205. George Melly - Scouse Mouse

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

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

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

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

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

204. Love on the Dole - Walter Greenwood

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

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

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

203. Margaret Laurence - The Stone Angel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

201. Basil Bunting - Briggflatts

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

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

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

200. Nevil Shute - Trustee From the Toolroom

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

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

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

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

© Henri Cartier-Bresson | Magnum Photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

Backlisted Special: What Have You Been Reading?

We planned this as a short Backlisted to fill the gap before we release the Hallowe’en episode next week and as part of our episode 200 celebrations. As you will discover, it turned out a little longer than planned!  

In it, we each select a book we’ve particularly enjoyed over the past year. Andy returns to The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan (Tyrant Books) and reads a different extract sparking a different kind of discussion;  Nicky talks about Wifedom by Anna Funder (Granta), an genre-busting account of the life Eileen Maud Blair, the first wife of George Orwell, linking it back to the themes of The True History of the First Mrs Meredith episode; and John praises Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury), a rich and formally audacious novel based on the life and legends of St Cuthbert, the patron saint of North East England. The discussion leads us in all kinds of unexpected directions in classic Backlisted fashion.

Books Mentioned
Scott McClanahan - The Sarah Book
Anna Funder - Wifedom, Stasiland
Benjamin Myers - Cuddy
Rebecca Solnit - Orwell’s Roses
Sylvia Topp - Eileen: The Making of George Orwell

Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)

00:00 Intro
04:22 The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan
19:32 Wifedom by Anna Funder
38:26 Cuddy by Benjamin Myers

The traditional Backlisted 'what have you been reading this week?' slot which used to appear at the start of each episode, has now been moved to our Patreon only show (for those subscribers on the Locklisted level). Subscribers can hear fortnightly programmes with John, Andy and Nicky talking about books they have been reading as well as films, music and TV they've enjoyed.

197. Diane Johnson - The True History of the First Mrs Meredith

Episode 197 is dedicated to our late friend Carmen Callil, the founder of Virago, an author in her own right and, on a couple of memorable occasions, a former guest on Backlisted (episode 80 and episode 102).

Joining us are the writer Rachel Cooke and critic and editor Lucy Scholes. Under discussion: The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson, first published in 1972 and reissued in 2020 by New York Review Books. Is this imaginative, funny, heartfelt, headstrong book a novel, a biography, an alternative history, a feminist polemic, a work of literary criticism or something else entirely? To which the answer is a far-from-straightforward: Yes. We hope you enjoy this conversation - and a unique book - as much as we did.

Books mentioned
Diane Johnson - The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives; Lorna Mott Comes Home; Flyover Lives; Lulu in Marrakech; L’Affaire; Le Mariage; Le Divorce; Lying Low; The Shadow Knows
Carmen Callil - Bad Faith: A History of Family and Fatherland; Oh Happy Day: Those Times and These Times
Rachel Cooke - The Virago Book of Friendship; Kitchen Person: Notes on Cooking and Eating; Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
Lucy Scholes - A Different Sound: Stories by Mid-Century Women Writers
Rosamond Lehmann - Dusty Answer
Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper
Phyllis Rose - Parallel Lives
Richard Holmes - Footsteps

Other links
Lucy Scholes’ column and podcast - Re-Covered archive (Paris Review) and Ourshelves podcast (Virago Books)

196. George Moore - Esther Waters

In this episode we discuss the controversial and ground-breaking novel, Esther Waters by the Irish novelist George Moore. We are joined by Tom Crewe, author of the prize-winning New Life (Chatto & Windus) and one of this year’s crop of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Esther Waters was first published in 1894 and is told almost entirely from the point of view of an illiterate working-class woman, who falls pregnant by a fellow servant, is abandoned by him, and decides to raise their child on her own. Telling her story allows Moore to catalogue the glamour and sordidness of 1890s London society in astonishing detail and his refusal to judge his heroine led to it being banned from W.H. Smith’s railway bookstores. Despite (or because of) this, it sold over 24,000 copies in its first year and has been in print ever since. We examine what sets Moore apart from other writers of the time, including Émile Zola, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing, why it has had such a positive influence on later admirers like James Joyce, Jean Rhys and Colm Tóibín, and how its simplicity of style and detailed presentation of Esther’s inner life feel so surprisingly contemporary.

Books mentioned
George Moore - Esther Waters; Confessions of a Young Man; A Drama in Muslin; The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story
Tom Crewe - New Life
Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn
James Joyce - The Dubliners
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
George Gissing - The Odd Women; New Grub Street; In the Year of Jubilee; The Whirlpool
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre

Other links
Esther Waters (1948) - film starring Dirk Bogarde

195. Kurt Vonnegut - Galapágos

In this episode we are delighted to welcome 2023 Booker Prize Winner Shehan Karunatilaka to discuss Kurt Vonnegut’s eleventh novel, Galapágos. First published in 1985, it is one of his most radical, intricate and humorous works, a Darwinian satire narrated by a ghost from a million years in the future. As Lorrie Moore wrote about it at the time, Vonnegut’s ‘grumbly and idiomatic voice has always been his own, unfakeable and childlike, and his humanity, persisting as it does through his pessimism.’ We talk about where Galapágos book stands in Vonnegut’s long career, its continuing relevance to a world even more dominated by technology and the climate emergency, and whether with the two novels the followed (Bluebeard and Hocus Pocus) it represented a return to form. We discuss Vonnegut's second career as a quotable talk show guest and ponder the seeming mismatch between his enduring popularity with readers and his less stable critical reputation. Shehan also offers us frank and fascinating insights into the influence that this book and ‘Uncle Kurt’s work in general has had on his own work, particularly the Booker winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, also narrated by a ghost.

Books mentioned:

Kurt Vonnegut - Galapágos; Bluebeard; Slapstick: Or Lonesome No More; Hocus Pocus, Slaughterhouse Five; Cat's Cradle; Player Piano; A Man Without a Country
Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida; Chinaman
Tom Roston - The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five`

Other links:

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2022) - this is an excellent documentary. It can be rented via Prime. Here's the trailer.
Kurt Vonnegut and Martin Amis in conversation, London 1983
Kurt Vonnegut: After the Slaughterhouse (1983), essay by Martin Amis
Review of Galapagos by Lorrie Moore
Kurt Vonnegut official website
The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library
The Police official website
The Art of Fiction no 64, Paris Review (1976)

194. Barry Hines - A Kestrel for a Knave

Author and illustrator Rose Blake and writer and musician Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) joined Andy and John at the Green Man festival in Wales on August 18th 2023 to discuss Barry Hines's second novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) and, inevitably, the film adaptation Kes (1969), directed by Ken Loach from a screenplay by Hines himself. This episode was recorded in front of a large crowd of festivalgoers, most of whom had either read the book or seen the film, or both. Why does this apparently simple story of a boy and a bird continue to speak to us nearly 60 years after it was written? And what does that say about the changes in British society in the same period - or lack of them?

Books mentioned

Barry Hines - A Kestrel for a Knave; The Gamekeeper
Rose Blake - A History of Words for Children; Meet the Artist: David Hockney; Egg and Spoon
Bob Stanley - Bee Gees: Children of the World; Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop; Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop

Other links
Kes (Ken Loach’s adaptation)
Threads (1984 drama by Barry Hines)

193. Summer Reading Special

This week, to mix things up a little, it’s our annual round-up of books, old and new, you might enjoy over the summer. John, Andy and Backlisted’s producer Nicky discuss: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker (W&N Essentials); Sheep’s Clothing by Celia Dale (Daunt Books); The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time by Catherine Taylor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber); A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo (Canongate); and The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds (Weidenfeld and Nicolson).

Books mentioned
Elspeth Barker - O Caledonia
Celia Dale - Sheep’s Clothing
Catherine Taylor - The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time
Sebastian Barry - Old God’s Time
Ayobami Adebayo - A Spell of Good Things
John Higgs - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds

192. E.M. Forster - A Passage to India

Things are a little different on this week’s episode of Backlisted. Recorded at our first live event of 2023, John and Andy are at Dartington Hall, Devon for Byline Festival. Joining us are novelist, playwright and memoirist Alice Jolly for her third appearance on Backlisted - joining us on episode 7 and episode 86 previously - and novelist Patrick McCabe, who joined us on episode 140, to discuss the A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. 

First published in 1924, by the end of that year, A Passage to India had sold 17,000 copies in Britain and 54,000 in the USA and today is viewed as a seminal text in post-colonial literature. A Passage to India grapples with, among many themes, colonialism and faith, and is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. In this episode we reflect on its legacy today.

Books mentioned
E.M. Forster - A Passage to India; Howard’s End; The Machine Stops; Maurice; Where Angels Fear to Tread; The Longest Journey
Sophie Divry - The Library of Unrequited Love
Jay Griffiths - Nemesis, My Friend: Journeys Through the Turning Times
Alice Jolly - From Far Around They Saw Us Burn; Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
Patrick McCabe - Goldengrove; Poguemahone; Breakfast on Pluto; The Butcher Boy

Other links
The 1985 film of A Passage to India

191. Margaret Drabble - The Millstone

Novelist Linda Grant and critic and editor Lucy Scholes return to Backlisted for a discussion of Margaret Drabble's third novel The Millstone, a book which has remained in print ever since it was first published in 1965, when Drabble was 26 years old; it was adapted for the screen by the author herself in 1969 as A Touch of Love, starring Sandy Dennis, Eleanor Bron and, making his film debut, Sir Ian McKellen. This story of a shy but determined young woman's decision to keep her baby and raise the child alone remains as relevant as ever. But The Millstone also speaks volumes of the era in which it was written, during which Margaret Drabble was a rising star in the literary firmament; and Andy, John, Linda and Lucy were delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate both novel and author, who is now 84.

Books mentioned:
Margaret Drabble - The Millstone; Jerusalem the Golden; A Natural Curiosity; The Red Queen; The Sea Lady; A Summer Bird-Cage
Linda Grant - The story of the Forest; The Clothes On Their Backs; The Thoughtful Dresser; The Dark Circle; A Stranger City; Remind Me Who I Am, Again; When I Lived In Modern Times
Lucy Scholes - A Different Sound: Stories by Mid-Century Women Writers; Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (introduction by Lucy Scholes)

Other links:
Lucy Scholes’ column and podcast - Re-Covered archive (Paris Review) and Ourshelves podcast (Virago Books)
Margaret Drabble discusses The Millstone on World Book Club
One Pair of Eyes, BBC, 1968
A Touch of Love, Waris Hussein, 1969

190. Anthony Trollope - The Eustace Diamonds

In our latest episode of Backlisted, we are joined by authors Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) and Nell Stevens (Briefly, A Delicious Life), who last featured on Backlisted #170 discussing North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

This time the talk turns on The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope, the third instalment of the Palliser sequence. We explore the ways in which this novel and Trollope’s work in general confound expectation at every turn, a surprise perhaps when one considers the author’s reputation as a spokesman for the establishment.

Books mentioned:
Anthony Trollope - The Eustace Diamonds; Can You Forgive Her?; Phineas Finn; Phineas Redux,
The Prime Minister; The Duke's Children; Barchester Towers: The Chronicles of Barsetshire;
Castle Richmond; The Warden
Jennifer Egan - The Candy House; A Visit from The Goon Squad
Nell Stevens - Briefly, A Delicious Life; Bleaker House; Mrs Gaskell and Me

Other links:
Trollope’s Material Girl by Christoph Lindner
The Pallisers (BBC, 1974)
Audiobook read by David Shaw-Parker
Audiobook read by Timothy West

189. Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon

In this week’s episode, we are joined by the crime novelist Mark Billingham to discuss his favourite book, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. First serialised in Black Mask magazine in 1929 and published the following year in book form by Alfred A. Knopf, it is widely considered to have inaugurated the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction. It introduces the tough, abrasive and morally ambiguous private detective, Sam Spade, who sent Dorothy Parker ‘mooning about in a daze of love such as I had not known for any character in literature since I encountered Sir Lancelot.’

The labyrinthine plot turns around the eponymous falcon of the title – a statuette so valuable that three people are killed in the search to retrieve it. But, as the discussion reveals, it is not the plot that has made the book a classic. Hammett’s San Francisco, filled with sharp-tongued dames, wise-cracking gumshoes, cops on the take and thugs on the lam, spawned a whole genre of noir novels and movies – including John Huston’s classic adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in 1941. In 1995, the Mystery Writers of America voted The Maltese Falcon the third greatest crime novel of all time. In this episode, illuminated by Mark’s own long experience of writing in the genre, we try to find out why.

And as a bonus, as Mark Billingham is also a huge Elvis Costello fan, Andy obliges with a Maltese Falcon / EC themed quiz.

Books mentioned
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon; The Continental Op; The Thin Man; Red Harvest; The Glass Key; The Dain Curse
Mark Billingham - The Last Dance; Rabbit Hole; Sleepy Head; Cry Baby
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep & Other Novels; Farewell, My Lovely
James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
Jim Thompson - The Killer Inside Me
Ross Macdonald - The Drowning Pool

Other links
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Mark Billingham website
Mystery Writers of America 100 Greatest Crime Novels of All Time
Dashiell Hammett: A Documentary (Josh Waletsky, 1999)
Dashiell Hammett’s 1934 Introduction to The Maltese Falcon
Lillian Hellman on The Dick Cavett Show (1973)
The Mystery of Dashiell Hammett - Claudia Roth Pierpont (New Yorker, 2002)
Dashiell Hammett’s Strange Career - Anne Diebel (Paris Review, 2018)
Politics and the 1920s Writings of Dashiell Hammett - J.A. Zumoff (American Studies, 2012)

188. John Bossy - Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair

For this episode we are joined by the critic and former literary editor of the Independent on Sunday, Suzi Feay and the novelist and former Deputy Literary Editor of the Observer, Stephanie Merritt. Both are fans of the history-cum-detective story, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, by the late great historian of English Catholicism, John Bossy.

The book was a departure from Bossy’s weightier academic publications – in it he attempts to pin down the identity of the shadowy Elizabethan spy known only as ‘Henry Fagot’. As well as creating a vivid picture of the complex and treacherous world of London during the Elizabethan ‘cold war’ in the years leading up to the Armada, Professor Bossy makes a persuasive case for Henry Fagot being none other than the Italian philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist and dabbler in the hermetic arts, Giordano Bruno, who spent two years in London between 1583 and 1585, during which he wrote his most important books and became friends with Sir Philip Sidney and the magus, John Dee. First published in 1991 by Yale University Press, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair went on to win both the 1991 Wolfson History Prize and the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.

As well as discovering how Bossy’s Bruno inspired Steph Merritt to launch her career as a novelist, we also discuss how the role of a literary editor for a national newspaper has changed over the past three decades.

Books mentioned:
John Bossy: Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair; Under the Molehill and Christianity in the West 1400-1700
S.J. Parris: Alchemy; Heresy; Prophecy; Sacrilege; Treachery; Conspiracy; Execution

Other links:
Stephanie’s website

187. Graham Greene: Books and Short Stories

Welcome to the first in what we are calling our third season of Backlisted (the first one lasted for 109 episodes, the second a mere 68). Thank you for your patience and your support during our sabbatical. Normal service (or something like it) has now been resumed!

The whole of the next hour and a bit is dedicated to the work of Graham Greene – a writer we have long wanted to tackle. There are no guests, but we will cover several representative pieces – not necessarily the most famous or of Greene’s work – and try to apply a fresh perspective to his long and sometimes controversial career.

We start somewhere near the beginning with The Name of Action from 1930, a book Greene himself wanted suppressed…

Books mentioned:
The Name of Action (1930)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Quiet American (1955)
May We Borrow Your Husband? & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life (1967)
Lord Rochester’s Monkey (1976)

 Other links:
New Yorker long-read