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