantes Way; Sodom & Gomorrah; The Captive & The Fugitive; Time Regained (Scott-Moncrieff/Kilmartin translation)
The Way by Swann’s; In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower; The Guermantes Way; Sodom & Gomorrah; The Prisoner & The Fugitive; Finding Time Again (Penguin Proust - various translators ed. Christopher Prendegast)
Marcel Proust & Stephane Heuet - Swann’s Way (graphic novel)
Marcel Proust & Stephane Heuet - In the Shadow of Young Girl’s in Flower (graphic novel)
Andrew Sean Greer - Less
J.L. Husymans - A Rebours
Samuel Beckett - Proust
Harold Pinter -The Proust Screenplay
Alain de Botton - How Proust Can Change Your Life
Céleste Albaret - Monsieur Proust
Jozef Czapski - Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp
Clive James - Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust
Eric Karpeles - Paintings in Proust
James Joyce - Ulysses
Edouard de Pomiane - Cooking in Ten Minutes

Other links:

Pete Townsend - Time is Passing
Monty Python’s All England Summarize Proust Competition
Céleste Albaret talking about her memoir in 1972
102 Boulevard Haussman by Alan Bennett
Reynaldo Hahn sings and plays Toutes les Fleurs and more
Saint-Saëns Violin Sonata No.1
Desert Island Discs
Jealousy - Pet Shop Boys
Who Knows Where The Time Goes - Fairport Convention
The Past Sure Is Tense - Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band

107. Arnold Bennett - Riceyman Steps

In this episode, Andy and John are joined for a second time by Kit de Waal. Kit is a writer and activist whose debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. Her second, The Trick of Time was published to great acclaim in 2018 and her most recent, a YA novel called Becoming Dinah, was published by earlier this year by Orion Children’s Books. She is the editor of the anthology of working class writers, Common People published by Unbound and the force behind the Kit de Waal Creative scholarships, for budding writers from a low-income households or marginalised backgrounds. For all this, and for being generally a force for good in the book industry, she was named 2019 Futurebook Person of the Year. Her previous appearance on Backlisted was on episode 26 back in 2016, where she talked about So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell.

Kit is joined by the writer and journalist Charlotte Higgins, the chief culture writer of the Guardian. She is the author of several books on aspects of the ancient world. Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain (Cape, 2013), was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction and the Wainwright Prize. Her latest book Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths (Cape, 2018) won the 2019 Arnold Bennett prize. Charlotte has written for the New Yorker, the New Statesman and Prospect and in 2010, she won the Classical Association prize for her books and journalism, awarded for the person deemed to have done most to bring classics to a broad audience. And in 2019 she was chosen for a British Council showcase by novelist Elif Shafak as one of ‘ten brilliant women writers’ working in Britain today.

The main book under discussion is Riceyman Steps  by Arnold Bennett, first published by Cassell & Company in 1923, and which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in the same year. Before that John rediscovers his North Eastern roots via Dan Jackson’s excellent new history The Northumbrians and Andy reflects on his recent re-readings of Kazuo Ishiguro.

Books mentioned:

Arnold Bennett - Riceyman Steps; The Old Wive’s Tale; Anna of the Five Towns; The Card; Clayhanger; Helen With the High Hand; Buried Alive; How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Kit de Waal - My Name is Leon; The Trick of Time; Becoming Dinah; Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers
Charlotte Higgins - Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain; Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go; The Unconsoled; The Buried Giant;
Dan Jackson - The Northumbrians
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Virginia Woolf - Jacob’s Room

Other links:

The Clientele - ‘Bookshop Casanova’
Novels that Shaped Our World (BBC, 2019)
Virginia Woolf - ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’
Omelette Arnold Bennett on Masterchef: The Professionals
Broadcast - ‘The Book Lovers’
The Go-Betweens - ‘Karen’
American Music Club - ‘Myopic Books’

106. Patricia Highsmith - Edith's Diary

This episode is dedicated to the writer and journalist Deborah Orr. Deborah chose the book for us to discuss but died before we were able to record. Her powerful and widely acclaimed memoir, Motherwell is published by Weidenfeld in January 2020 and is available for pre-order here.

In Deborah’s place, John and Andy are joined by two writers: John Grindrod, author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain, and Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt  which the FT described as ‘a lucid, evocative book, suffused with sadness and anger’. He has also co-written and edited a book about TV, Shouting at the Telly, and contributed to a book on music, Hang the DJ, and most recently a book for Batsford called How to Love Brutalism . He runs the website dirtymodernscoundrel.com and his previous appearance of Backlisted was back in 2016 when he joined us to talk about Memento Mori by Muriel Spark. John is joined by the novelist and performer, Karen McLeod. Karen is the author of In Search of the Missing Eyelash published in 2008 by Vintage and which won a Betty Trask award. She is the creator of comedy character Barbara Brownskirt ‘the worst living lesbian poet alive and performing today’ and has written for the Guardian, The Letters Page and the Independent, but most importantly she is writer-in-residence at Bookseller Crow in Crystal Palace, host of tonight’s live recording.

The book that Deborah chose is Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith, first published by Heinemann in the UK in 1977 and then Simon & Schuster in the US later that year. It was the seventeenth of her 22 novels. Before that Andy enthuses over Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators series ( The Case of the Stuttering Parrot, in particular) and John shares some stories of how women writers approach their writing drawn from Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: Women at Work.

Books mentioned:

Patricia Highsmith - Edith’s Diary; Strangers on a Train; The Talented Mr Ripley; Carol; Deep Water; Eleven; The Animal Lovers Book of Beastly Murder; Little Tales of Misogyny
Deborah Orr - Motherwell
John Grindrod - Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain; Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt; Shouting at the Telly; Hang the DJ; How to Love Brutalism
Karen McLeod - In Search of the Missing Eyelash
Alfred Hitchcock - The Three Investigators: The Case of the Stuttering Parrot
Mason Currey - Daily Rituals: Women at Work
Alison Walker - The Colour People
Andrew Wilson - Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith
Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
T.S. Eliot - Collected Poems
Ronald Blythe - Akenfield

Other links:

Bookseller Crow - orderline
Patricia Highsmth interviewed by Mavis Nicholson (1978)
A.N. Wilson on Patricia Highsmith (2003)
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - ‘Ice Cream for Crow’
Emma Tennant review of Edith’s Diary
Alfred Hitchcock - Stangers on a Train (1951)
René Clément - Plein Soleil (1960)
Anthony Minghella - The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Wim Winders - The American Friend (1977)

105. W.G. Sebald - The Rings of Saturn

In this episode John and Andy are joined by Philip Hoare, a broadcaster, curator, filmmaker and writer whose books include biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noel Coward, the historical studies, Wilde’s Last Stand; Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital, and England’s Lost Eden.  His book Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His most recent book, RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, is published by Fourth Estate. Philip presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night.  He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com.  
The second guest is the writer, Jessie Greengrass, the author of two books. Her first, the short story collection, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It won the Edge Hill Prize and a Somerset Maugham award (and was enthuiastically praised by John in the episode of Backlisted devoted to Husymans). Her novel, Sight, was published in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and longlisted for the Wellcome Prize. Jessie lives in Northumberland with her partner and their two children.

The main book under discussion is The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, first published in German by Eichborn Verlag in 1995 and in an English translation by Michael Hulse by the Harvill Press in 1998. Before that, John ventures back in timed space with The Years by Annie Ernaux and Andy is blown away by Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson.

Books mentioned:

W.G. Sebald - The Rings of Saturn; The Emigrants; The Natural History of Destruction; Austerlitz
Philip Hoare - Spike Island; Leviathan, or The Whale; RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR
Jessie Greengrass - An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It ; Sight
Annie Ernaux - The Years
Fiona Benson - Vertigo & Ghost

Other links:

Brian Eno - Dunwich Beach, 1960 (2004)
W.G Sebald on photographs and lichen
W.G. Sebald interviewed by Bookworm on KCRW, 2001
W.G Sebald reading at the 93 Street Y , NYC, in 2001
Backlisted Live at the London Library 

104. Daphne du Maurier - The Breaking Point

On this Hallowe’en episode Andy and John are joined by Laura Varnam. Laura is a lecturer in English Literature at University College, Oxford, and she is currently writing a book on Daphne du Maurier. She regularly appears at the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature in Cornwall and was one of the experts consulted on the documentary Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of Rebecca. Also on hand – as is traditional for the Backlisted Hallowe’en festivities – is Andrew Male. Andrew is the senior associate editor of Mojo magazine and writes about books, film, radio and TV for the Guardian, Sight and Sound, and Sunday Times Culture. This is fifth time on the Backlisted (and his fourth at Hallowe’en). 

The main book Laura and Andrew are discussing is a collection of stories known as either the The Breaking Point or The Blue Lenses by Daphne du Maurier, first published in 1959 by Gollancz and issued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2009. Before that Andy explores the spooky world of The Usborne World of the Unknown - Ghosts while John explores a strange but affecting tale - Walter J.C. Murray’s Copsford, recently republished by Little Toller with an introduction by Raynor Winn.

Books mentioned:

Daphne du Maurier - The Breaking Point; Rebecca; Don’t Look Now & Other Stories; The House on the Strand; I’ll Never Be Young Again; Rule Britannia; The Infernal World of Bramwell Bronte
Christopher Maynard - The Usborne World of the Unknown - Ghosts
Walter J.C. Murray - Copsford
Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
Margaret Forster - Daphne du Maurier
Tatiana de Rosnay - Manderley Forever: A Life of Daphne du Maurier

Other links:

Daphne du Maurier at Home (Pathé Newsreel)
Interview with Daphne du Maurier (BBC, 1971)
Rebecca - Alfred Hitchcock (1940)
Sheila Bond remembers Daphne du Maurier (Meridian BBC, 1989)
Daphne du Maurier on Desert Island Discs (1977)
Christopher Douglas on Don’t Look Now (A Good Read, 2007)
Don’t Look Now - Nic Roeg (1973)

103. William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!

This episode marks the fourth visit by Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London. Her previous episodes features books by Nella Larsen, Anita Loos and Gayl Jones. As a well as working as a critic, prize-judge, TV and radio pundit, Sarah is also the author of books on Marilyn Monroe, F. Scott Fitzgerald and her most recent published in paperback earlier this year by Bloomsbury, Behold, America - a history of America First and the American Dream, called ‘excoriating and brilliant’ by Ali Smith and which inspired historian Dan Snow to call Sarah his ‘number one contributor when it comes to US politics’. The book under discussion is one of the great classics of 20th century American literature, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner first published in 1936 by Random House, and widely considered to be one of the novels that won Faulkner the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The episode also features John enjoying the smart, funny collection Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine and Andy offering another of his inimitable mash-ups, this time a combination of a short story by Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard and NEU!

Books mentioned:

William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!; The Sound & the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Sanctuary
Sarah Churchwell - Behold!, America: A History of America First & the American Dream; Careless People
Gayl Jones - Corregidora
Wendy Erskine - Sweet Home
Thomas Bernhard - The Voice Imitator; The Loser; My Prizes; Wittgenstein’s Nephew
Toni Morrison - Beloved
James Baldwin - Nobody Knows My Name

Other links:

NEU! ‘Fur Immer’
Barton Fink (2005) DVD
The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction 12: William Faulkner
William Faulkner on Absalom, Absalom!
Serge Gainsbourg - ‘Requiem pour un con’
Film of William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi (1952)
William Faulkner on J.D. Salinger

102. Elizabeth Taylor - The Soul of Kindness

Here Andy and John are joined by two returning guests: Carmen Callil and Rachel Cooke. Carmen is the legendary publisher and writer, who is best known for founding the Virago Press in 1972.  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’. She last joined us in 2018 to discuss Elizabeth Jenkins’ The Tortoise and the Hare.

Rachel is one of the UK’s most celebrated journalists, trained at the Sunday Times, and a regular contributor now at the Observer and the New Statesman, where she is TV critic. In the 2006 British Press Awards, she was named Interviewer of the Year and her latest book is Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties, published by Virago in 2013. Rachel joined us on the eleventh Backlisted to discuss All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook. Her advocacy (on Backlisted and elsewhere) helped get the book back into print through Granta, where it is now one of their bestselling backlist titles.

The book that Rachel and Carmen are discussing is The Soul of Kindness, the ninth novel by Elizabeth Taylor, first published by Chatto & Windus in 1964, and reissued by Carmen in 1974 and published as a Virago Modern Classics in 1983.

This episode also includes Andy finding his way into Richard King’s musical odyssey, The Lark Ascending: The Music of the British Landscape, (Faber) and John enjoys diving into the past with Kathleen Jamie’s exquisite Surfacing (Sort Of Books).

Books mentioned:

Elizabeth Taylor - The Soul of Kindness; Angel; A Game of Hide and Seek; In A Summer Season; Complete Short Stories
Richard King - The Lark Ascending
Kathleen Jamie - Surfacing
Rachel Cooke - Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
Carmen Callil - Bad Faith: A History of Family & Fatherland
Barry Lopez - Arctic Dreams
David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here
Nicola Beauman - The Other Elizabeth Taylor
Jane Gardam - Old Filth
Shena McKay - The Orchard on Fire
Tessa Hadley - Late in the Day

Other links:

Tickets for the Backlisted Christmas Evening at the London Library
Ralph Vaughan Williams - ‘The Lark Ascending’
The Stan Tracey Quartet -Under Milk Wood: Jazz Suite
John Cameron - Kes Soundtrack
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Ultramarine
Robert Wyatt - ‘Happy Land’
Elizabeth Taylor on Mastermind
Tales of the Unexpected - ‘The Flypaper’

101. Werner Herzog - Of Walking in Ice

This episode was recorded live at the End of the Road Festival. Our guest is Luke Turner, author of the acclaimed memoir Out of the Woods which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and longlisted for the Polari Prize for first book by an LGBT+ writer. Luke has also been selected by Val McDiarmid as one of 10 most important LGBT+ writers for a British Council and National Centre for Writing initiative. In 2019 he’s been co-curating a programme of arts events celebrating the landscape and people of Epping Forest as part of Waltham Forest's stint as the first London Borough of Culture. He’s co-founder and editor of The Quietus and writes for a variety of publications.

The book Luke is here to discuss is Of Walking in Ice, the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s account of the journey he made from Munich to Paris on foot in December 1974 to visit the doyenne of German film, Lotte Eisner, who he believed to be dying. It was first published in 1978, and appeared in an English translation by Alan Greenberg, published by Jonathan Cape in 1980.

Books mentioned:

Werner Herzog - Of Walking in Ice; A Guide for the Perplexed (Conversations with Paul Cronin)
Luke Turner - Out of the Woods
Denise Riley - Time Lived, Without Its Flow; Say Something Back
Stewart Lee - March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
Derek Jarman - Modern Nature: Journals 1989 - 1990
J.A. Baker - The Peregrine
Alan Garner - The Voice that Thunders

Other links:

Werner Herzog on Lotte Eisner
The Great Ecstasy of Wood Carver Steiner (1974)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)
Encounters at the End of the World (2009)
Into the Abyss (2011)
Burden of Dreams: The Making of Fitzcarraldo
Grizzly Man (2011)
Wender Herzog on writing
Popol Vuh - soundtrack to Nosferatu

100. Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy

Welcome to our 100th episode! To mark the occasion, Andy and John are recording at the home of one of the UK’s most celebrated writers. Sir Philip Pullman is the author of more than 30 books – for children, adults and those in between – and most famously the worldwide bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy. He and has work have been recognized with awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Guardian Childrens’ Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Carnegie of Carnegies, the Eleanor Farjeon Award, the Astrid Lindgren Award, and the JM Barrie award. In October, David Fickling and Penguin Books will publish The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in his The Book of Dust trilogy and the BBC One will launch a new adaptation of His Dark Materials. The book under discussion is one of Sir Philip’s favourites: The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, first published in 1621, but republished five more times over the following seventeen years with substantial alterations and expansions.

Books mentioned:

Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials; The Book of Dust 1: La Belle Sauvage; The Book of Dust 1: The Secret Commonwealth; Daemon Voices: Essays on Storytelling (including Folio Society introduction to The Anatomy of Melancholy)
James Boswell - The Life of Samuel Johnson
John Keats - Bright Star: The Couple Poems & Letters
Jorge Luis Borges - Fictions
Bocaccio - The Decameron
Laurence Sterne - The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year
Charles Sprawson - Haunts of the Black Masseur; The Swimmer as Hero
David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here


Other links:

Ethel Waters - Stormy Weather
The Unthanks - Starless
Amy Winehouse -Back to Black
Nico - All That is My Own
Paddy McAloon - I Trawl the Megahertz
Richard & Linda Thompson - The World is a Wonderful Place
Billie Holiday - Gloomy Sunday