Backlisted - A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

John and Andy are joined by Laura Cumming, the art critic for The Observer and author of 'The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez', and Hilary Murray Hill, CEO at Hachette Children's Books, to talk bout Jane Gardam's debut novel 'A Long Way from Verona'.Timings: (may differ due to adverts)5'39 - The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper6'28 - Hark the Herald by Magnus Mills6'55 - Christmas Day at the Work House by Angus Wilson8'00 - What to Look For In Winter8'26 - An Advent Calendar by Shena MacKay12'03 - Between the Lights by E F Benson17' 18 - A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws. Like Fresh Promise. Produce is carefully selected and checked for freshness. And if it's not fresh, it's free.

Yes, you heard that right. From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh, so you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio

Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio Cynllunio co-author with 10 books with me. The QI books with me. And more importantly, co-author with 10 books with you. Yeah, 10 books. We actually had them piled in front of us

because that was the prize for the quiz. We then did a quiz. And how was the quiz? The quiz was good. The quiz, I did Christmas. I did the deck the halls round, which was pretty, you know, standard. Give us a question. I'll give you one.

I mean, it's a pathetic question, but it amused me. How many people each year on average are injured by Christmas trees, Andy? Is it A, 100 people? Is it B, 1,000 people? Or is it C, 100,000 people? Injured by Christmas trees. By injury, that could mean poking the eye or fall on top of you. Mostly, you know what it is, is people putting the lights up.

So it must be 100,000. Is it 100,000? No, it's 1,000. It's 1,000 still. It slightly undermines you. I will ask you a question. Middle names based on places of conception. What is the middle name of Rodney Busey's character Bob Ferris

in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Bob C. Houses Ferris. Bob Scarborough Ferris. And in the words of James Bolam in that episode, Scarborough! From the back of the church. Shall we start? With that, shall we start?

Hello, ho, ho, ho. And welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. We're gathered seasonally around the table in the luxurious and tinsel-bedecked offices of our sponsors, Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to make great books.

I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, Grinch, and author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us around the table, we have two guests today. First of all, we have Laura Cumming, author of A Face to the World and backlisted favourite, The Vanishing Man, which was published earlier this year to great acclaim from us

and more importantly, other people too. It's a book about, can you say the name of the person this book is about? Well, there's a whole chapter in the book about the fact that nobody can possibly pronounce his name. I mangled it on the podcast. Please would you say it? Well, I was in Madrid last week promoting this book with the Spaniards and I asked 16 journalists how to pronounce it and I had 14 different variations. So, I

can tell you it's either Velazquez or Velazquez or Velazquez, etc. And you can take your pick, really. It's the old thing. We call Paris Paris and not Paris. So let's all go with Velazquez.

Velazquez, very good. Well, John and I have both read The Vanishing Man. We both absolutely love it. When will that be available for listeners to enjoy in paperback edition? It's coming out in three weeks' time. Perfect. With an afterword which tells you what happened next oh how exciting excellent added value yeah thank you thank you laura and um and we're also joined by uh joining us today very special guest backlisted listener and competition winner uh hillary Murray-Hill, who is now, you are, first of all, you are a friend of mine, but more importantly, you are the CEO of Hachette Children's Publishing, is that correct?

I am the CEO of the Hachette Children's Group, yes. And you are with us breaking our infamous one guest only rule because you recommended our book today to me a couple of months ago and am I right in saying it is your all-time favourite book? You're right in saying it's my all-time favourite book and it was my all-time favourite book when I was eight and nothing has changed since then. Eight? Yes which is when I first read it yeah. So the book that we are going to be talking about in a minute uh that both Laura and uh Hilary have brought to the table as it were is Jane Gardens A Long Way From Verona I am going to show my hand immediately and say I enjoyed this book

which I had never even heard of a couple of months ago, so much. It is a total pleasure to have a podcast to just come on and invite people to talk about it. What do you think, John? Yeah, unfortunately, I feel for the reasons of balance, I ought to say I wasn't that impressed by it, but I completely loved it. Oh, you've taken breath. Well, I can't really see how anyone couldn't love this book

it's Elan on every page the energy a test of a good book is that I do now want to go and read everything that Jane Cardam has ever written I've attempted to do that in the last three weeks

I've watched with interest from the sidelines so we're going to come back do that in the last three weeks, as you know. And I've watched with interest from the sidelines. So we'll talk a bit about that in a minute. So we're going to come back to that in a minute. But first of all, John, do you want to go first or should I go first? Why don't you go first? What, Andy, have you been reading? I have been reading some Christmas stuff.

Because we asked listeners a couple of months ago to suggest things, stories or short novels that we might read over Christmas so I've been diligently reading a few of those I'm just going to mention a few of them now I'm going to see if anyone around the table has read these then let me know so I'm currently reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper the suggestion of Una McCormack author Una McCormack brilliant book absolutely oneormack. Brilliant book. Absolutely. One of my favourite, favourite books. It's fantastic.

I put a little, I mentioned on Twitter that I was reading it this morning. It's very, I explain when I talk about my stuff, but it's as a connection with, which I hadn't really thought of. Carrie Cania suggested that I read Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor by John Cheever. Have you read that? I haven't, but what a great title. It is unbelievably brilliant. We could have done the most depressing

episode of Batlisted ever if we just, was he saying something? If we focused just on that story. Well, Cheever is definitely out there, isn't he? Is it possible? At something. Maybe the journals, Andy. Maybe that'll be in my Christmas stocking, do you think? I read a story called

a brilliant story called Heart the Herald by Magnus Mills which was recommended by both Anthony Waller and Book Glutton. It's only ten pages long. Magnus Mills is so great. I'd love to do Magnus Mills on here. Such a brilliant

mixture of weird, funny and heartbreaking. All in ten pages. I can really recommend. That's called Heart the Herald. I read a story yesterday which was recommended by Andrew Corbyn by Angus Wilson called Christmas Day at the Workhouse.

Has anybody read that? I have read that but I haven't read it for about 20 years. I went through a big Angus Wilson phase. It was weird. He was oddly... He was published early 90s wasn't he? I think we might have had something to do with it Rwyf wedi darllen hynny, ond dydw i ddim wedi'i ddarllen am 20 mlynedd. Roeddwn i wedi mynd trwy'r ffas Angus Wilson. Roedd yn ddiddorol. Roedd yn cael ei gyhoeddi yn ystod y 90au. Yn fawr, rydyn ni efallai fod gennym rywbeth i'w wneud â'r ffaith. Roedd Tim Waterstone wedi cael ei gyffredinu'n hollol iawn gyda'i. Mae hynny'n hyfryd.

Ydy'n hyfryd iawn? Mae'n hyfryd iawn. Ond hefyd, mae'n stori sydd yn ymddangos... Roeddwn i wedi darllen hi drwy ddwy gilydd oherwydd roedd y llai o'r stori'n ddiddorol iawn. Mae'n ymddangos... Mae'n wirioneddol yn ddiddorol. I ended up reading it three times because the layers of it were so interesting. It appears to be he worked at Bletchley Park. And when he wrote the story, nobody knew, of course. But it's clearly a story about what it was like to work at Bletchley Park. Doesn't sound much fun.

Seems very claustrophobic, very intense. All sort of class conflicts going on within the group of gals who are gathered there. So I can really, really recommend that. But we should put a call out if there's anyone. I mean, I do think some of them are still in for Angus Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. But there are others that I think are better. And also Gagarin recommended I read What to Look For in Winter, published by Lady Bird, 1959.

Oh. Which is a beautiful book. I remember that book. And gives a great title to Candy McWilliam and her marvellous memoir. Yes, that's right. Very wintry memoir. But the short novel that I read, which was also recommended by Andrew Corbyn,

which I'm really delighted to have read, is called An Advent Calendar by Sheena Mackay. And by the time people get to hear this, you still have time to get hold of a copy of this book. It's only about 100 or so pages long, written 1971. You need sort of sleigh bells or something to play in the background. And it's like, as the title suggests, it's a novel that is broken into 25 days, starts on December 1st, ends on Christmas Day.

In fact, unlike an advent calendar which ends on Christmas Eve. And I don't know how much people know about Sheena Mackay. I absolutely love Sheena Mackay. I read her in the 80s when her book Red Hill Rococo was recommended. It was very close to my heart because I was born in Red Hill because Sheena Mackay writes about the suburbs. You are a man of the suburbs. Well, and proudly so.

And Red Hill Rococo was reviewed by Julie Birchill at the time, and this is what she wrote. I was going to say, Julie Birchill is a massive fan. She wrote this. There is one amongst us who can write about blear and drear and perform some kind of magic on them that turns Tippex to liquid gold. This alchemist's name is Sheena Mackay,

and she is probably the best writer in the world today. Sheena Mackay, savage sphinx of the suburbs, and simply the best woman writer since Ernest Hemingway. So I'd never read this book, An Advent Calendar, and I'm just going to read you the opening, just the opening few paragraphs. Because it's so, only Sheena Mackay would write this in a Christmas novel. Here we go, chapter one. An ambulance racketing at four o'clock through fairy-lit Finchley made late shoppers jump back from the curb

as it stopped outside the butcher's shop in North Pole Road. The crew pushed through a small crowd in the doorway to find a white-faced boy sitting on a chair nursing a huge hand wrapped in bloody swabbing cloths while two butchers crawled frantically through the sawdust. It's no use. It must have gone in the mincer, like I said, said one, straightening up. He chopped off his finger and we can't find it,

he explained to the ambulance crew who were supporting the stricken boy to his feet. Mincer! Mincer! ran through the crowd like a flame. Get the mincer, said an ambulance man. Empty, replied the butcher mournfully. What do you mean empty? Every sex vital, you know. There was a customer here when it happened. Mick was serving him when the cleaver slipped, so I thought I'd better finish his order for him. I must have accidentally knocked his finger in with the meat. It could have happened to anyone. He seemed upset by the intrusion of alien meat and blood and sank onto the chair vacated by mark you find that finger said the ambulance man jabbing his own menacingly and get it around the Whittington casualty right away

the butcher's pate bubbled with panic they left and the butchers heard the siren shrieking all the way down the high road as they bent their tonsured heads once more into the sawdust. And then the novel proceeds from that point about a man who believes he may or may not have eaten the digit in question with his tea and how he receives absolution by Christmas Day. So I heartily recommend that to everybody. Andrew Corbyn, thank you very very much for making me read

Ashene Mackay that I hadn't read before John, what have you been reading? I've been reading Christmas stories I wanted to read a couple of Christmas ghost stories and I didn't want to read M.R. James because that's sort of obvious so I thought I'd read an E.F. Benson

that I'd never read before I have a secret love of E.F. Benson that I'd never read before. I have a secret love of E.F. Benson. So I read one really good one which was called Between the Lights which is I think 1912 and it's just classic. I kind of

have a soft spot for the everybody's playing hide and seek in a large country house in huge Christmas jollity. And then they all settle down after the, you know, sort of panting and having had a cup of tea, something nice. And one of the parties starts to tell a story. And it's a pretty terrifying story,

is that he remembers them all gathering last year at the same house and that it was a warm Christmas. I think in the book we're about to go it was called a green Christmas a warm Christmas and he has this vision looking at a patch of dahlias that he finds himself

in this terrifying low kind of building with a sense of absolute terror with a group of strange shapes around the fire they turn out to be sort of semi-human and is this completely sends him doolally for several months afterwards he comes back to his senses anyway but without giving you the whole story he goes up to scotland goes walking shoots a stag as you do in any f-pets and story loads up a pony he's walking back the mist descends,

and his ghillie runs off, screaming into the night. He's left on his own. He finds himself sheltering in a shelter. And of course, where he finds himself is exactly the same as the vision he had on Christmas Eve. It's kind of hokum, but it's really, really well-written hokum. But one of the things, the start of it's quite it's yeah it's really really well written hokum but i one of the things that the start of it what i liked about it i got i discovered i got a bit of a thing about snow

which is what links to uh the dark is rising and i suppose it's just you know there's some odd connection i was forcibly translated to new zealand as a child and you know there was an absolutely no chance of having a white christmas in New Zealand for obvious reasons and I don't know that we had that many white Christmases when I was a kid but there was some deep need for them and the idea of Christmas and snow and frigidity and coldness which I still love and so I've been looking for sort of snowy stories and the EF Benson is great because it's they're all snuggled in playing hide and seek in a snowy house and they're hearing the snow sort of patter against the window panes. You know

another listener recommended a book which you might have read I'm sorry, I'm so sorry if the person is listening to this, I didn't write your name down and I should have done, called The Rack by and he said

the person in question said it was a great pain to me to say, it isn't Christmas rack by... He said, the person in question said it was a great pain to me to say, it isn't Christmassy at all, but it's about, it's set in a sanatorium surrounded by snow. It's autobiographical, I believe, and is the most harrowing but brilliant account of,

I think, mental illness, I believe, and isolation isolation which obviously is as a Grinch I have to say what what this makes me feel is that this actually might be a really rather good anthology of interesting snowy cold Chris yeah well that was the other I wasn't you I I mean, such the greatest story of all. Ever, yeah, I agree. And The Dead was recommended by Richard King. The reason it links to one of the opening chapters of The Dark is Rising is all about the snow non-stopping.

Yeah, that's right. And it's in the small but perfectly formed genre of snow writing. Barry Lopez, here we come. Orhan Pamuk's Snow. Yeah. God, yeah. But, I mean, the start to that book is brilliant. And it's just, there is something,

and that's what I, that sense that there is something, snow as some sort of objective, correlative of some inner state is quite an interesting one. It's quite interesting. Sorry, Henry. I was just going to say about, the Bish in the Middle, it's a long time since was just going to say about the Bish in the Middle.

It's a long time since I've read it, but the Bish in the Middle is the secret history when he's up on the roof, do you remember? Yes, yes. And the snow is a sort of metaphor for his moral state and moral isolation and coldness, and that's one of the snowy things that I think of when I think about absolutely brilliant snowy writing.

And you can have a Velazquez of snow on the cover, because there is one. Yes. We're making a book on air, ladies and gentlemen. I must make a comment. We can't talk about books about snow if we don't mention Dan Rhodes' fantastic When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow.

What's that? It's a comic novel about a a humorless atheist professor of science of science whose name we we perhaps won't we dare not mention the legal reasons but if you've not read this book it is extremely funny um i think it was published a couple of years ago wasn't it in paperback i like this snow the snow genre yeah yeah we've already well we can all go home well there is there is crucially brilliant segue here crew the crucial turning point in the book you have to say has a bit of a snow thing time now for an advert summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with uber

eats what do we mean by almost well you can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered but you can get a We'll be right back. Almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights. There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month.

Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness end July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. It does indeed. The house party. Oh, yes, the house party. So we're going to move on to A Long Way From Verona now by Jane Gardham. This was Jane Gardham's first novel.

I'm going to ask Laura a question in a minute. Can that possibly be true? Can it possibly be true that this was her first novel? Yes, and she famously says in every interview, doesn't she, that she didn't write a thing until the final child actually got posted through the letterbox to school and she could sit down having raised them all and get on with it so she is i think was she not 39 she yeah that's right and somebody i noticed the other day was saying about it this incredible masterpiece she's writing about it in the 60s, at the late 60s, so it's a summer of love

going on while she's sitting there, finally liberated to get on with work, which I think is a sort of great moment of feminist... She says that the day her youngest child went to school, she dropped him off, turned round, came home, went upstairs and started writing. And never stopped. And never stopped. I mean, she's written 25 novels, 25 books. Not 25 novels, 25 books, that's right. Laura, we always ask this, this is the first question we ask,

but I sort of know the answer to this, but people listening won't do. When did you first encounter A Long Way From Verona? I was older than Hilary, and I'm staggered at your precocity that you could have read this when you were eight given that so much of it is about the history of adult English literature so I take my hat off to you I was I think 12 I've been looking at my old edition and I think looking at the dog ear and the hand right I think I'm 12 and the character in the book is 13 but the book opens when she's nine which is of

course juvenile beyond belief to a 13 year old and certainly when I was reading it I thought of her as very grown up indeed so I think I must have been more or less at that moment and I got it because in the days when I was growing up in the 70s in Edinburgh there were four, bless them, independent bookshops and at Christmas the largest of them, Thins if anybody remembers that wonderful shop used to send round a pamphlet with all their promoted titles and so on and a long way from Verona has on the cover of it

as anybody listening who has read this book will know an absolutely terrific piece of drawing showing the girl herself in her awful blue sydd wedi darllen y llyfr hwn yn gwybod, y llyfr anhygoel o ddrawi, yn dangos y gynhyrch y gynhyrch ei hun yn ei llwyth anhygoel. Mae'n ganu'n hyfryd, mae'n ganu'n hyfryd. Mae'n ddawr. Mae'n ddawr. Ac mae'n yn eu gwyrdd yn ei llwyth yn ysgol, gan fod yna barbwyr, gan fod yn amser yn ymwneud â'r arfer, ac mae'n mynd i fod yn ymwneud â'r arfer, byddai'n cael ei wneud yn ystod y llyfr, ac felly yn ystod y llyfr, byddai llawer yn digwydd i'w gwneud. Ond, mewn gwirionedd, mae' ddrawiad hyfryd yn fy marn ac rwy'n credu y byddwn i ar y pwynt, ac mae'r rheswm hon yn rhai oherwydd mae'r llyfr yn bwysig iawn i mi, rwy'n credu y byddwn i ar y pwynt

o'r bywyd lle roedd y lluniau yn golygu mwy i mi na phosib. Rwy'n credu fy mod i wedi gwneud y llwybr arall, wrth fy mod i wedi dod yn llawer llawer, ac rwy wedi credu fy mod wedi gwneud hynny. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda.

Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. Mae'n dda, mae'n dda. generally Sollum had written a sort of great thundering thing saying it was a tremendous book this was when it came out from Hamish Hamilton in hardback so Thins had got a huge quote longer than the blurb of the book saying you know you must buy this and I had because I was very thrifty about my book tokens from my July birthday I had kept my book tokens I always did until Thins told me what's really going to be and I remember going to buy the book in the shop at Christmas at this time of the oherwydd roeddwn i bob amser yn gwneud hynny hyd yn oed i'r gweithdariadau ddweud wrthym beth fydd yn gwneud. Ac roeddwn i'n cofio mynd i bwyso'r llyfr yn y siop ar Aros, ar yr amser hwn o'r blwyddyn,

mwy neu lai, ac yn dod yn ôl gyda'r llyfr a bod yn gwbl... Wel, rwy'n credu, os ydym ni i gyd yn cytuno bod llyfrau'n llwyddo i'ch bywyd, naillai'n cyfnodol, yn gyfnodol neu'n dramadig, mae'r llyfr hwn wedi'i wneud i mi. Oherwydd mae'r charakter ynddo, i mi, mor heroig, fel unrhyw ffigur o... chi'n gwbod, i ddynion i mi, i unrhyw ffigwr o fy oed, i ddynion fy oed, i unrhyw ffigwr yn Jane Austen, mae hi'n llawer mwy ymddangos ac yn ddiddorol ac yn hyderus ac yn anhygoel ac yn ddiddorol iawn iawn iawn, sy'n beth rwy'n hoffi amdano. Fe hoffwn adnabod, os gallaf, cyn i ni ddod yn ôl i'r broses, fe hoffwn adnabod fy mab Joyce before we come back to the book. I would like to mention my auntie Joycey, who is no longer with us, but she used to live in Broughty Ferry in Dundee,

near Dundee. And I saw a poll when I was writing my last book that was published in a newspaper that said, and this is the sort of thing that newspapers, as you know, will run polls on, what was the most disappointing Christmas present of the 1970s? And readers or subscribers had

nominated book tokens as the most disappointing present. Well, those people are idiots. And we're all here to prove it. My auntie Joycey used to send me a book token down from Broughty Ferry every Christmas and every birthday.

And I used to go and spend it at WH Smith in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon. And it was the best present, usually, that I ever got. And, you know, it's funny, reading this book, the reason why I mention all that, apart from just to be cross that people thought book tokens were a disappointing present, to read a book which treats a bookish child heroically is wonderful I thought one of the reasons I love this book so much I'm going to we're going to read bits I'm sure but there's a there's a couple of descriptions of

reading which are went as childhood reading which are as good as anything I've ever read about the experience that you get from a book as a child. I'd just like to say, just in case Laura thinks that I was a child genius or any of your listeners might think that I was a child genius, I'd like to say that I was not a child genius. But I did really, really love the sound of the story, even though I didn't understand chunks of it. And chunks of the plot eluded me until I was about 37, I think.

But I was lucky because my mother read this book immediately after I'd read it and she absolutely loved it and I think about it now it really spoke to her because she grew up you know she was a child during the war and she's about the same age as Jane Gardner now and I think that quite a lot of my pleasure in it came from her explaining parts of it to me and quoting bits of it back to me and saying, did you enjoy this part? When? And so I think that started my re-reading and I think I have pretty much re-read it every single year since then.

I'm just going to read the blurb for the benefit of everybody so they know what we're talking about. And this is the blurb for the puff in addition. So this is the blurb for the puff in addition. I'm going to read the back and then the inside blurb because the back blurb is very short. You'll see why I'm going to read this. Here we go.

Jessica Vai yearns to become a writer, but wartime, a curate's cramped and chaotic household, and a strict down-to-earth school are a comically disheartening setting. First of all, I'm in, right? Comically disheartening. I'm in, right? And then we go. And then we have

this is a story set during the last war. And I assume this was written, this would have been written by Kay Webb, the legendary Puffin editor-in-chief. This is a story set during the last war. It is about Jessica Vi fighting her own private battle to grow up in her own way, to live her own life in the confining world

of a girl's day school, and in the bleak little house her family had come to live in when her father decided to become a curate her own life in the confining world of a girl's day school and in the bleak little house her family had come to live in when her father decided to become a curate instead of a comfortably off schoolmaster. Sensitive, emotional and devastatingly truthful, Jessica steered her way past reef after reef, from a chance meeting with a maniac in some forbidden woods to a foul house party for children in a grand snobbish household. It is a funny, gritty,

unsentimental book and Jessica is one of the most lively and attractive heroines to have appeared in the pages of a puffin. Highly recommended for girls and perceptive boys of 11 and over. I want to adopt the phrase, highly recommended for girls and perceptive boys of 11 and over for this want to adopt the phrase, highly recommended

for girls and perceptive boys of 11 and over for this podcast, John. What do you think? I think that's brilliant. It's so, from the first page there, that's why the idea of a first novel, the confidence, the style is so... I mean, it's very rare that you get a book...

It's actually a famous piece of writing, isn't it, Hilary? Read usifying opening. Read us the opening. Read us... Have you got a... The famous opening. The famous opening. And anybody who's about to listen to this

will get a proper shock when Hilary tells you what the event was, because it's not what you think at all. I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal, having had a violent experience at the age of nine. I will make this clear at once, because I have noticed that if things seep out slowly through a book, the reader is apt to feel let down or tricked in some way when he eventually gets the point.

I mean, the thing is, that's so... Oh, I get goosebumps listening to that. She mentions Copperfield, you know, in the book goosebumps she mentions copperfield you know in the book she mentions a lot of books in the book but it is it has that level to me of uh you know that's a that's the opening paragraph of a book that you'll never forget you know like like um ford maddox ford's good soldier i mean all those great you think God, that is a violent experience. So Jessica and her classmates are to be addressed by a quote-unquote famous writer. The most brilliant famous writer. Appears in a school ever.

His name is Arnold Hanger. Like many, like Garda might now realise, has a Dickens-like ability for names. Brilliant. Right. Anyway, Arnold Hanger. here he's in there in the classroom uh everyone clapped like mad and biffed everyone else's knee and pushed at everyone else's elbow and snuffled though keeping straight faces because of course nobody have ever heard of the man before except i suppose the headmistress. Arnold Hanger got up with a deep sigh and looked all round us

and then his face broke into a great lovely smile all over and he began to talk. I'm abridging as I go incidentally. And he was absolutely marvellous. Even the top form, the really ghastly ones who just sat about yawning all day and were going to do nothing when they left school but sit about yawning all day. It was a pos nothing when they left school but sit about yawning all day it was a posh sort of school even they set up and listened he had a lovely voice

and he had brought a lot of books with him with bits of paper stuck into mark the place and he kept picking up first one book and then another and reading bits out long long bits and sometimes very short bits poetry and all sorts well i was only nine and I wasn't really far off fairy tales. So she goes on and then the head thanked him, beam, beam, beam, and he suddenly looked sad and tired again and went padding off after to the door with his head down while we clapped and clapped. He stood in the door with his back to us for a moment and then he turned around and stared at us and suddenly he put up his hand and we were quiet thank you he said i'm glad you enjoyed it if there is anyone here this afternoon whom i have convinced the books are

meant to be enjoyed that english is nothing to do with duty that it has nothing to do with school with exercises and homeworks and ticks and crosses then i am a happy man he turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed, to hell with school, he cried, to hell with school. English is what matters. English is life. The head grabbed him and led him off to her sitting room for tea, not looking too thrilled, and we were let out and I went flying home. And she goes flying home to get her writing?

Yes. To show this man home to get her writing. Yes. To show this man who's changed her life. Who I suppose I mean I guess he's a kind of Arnold Bennett she sort of half likes him and half doesn't. Well he appears later in the book. I really related to that much more strongly after Alan Brownjohn came

to ask and gave a talk when I think I must have been in about the fifth form and that was the first time I'd ever really considered that yn fawr, ar ôl y dod Alan Brownjohn i ofyn a chyfarfod, ac rwy'n credu y dywedais fy mod i wedi bod mewn y ffordd pethau a dyna'r tro cyntaf rwy'n meddwl oedd pobl a wnaethau llyfrau yn cael eu cymryd i'w ddarparu ac yn eu cyflawni. Roedd yn ddangosol mewn un ffordd, ond yn arno arno arno arall. Hilary, roeddech yn dweud wrthi bod hynny'n seiliedig ar... Ie, profiad tebyg a gafodd Jane Gardner arno, ond yn llawer yn ôl,eddech chi'n dweud wrth fy modd fod hynny'n seiliedig ar... Ie, profiad tebyg yr oedd Jane Gardham yn ei gael, ond llawer yn ôl pan oedd hi'n bodoli ar brifysgol. Ac mae'n sôn am hyn yn y cychwyn i'w anthologaeth o storïau bach.

A fyddai'n hoffi i... Ie, beth yw hi'n ei ddweud? ...i ddweud am hynny? She was taken, in surprising circumstances, to a lecture by L.A.G. Strong, a well-known critic then, she says, a critic who wrote on the short story. She'd read his book at school and she agreed with much of what he said. And on the way back to London after this lecture, she followed L.A.G. Strong. She says, I climbed into the same carriage. I sat down beside him. He looked dejected and tired with deep lines between his nose and his sweet mouth. I fell in love. I began to talk. She goes on to say that he says to her,

I believe you write. And I said, yes, send me something. Looking weary, he courteously passed me a card. So she went back to college and sent him a short story and she didn't hear anything for some time. Then a letter typed in royal blue ink, Jane, you are a writer beyond all possible doubt. Which is obviously the beauty of the Arnold's hangar thing.

Now, this is very good timing. We have a clip of Jane Gardham talking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2013. She was being interviewed by Claire Armistead, and they've just gone over to audience questions. And what you're going to hear is the first audience question. Here we go. That's such a fabulous story about a young girl growing up during the war a chyfeirio i gwestiynau cyflwyniad. A'r hyn y byddwch yn ei glywed yw'r cwestiwn cyflwyniad cyntaf. Dyma ni. Mae'n stori hyfryd o ran un gynhyrch gyrfaeddu drwy'r llawr

a'i fod yn gwybod ei fod eisiau bod yn ysgrifennydd. Rwy'n mynd i ofyn, a yw'n biograffig? Mae'n rhywbeth. Felly, rydych chi'n Jessica. Ie. Mae'n iawn. Felly, beth mae Jessica yn ei wneud sy'n eich canfod? she's hopeless, she doesn't know where she is, what she's doing, she's very young for her age, I think. It's wartime too, and she's, you know, we were all launched into a different kind of thing straight away. But she holds firm to the fact that she wants to write, and this is so usual in someone who's going to be a writer, that we just never lose it, so usual in someone who's going to be a writer that we just never lose it.

It's a very strange thing. I don't know what it's all about. I think a lot of writers would say we don't know... Who was it? Iris Murdoch said, we don't know what we're doing until it's finished, really. No, that book was sort of a kind of love song to my home, I think. So, yes, that was Jane Gardham speaking at the Edinburgh Bookfest.

What do you think about that? It's quite interesting. I find it absolutely fascinating because, of course, when she says, oh, in her beautiful voice, she's such a beautiful woman and she has a beautiful voice and she's a great writer, God. When she says, oh, you know, she's absolutely hopeless, of course, you see, I'm staggered by this remark because to me, Jessica Vi is the absolute opposite of hopeless. She's the only brave child in the school.

She's the only person who stands up to absolutely everybody, adults, children, teachers, friends, the whole lot. It's a great, and again, I think this is a very beloved scene for people who adore this book, a great scene where she's sent by her middle-class intellectual parents who are living on nothing and it's all rations and the house is unheated and the mother has a marvellous brain that's being unused, which is a great portrait in the book.

I particularly relate to that now that I am much, much older than the mother has a marvellous brain that's being unused, which is a great portrait in the book. I particularly relate to that now, that I am much, much older than the mother myself. And the father's constantly churning out these essays for the New States because she doesn't even know he's writing and she doesn't care. At some point, a fat envelope arrives with a kind of bossed invitation to go to a country house party, which fills her with disgust. But she goes! You see, I'd have got out of it somehow in my cowardly way. But she goes, this character goes. i fynd i fferm diogelu gwledig sy'n ei llenwi gyda disgust. Ond mae hi'n mynd! Fe fyddwn i wedi cael fynd allan o'r ffordd yma mewn ffordd ddynol.

Ond mae hi'n mynd, mae'r cwreidr yn mynd. Ac nid oes hi beth i'w ddynu oherwydd yr holl bethau sydd wedi'i ddysgu. Yr unig beth sydd wedi ei gael yw gosod ysgafn, sy'n mor tair ac yn fyr, ac mae'r llawrnau ar y chyfnod, y llawrnau ar y chyfnod, ac mae'n mynd i fod yn rhaid i hi ddewis pethau ac mae ei mab yn dweud, chi'n gwybod, oh, a allai chi ddewis eich pumpiau ac mae hi'n coelio yn horio ar y defnyddio'r gwrthym o'r enw pumpiau, chi'n gwybod, ac mae'n rhaid i hi fynd i'r peth hwn, felly mae'n ei gwneud ei meddwl i fynd i'r peth hwn ac pan fydd hi'n dod yno mae yna llawr sy'n cael ei ffynnu

gyda phlant rhaid, chi'n gwybod, sy'n hollol blant yn yr ardal ac ati. Ac mae hi'n cael ei anfon i fyny o fewn iddo ac mae'r holl un yn ei hoffi hi. Mae hynny'n gwneud i chi'n ei hoffi mwy. Ac mae'r tro cyntaf pan fydd y cysylltiadau'n rhaid eu rhoi arno, ac mae'n mynd i fod yna sgîmau o ddiddordeb sy'n digwydd, ac mae pawb yn rhaid i gyd ddod i lawr i'w ddanc, a phobl yn gadael i'w ddanc, a phobl yn gadael i'w ddanc, downstairs and you know dance and so on old ladies with old ladies it's very funny and she has brought with her fancy dress costume from home and instead of putting on the rotten viola she braves it and

sticks on you know last christmas's nativity outfit and some scarlet tights and they all come in and they all say oh my dear but how oh dear you you seem to have not understood the invitation it's not fancy what are we going to do and a lot of um uh very patronizing things are said to her about this and but she sticks with it and she will not put on the rotten viola and what a brave child you know you think she could have Churchill is often mentioned in this book and I think she's rather Churchillian in some ways wonderful I love the way as well that the book is a um I mean I this tends to be a cliche for me for things that I like but actually what's so interesting about the book is it's a book about sydd i mi fwynhau. Ond mewn gwirionedd, beth sy'n ddiddorol am y llyfr yw ei fod yn llyfr am

ysgrifennu llyfrau. Mae hi'n ei ddefnyddio ei hun, fel y gwnaeth Jane Gardham yn y clip hwnnw, fel rhywun sydd rhaid bod yn ysgrifennu, sydd ddim yn gallu helpu ond fod yn ysgrifennu. Ond hefyd, y llyfr rydych chi'n ei ddarllen, pan rydych chi'n darllen Ymlaen O Verona you're reading Jessica's attempt to write a book it's her first attempt to write a book and she's got these wonderful so first of all it's about reading it has all this stuff about reading but it's also about writing

it has all these wonderful little authorial asides or winks to the reader saying this is the sort of thing you might enjoy here and then as the book goes on and the sense that she's getting more confidence, she starts making stuff up that she wasn't present at. And she tells you, I wasn't here for this, but I'm pretty sure it went something like this.

That struck me as so clever. And the great ingenious gift that God gives the child, which is, I always knew what everybody else was thinking. And therefore I'm now able to tell you. And off she goes into these interior monologues from allol o'r holl gymeriadau eraill. Ond y peth mwyaf ddiddorol amdano yw ei anodd anhygoel pan fydd hi'n cwrdd â rhywun arall sy'n gallu wneud yr un peth. Oherwydd mae'r mam anafol yn y partysi'r tŷ i blant yn gweld ei fod yn darllen ei syniadau ac mae'n

yn gwneud iddyn nhw, mae'n anodd iawn iddyn nhw fod yn gilydd yn yr un ystafell. Ie, mae hynny'n fy modd i mi, ac wrth i chi ddweud hynny, Hilary, mae hynny'n fy nghoffio o llyfr arall yr oeddwn i'n ei fwynhau fel plant, ac nid wyf yn gwybod a ydych chi wedi'i ddarllen, yw'r enw 18th Emergenciaeth gan Betsi Byers, sy'n ymwneud â plant sy'n byw yng Nghymru, sy'n eithaf anodd ac does dim dad o gwmpas yn eu teulu, ac mae'n rhaid i ei edrych ar ddyn oedol sydd wedi cael strogi pan nad yw'n ysgol. Ac wrth i'r llyfr ddechrau, mae wedi llyfrio'r fwyafwr ysgol, Marv Hammerman and the story of the book is him waiting to be hit by Marv Hammerman.

It's how do you deal with a bad thing that's going to happen to you and it captures the sort of quirkiness and Jessica in this book is very driven emotionally and I thought Jane Garddard was so brilliant at finding those swings of moods that children have which adults perhaps don't have access to.

Reading it for the first time, but you get that sense of how her language changes and darkens and deepens over the course of the book. But I was just saying about the mother, the relationship with the mother I particularly liked. I grew up in a... My dad was a vicar and became one after being a schoolteacher, and my mother was a schoolteacher, and my mother was forced to become a vicar's wife, which she absolutely loathed.

But there was, so there's lots of details in this book which I really love, but the relationship with a mother, between Jessica and her mother, I think is really remarkable. There's a great paragraph here where she says, she's got a bit red in the face now, and rather wild, this is the mother, slamming and crashing about, and her clothes are so vile. It does no good telling her, and to tell you the truth, I try not to think about what she looks like, with her hair all frizzed all over her head and her red hands.

When she gets angry, she seems to grow knobs all over her face. I just never tell her about things at school, like speech day, as a matter of fact. I just say, she's much too busy to come. She seems to grow knobs all over her face. I just never tell her about things at school, like speech day, as a matter of fact. I just say, she's much too busy to come. She never asks. There just might never be a speech day for all she cares. When I'm at school, I might just as well be dead for all the interest she takes. And I hope she finds this book and reads what I said. That petulance, but also that kind of ability just to turn to the reader and then you know you're saying that she is

that's the weird thing the book is the book that she's writing it's just great I've got this quote from Joan Garland which seems appropriate just a short one where she says that the most important thing for her when she's writing a novel is character, and that she, towards the end of her career,

as she sees it, even though she's still with us and she's still writing, she said this brilliant thing where she discovered, I discovered that everybody is as interesting as everybody else if you tell their story correctly. And she says here, I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed.

I don't think my style has changed very much at all, though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them. And actually, the others of her books that I've read in the last few weeks, like Bilgewater could almost be a sequel to A Long Way From Verona but certainly Old Filth, the novel Old Filth

is a novel again almost Dickensian in its capacity to juggle 30 different characters wildly different from one another all of whom you feel the author will spend more time with because she loves

them so much. She's just genius. I mean, this early on in the book. Sissy Cumberbatch, who is usually the colour of mashed potatoes, I mean, that's all you need to know about a character, had gone quite pink. She is a very, very small girl, and as I've said before, she hardly ever speaks. If you had to think of one word to describe her,

you would say, watchful. She's funny. She was evacuated from London or somewhere to an arts farm near Kirk Hinton Beck because of the air raids with a terribly long journey to school on about 17 different buses. She looked terribly tired half the time. You could tell what a stupid sort of family she must have had to send her to a place like Teesside to get away from the air raids. We're getting air raids just about every night so I just love that it's that sort of chatty slightly imperious kind of tone but Sissy Cumberbatch is brilliant

in just a couple of sentences you've got a character I've got a few quotes I can't stand people who play the piano all the time they have mean little mouths we see that instantly it was a terrible moment we put our heads in our cups.

The bell was like a metal muffin. He had a white, freckly face, like porridge. Yeah. And the book is filled, again, with images. She can create an image in just half a line every time. And every page and every paragraph is filled with them. And Laura, for obvious reasons, there is a key plot point in this book

about a picture, a painting. How did you feel about that when you read it again recently? Well, in fact, I would like to just read this. This is not the painting you were talking about, but this is a painting. Now, anybody listening to this, what is this painting? Two women coming along, some sort of

Africans. They were very steady and still against dark green trees. You could tell it was a man who was painting them. You could tell because they have nothing on above the waist. So this is a Gauguin. Absolutely brilliantly described.

And of course, it's a marvellous moment in the book because the character, Jessica Vi, has gone to the flat of the elderly ancien regime English teacher who is kind of retired but still present in the school in some way and who will tell you all the great things about literature in the book that you really need to know.

Like, you know, Keats cheers himself up when he's really depressed, gets a clean shirt. Emily Bronte, she never got down. She just got on with her work. And also she didn't hold with Chatterton. Didn't hold with Chatterton. And the values about literature in the book are, I think, marvellous.

She goes from thinking Romeo and Juliet, so right about Cluster in the past, it's a running gag. I've just got this little bit. I so hope you're going to mention this. There is a brilliant section where Jessica describes reading a series of books in a library. And she says...

And she reads them from A to Z. She said, in this way, I read most of Jane Austen in three weeks. Even though there are certain things I very much dislike in her books, I won't go into them now. I don't know if you've noticed, but if you want to become one of the English classics, it's a good idea to be up in the top half of the alphabet.

There are a tremendous lot of A's and B's and D's, and down to about H. Then there's hardly anything at all, until you get to all the Richardson Scott factory lot. It's rather depressing, really, and you don't feel you're making much progress when after a month you're just past the Brontes and when you see how many Dickenses are coming.

But I must say I loved the first two or three weeks. Then I decided I'd skip about a bit and read one of the E's, a very strange-looking man called George Elliot with ringlets and watery eyes. It was called Silas Marner, and it was marvellous. And then I decided to read an H and chose Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I hope I never read another book so utterly terrible as this.

It is a marvellous book, and I didn't skip any of it, and I read on and on and on. But all the time I was thinking of Thomas Hardy, of the terrible sorrows and sadness of him. It seemed terrible to me that anyone who knew that he was a writer beyond all possible doubt should have not one glimmer, not the faintest trace of happiness in him. There was one thing that he said that beat in my head over and over and over again. It was at the point where poor Jude just misses meeting someone who might have changed the whole terrible pattern of his life.

If he had, who knows, says Hardy, then it all might have yet been well. Then, he adds, but this did not happen, this good fortune, capital letters, because it never does. Which is the exact moral of her book, this book, llythyrau, oherwydd nid yw'n gwneud hynny. Felly mae'r ffordd yw'r ffordd honno o'i llyfr. Mae'r llyfr yma, o'r llawer o bethau, yn cael syniadau mawr yn y llyfr. Ac un ohonyn nhw yw bod hynny'n llawer o

llyfr anhygoel, oherwydd Arnold Hanger sy'n dod i fyny yw'r paralell i hynny. Mae ei bywyd wedi cael ei roi i fyny gan y cyfranogwyr Alan Bramlow. Byddwn hefyd, os gallaf, yn hoffi darllen y llyfr ychydig. Byddwn i am wneud hyn oherwydd mae hyn yn golygu cofnod sy'n rhyfeddol mewn fy nghymorth fy hun, sef, ar ôl darllen y llyfr hwn, pan oeddwn i'n meddwl i mi fod yn 12,

rydw i'n mynd i ffwrdd i Môl gyda'r rhieni, ac ar y ffordd rhwng y Llyfr Gwlad a Môl, Well, I go on holiday to Mole with my parents. And on the way between the mainland and Mole, we were in, this is the days obviously before magnificent hovercrafts and all the rest of it, and we're in some kind of rowing boat. And as we go, and I am not lying, so you'll see where this is going, the boat, a storm blew up between the island and the mainland, and we really were nearly all drowned. And we were, you know, people on the boat were injured. Somebody fell over.

And the captain of the boat, or the man rowing, I don't know, the team rowing, began to sing hymns because they were so frightened. End of the summer holidays, I write my essay. The classic, what did you do in your summer holidays? And my teacher, Miss Ireland, if you're listening now, Miss Ireland, gave me, she gave, I mean, she did exactly, but exactly, word for word,

what happens here in the book, which is another reason I love this book so much. She began to give the books back one by one, sometimes stabbing with her pencil here and there as she pointed something out. The pile grew smaller until there was only one book left. And now, Jessica, will you come here, please? What is the meaning of this? I lifted one of my feet a little way from the floor and at the same time I wondered why people do stand on one leg at moments like this. Horses lift a foot

up when they're ready to kick. Dogs do it when they're ready to run. I wasn't thinking of doing either but still I raised my leg and then I began to smile because I didn't know what to say and my eyes had gone hot. The title of this essay, Jessica, was The Best Day of the Summer Holidays, wasn't it? Yes, Miss Dobbs. Then may I ask, Jessica, why you felt you had to write 47 pages? Well, I just wanted to. But you see, it wasn't on the subject, was it, in the first place? It was about something that happened before the holidays started,

the day you broke up, in fact. Not in the holidays at all. In the second place, it was pointless and silly. All about some woman in a tea shop. Some woman you had obviously made up. Now, I have no objection to you using your imagination, inventing characters. That is, after all, what writers sometimes

do. But you must not try to pass people off as real, who never existed when you were asked for facts, facts, facts, Jessica. It isn't even as if you were telling a story. It was an essay I asked for. I'm afraid what you gave me is a lie. I didn't say a thing. And so it goes on, but the great moment in the book, the redemptive moment for all of us,

and I'm now talking directly to you, Miss Ireland, is this moment. She says, if you've ever written anything you thought was any good, you must throw it away. You'll feel terribly ashamed of it afterwards. What rubbish. Do you see, dear? I love it.

I could feel that she was looking more closely at the top of my head, and there was a sort of kindness beginning to be in the air. It must have taken you such a long time, dear. I don't expect you to spend so much of your weekend. And after all, you have very little time when it comes to studying for the exams. It must quite have spoiled your Saturday. Capital letters again. I adored it!

Up came my face. I adored it, you stupid cuckoo. I picked up the cloister and the hearth from her desk. And if mine's long, what about this? It's an awful long book and it's dead boring. And he was jolly pleased with himself, if anyone was. He's no good at all. All that romantic tosh. Be quiet, Jessica, and so it goes on, and she eventually, she just shouts, you are a fool! And so, it's a moment where it's a counter to the hanger moment at the beginning of the book,

where she's being told she can't write, mustn't write, etc. And my, Miss Ireland, are you listening? Miss Ireland, I remember at the end of my term report wrote, she will go nowhere. On my report. Good. Excellent., she will go nowhere on my report. Good. Excellent. So I've gone nowhere, Miss Ireland.

Here I am in London. But this issue of what is the truth and what is a lie and how you measure what reality is and how you measure the imagination is very much the theme of this book. It's worth saying that the genius of the book is that you've been with the girls, you've witnessed the thing that she's written about,

so you're kind of in that process of what a writer does to turn... It's such an admirable... The issue about the reality of what it is, I don't know whether you found this, John, but I was really struck by there are two or three scenes in here that we haven't really talked about. There's a scene

with a maniac, which I don't want to say too much about, and there's a scene in an air raid that I don't want to say too much about, which incredibly reminded me very strongly of Barbara Cummings who we did very much so we did on this podcast about six months ago in fact weirdly the two books

the Barbara Cummings uh book we did the vet's daughter vet's daughter and the and Lolly Willows there were both yes that's right strong just in terms of really really original I mean I was thinking about I was thinking about that the I was thinking about... I was thinking about the... I was thinking about weirdly portrait of the artist. Yeah. And Stephen Dedalus and that. And how internalised. What's brilliant about that scene

is where, you know, the famous Pandy scene where Stephen gets hit by the teacher, which is brilliantly done. But you sort of want... You want kids to say oh for god's sake you stupid can't you see that i enjoyed doing it anyway that's rubbish you're teaching the defiance in the book and the and the kind of the spirit and the and as you say she she she gives it out to everybody she gives it out to her parents she gives it out to the teachers

but then the subtle the subtle moments that scene with the maniac as he's called is so good but that it comes back in a wonderful moment when she's thinking about i think she's thinking about the boy and she about being attractive and she remembers she remembers him and she also remembers i think it's the bus inspector who looks at her in a certain way yeah that's just in what again one sentence burgeoning sense of her own sexuality but also done with such a lightness of touch and but also what's so brilliant about this book in terms of of is the more we talk about the more ambitious i think this book is actually and and one of the things that it does brilliantly is try to recreate for you

the creative process both in terms of the writing of the book, as I was talking about, but actually the incident with the maniac becomes the basis of a poem. It's one of the narratives that threads through the whole book that very slowly you see how the writer... Yeah, how the writer takes what they're given and finds, through processes they don't necessarily understand, how to articulate it.

Hilary, what was it doing on a children's list? Well, that's a question, obviously, especially since I've worked in children's publishing, which is only about half my career. I started an adult that I thought of a lot. But having read a lot more now that was published around that time for comparison, it doesn't surprise me perhaps quite so much. As now it absolutely... I mean, I can't imagine a context in which this would be published for children now.

Just for clarification, this was published as a children's book in 1971, but then moved across to the adult list in the mid to late 70s. And it's published now as an adult book. It was at the end of the Golden Age. Yes. Well, Alan Garner. Alan Garner. Yeah, absolutely. ac mae'n cael ei gyhoeddi nawr fel llyfr oedol. Roedd hi ar ddiwedd yr Eid Gwlad. Alain Garner, Leon Garfield, a Hamish Hamilton oedd un o'r mawr... Os ydych chi eisiau cyfathrebu, rwyf wedi gwneud ystod o ddysgu o anualau Bunty a Diana.

Rwy'n gallu ddweud bod y cymhleth o storïau b that the complexity of short stories, even in the Bunty annual from about 1973, is a lot more than anything that would be comparable that would be published now for girls of the same age. So I do think just the complexity of text has changed fundamentally.

Is that a first edition? It is. We will put some photos up of the first edition. There's been certain books we've done this year that seem to me, when I've read them, I can't believe that they aren't better known. But this is perhaps the apex of that. I read this and thought, well, this is a classic. This is transparently a classic.

Why is it... Is it perhaps because Jane Gardham has been so consistently excellent and prolific that it's become subsumed into her body of work? I don't know. I feel a great privilege not only to have found this book but also to be given the opportunity to discover another amazing writer who's written 25 books. What a treat.

And we haven't even talked about her short stories. Short stories, masterly. I mean, we always talk about short stories I'm backlisted but the ones I've read are completely brilliant she's won awards for her volumes of short stories as well there's a great quote from DJ Taylor which I love which is that if you're too hip for Jane Gardner you're too hip

and there is that about her I honestly think you could put this into the hands of anybody. And if you have any interest in reading fiction, I can't imagine who, within a few pages, that you wouldn't be absolutely hooked and wanting to... Laura, did you say you read it with your... My daughters, my twin daughters, yes. And they were about, I guess they were about nine or ten when I was reading.

And I did skip parts of it because I thought oh lord, you know, the maniac anyone listening will have worked out that the maniac given what John had said earlier there is a very dark undertone there and so I missed all this

out because I thought, oh you know perhaps I shouldn't read this part and of course then as soon as I stopped reading it aloud, they picked it up and read it themselves. The thing that they were very struck by was, of course, Christian, who we haven't mentioned, who is the boy who is wonderfully called Christian.

She's not really, she's not Dickensian in so far, she doesn't generally go in for allegorical names and so on, but Christian is a real kind of joke on him because he's a huge atheist, he's a 14-year-old boy, he's a communist and so on, but Christian is a real kind of joke on him because he's a huge atheist. He's a 14-year-old boy and he's a communist and so on. But he's compared with Rupert Brooke, whose book she is reading in the course of it,

and our wonderful, I think, rather sort of big kind of critique of Rupert Brooke himself insofar as you can only read Rupert Brooke for a very short time, which is really true. And the character of Christian is described as looking like Rupert Brooke, and she gets over him very fast, which is another heroic aspect of this magnificent

character. She does say, actually, that Rupert Brooke makes her feel slightly sick. She's brilliant. She has the book and opens it so she can look at it. At the picture. At the picture. It's a sort of, you know, a pin-up, a kind of David Cassidy pin-up during the war, rationing.

It's the best account of the poverty and the cold and the real day-to-day feeling of what it was like living through the war as well. As we've talked about it, I just think this is such a wonderful book as a perceptive boy of 48 I just I enjoyed this so much so much I think we're are we? I think we're there

I think we probably have to do the sad thing never is Sandy never is when you've got a good book well I think we have to say thanks to Laura Cumming and to Hilary Murray-Hill, to our producer Matt Hall, and once again thanks to our sponsors Unbound. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at

BacklistedPod, on Facebook at BacklistedPod as well, and on the Unbound site at unbound.com forward slash backlisted. Thanks for listening. We'll be back in a fortnight with another show. Have a very Merry Christmas. Until then. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Winter.

You can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts. If you prefer to listen to it without adverts, you can join us on our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted, where you also get bonus content of two episodes of Locklisted, the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks.