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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