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