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