131. Locklisted - Teenage Books Special

This Locklisted special is the companion piece to the previous episode on books we read as children. It was recorded in August 2020 and was previously available exclusively to supporters of our Patreon.

Here we cover our teenage years and the tricky transition into ‘adult’ readers. Much of the conversation is dominated by of our re-reading of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, but you also get John falling for James Joyce at seventeen (via Wilbur Smith), Nicky moving from Puffin Plus to Douglas Coupland, a digression on the horror novels of Stephen King and and a haunting reading by Andy from a story by Graham Greene. 

Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons. If you would like to hear all past episodes of Locklisted and support Backlisted in the process, please sign up as a Locklistener or Master Storyteller at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction
Wilbur Smith - The Sunbird
Jack Higgins - Luciano’s Luck
Stephen King - It; Misery
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Erich von Daniken - Chariots of the Gods
Liz Berry - Mel
P.C. Wren - Beau Geste
Shaun Hutson - Slugs
Graham Greene - The Portable Graham Greene
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners
Douglas Coupland - Generation X
Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Sam Selvon - The Lonely Londoners
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Victor Bockris - Up Tight

Other links:

Stand by Me (Rob Reiner, 1986)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
The Velvet Underground - ‘I’m Not a Young Man Anymore’

130. Steve Tesich - Karoo

Karoo is a posthumously-published cult novel by screenwriter and playwright Steve Tesich. Joining John and Andy to analyse this dark and hilarious tale of a Hollywood script doctor's apocalyptic decline and fall are journalist and podcaster Sali Hughes and novelist John Niven (who previously guested on Backlisted episode 9 discussing Martin Amis's The Information).

Sali Hughes is a journalist, presenter and broadcaster, specialising in beauty, women’s issues and film. She has written for more or less every quality magazine and newspaper from Vogue and the Daily Telegraph to Cosmopolitan and Empire and has been Beauty Editor on the Guardian since 2011. She has published three bestselling books, the latest of which, Our Rainbow Queen, published by Square Peg in 2019, was a colourful and witty journey through eight decades of royal style and her new book Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons is published in September by Fourth Estate. Sali is also a podcaster- The Beauty Podcast With Sali Hughes debuted at number one across all categories.

John Niven was born in Irvine, Ayrshire and worked in the music industry for a decade before leaving to write fiction.  His bestselling debut novel Kill Your Friends was published in 2008 and later made into a feature film, scripted by Niven and starring Nicholas Hoult and James Corden. He has gone on to publish ten novels including The Second Coming, Straight White Male and his most recent, The F**k It List. He continues to work as a screenwriter and his latest film The Trip starring Noomi Rapace and Aksel Hennie arrives on Netflix this autumn.

Also in this episode, John enjoys This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960 by Robert Colls, a social history of the English and their relationship to sport, while Andy recommends Unquiet Landscape, Christopher Neve's recently-republished study of the English imagination in 20th-century landscape painting.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Steve Tesich - Karoo; Summer Crossing
Sali Hughes - Our Rainbow Queen; Pretty Honest; Pretty Iconic; Everything is Washable & Other Life Lessons
John Niven - Kill Your Friends; Straight White Male; The Second Coming; The F**k It List
Robert Colls - This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960; George Orwell: English Rebel
Christopher Neve - Unquiet Landscape
Joseph Heller - Something Happened
John Updike - Rabbit, Run
Saul Bellow - Herzog
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Michael Tolkin - The Player
Elmore Leonard - Get Shorty
Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
Nora Ephron - Heartburn
Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

Other links:

Film director Jean-Pierre Berckmans discusses Karoo, 2013
Steve Tesich's acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay at the 1980 Oscars
Steve Tesich on Letterman, 1982
Breaking Away (1979, screenplay by Steve Tesich)
The World According to Garp (1982, screenplay by Steve Tesich)

129. Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater

For this discussion of Rosemary Tonks fascinating third novel,The Bloater - first published by the Bodley Head in 1968 - Andy and John are joined by two enthusiastic fans of Tonks’s writing: the author and critic Jennifer Hodgson (who appeared on episode 61 to discuss Berg by Ann Quin) and the comedian, Stewart Lee.

The Bloater is long out of print, unfortunately, but the discussion also covers Tonks’s remarkable poetry, her friendship with Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, her eccentric career in fiction, radio and theatre, and her gradual retreat from the world.

Also in this episode Andy replenishes his enthusiasm for Elizabeth Taylor with her (bizarrely underrated) novel The Wedding Group (1968), while John extols the virtues of Andy Charman's Crow Court, a debut novel of rare quality, set in Wimbourne Minster in Dorset in the mid-19th century and published by Unbound.

Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons - if you would like to join them, you can do so at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater; Emir; Opium Fogs; Businessmen as Lovers; Love Among the Operators; Way Out of Berkeley Square; The Halt During the Chase; Bedouin of the London Evening: The Collected Poems
Andy Charman - Crow Court
Elizabeth Taylor - The Wedding Group; In a Summer Season; Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Ann Quin - The Unmapped Country; Berg
Stewart Lee - March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Graham Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project
Benjamin Myers - The Gallows Pole
Sarah Perry - The Essex Serpent
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake
Alice Jolly - Mary-Ann Sate, Imbecile
B.S. Johnson - Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry
Brigid Brophy - The Snow Ball
Penelope Gilliat - Mortal Matters
Nathalie Sarraute - Tropisms

Other links:

Rosemary Tonks on the Bloodaxe Books website
Neil Astley's 2014 Guardian article on Tonks's life
The Woman Who Quit, Michael Hofmann's 2015 easy on Tonk’s work
The Rosemary Tonks page at neglected books..com
Rosemary Tonks interview with Peter Orr (1963)
Rosemary Tonks reads ‘Badly Chosen Lover,’ 1963
Radiophonic workshop sounds via WikiDelia, a comprehensive Delia Derbyshire resource
The Borodin Quartet plays Borodin, String Quartet No 2, 1973
Rosemary Tonks: The Poet Who Vanished, 2009 BBC R4 documentary (currently unavailable)
Stewart Lee’s website
Trailer for King Rocker by Stewart Lee & Michael Cumming (Sky Arts 6th February, 9pm)
Obituary for the poet Val Warner in the Guardian (2020)

128. Locklisted - Children's Books Special

This Locklisted special on children's books was recorded in August 2020 and was previously available exclusively to supporters of our Patreon at patreon.com/backlisted.

Join us on a journey through time and space as John, Andy and Nicky discuss the books they loved as children (so actually no pubs were involved or even mentioned on this occasion). The discussion covers the importance of libraries, the Proustian aroma of parquet flooring, the challenges of the display spinner, the significance of the Puffin Club, the utility of book tokens and the joys of early audio books. The books mentioned make for an eclectic mix and include Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner, The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars, the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams, I-Spy books, the epic sweep of Sweet Valley High, Great Northern by Arthur Ransome, The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, the audiobook of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (as read by Glenda Jackson), the audiobook of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, comics such as Mandy and Look-in, the sublime Peanuts collections by Charles M. Schulz and last but definitely not least, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke.

We so enjoyed making this episode that we recorded a sequel on our favourite teenage reading, which will be shared here soon. Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons - many thanks to them! If you would like to hear all past episodes of Locklisted and support Backlisted in the process, please sign up as a Locklistener or Master Storyteller at patreon.com/backlisted.

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Erich Kästner - Emil and the Detectives
Betsy Byars - The Eighteenth Emergency
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (boxset)
I-Spy Books
Sweet Valley High
Arthur Ransome - Great Northern
A.A. Milne - The House at Pooh Corner
Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden (read by Glenda Jackson)
Noel Streatfeild - Ballet Shoes (BBC Classics Audiobook)
Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising
Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts
Malcolm Hulke - Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters

127. Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising

Susan Cooper's magical novel The Dark Is Rising is the subject of a bumper Christmas special episode of Backlisted. Joining John and Andy to discuss this classic winter solstice read, and the four other books that make up the Dark Is Rising sequence, are writer Robert Macfarlane and writer and illustrator Jackie Morris, co-authors of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells and fellow Susan Cooper devotees.

Robert is the author of books about landscape, people and nature including Underland, The Old Ways, The Wild Places. His books and writing have been widely adapted for film, theatre, radio, tv. He's a Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he's lucky enough to spend his days talking about ideas with brilliant young people. He loves collaborating with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake, Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, and the band Underworld.

Jackie is a multi-award-winning author and illustrator. She began her career in publishing illustrating for magazines and newspapers before moving into book illustration and then writing. She has illustrated more books than she can be bothered to count and written many too, including most recently, The Unwinding, published by Unbound. Her work with Robert Macfarlane has been described as a ‘cultural phenomenon’. She is currently working on The Book of Birds, written by Robert, The Space Between, a curious creature, part book, part leaf (funding via Unbound) and Mrs Noah’s Song, to be illustrated by James Mayhew. She lives and works in a small cottage in Pembrokeshire..

The Dark is Rising was first published in the UK by Chatto & Windus in 1973, and as a Puffin in 1976 and is the second book in the sequence, also called ‘The Dark is Rising’ which began with Over Sea, Under Stone in 1965 and then continued on with Greenwitch, The Grey King and finally in 1977, Silver on the Tree.

In this episode, John also talks about a beautiful ice-and-snow bound story from the Chuckchi people of the Bering Sea, When the Whales Leave by Yuri Rytkheu, and Andy reads ‘The Tree Room’, a poem from Caroline Bird's new collection The Air Year that seems to sum up the spirit of Christmas 2020. Wherever this podcast finds you in the world, Merry Christmas from us all. When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back...

As far as possible, all the books listed below are supplied via the Backlisted shop on bookshop.org and a proportion of the price helps support the podcast.

Books mentioned:

Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising; Over Sea, Under Stone; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree; Dreams & Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children; The Shortest Day
Jackie Morris - The Unwinding; The Space Between
Robert Macfarlane - Underland, The Old Ways, The Wild Places
Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane - The Lost Words; The Lost Spells
Yuri Rytkheu - When the Whales Leave
Caroline Bird - The Air Year
Martha Sprackland - Citadel
Susannah Clarke - Piranesi
Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; The Moon of Gomrath
Henry Williamson - Tarka the Otter
Jack London - The Call of the Wild
Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials
Penelope Lively - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
Diana Wynne-Jones - Charmed Life
John Masefield - The Box of Delights
Susan Price - Ghost Drum
Katherine Arden - The Bear & the Nightingale

Other links:

The Lost Land of Susan Cooper (official website)
The Dark is Rising by Handspan
Susan Cooper, 'A Catch of the Breath', Tolkien Lecture 2017
Theme from The Box of Delights by Roger Limb and the Pro Arte Orchestra
’Hard Road’ by Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, live at the Roundhouse, Camden (2017)

126. Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise-longue

The Victorian Chaise-longue is a terrifying short novel by the writer, broadcaster and lexicographer, Marghanita Laski. First published by The Cresset Press in 1953, it was reissued as Persephone Books’ sixth title in 1999 (followed by re-issues of four more novels by Laski). Joining Andy and John is the novelist Eley Williams. Eley’s debut novel, The Liar’s Dictionary,  was published this year by William Heinemann. Her short story collection Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press) won the James Tait Black Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Frit, a chapbook of poems, is published by Sad Press. This year she was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award for a short story ‘Scrimshaw’, concerning walruses, miscommunications and ellipses. She lectures at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

The episode also features Andy’s report back from the summit of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and John excavates an old Puffin anthology called Authors’ Choice which contains ‘The Tower’ (1955), another deeply unsettling story by Marghanita Laski story, chosen and introduced by Alan Garner.

Books mentioned:

Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise-longue; Little Boy Lost; Tory Heaven; Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular & Religious Experiences
Eley Williams - The Liar’s Dictionary; Attrib. & Other Stories; Frit
Douglas Adams & John Lloyd - The Meaning of Liff
Tim Brooke Taylor & Graeme Garden - The Uxbridge English Dictionary
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain; Death in Venice
Puffin Books - Authors’ Choice: Favourite Stories Chosen by Seventeen Distinguished Authors
Frank O’Connor - Collected Stories
Arthur Ransome - Old Peter’s Russian Tales
Saki - The Collected Stories
Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
Algernon Blackwood - Ghost Stories
John Buchan - The Watcher by the Threshold
Simon Winchester - The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Other links:

Marghanita Laski on the return of the supernatural story (BBC - Meridian, 1983)
‘The Tower ‘ - Marghanita Laski (PDF)
’The Tower’ - read on Classic Ghost Stories Podcast
’The Foghorn’ - Ray Bradbury
Shirley Jackson ‘The Lottery’ in The New Yorker
Marghanita Laski on whether books do us good (LRB, 1981)
Bing Crosby - ’The Magic WIndow’ from Little Boy Lost

125. Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle - The Compleet Molesworth

The Compleet Molesworth (1958) by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle is the beloved book we're celebrating in this special fifth birthday episode of Backlisted, cheers cheers.

Joining John and Andy to discuss some of the funniest and most influential fictional creations of the 20th century - Nigel Molesworth, Basil Fotherington-Thomas ect ect ect - are satirical cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson and the novelist Lissa Evans, who as any fule kno was our guest on the very first episode of Backlisted in 2015.

Also in this episode John contemplates the huge and genuinely remarkable The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness by Patrick Wright (published by the excellent independent Repeater Books) and Andy is enchanted by Piranesi, Susanna Clarke's long-delayed second novel, her first being the bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (both published by Bloomsbury).

Please note that all the links to in-pront books below now connect to the Backlisted bookshop on bookshop.org.

Books mentioned:

Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle - The Compleet Molesworth (Penguin Classics)
Martin Rowson - Stuff: A Memoir of Life & Death; The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Gulliver’s Travels; The Communist Manifesto; The Dance of Death
Lissa Evans - V for Victory; Old Baggage; Crooked Heart; Wed Wabbitt; Wed Wabbitt (audiobook)
Patrick Wright - The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness; On Living in an Old Country
Uwe Johnson & Damion Searls - Anniversaries
Susanna Clarke - Piranesi; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Ronald Searle - The Terror of St Trinian’s; To Kwai & Back: War Drawings 1939-1945
Rohan O’Grady - Let’s Kill Uncle
Ralph Steadman - The Joke's Over: Memories of Hunter S. Thompson
George Orwell - 1984
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker
James Joyce - Finnegans Wake

Other links:

Backlisted Proustmas episode
’Fairy Bells’ (Henry Cowell) - The Playground Ensemble
Ronald Searle on Desert Island Discs, 2005
Ronald Searle on Channel 4 News, 2010
’Fairy Bells’ 2020 Grime remix feat. Peason and Ronald Searle (arr. Miller)

124. Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius

Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius (1977) by Terrance Dicks is the much-loved book featured in this episode. Joining John and Andy to discuss the life and career of a hugely influential and prolific author - and the history of the Target novelisations of Doctor Who stories, which between them are estimated to have sold over 13m copies - are two writers who are both enthusiastic fans and bona fide experts: broadcaster Matthew Sweet, a writer, broadcaster, cultural historian and presenter of the BBC radio programmes, Sound of Cinema, Free Thinking and The Philosopher’s Arms; and returning guest Una McCormack, the bestselling science fiction writer who specializes in TV tie-in fiction, particularly Star Trek and Doctor Who. We also take a look at The Gifts of Reading, the recently-published anthology (to which Andy has contributed a memoir on Terrance Dicks), alongside new essays from Philip Pullman, Robert Macfarlane, Candice Carty-Williams, S.F. Said and more, proceeds from which go to the international literacy charity, Room To Read.

Books mentioned:

Robert Mcfarlane et al - The Gifts of Reading
Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius; Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius (audiobook read by Tom Baker); Doctor Who and Genesis of the Daleks; Doctor Who: The Three Doctors; Doctor Who and the Web of Fear.
Una McCormack - Doctor Who: All Flesh is Grass
Matthew Sweet - Inventing the Victorians; Shepperton Babylon; Operation Chaos
Dicks, Sweet, McCormack et al - Doctor Who: The Target Story Book
David J Howe - The Target Book: The History of the Target Doctor Who Books (foreword by Terrance Dicks)
Tom Baker - Who on Earth is Tom Baker?; Who on Earth is Tom Baker? (audiobook)
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (ed. Matthew Sweet)

Other links:

Room to Read charity
Doctor Who - The Brain of Morbius (DVD)
Doctor Who - Series 13 (Britbox)
Dudley Simpson - Pyramids of Mars: Classic Music from the Tom Baker Era
Tom Baker reading from Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius
Gareth Roberts & Terrance Dicks discussing the novelisation of the original scripts for The Brain of Morbius from ‘On Target: Terrance Dicks’ on Doctor Who - The Monster of Peladon DVD
On The Outside It Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box - BBC R4 documentary (2009)
Doctor Who publishing at BBC Books

123. Beowulf

For this year’s Hallowe’en episode our subject is the Old English poem, Beowulf, composed somewhere in England more than a thousand years ago. The atmospheric tale of supernatural monsters and human heroes has inspired scores of translations over the centuries and we will discuss several, including versions by Seamus Heaney, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Morpurgo, Edwin Morgan and the powerful new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley (the 2007 computer-animated film adaptation by Robert Zemeckis and Neil Gaiman also makes an appearance). Andy and John are joined by regular Backlisted Hallowe’en guest Andrew Male, the senior associate editor of MOJO magazine, and Dr Laura Varnam, who first appeared on our last Hallowe’en episode to discuss Daphne Du Maurier’s collection, The Breaking Point. As well as being a Du Maurier expert, Laura is also the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford and teaches Beowulf to undergraduates. Before that, to put everyone in a suitably spooky mood, we all discuss stories taken from Robert Shearman’s remarkable experiment in storytelling, We All Hear Stories in the Dark.

Books mentioned:

Robert Shearman - We All Hear Stories in the Dark
Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine
George Jack (ed) - Beowulf: A Student Edition
Howell D. Chickering (ed) - Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition
Seamus Heaney - Beowulf
Seamus Heaney - Beowulf (Audible version read by Seamus Heaney)
Michael Morpurgo - Beowulf (Illustrated by Michael Foreman)
Rosemary Sutcliff - Beowulf, Dragonslayer
John Gardner - Grendel
J.R.R. Tolkien - Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Monsters and the Critics
Edwin Morgan - Beowulf: A Verse Translation into Modern English
Maria Dahvana Headley - Beowulf: A New Translation
Maria Dahvana Headley - Beowulf: A New Translation (Audio CD read by J.D. Jackson)
Toni Morrison - The Source of Self Regard

Other links:

Now That’s Hwæt I Call Music! - Andy & Andrew’s Beowulf Playlist
Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf Part 1
Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf Part 2
Beowulf (read in Old English by Trevor Eaton parts 1-11)
Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis, 2007)
Grendel, Grendel, Grendel (Alexander Stitt, 1981 animated film)
The Chills - ‘The Male Monster from the Id’

122. Shūsaku Endō - Silence

Joining Andy and John for this episode is the novelist, Sarah Perry. Sarah first appeared on Backlisted episode 43 in which she talked about Edmund Gosse’s Victorian memoir, Father & Son. Sarah is the author of the novels: After Me Comes the Flood, The Essex Serpent, and Melmoth. Her most recent book is Essex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere, a defence and celebration of the Essex girl stereotype (described by the Guardian as ‘a polemic that makes room for both Kim Kardashian and Harriet Martineau’). She was born in Essex, and now lives in Norwich, where she is working on her fourth novel. 

The book she has chosen to discuss is Silence by Shūsaku Endō’s masterpiece, a novel following two Jesuits posted to 17th century Japan in search of their former teacher, now feared to have apostatised. Silence was first published in Japan as Chinmoku in 1966 and was translated into English by William Johnston in 1969 (Sophia University Prees, Tokyo) but didn't appear in the UK (from Peter Owen) until 1976. It won Japan’s most prestigious award for original fiction, the Tanizaki Prize, in 1966 and is generally considered to be Endo’s masterpiece and has been adapted for stage and screen several times, most recently by Martin Scorcese in 2016.

Also in this episode John enjoys The Appointment, a mordantly funny debut novel by literary agent, Katharina Volckmer and Andy wallows in the profound comedic achievement that is From the Oasthouse:  The Alan Partridge Podcast.

Books mentioned:

Shūsako Endō - Silence; Foreign Studies; The Samurai; Scandal
Sarah Perry - Essex Girls; Melmoth; The Essex Serpent; After Me Comes the Flood
Katharaina Volckmer - The Appointment
Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutter
Alan Partridge - I, Partridge; Nomad
Graham Greene - The Power & The Glory; The End of the Affair
Caryl Philips - Cambridge
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment

Other links:

Sarah Perry on Essex Girls in the Guardian
From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast
Alpha Pappa (Alan Partridge movie, 2013)
17th century Japanese shepherds song (Ushikata-bushi)
Excerpt from Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
John Updike’s review of Silence in the New Yorker (1980)
Flower Travellin' Band - ‘Satori I’

121. George Gissing - The Odd Women

For this episode, John and Andy are joined by the novelist and scholar Janet Todd, known especially for her biographies and editions of early women writers. She has published books on Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Samuel Richardson and Aphra Behn. Her most recent novel, published by the Fentum Press earlier in 2020, is Don't You Know There's a War On?  In 2018, Fentum also published her memoir Radiation Diaries, described by Hilary Mantel as ‘frank, wry and unexpectedly heartening’.

The second guest is Simon James, Professor of Victorian Literature at the Department of English Studies, Durham University. He has published and edited work on H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Victorian bestsellers Trilby and The Sorrows of Satan. He regularly contributes to the Durham Book Festival was the Principal Investigator on the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education for Arts Council England. Simon's PhD was mostly on George Gissing.

The book under discussion is The Odd Women by George Gissing, first published in three volumes by Lawrence & Bullen in 1893, and along with New Grub Street and Demos, accounted by Gissing himself as one of his three best books. Before that Andy explores insomnia through The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey (published by Vintage) and John is excited by Luis Sagasti’s short but profound novel, A Musical Offering published by Charco Press.

Books mentioned:

George Gissing - The Odd Women; New Grub Street; In the Year of Jubilee; The Whirlpool
Janet Todd - Radiation Diaries; Don’t You Know There’s a War On?; Aphra Benn: A Secret Life
Simon James - Unsettled Accounts: Money & Narrative in the Novels of George Gissing
Samantha Harvey - The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping; Dear Thief; The Western Wind
Philip Larkin - High Windows
Luis Sagasti - A Musical Offering; Fireflies
Thomas Bernhard - The Loser
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park

Other links:

‘After the Ball’ - George J. Gaskin 
Karen Chase - ‘The Literal Heroine: A Study of Gissing's "The Odd Women"‘
Gissing’s account of identifying his wife’s body
Edward Elgar, Serenade for Strings Op. 20 (conducted by Elgar in 1933)
George Orwell on Gissing
Jean Sibelius, Six Piano Impromptus Op. 5, No 2 in G minor
Amy Beach, Romance for violin and piano Op. 23

120. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin

Joining John & Andy for this episode are the novelists Andrew O’Hagan and Rachel Joyce. Born in Glasgow, Andrew has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and won the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His fifth and latest novel, Mayflies has just been published by Faber.

Rachel is the author of the international best sellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop and Miss Benson’s Beetle. Her books have apeared in thirty-six languages. She has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and was awarded ‘New Writer of the Year in the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards. 

The book under discussion is Thérèse Raquin, the third published novel by the great French master of naturalism, Émile Zola. Originally serialised in the literary journal L’Artiste under the title A Love Story, it was first released in volume form as Thérèse Raquin by Albert Lacroix in 1868 and despite some famously disparaging reviews became an immediate bestseller and established Zola’s literary reputation. Bepfre that, Andy expresses his enthusiasm for Robin Muir’s exhibition catalogue for the National Portrait Gallery show Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’ and, after thirty years, John finally finishes his reading of Eduardo Galeano’s epic history of the Americas, Memory of Fire.

Books mentioned:

Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin; (translated by Adam Thorpe); Germinal; L’Assomoir; Nana; La Bête Humaine; The Masterpiece; The Experimental Novel & Other Essays
Andrew O’Hagan - Mayflies; The Illuminations; Our Fathers; Be Near Me
Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Perfect; The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy; The Music Shop; Miss Benson’s Beetle
Robin Muir - Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’
Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies
Radclyffe Hall - The Well of Loneliness
Eduardo Galeano - Memory of Fire: I: Genesis: II: Faces & Masks; III: Century of the Wind
Michael Rosen - The Disapperance of Émile Zola
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Angus Wilson - Zola
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment

Other links:

Thérèse Raquin - Tobias Picker’s opera
Thérèse Raquin (1979 BBC adaptation)
’Oh My Dear: Something’s Gone Wrong’ from Thou Shalt Not - Harry Connick Jr
Thirst (2009) - Park Chan-wook trailer
Thérèse Raquin: The Musical
The Big Gun - ‘Let’s Hear it For Love’
John on Zola’s Dreyfus letter ‘J’Accuse!’ in Byline Times

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

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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

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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

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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