Backlisted - Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Angel (1957) by the English writer Elizabeth Taylor, is the subject of this special episode - and, as you'll hear, the next episode of Locklisted too.* Joining Andy and Una for a hotly disputed umpteenth appearance on the podcast is our guest, the critic and broadcaster Andrew Male. We last featured Elizabeth Taylor in 2019 when we discussed The Soul of Kindness (1964) on episode 102. Now we are revisiting this most Backlisted of authors, with perhaps her most Backlisted novel, Angel, about a character who could herself be the subject of a Backlisted episode, Angel Deverell, neglected lady novelist and sacred monster. The conversations we have had on Backlisted over the last decade return again and again to the themes of this magnificent book: the craft of writing; popularity with the public vs literary merit; separating the art from the artist; the problem of 'likability'; the burden of narrative; and the pitiless mechanics of the book business. Writers such as Hilary Mantel, Philip Hensher and Anita Brookner have all described Angel as a masterpiece and, without revealing the plot of this episode, and its spontaneous sequel, we could hardly agree more. * Sign up at www.patreon.com/backlisted to listen, join in with the book chat, listen without adverts and receive the show early. ** 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 ****You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Batlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. The book featured on today's show is Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, first published in 1957 by Peter Davis in the UK and the Viking Press in America. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously and Inventory, an unreliable guide to my record collection. And I'm Dr Una McCormack, science fiction author and associate fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. Well, Backlisted has been running for 10 years now and in that time we've built up an incredible community of listeners, patrons and guests, not least the gentlemen joining us today and me for that matter. Plus of course, a back catalogue of...

So it begins. We meet again, Andrew. Plus of course, a back catalogue of nearly 250 shows covering everything from the Maltese Falcon to the Midwich Cuckoos. One really easy free way to support the podcast and to listen to episodes from our backlist is to follow backlisted on whatever podcast app you use. You can explore the Bat Catalog and it really helps us make the show more visible to new listeners. In other words, please subscribe to Bat Listed. Now, before we start, I would like to pay tribute to our friend Professor Simon James, who has died after a short illness. Simon

was a great supporter of Batlisted. He was a lovely and learned man, and of course a former guest on the show. He joined us on episode 121 in September, 2020 for a discussion of The Odd Women by George Gissing, one of his favorite writers and about whom he published an excellent book called Unsettled Accounts.

We were extremely fortunate to be able to call upon Simon's expertise and his enthusiasm and by extension so were our listeners. All of us at Backlisted send our condolences to Simon's family and friends and this episode is dedicated to him. And Simon, if you're listening, I'm sorry we won't get to do HG Wells with you. Thank you, Andy. Now joining us on today's show to discuss Elizabeth Taylor's novel Angel and no doubt many other of her books is an old friend of the show, Andrew Mail. Hello, Andrew. Hello, Andrew. Hello. It's lovely to be back again.

Lovely. Every word a joust. Now, Andrew Mail has been writing about music, films, books and TV for the last 30 years, and even he thinks that's a typo. He's currently an associate editor for Mojo magazine and the resident TV critic at Sight and Sound. He's both a broadcaster and a narrowcaster of some renown, having appeared on Radio 4's Boring Talks, sundry music podcasts, including a two hour Christmas music show with Andy. Toby Soot Yes, you're not on the list presented by

Jim Irvine, available wherever you get your Christmas music podcasts with Andy. Yes, you're not on the list presented by Jim Irvin, available wherever you get your Christmas music podcasts in July. Very seasonal, yeah. I'm feeling the weather. Yeah. And of course, Andrew's been on numerous episodes of Batlisted. Andrew, can you name them? Oh, you know, I don't like to boast. I mean, I could go through the list.

One thing I should point out is there's some sort of administrative error on the website. If you search my name, not that I have, it comes up as 10 times. I've actually been on 11 times. And so if you kind of factor this one in, I think that comes to 12. Went to 12, right, okay.

Just to have interest, how many times have you been on it as a guest? Well, well, the funny thing is, is that that administrative error also applies to me. And if you can count this one, well, 13. 13. Okay. Lucky 13. Lucky for some. Yeah.

Now come, come on guys, steady. We're not counting lot listed because I think that's like counting appearances on Torchwood or K9 and Company. K9 and Company, how true. I'm quite proud of being on the backlisted equivalent of K9 and Company. Come on, come on, calm down, calm down. Everybody calm down. We're here today to talk about Angel by Elizabeth Taylor.

I'm only going to say this once in this podcast, not that Elizabeth Taylor, the novelist Elizabeth Taylor. That's it. We've said it. We're not going to do that again. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. It's both a historical novel and a Roman à clef. It is also neither of those things. It tells the life story of novelist Angelica Angel Deverell, her unlikely rise and slow,

inexorable fall. Like the heroine of one of her own sensational romances, Angelica is born into poverty but astounds the world with her determination to succeed in the face of obstacles that might discourage other writers, not least a conspicuous lack of talent. Although she achieves fame and wealth and marries the love of her life, Angel's destiny is one of gradual disenchantment, loneliness and a return to obscurity. Elizabeth Taylor's tale is both hilariously funny and dreadfully sad. In the words of Dr Anita Bruckner, quote, Taylor was particularly good with women of a coarse and overpowering disposition, as well as with attractive young men who after long travail still fail to come up to scratch. Of great modesty herself, she succeeded brilliantly in her picture of a particularly obnoxious and famous woman writer, a monstrous egoist,

a self-made legend, a devourer of useful contacts and second-hand experiences, and a positive factory of high-toned pros. The novel is called Angel and should be more famous. The Virago editors adorned the cover with a slap-dash portrait by Baldini and they got it absolutely right. Can I just say I can't help thinking that it might have been Dr. Bruckner herself who advised the Virago editors on their choice of jacket image, but who knows? We may never know. Here I am a woman of a course and overpowering disposition with Here I am a woman of a course and overpowering disposition with two attractive young men failing to come up to scratch. Angel was...

After... Yes, after what is it? After long travail. After long travail. That's right. We're here for the next six hours, everybody. Let's go. Angel was first published in 1957. It was the eighth book Elizabeth Taylor had written

in 12 years, seven novels and a volume of short stories. It both marks a departure from her previous works such as At Mrs Lippincott's of View of the Harbour and A Game of Hide and Seek, all of which feature contemporary setting and a shift in tone that would endure through the rest of her career up to and including the booker shortlisted Mrs Palfrey at the Clermont, which was published just before her death in 1971. Angel, therefore, is arguably Elizabeth Taylor's least typical and most significant novel and we will be arguing about it or rather we'll be half listening to one another talk with a certain ironic politeness and superficial geniality for the next hour or so.

Exactly like the characters in an Elizabeth Taylor novel. Steady on gents. Writing in 2005, Hilary Mantel said, it seems to me that what Elizabeth Taylor does is to show us the process of writing close up. Whatever the impulse to art, however little or great the gift, a cast iron vanity and a will to power are needed to sustain it. Writers are monsters,' she's telling us. How else would you be reading this book? That's brilliant. Good news everyone. Angel was reissued by Virago Modern Classics in 1984 and has remained in print ever since. In America, somewhat belatedly, NYRB Classics republished the book in 2012. Now, I know many listeners will be saying to themselves, hang on,

Backlisted did a show on Elizabeth Taylor six years ago. It was episode 102, The Soul of Kindness, and it went out in September 2019. Because our listeners do have perfect recall, the swine. They'll know it's 13 for me and 12 for Andrew. Quite so. Now when we come back, we'll explain just why and how we came to pick Angel for today's show. But first, let's hear from our sponsors. Welcome back. So we should begin by asking Andrew, when did you first become aware of the work of Elizabeth Taylor? Probably in the late 90s. I think the first

book I read by her was Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. A Virago copy I found in a charity shop at a time when I was seeking out all those lovely 80s green spine copies. And I think what struck me initially is I liked her sentences, the sort of delicate and subtle and unpretentious and exact. She seemed to be writing about those small interior moments of life, that signal something profound,

these little pitch perfect moments of psychological realism that you notice are brilliant for what they don't say as much as they do say on the page. And as someone who has gone on record as saying that they fear the plot heavy novel, this was like kind of manner for me, these kind of just carefully wrought little kind of moments filling up, you know, growing into just sort of beautiful paragraphs of prose. In fact, I don't know if Andy remembers this, she was one of the first, on the first list of authors that I suggested as possible backlisted subjects back in early 2015. I like your approach to this episode, Andrew, which is first of all to pick a fight with

Una and then to pick a fight with me. Well done. It's in keeping with the spirit of the novel that we're discussing. Yeah. Well, can I just put this in context for listeners? What's happening here, the reason why Andrew is exercised about the number of times he's been on and whether he was the first person to discover Elizabeth Taylor is because his resentment is bubbling up now

at being forced to be backlisted Mr. Halloween. And in fact, all joking aside, one of the reasons we wanted to make this show was Andrew has been, as regular listeners will know, been a regular contributor and brilliant guest to Backlisted. I know he was slightly crestfallen that he didn't get to come on the episode we did about Elizabeth Taylor. So this is partly for him. It's also because for me, I think Elizabeth Taylor, there is no more perfect backlisted author than Elizabeth Taylor. And of her novels, there is no more perfect backlisted book than Angel. So here in our 10th anniversary, we wanted to visit the book, visit the author

with Mr. Hallowen himself, Andrew Mail. And to be fair, there's nothing more domestic, more Elizabeth Taylor than carving a pumpkin, is there? So, you think? The best ghost stories are domestic interiors, and the best stories are written by women. Best ghost stories are written by women. And see, I told you, he can't stop it. Elizabeth Taylor wrote two perfect horror stories as well. So yeah, I knew he'd be saying actually angel is a book about the weird.

It is. It's a nightmarish book. We know this. It's a Gothic. It's a Gothic novel. It says the monstrous. Yeah. Peter pumpkin head.

Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for that. Now, listen, Andrew, so you've told us when you started reading Elizabeth Taylor, which is in the 90s, and to be clear, many of her books, I think I'm right in saying many, perhaps not all of them, were out of print until the early to mid 1980s when Virago started republishing them. Elizabeth Taylor was a great favourite of one of our former guests in 2019, the late Carmen Khalil. I will say a little bit more about Carmen Khalil and about our other guest on that episode, Rachel Cook, a little later in the show. But

as you suggest, those novels in the 90s perhaps had become, this is a recurring theme in Taylor's career I think, those novels had fallen in and out of fashion again. I get the sense they were rediscovered in the 80s and then lost again in the 90s. So the fact that you're looking for them in secondhand bookshops seems significant to me. Absolutely. But it was led by Virago, it was led by me in the same way that you would trust Blue Notes as a record label or something.

I kind of, those green spine Viragas were a mark of quality for me. I knew that I would get kind of the sort of kind of books that I was seeking out. Those sort of, you know, sort of beautifully detailed domestic interior narratives. Well, that leads me then to bounce the question onto Una, given that Elizabeth Taylor was and still is, I think, synonymous with the very best of the Virago Modern Classics list. When we discussed doing the show, I was surprised that you said that you'd never read Elizabeth Taylor before. I would have thought she was catnip to you.

I had never read her before. So I assume that I had seen one of her stories, the fly paper is adaptive for Tales of the Unexpected. And I assume I watched that in 19 whenever it was. But other than that, I had not read Elizabeth Taylor. I had a copy of one of those of the green spine viragos of at Mrs. Lippincott's that had been on the shelf. I bought a bundle of maybe 15 viragos going for a song and it was one of those, but I had not read her before until, what, two weeks ago? And fulfill the backlisted persona of Dr. Una McCormack as opposed to your real self by telling people how many you've read in the last three years.

I've read, I think I've read four of the novels and Booker's Short Stories and Nicola Bowman's biography. And was it hard labor? It was an absolute pleasure. It was nonstop delight from start to finish. And I am regretful that we're not recording this next week so that I have a chance to get through another three or four. I'm resentful in fact.

We should have postponed this one. Andrew, I envy Una's ability to read Elizabeth Taylor that fast. This is not a criticism. I'll give you my take on Taylor. I first read her almost 10 years ago. Angel was the first one that I read after it was floated not by you, Andrew, but by another guest, Lloyd Shepherd. We chose a different book to do with Lloyd. But because I think you'd mentioned it to me and like Una, I was aware of her reputation and here was another person recommending it, I thought, well, I ought to read that. I just thought it was fantastic from the off.

I never had any qualms, we'll talk about this in the show, but I just thought it was a wonderful novel. And since then, I've read everything that she wrote. I'm fairly sure I've read everything that she wrote now. And she's inextricably bound up with the last 10 years of backlisted for me. This is, by my reckoning, the fourth occasion on which we featured her on the show. We made the episode on the soul of kindness. I'm pretty sure, no, I know for a fact, I read bits when we used to do what we've been reading this week's slot. I read bits from A View of the Harbour and The Wedding Group. And as I said a moment ago, to me, she's just, she is for reasons of both style and theme and personal life, she is the ultimate Batlisted author. So Andrew, although I concede that you read Angel first, you didn't read it best, did you? Because I liked it straight away, didn't I? Whereas

you weren't sure. I think I read it about 20 years ago, but I'm not entirely sure that I finished it that time around. When I first read it, I found, I mean, I was a younger man then, a no more naive man, an innocent man. But I found Taylor's portrait of Angel Deverell was like her name, a little too on the nose,

a little too broad, a little too obvious. And I found the depiction cruel. I missed the subtleties that I should have spotted because obviously it wasn't the first Taylor book I'd read, but I also felt a notice that what was here was a perfect pastiche, that Taylor was effectively writing her own version of the melodramatic historical novel. Because Angel is the Victorian

working class girl who escapes her fate and makes good. I also miss the jokes. It is an incredibly funny book. It's probably her funniest and I did not see that at the time. And I also don't think I noticed how Taylor gradually solicits our pity for Angel and how in a way she's writing about a version of herself. Or, you know, all this went over my head. I texted Andi earlier today to say, this is her equivalent of Stephen King's The Dark Half. It is basically a writer who creates a nightmare

double of themselves. This all devouring id, completely undisturbed by self-doubt, untroubled by reality, who nevertheless reveals their creator's secret desires and how those desires will be your downfall, an excess of style, an ease of writing, a refusal to edit. All this stuff that Taylor was committed to, the paring down, you know,

the importance of the edit that she, she described writing as a miserable exercise because of all those things. So, you know, Angel is her perfect dark half. All right. Before we, you're going to read for us in a moment. I would like to say, um, I read Angel again for this. I read, I for the first for this. I now have read everything Taylor's written because for this podcast, I read at Mrs Lippincott's, her first novel

and Blaming, her final novel. And the thing is they took me a few days each. I would like to ask Una how you read Taylor Swiftly. So I never leave the house. Basically, I just sit down, there's a book and I read it. It's one of those things that people say, I genuinely couldn't put this down. The beauty of those sentences, you just want to eat them. Yeah. You just carry it. You want, because you're reading both the story and for mood of a context, but you're just going, oh, this is, you kind of want to hold it up at the window and go, look, people, this is how a sentence works. Yeah. Then people walk past because they don't read books. But the other thing that Andrew said

and this I think is absolutely critical to reading her is the lack of cruelty. I don't know how she does this, but the dispassion somehow turns into compassion. It's almost as if as she gets closer and closer in the observation, you get closer and closer to the particularity of each individual and that makes you meet them as the human being that they are. It's phenomenal. It's the same as Austin, that same kind of meticulousness, but it doesn't have that edge of, you know, that edge in Austin that sometimes you've got all Jane, you know, put your nail varnish

away. Yeah. Get your handbag down. What was it you said in our chat the other day, you know, when we were preparing for this, what did you say? I can't remember now. It was brilliant though. It was obviously brilliant. It was brilliant. You said something along the lines of the thing about Taylor is she takes Austin's project and does something more interesting with it, which I thought was fairly bold. I thought that was pretty bold statement.

Well, why not? But I know but. Do you know what I mean though? It's the moments with Austen where you go, oh, that slightly disfigured this. Yeah. But that never happens, I think. And to do that in Angel with somebody who is effectively monstrous and Flora as well in The Soul of Kindness, which was the next one that I read, you went, this person is awful, you know? And yet I end up feeling sorry for you. Oh, what Flora in The Soul of Kindness? Oh, she's appalling. She's appalling. Yeah, I know people like that. Absolutely.

Yeah. That monstrosity is humanised and that's a really quite a moral thing to do. I found Andrew reading at Mrs Lippincott's, the two things that really struck me were one, that's a pretty amazing first. Yeah, incredible. Right, everything's there, isn't it? It's all the voice, the style. And also we've delved into this already and we did so extensively last episode on Sylvia Townsend Warner and the corner that held them. But at Mrs. Lippincott's seems to have almost nothing in the way of

plot until the last 10 pages during which something remarkable is revealed. And I don't say this as hype, but genuinely when I finished I went, well I've got to go back and read that again now because all these things I didn't have the information to quite discern. I don't believe it's the first novel though. There must have been two or three written before that. Well, she says that she wrote three very bad novels when she was, very bad and very sad novels when she was a teenager.

By the time she was 16. So yeah, it's her first published novel. Because in terms of like those similarities with Angel Devereaux, you know, she was submitting poetry to the Bloomsbury Journal at the age of 12. You know, she was submitting poetry to the Bloomsbury Journal at the age of 12. You know, she'd written three sad novels by the age of 16 and several plays. She won the school English prize every year.

She refused to do maths. These are all angel character traits. Taylor had the good luck that nobody picked up her novel when she was 16. Yes, absolutely. Had to keep working and honing. I think what both Andrew was saying earlier and that Hilary Mantel was referring to in the bit we shared near the beginning is so true. The idea that the fate of the writer The fate of the writer is only slightly dependent on the quality or type of work they do. And one of the reasons I love Angel is because it is a conversation about the role played by everybody else.

Publishers, supporters, fans, critics and the public, specifically the public. So we'll come on to all this stuff. It's very rich. Let's hear from Elizabeth Taylor though. Andrew, do you want to read us a little bit from Angel? Yeah, this is basically from, she goes for a meal with her publisher Theo and she's basically, she's been looking forward to this evening. She's been looking forward to having a go at how Theo's been publishing her books but also destroying Theo's wife. Is it Hermione here? And then you get this moment where she just suddenly feels a sense of unhappiness when she's outside with Theo. You think it might be to do

with that she has this love for Theo that she doesn't quite comprehend. Why is there no one? she wondered, facing the house as she walked on, hastening away from the others without knowing what she did. She drew her silk scarf more tightly round her shoulders, clutching it to her with her hands crossed on her breast. She looked forward to this evening, to the pleasures of punishing and impressing Hermione and having Theo to talk to. But he had said nothing. She herself had gone relentlessly on about sales, royalties, shopkeepers, unable to control her tongue. As her mistake grew she had willfully added to it. He will be under my roof, she thought, glancing up at the eaves, where birds, Martins if she had known, had

built. It isn't as I thought it would be, and he is the only friend I have.' She was rarely so truthful with herself. As she came close to the house, the walls threw warmth out towards her. The brick still held the day's sun. She turned at the door to wait for the others. Theo came first. He was holding a flower in his hand. A present, from your own garden, he said, and slotted it through the large brooch on her bosom. He had sensed her agitation and seen her clasp her arms about her as if she were shuddering. And now, at this gesture of tenderness, with which, from some half-formed wish to comfort

her, he had surprised her, tears filled and magnified her eyes. You are cold, he said hastily, and he rearranged her scarf on her shoulders and urged her on into the hall before her mother and her mione could see. Now, the brilliant thing about that extract, apart from the fact that it is brilliant, is then you get this little, which I won't read, this little paragraph later that kind of comments on it self-reflexively and sort of you see that Taylor knows what she's doing. So you get kind of these all these various different levels of kind of awareness. It's like Taylor is doing the stuff that Angel can't do as a writer and as a result she is doing the stuff that Angel can't do as a writer. And

as a result, she is seeing the stuff that Angel can't see. Yeah. Martin's, if she had known. Yeah, exactly. You know, I was just about to pluck that one out myself. Isn't that amazing? That's just, oh, who doesn't love a little bit of omniscience just in there, absolutely. That's five words. Look at those five. It's not even the whole sentence and you go that. That's a writer of genius. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, Andrew, when you were saying about Angel being... First of all, you were saying Angel is funny, which it is, and you also said the thing that first attracted you to Taylor's work were her sentences. I think listening to that extract, the thing that makes me slightly peeved, I've got some of the original reviews here, which we'll get into later in the show is the speed with which critics presume to take her excellence for granted. It's like, you know, as Una was saying, she'd written half a dozen novels or something in 10 years and people had already gone, well, oh yes, she's all right. She writes perfect sentences, but I don't know, there's something.

You say, oh, come on, you know, come on. This novel does seem to divide opinion between those of her readers who see it as an outlier and those who feel it's perhaps central to what she does. I think it's central. Una, I don't know what you think. I'll ask you in a moment. And Andrew, you've changed your mind. But I still think it's an outlier. I still think it's atypical. And I think it's significant that it was the first book you read by her because I do think she's one of those authors where with a lot of people, the first book you read by her is the one that you think is your favourite. I don't mean that as a slight honour, but I think kind of because those books are so powerful

that kind of your perspective on her is shaped, I think, by the first. And the first one I read was Mrs Palfrey, which I know people struggle with for other reasons because they find it too dark and so bleak. That's very interesting. So as readers, I like that idea, as readers, when we find a particularly striking writer, one that she reminds me of, though stylistically they're nothing like one another, is Thomas Bernhardt. So your favourite Thomas Bernhardt novel will probably be the first one you read. And every subsequent one you read is a refinement in your brain of what you liked about the first one.

And I think, Andrew, that's really true with Taylor. Una, did you, I mean, I can't remember where you read Angel. Did you read it first, second, third one? I said to you, when we were texting about it, I said, okay, people seem to think this is an outlier. Should I read another one first and get a sense of Taylor or should I come in with this one? You said come in with this one. So I came in with this one, which obviously I thought was just amazing. Yeah. And then I read a few more and I thought, well, no, I, I absolutely see the

continuities between these, which are to do with the sort of ruthlessness of the writer and the nature of monstrousness. And in this book, they come together. But my favourite that I've read so far is Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. So I read that, I think, third. And I just think that was incredible. In fact, I was so besotted with it that I almost forgot it was Angel we were doing. Okay. Oh, hang on a minute. That's fine. And I didn't find it dark either. I found it. Oh, I thought it was marvellous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's bleak, but it's human. Yeah.

Because you read them so close together, you also see similarities because obviously Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo are both weavers of fiction. Exactly. They both, like Angel, they tell themselves stories that are, especially with Mrs Palfrey, that are their undoing, which is a theme that runs through so many of Taylor's books and short stories. There's a little short story as well, isn't there? In and out of the houses about a little girl who goes around the village making observations about what next story is cooking. That's in the devastating voice. I think that's the story. The story of our former guest,

Philip Henshaw, who's also introduced at least one tailor novel for Virago. I think that's in and out of the houndage is the story that he chose for his Penguin Book of the 20th Century short story, if I remember rightly. I'm not sure about that, but I think he did. I find those stories in The Devastating Boys, which is the final collection she published during her lifetime. They are clockwork in the best possible way. Every single one is a little jeweled object that works when you read it. They're amazing, amazing writing. Just one last thing I want to say about that, Martins, if she had known, because I've been thinking about it while we've been talking about it. Because if you stop and look at a phrase like that, you're also being asked to think, Martyn's, if someone had told her. And there's nobody in Angel's life who would have told her that. And Theo, who is

effectively the father figure, which she doesn't quite understand, he's come too late to be able to tell her the things that she could or should know. Doesn't Martyn's if she had known, and let's be quite clear here, this is the most anyone has ever discussed the phrase Martyn's if she had known. If not here, then were. If not here, then were. Yeah, yeah. Not on backlisted, that's true.

This in a sense is what this 10 years has been leading up to. Three people arguing over who's been on the most times and analyzing the phrase. Today on backlisted, we'll be discussing the following five words. Martins, if she had known, also implies not only that there is no one there to tell her name, but that A, she hadn't the education to know what they were, nor the background, nor for that matter, the curiosity, all of which are perfect for this character. She's poorly educated, but doesn't care. It's the sentences, everyone. It's the sentences. It's the sentences. Before we do the blurb, let me on the jacket, let me give you a theory

and I'll tell you a story about the last episode we recorded on Elizabeth Taylor. Now, as I said earlier, that was back in 2019. It was on Taylor's novel, The Soul of Kindness. And our guests were Rachel Cook, who's been on Backlisted several times. Thank you, Rachel. And Carmen Kalil, our dear friend Carmen Kalil, who, and this was her second appearance on Backlisted. And Carmen died, Dame Carmen to me, she died several years ago. When we were discussing which tailor we wanted to do, because Carmen and Rachel both wanted to come on together to talk about tailor, I said to Carmen, well, we were thinking of Angel and Carmen said, oh no, that's the one all the men like.

Right. Now, you know me, everyone. I don't put up with that gender bullshit from anyone except the late Carmen Kalil. But I would like, but it does, I think, I think it is instructive. There's something about Taylor and I'd like to ask you what you think it is that makes people feel this way. Carmen clearly felt very proprietary of what was good about Taylor. I think Nicola Bowman does in her biography. I think in the first half she feels that was Elizabeth Taylor doing her best work and in the second half not so much perhaps. You know, Andrew, you and I have both at times

been proprietorial of Taylor, what Taylor means to us. Furthermore, it's hard to open a newspaper these days without seeing David Bedeele or Geoff Dyer writing an article about how marvelous Elizabeth Elizabeth Taylor is. So something in her writing to people of various genders seems to make us want to own her. Those of course, again, she's a cat and we can't own her. And she seems to me guys to be a writer who, while we say we wish more people were reading, we would actually be appalled if suddenly she were discovered and taken from us. She is everybody's secret. That's my theory. Andrew, what do you think? Why do we feel that sense of proprietorship of her work? I think part of it is to do with how she has been mislabeled by critics. I mean, even, you know, kind of I read a recent essay in the LRB about her that couldn't

have got her more wrong, you know, and sort of, and there's that. No names, no names, no names. But also it's the idea, which I kind of outlined a bit earlier, the idea that she is a standard bearer for you if you go against certain trends in the novel. So if you go against what she would call virtuosity, you know, if you go against plot, if you go... and these things, certainly virtuosity is in vogue at the moment. She represents what you don't want as much as what you do. And I think that's one of the reasons why you hold hard to her. Does that make sense?

I think I know what you mean, but at the same time, isn't Taylor a virtuoso in her own right? It's not like she's not a stylist. I've got a quote from her where she explains what she means. Can I read it to you? It's from her short story, The Ambush, which is in the collection called The Blush. She's writing about art, but I think it applies to her style of writing as well. Someone called Freddie began to be talked of, a friend of Esme's, a painter of whose painting Mrs. Ingram disapproved. She compared it unfavorably with Catherine's. It had, she said, that detestable ingredient virtuosity. It allows one to see how clever he has been. And that should never be. I don't want to see the wheels go round or to feel

called upon to shout, Bravo! as if he were some sweating Italian tenor. One should really feel how easy it must be, how effortless. I should think, don't you, Catherine, that an artist must seem too proud to have tried, too careless to have thought of succeeding. Esme said nothing, so Catherine could not judge if he agreed." And so I think there's something of that there. Yeah, bravo. Again, you know, too careless to have thought of succeeding. Martins if she had known. Yes. And so there's never, you're right. She, on one definition of that word, she is a virtuoso, but it's never look at me, virtuosity.

It's never look at what I am doing. Never look at how I have, you know, verb the adjective or whatever. You know, it's kind of... Oh no. Her editor at the New Yorker, she was published over 30 times by the New Yorker magazine under the aegis of the great William Maxwell. Maxwell used to give her stories

to subs and juniors on the New Yorker and effectively say to them, if you can find anything to change in this story, you're not doing your job right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If they came back red-penned, he'd fire them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are perfect. Una, as a newcomer to Taylor, what is it that inspires that sense of passion once you've discovered her? What is it? Well, firstly the firstly, the sentences and that just the simple pleasure of doing, hooray, I've got an excuse to just track down another author. Now, I don't feel this proprietary sort of sense towards it, maybe because I'm coming so late and it's like, oh, everyone already knows it. But I was reading a copy of The Soul of Kindness. I was sitting

in a cafe in the covered market in Oxford and the guy around the cafe came up to me and he said Elizabeth Taylor as in the actress and I said no no no no and then we had a little chat about that and I ate my bacon sandwich, my bacon bap, and I finished the book and I actually left the book with him because I thought you know that was a great bait and sandwich but I just wanted him to read her just wanted it look this is just incredible I think everyone should know so a shout out to Taylor's Cafe in Oxford covered market it wasn't an edition I was collecting so if it had been a different edition I would have kept it but but I just

wanted people to know and everyone I've seen since then, my writer friends have gone, have you read Elizabeth Taylor? Have you read Elizabeth Taylor? And they've gone, yes, of course, Una, well done. So you don't yet feel proprietary, but let me assure you, in the words of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, you will learn. I will learn. Now, look, we need to take a break to hear from sponsors.

But when we come back, we'll be going straight into an excerpt from a dramatic adaptation of Taylor's novel, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. And there will be a quiz question, an easy quiz question for Andrew Mail following that clip. But so when we come back, Mrs. Palfoury at the Claremont, but first a word from our sponsors. Prime Day is here.

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Are you ever irritated by the claims on you of other people? Well, I have been, I suppose, one time or another. Yes. Do you prefer to be a host or would you rather be a guest? Well, I loved the evening when you came to dinner at the Claremont. I must say I prefer being here. If you were kept waiting by a friend, would you A. Wait patiently and be forgiving so that you could both enjoy the evening?

B. Wait but have a row when your friend arrived? C. Go home. Well, I know you wouldn't keep me waiting except for some very good reason, so I should wait patiently so that we could both enjoy the evening. This is not just me, anyone. Well, there's nowhere else I could think of. You're the only person I would be meeting. Do you have a brick your word? No.

That's it. Now, let's see. According to this, you have an average capacity for friendship and a well-ordered social life. Goodness. I must admit it was easier when Arthur was alive. We met other couples, you know. Being a widow isn't quite the same thing. And then as one gets older, people die or drop out of your life for some reason or another. Shall I ask you the questions first? No, no, no. My answers would probably be the same as yours. Would they? Oh. Things like claims on one. I should have thought the viewpoint changes. I remember when I was a young married

woman, I often longed to be free of my responsibilities. And now I am, because my daughter no longer needs me and you must have gathered her ideas with Desmond and I find I have such a sense of loss. No one will ever again be a burden or dependent on me. In a way, I need you. No, you don't. Not really. No, I don't have many friends, and the ones I used to have all have cars and jobs. What, Rosie? I hardly know her.

Well, not like this to sit and talk. That's very kind of you. Shall we do the washing up? Well, that was from the 1973 BBC Play for Today production of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. You heard Joseph Blatchley there as Ludo Myers asking questions of the wonderful Celia Johnson as Mrs. Palfrey, whose delivery there of the line, that's very kind of you, is with something approaching subtle genius, I thought is beautiful. Now Andrew, which film, now the director of that show, I know you'll find this answer easy, he made another film, a very claustrophobic film about a group of

people thrown together desperately trying to get along. Who was he and what was the film? Michael Lindsay Hogg and the film is, oh no, what was his original one called? It wasn't called Get Back, it was called Let It Be. Yes, the director of the miserable Beatles film Let It Be went on to make the miserable Mrs Palfrey at the Claremonts. And of course, Andrew, in this version at the end, she and the other members of the hotel play a gig on the roof, don't they, which is something of a departure from the

original. I've got a little quote here from Elizabeth Taylor. She didn't really like that adaptation. Did you know that? No. Very funny. She said, it was the second time she'd seen her own work on television the first had been in November 1969 when

Hester Lilley was adapted by for ITV Sunday Theatre starring Joan Hickson and this is from Nicola Bowman's biography although she was pleased and proud of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. She thought Celia Johnson badly miscast because she was quote, quite glamorous and elegant. Obviously not only would her grandson have been on her doorstep all the time, but half the British Museum people with him. Here we go though, here's the killer Andrew. I had hoped Lord Mountbatten would take the part. Because in this short story she is described as resembling a man in drag. Yes exactly. I think earlier in the biography I think it actually does say Lord Mountbatten in drag

but they persuaded her not to put the part. There you go. So, so can we just talk a little bit about adaptations then of Taylor's work? Fortunately, Andrew, when we, when you were discovering Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and indeed when I was discovering Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, this was only something we could read about. It's only popped up on YouTube in the last couple of years. Yeah, absolutely. This play for today. What did you think when you finally got to see it?

I mean, I like it, but I think she is a difficult one to adapt to get the tone right, to get that mix of kind of, it can feel too doer or it can feel too like as the, we all, I also watched and I think Una watched it as well, the adaptation of, um, Angel. Um, yeah, the, the film of the film of Angel and that really struggles with tone as well. And I saw it last night. Actually was, I was looking to see what other, um, stories has been adapted into TV and film and there's a, I found a 1982 ITV adaptation

of a short story, A Dedicated Man, starring Alec McCowan and Joan Plowright. And that gets right to the heart of one of Taylor's themes. And one of the themes that we've been talking about today, the dangers of storytelling and the creating fictions as a means of escape. What's that called? Is that the title story of Dedicated Man?

A Dedicated Man, yeah, it that the title story? A dedicated man. Yeah, it's the title story. So that was in a strand. I looked at it, I didn't have time to watch it unfortunately, but Andrew, do you remember when we did Edith Wharton? Yes. And there was a TV adaptation of one of Wharton's novels or stories, I think in the volume that we were from Ghosts.

Was it after would? Was it that? Yeah. I think, cause that was the adaptation. That was in the volume that we were from Ghosts. Was it Afterward? Was it that? Yeah. Because that was adapted. That was in the same ITV strand. It was like four Wartons and Elizabeth Taylor and somebody else. I can't remember who. So somebody with a very refined sensibility was working for ITV in that period.

Yeah. Does the film of Angel, is there an attempt to depart from the tone of the novel or is the problem if there is one that it doesn't capture the tone of the novel? Yeah, no, I think Andrew's completely right. The tone sort of veers around. They make certain oh the cuts my dear, the cuts, the sort of changes at the end which I think miss out on what to me is what makes it really great novel which is that Angel's life is not mercifully cut short. In a kind of romantic dramatic conclusion it goes on and on and on so all of the stuff at the end of the book with Angel crumbling and decaying and that's all lost from the film. However, there is a moment where Ramola Garay,

who's playing Angel, arrives at a pivotal moment of the film. She arrives at a house and she's in sort of full Bohemian garb, which bears no resemblance to what anything else anybody would wear. And you kind of go, that's Angel, that looks exactly like her. So there's just these moments. It's got Sam Neill is Theo and I really love Sam Neill. I think that's

beautifully done. It's Charlotte Rampling is Hermione isn't it? And I think they capture that tone extremely well. These sort of adult observers of this child ego that's arrived in their lives and how they negotiate their marriage around it. I think that's all very, very beautifully done. I love that play for today, by the way, the Mrs Palfrey. I found it, particularly that clip we've just heard, the tenderness that they managed to bring into that sort of conversation between them. It's just absolutely beautiful. There is a film too, isn't there, of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, which I haven't seen.

Yeah, I watched that. So it's round about 2007. It's Joan Plowwright. I think it's introducing Rupert Friend, yeah? And one of the difficulties for me, I think, is that it transfers the story to 2007. By which time? I don't feel like these people would exist, that hotels like that wouldn't exist.

And so that particularity, which is crucial to Taylor, it's not authentic. But in other ways, very nicely done Phil, little sentimental. And I understand the production history is legendary, that they made it on, they raised money from nowhere and made it on a budget that you wouldn't believe. Wow. So I said earlier that I thought Taylor was tremendously funny and I think another distinguishing feature we've all agreed on is her amazing facility for crafting the perfect sentence. But there is one other thing that makes her so, so very backlisted. And that is she is the greatest writer I can think of, the most truthful, honest and funny writer about what it means to be a writer and about the process of writing. And obviously Angel is

a perfect example of this, right? Andrew, it was you, I believe, who coined the alternative title of backlisted, Their Poor Agents. And in a sense, Angel Deveril is a perfect, we could be making an episode about Angle Deverell herself. So closely does she fit the profile of a typical backlisted author, right? She's A, her novels are forgotten and B, she's horrible. So she fits that pattern perfectly. But one of the things the book is so know, is so brilliant about Angel is the relationship between literature and commerciality, between popularity and obscurity, between what Matthew debates you brilliantly, you know, the writer is the person who sits home and does it,

and the author is the Pratt who goes out and does the book festivals. And in Angel, that's right there, isn't it? That division between the writer and the author. NM. Yeah. So I've picked a little bit, which is where Angel is on honeymoon with poor Esme, who she has fallen in love with a human being called Esme who roughly inhabits the same space that a real person called Esme inhabits and they've gone on honeymoon together. I think I like this bit because it first of all it shows the gap between what's going on in Angel's head and what's actually happening in the world and also how she's never switched off.

It helps to know as well perhaps that Angel has taken against Italy where she's never been because she suspects that Esme may have had a love affair while he was out there. So anyway they're on honey. Okay right. Greece was especially disappointing. It was nothing. I remember. It was nothing like her novels. There was so much fallen masonry, dazzling and tiring to the eyes, olive groves that were dusty, and really there were only pillars to temples. The food was nauseating. Plates of black octopus and black olives and black liver

sausage. She'd had good food all her life and missed it. Esme laughed at her squeamishness. They were both tired from traveling and he from seasickness. He tried to hide the fact of his nausea because it prompted her to make long speeches on willpower and morbid imaginings, on abandoning oneself to the rhythm of the boat and thinking of other things, not of oneself the whole time. The food isn't wholesome and that's why you are sick. It is foolish to blame the elements of the sea. I was wiser than you knew when I refused the egg and lemon soup and that ghastly looking squid lying in rancid oil. Esme stuffed his fingers in his ears. The seasickness speech irritated him dreadfully but there were other annoyances too.

She had brought with her a flowing white pleated garment and in this insisted on being photographed standing on a plinth. She owed this to her readers she said standing on a plinth. She owed this to her readers, she said, and she collected souvenirs. Wherever they went he was loaded with peasant costumes which she would put on as soon as they reached the hotel, with baskets and bottles of wine, with pottery, with strings of beads and icons and plaster statuettes. She could not learn the currency and managed to convey an impression of deep suspicion frowning at the coins she was given and muttering her distrust. Venice, although Italy, was strangely less disappointing. It had the advantage but was not to have for much longer of not having been the background of one of her novels.

Angel bought a great deal of vulgarly ornate glass, more baskets, more peasant costumes. Esme had shellfish poisoning and was sick again. Angel had never had patience with other people's illnesses and she thought that Esme was doing his best to spoil her honeymoon from heedlessness, gluttony or lack of common sense. They went in a gondola on the Grand Canal in the moonlight but that again was not what she had imagined. Later she was to write of such an excursion as the climax of romance but Esme was not romantic. We like different things he said. A great pity he had loved Greece and her complaints there had exasperated him. We like different things he says. Yeah. A great pity. I mean even that seems to me

A great pity. I mean even that seems to me just magnificent understatement there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If he'd only jumped off the bridge in Venice, I think we would have had a, you know... I know people like that, people who are impatient with other people's illnesses. Yeah. You know, it's just brilliant. Yeah, yeah. And it's her honeymoon as well, that's the genius. He's spoiling her honeymoon. Yeah. Yeah. And it's her honeymoon as well. That's the genius. He's spoiling her honeymoon. Yeah. Yeah. And that mismatch between everything she's seeing and how she has imagined it to be. I think this, one of the things I thought about Angel again, and as I sort of read more about Taylor, is how this is like, if Emma Bovary wrote her daydreams down, yeah? This is what Emma Bovary would be if she

had slightly more ruthlessness and any self-discipline. And yet the sacred monster, you know, one of the things that comes over in the novel is Taylor admires Angel's indefatigability, which Angel has what it takes to be a successful author. If you need to get up on a plinth and have your photograph taken because your readers expect it, of course that's what you do. And furthermore you're delighted to do it. Imagine being someone who got to do such a wonderful thing. When you think about it, it is incredibly modern because it's how people are told to

be successful and famous now. You need the self belief, you need the drive, you need the willingness to get up on a plinth. What you don't necessarily need is the talent. I agree with you. And I say that as a podcaster, Andrew, I would like to just share if if I may, this. So I said I read Taylor's final novel, Blaming, this week. And just like at Mrs. Lippincott's, her first, I think I was thinking, oh, Blaming, it was published posthumously and she was very ill when she wrote it. Well, if not quite as good as Angel or Mrs. Palfrey, it's damn close.

It's full of wonderful things and wonderful things about being a writer. I just want to read this one half a paragraph. We're talking about an American character called Martha. Martha had listened to Nick and Amy talking, not only with relief at understanding what they said, because they are in Messina, but with her usual passionate delight at the turn of a sentence and her ear for nuances. She was a novelist, an expatriate one at that, a writer of sad cont about broken love affairs of depressed and depressing women. Her few books were handsomely printed, widely spaced on good paper, well reviewed and more or less unknown.

Without fretting, she waited to be discovered. From the sales of her last novel, she had hoped to pay for this holiday, but could now see that savings would have to be delved into. And perhaps some borrowing done. I mean, you know, it's so exquisitely done. And funny, I don't understand why people can't find this funny. Andrew you have a little bit don't you from a view of the harbour. Well I've got two from a view from the harbour and they're both magnificent there's one which is just Beth is a novelist who is married to a doctor Robert mother of two kids. Robert is having an affair with Beth's best friend, the beautiful

Tory foil who lives next door. And so one of them is describing Beth's process and that you might have read that one before Andy on one of the episodes. I did read it before, but you know what? I think I'm going to read it again if you don't mind because it's so perfect. I'll read Tori's verdict on Beth's career. Writers are ruined people. As a person you're done for, everywhere you go, all you see and do, you're working up into something unreal, something to go onto paper. I've watched you for years and I've seen you gradually become inhuman, outside life, a machine. You're so used to twisting things that you can see nothing straight. One day something will happen to you, as it has happened to me, that you can't twist into anything at all and it will go on

staying straight and being itself and you'll have to be yourself and put up with it and I promise you you'll be a bloody old woman before you make a novel out of that. Well I will supplement Andrew's wonderful reading there. Writer beware. Writer beware. With a short paragraph from Taylor's third novel of A View of the Harbour, regular listeners will recall they last heard this approximately 220 episodes ago. I think this is so exquisitely perfect and it has a phrase in it, much like Martin's If She Had Known, which I have worked into conversation ever since. Beth dipped her pen into the ink. Vague what? she began to wonder once more.

This isn't writing, she thought miserably. It's just fiddling about with words. I'm not a great writer. Whatever I do, someone else has always done it before and better. In ten years time, no one will remember this book. Whatever I do, someone else has always done it before and better. In ten years' time no one will remember this book, the libraries will have sold off all their grubby copies of it second-hand, and the rest will have fallen to pieces, gone to dust.

And even if I were one of the great ones, who, in the long run, cares. People walk about the streets and it is all the same to them if the novels of Henry James were never written. They could not easily care less. No one asks us to write. If we stop, who will implore us to go on? The only goodness that will ever come out of it is surely this moment now wondering if vague will do better than faint or faint than vague and what is to follow

putting one word alongside another like matching silks a sort of game. I mean, I can I just say the phrase they could not easily care less has been imported by me into everyday speech. I could not easily care less. I've caught myself so, so perfect. Well, listen, I think we're getting near the end of our slot talking about Elizabeth Taylor, but the good news is we've decided to carry on talking about Elizabeth Taylor, but the good news is we've decided to carry on talking about Elizabeth Taylor, but in order to hear us do that, you'll have to be a subscriber to Locklisted, the podcast we put out on our Patreon.

So Una, Andrew and I are gonna continue our conversation about Elizabeth Taylor, and I can tell you that within that conversation, you will hear the following. You will hear the original jacket copy, which I have here. You will hear some of the very snitty reviews that appeared at the time, which we will trample on the graves of the critics who left them. And you will also hear us discussing such lively topics as who is the Elizabeth Taylor of today, which writer is working today who is most like Elizabeth Taylor, but perhaps more importantly, who is the angel de no jour? Which sacred monsters are there out there? Which we daren't say on this podcast,

but we will say on Locklisted. So you need to sign up to our Patreon if you want to continue listening to the next part of this discussion, which will be available in about a week's time from when you hear this. Right. there we go, due process done. And that's where we must leave it. Thanks to Andrew for letting us share in his account of bumpshis careerism and unfettered ambition, and also for bringing Angel to us. And many thanks to our producer today, Tess Davidson, for acting as our own long suffering editor. And if you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the previous 242 episodes, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you

want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop and do subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Remember if you subscribe at the lot listener level you'll get two extra exclusive podcasts every month including you know the one Andy just talked about, installments of Andy's new project inventory and the chance to join a community of dedicated listeners and readers like ourselves. But before we go, Andrew, and if anyone, imagine this is the first episode of Backlisted you've ever heard. So just in case it is, this is a gag that has been running now for almost 10 years, everyone. We should compile all of Andrew's answers into a little chat book or something.

Anyway, Andrew, if Angel by Elizabeth Taylor were a Gene Kelly film or Gene Kelly film musical, which would it be? Well, this one I've chosen is a film about a young woman who lives in a drab, desultory village but dreams of wealth and romantic escape creates fantasy narratives in which handsome men will come and rescue her and along the way the film pokes fun at genre tropes to the point where it's impossible to tell what is real, what is satire and what is daydream it is the pirate from 1948 starring Jean Kelly and Judy Garland and directed by Vincente Minnelli. And that my friends is why we are still here. Amazing Andrew amazing. Can I just ask off the record because

no one's gonna listen to this bit are are they? Did these get harder or easier? Harder. Because you're winnowing them down. I've never repeated myself. No, I know you have. That's why we all together. You know what? We will do that. I swear to you, we'll pull these together. Andrew, just absolutely incredible.

Is there anything more you would like to say about Angel or about Liz Taylor that we didn't get to the podcast? I'm gonna save it for the Luck Listed episode. Well done. Thank you very much for being here Andrew and we will see you at Halloween. Oh yes, because I am, because I am Mr Halloween. Mr Halloween. Hey, it's Mr Halloween.

Mr Halloween, Mr Halloween. Thank you Halloween. Mr. Halloween. Mr. Halloween. Mr. Halloween. Thank you very much everybody for listening. Join us over on Lock Listed in about a week's time where you can hear some more of this conversation, but if you're not able to do that, we would all like to say thank you for listening to this show. I would like to thank Andrew and Una for just being wonderful partners in this enterprise for the last 10 years. I am so grateful to you both and I have so enjoyed this particular conversation. So if you've never read Elizabeth

Taylor and you want to feel proprietary of her, now's the time. It's never too late. All right, everybody. See you on Locklisted or see you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye. listed or see you next time. Bye bye! Bye bye!