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A State of Denmark - Derek Raymond
In a bid to get our fear and creeping dread about the state of the world in early for 2017, author Travis Elborough (A Walk in The Park, The Bus We Loved, and The Long Player Goodbye) joins us to discuss A State of Denmark, the dystopian vision of England by Derek Raymond (a/k/a Robin Cook). Worst. Happy New Year. Programme. Ever.
I highly recommend it - and I think Backlist might also become part of my regular listening repertoire - it's jeffing great, they even mention TPHAS fave Cathi Unsworth AND Jumpin' Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld. Hoo and indeed hah!
They also discuss The Crust on Its Uppers - which they actually preferred.
Backlist? A regular podcast presented by Unbound's John Mitchinson and Andy Miller (author, The Year Of Reading Dangerously) a/k/a Leavis and Butthead. Bringing old books back to the surface.
As an aside, I also have a copy of The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life by Andy Miller - which also sounds fab. I'll let you know.
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A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam
...a book and an author that I'd never heard of before but the enthusiasm they all have for this book convinces me I must read it. It sounds wonderful.
‘I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal having had a violent experience at the age of nine'
Jessica Vye's 'violent experience' colours her schooldays and her reaction to the world around her- a confining world of Order Marks, wartime restrictions, viyella dresses, nicely-restrained essays and dusty tea shops. For Jessica she has been told that she is 'beyond all possible doubt', a born writer. With her inability to conform, her absolute compulsion to tell the truth and her dedication to accurately noting her experiences, she knows this anyway. But what she doesn't know is that the experiences that sustain and enrich her burgeoning talent will one day lead to a new- and entirely unexpected- reality.
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...that's the line that gets me on-board.."
You and me both
CQM wrote: ".I've already listened to the A Month in the Country podcast and it was most entertaining"
A Month in the Country is one of my all time faves and I've now listened to this discussion too.
Wonderful stuff, and which reminded me why I love A Month in the Country so much.
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Journalist, broadcaster and former editrice of The Erotic Review Rowan Pelling joins John, Andy and Mathew on the show to explain her love of Nigel Balchin's novel of the London Blitz, Darkness Falls From The Air.
https://soundcloud.com/backlistedpod/...
or
http://podbay.fm/show/1063252175/e/14...
or iTunes
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So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
...and it's hard to imagine a more Hamilton-ian (in its broadest sense) podcast. Really enjoyable, engaging and interesting.
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Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.
As with all these podcasts (so far) it makes me want to read the book, which I plan to do very soon.
So far, Spark-wise, I've only read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - which is pretty good.
This sounds really interesting Nigeyb. Do you think the best way is to read the book then listen to the podcast or the other way round? There are quite a few episodes that I'd like to listen to but don't want to encounter 'spoilers'.
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Thanks Nigeyb. I'll report back. P.S. Have you left the Bright Young Things group now?
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I have indeed. I'm amazed you noticed. I felt as though I was putting in far more than I was getting out. Shame, as there were (and indeed are) some lovely people there, and we used to have some great discussions. Latterly I felt increasingly disenchanted having tried my utmost to get some good discussions going. I'll pop back from time to time and might yet rejoin. We'll see.
We did have some great discussions there didn't we but it seems very quiet now. The last couple of times I tried I didn't get much response but you were one of the few who could be relied on to join in. I agree you can't just carry on posting for the sake of it though so sometimes it's just best to give it a rest for a while isn't it. I'll keep my eye on it too in case it peps up.
I listened to about half an hour of the podcast this morning just to get a flavour of it - very enjoyable so far.I decided to go outside my comfort zone and leap straight in with Derek Raymond as I'd seen some discussion about him on this group. I was intrigued to find out more about him even though I don't think I'll be reading any of his books and it's a good discussion as far as I've got.
I also enjoyed the general discussion between the presenters and guest at the beginning - very easy to listen to and full of interesting snippets. I've come across Persephone Books before but not really looked at the range of their catalogue, so that's something on go on to my to do list now.
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Persephone are amazing. I fully concur with all that was said about them on the podcast.
I used to work close to their shop in Lambs Conduit Street which is just wonderful. A visit there is highly recommended.
Coincidentally I have just bought a copy of Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes as a birthday present* for Mrs B. Her birthday is in mid Feb and she loves Persephone books. Something that has served me well when it comes to showering her with gifts.
*That I also fancy reading it is completely coincidental
Nigeyb wrote: "Coincidentally I have just bought a copy of Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes as a birthday present* for Mrs B. Her birthday is in mid Feb and she loves Persephone books. Something that has served me well when it comes to showering her with gifts...."
Sounds like a wonderful book, and have you seen the author's Goodreads photo - a lovely 1930s face, very Bright Young Things!
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What a surprise. Realistically I'm unlikely to ever read any Georgette Heyer but listening to the two hosts and two guests discuss Venetia was an absolute pleasure.
Nigeyb wrote: "I've just listened to the newest episode, released yesterday I think, about Georgette Heyer who I remember my Mum being very keen on.What a surprise. Realistically I'm unlikely to ..."
That's what I like about this podcast - it's all interesting and informative whether you've read the authors they are discussing or not. It means you can happily listen to an episode about an author you probably won't be reading but it all adds to the pleasure of literature in all its varieties.
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#somanybookssolittletime
I've gone back to the beginning and listened to the first podcast on A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr now. In fact I enjoyed it so much I'm listening to it again!Lissa Evans was the guest on this one and coincidentally I recently read one of her novels Crooked Heart. It was recommended by Christopher Fowler on his blog and well worth reading.
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Thanks for the Lissa Evans tip.
Another thank you to Nigey for pointing us in the direction of blacklisted. I've just listened to the Horse's Mouth episode and as usual it's excellent stuff.
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Patrick HamiltonThe Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
They are actually going to devote two episodes to the book and Andy, of Backlisted, told me on Twitter a while ago, when I queried the lack of Hamiltonian discussion, that PH was one of the main reasons they started the podcast. I eagerly await both podcasts. The first one should be available next week.
I will most definitely be listening but I'm actually working my way through all of the previous episodes. It's most excellent!
How can I listen to these podcasts, please? Is there a link? Thanks.
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You can also listen or download at Soundcloud...
https://soundcloud.com/backlistedpod
I hope that answers your question
Twitter is...
@BacklistedPod
Facebook page here...
https://www.facebook.com/backlistedpod
Many thanks Nigeyb. I'll look forward to those.
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https://soundcloud.com/backlistedpod/...
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#somanybookssolittletime"
^ For Susan
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Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
....which I must say sounds absolutely flipping essential
I will confess to a fascination with extreme religious sects, and the Plymouth Brethren seem to come up quite a bit when I read books set in the early 20th century
Edmund Gosse was the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes. His father was a naturalist and his mother an illustrator who published a number of books of poetry. Both were deeply committed to a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren. His childhood was initially happy as they spent their summers in Devon where his father was developing the ideas which gave rise to the craze for the marine aquarium. After his mother died of breast cancer when he was eight and they moved to Devon, his life with his father became increasingly strained by his father's expectations that he should follow in his religious tradition. Gosse was sent to a boarding school where he began to develop his own interests in literature. His father married in 1860 the deeply religious Quaker spinster Eliza Brightwen (1813–1900), whose brother Thomas tried to encourage Edmund to become a banker.
He later gave an account of his childhood in the book Father and Son which has been described as the first psychological biography. At the age of 18 and working in the British Museum in London, he broke away from his father's influence in a dramatic coming of age.
Here's Ann Thwaite, author of Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape, 1849 1928, & Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse...
Father and Son is a classic account of a childhood, a much-praised autobiography published by Edmund Gosse in 1907, nearly 20 years after the death of his father, the naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. Over and over again, it was a reference to that marvellous book that followed my answer to the question, "What are you working on these days?", the standard question to a writer whose work is only vaguely familiar. For nine years or so, until 1984, I replied "Edmund Gosse," and for another six years (from 1996 until a few months ago) "Philip Henry Gosse." Again and again, my questioner's response was "Ah, Father and Son."
It is the only book by either of the Gosses that is in print today, though in the years between 1840 and 1928 they published between them more than 90 books, as well as masses of contributions to periodicals, on natural history in the father's case, on literature in the son's.
I first read Father and Son in the little green Heinemann edition I found on my parents' shelves when I was 16 or so. In the introduction to my biography of Edmund Gosse, I described it as "one of the formative books of my youth". But I think this might have been a case of being wise after the event, of rewriting the story, as Edmund himself did all the time. I looked at my own diaries recently, trying to find some enthusiastic reactions to that first reading, but it is simply one book among many in a list.
Most adolescents long to get away from the constraints and expectations of the parental home, and that over-anxious love so many of us experience. My parents were not fanatics of any sort. That Philip Henry Gosse was one is undeniable. But he was not (and Edmund knew he was not) the "monster" that some readers saw in Edmund's portrayal of his father. One of the strengths of Father and Son is that the father's humanity confronts us as much as his religious obsessions. Indeed, the book takes much of its power from what Edmund rejected. Over and over again Edmund's attempts to be fair to his father are negated by his theme. Looking back to the years long before, he rewrites history and paints an enthralling portrait of a desolate childhood and a difficult youth.
Father and Son was first published anonymously. This seems to have been a clever marketing ploy to arouse curiosity, and Edmund's name was soon attached to subsequent impressions. Edmund was also eager to test the water, to discover just how much he would be attacked for his lack of filial piety. The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote: "The author of this book has no doubt settled it with his conscience how far in the interests of popular edification or amusement it is legitimate to expose the weaknesses and inconsistencies of a good man who is also one's father." One reader saw the son as "beneath contempt, causing his father to be an object of ridicule", but most admired, and Heinemann declared the book to be the "Literary Sensation of the Season." The criticism died away; the praise remained.
When my biography of Edmund Gosse appeared, Geoffrey Grigson wrote of Father and Son and its writer: "That classic book was in its way its own author. Circumstances could be said to have written it for him." This was far from the case. The story comes as much from art as from life. Edmund himself realised that in writing a powerful and moving book, he had overestimated the dark side, suggesting the comedy was superficial, the tragedy essential. Vivid images stayed in readers' minds of the lonely boy reading aloud theology to his dying mother, of him pressing his pale cheek against the window-pane for interminable hours, of "the hush" around father and son "in which you could hear a sea anemone sigh".
Edmund himself had stressed that at a time when fiction takes forms "so ingenious and so specious", it was necessary to state that his narrative was "scrupulously true". The introduction by Peter Abbs to the current Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition continues to say that "as a documentary record we know, from other sources, that most of the facts are accurate".
I knew already before 1984 that this was not so, and more recently I have come across substantial further evidence in the father's parish notes, that shows how little Edmund cared for accuracy. (His friend Henry James once said he had "a genius for inaccuracy".) Edmund must have read his source materials years before, when writing his Life of Philip Henry Gosse (1890), then forgotten the facts and used a version of them to enrich Father and Son. There is a great deal of fiction in the book. I was amused, when searching out a copy of the current edition, to find it on the fiction shelves at Foyles. TH Huxley once wrote: "Autobiographies are essentially works of fiction, whatever biographies may be." It is the biographer's task to try to get at the truth.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
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Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
....which I must say sounds absolutely flipping essential."
And so it turned out to be. A wonderful book....
Another book I discovered through listening to the wonderful Backlisted podcast. Sir Edmund Gosse CB (21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith.
'Father and Son' is his account of his childhood and his gradual questioning of the fundamentalist religion of his parents. All of which might make this book sound like a misery memoir, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. This is a charming, fascinating and insightful account of Victorian life in the mid-18th century with numerous wonderful little details.
'Father and Son' is subtitled “A Study of Two Temperaments” and this signals the approach of Edmund Gosse. He retained enormous respect and affection for his father but ultimately there was to be no way for the different personalities to be true to themselves and reconcile their differences.
It's beautifully written and, as I suggest, absolutely riveting, complete with numerous funny and idiosyncratic memories from a childhood spent both in Islington and, from around age 6, in Ilfracombe in Devon, then, as now, a small and sleepy backwater.
I listened to Father and Son (1907) narrated by the peerless Geoffrey Palmer, and courtesy of Audible. Incredibly, this wonderful experience only set me back three British pounds. What a bargain. It's a wonderful book.
5/5
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield
Here's the Wikipedia page...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serv...
To Serve Them All My Days mirrors the history of Britain in the post-Great War era, casting David's experiences against the difficulties, contradictions, and social issues of the inter-war years. David's life focuses on how Britain comes to terms with the turmoil of the Great War, the General Strike, socialism and the formation of the National Government in particular. Some commentators have remarked on the similarities between this book and the earlier Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which has a similar theme but is less pointed politically and socially.
There have been adaptations you might have come across...
First published in 1972, the book was adapted for television in 1980. It has been adapted twice by Shaun McKenna, first as a stage play at the Royal Theatre Northampton (Royal & Derngate) in 1992 and again as a five-part series of 45-minute plays for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in January 2006.
I have already ordered a copy.
I heartily recommend the discussion. Interestingly they compare it favourably to the wonderful London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins
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http://backlisted.fm
In the latest episode Andy Miller, a co-presenter, mentioned his is currently reading - and loving - the entire The Patrick Melrose Novels.
He read a section out and, I must confess, he piqued my interest.
He then came out with this killer line, which was just an aside....
Edward St. Aubyn is like Anthony Powell written by Irvine Welsh
Woah.
Now I am completely sold.
Anyone read it?
Nigeyb wrote: "... Andy Miller, a co-presenter, mentioned his is currently reading - and loving - the entire The Patrick Melrose Novels.He read a section out and, I must confess, he piqued my interest.
He then came out with this killer line, which was just an aside....
Edward St. Aubyn is like Anthony Powell written by Irvine Welsh
Woah.
Now I am completely sold.
Anyone read it? "
I read Never Mind: Book One of the Patrick Melrose Novels a couple of years ago and just finished reading Bad News: Book Two of the Patrick Melrose Novels last night. I'm starting the third book this evening.
I hesitate to recommend St. Aubyn to friends in general because his subject matter is always intensely disturbing, but I do think he's a great writer and am definitely a fan. I've not read any Powell or Welsh at this point, but I have an idea that Miller's description is apt. Extreme sarcasm and on-point social satire of Powell meets the massive drug (heroin/coke/speed) and alcohol abuse of Welsh. Very dark. Very funny. Chapter 7 of Bad News in particular reads like something out of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, but much more witty.
Showtime started airing a tv adaption of the Melrose novels featuring Benedict Cumberbatch (sp?) on Saturday night here in the US. Maybe the UK too? I haven't started watching it yet and can't imagine that it will catch the nuance of St. Aubyn's brilliant writing, but it could be fun. Cumberbatch does seem like the perfect casting choice.
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Thanks for your musings on the first two books Doug - you have whetted my appetite even more.
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The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
...which I heartily recommend to you
Here it is....
https://unbound.com/boundless/2018/08...
...and at all the usual podcast providers
Billy Bragg and Suzi Feay join the Backlisted team to talk about Orwell's seminal essay on Britain's class system, socialist revolution and war
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
You can read the essay here....
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/...
George Orwell's moving reflections on the English character and his passionate belief in the need for political change.
The Lion and the Unicorn was written in London during the worst period of the blitz. It is vintage Orwell, a dynamic outline of his belief in socialism, patriotism and an English revolution. His fullest political statement, it has been described as 'one of the most moving and incisive portraits of the English character' and is as relevant now as it ever has been.
The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society
Books mentioned in this topic
The Lion and the Unicorn (other topics)Never Mind (other topics)
Bad News (other topics)
The Patrick Melrose Novels (other topics)
London Belongs to Me (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Edward St. Aubyn (other topics)Norman Collins (other topics)
R.F. Delderfield (other topics)
Edmund Gosse (other topics)
Ann Thwaite (other topics)
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Here's how the Backlisted Podcast was launched in Dec 2015, and which I love...
So we’ve started a podcast. It’s called Backlisted and the simple premise is that every fortnight we choose an old book we think everyone should read. Unbound are sponsoring it and it is hosted by me and Andy Miller, an old friend and former colleague from the early (glory) days of Waterstone’s now better known as the author of the wonderful memoir The Year of Reading Dangerously.
Each episode also features a special guest. The first three are Lissa Evans on J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, Linda Grant on Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Jonathan Coe on David Nobb’s It Had To Be You. There’s also a ‘tenuous link’ cameo by Unbound’s Mathew Clayton. We intend for it to be warm, enthusiastic and cheerful – rather like the atmosphere of Waterstone’s staffroom in 1992, only with better drinks and (marginally) less swearing.
Backlisted is not about promoting new books, either by ourselves, Unbound or anyone else. The decision to do it sprung out of two related observations: one, that people keep asking us what they should read; and two, that almost all the existing book podcasts are driven by what is new rather than what is good. If nothing else, if you do acquire the books we recommend you’ll have a pretty interesting bookshelf to dust and share pictures of on Instagram.
Franz Kafka once wrote that a book was ‘an axe to break the frozen sea within us’ which perhaps goes a little too far (a Haynes car manual comes in useful when you’re trying to install a new alternator) but we do think, in Andy’s words, that books ‘represent the best that human beings are capable of’. We also think that the act of reading a whole book – in a world too often dominated by snap judgements and borrowed one-liners – actually makes us wiser, more tolerant human beings.
http://blog.unbound.com/the-backliste...