Backlisted - Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Penelope Mortimer's fourth novel Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958) is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Joining John and Andy to discuss Mortimer's fearless and pioneering autobiographical fiction, including this book, Saturday Lunch With The Brownings (1960) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962), plus the latter's subsequent film adaptation, are critic and broadcaster Lucy Scholes and New York Times daily books editor John Williams. Also in this episode John enjoys Brown Baby, the new memoir by Nikesh Shukla; and Andy takes a break with Always A Welcome: The Glove Compartment History Of The Motorway Service Area by David Lawrence.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)06:29 - Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla12:40 - Always A Welcome: The Glove Compartment History Of The Motorway Service Area by David Lawrence19:17 - Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer* 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

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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 card. Other conditions apply. Lucy Scholes. Yes, Andy Miller. When did you last leave your flat? This morning because I went to get my first vaccination.

Hooray! Oh my God, that's amazing. Yeah, pretty exciting, eh? Actually, it genuinely was the most exciting thing I've done in about a year. So yeah, pretty good. And how are you feeling now? Are you feeling any ill effects from the vaccine? I had a slight headache earlier, but I took some paracetamol and I'm soldiering on for you guys.

Thank you, Lucy. You are brilliant. John Williams, where are you calling from today? I'm calling from Brooklyn, New York, where I've been for the past 11 months. Well, mostly, steadily. I also got my first vaccine earlier this week. Woo! Look at us go, the backlisted vaccine team. Well, hang on.

Have any of us had the vaccine? You have. Nikki has. Oh, I know you have, Nick. Me and John haven't. They're letting us. They're playing chicken with us. I'm nearly 57 years old.

Yeah, mate. I'm old. Come on. I mean, for fuck's sake, everybody. Soz. Oh, well. Carpe diem. Yes, exactly.

It's like one of those things you kind of surplus to requirements. That's what you actually realise, you know, not in a protected occupation, Andy. Men that boff on about books. There's so many of them. Middle-aged male podcast hosts. Then there are sparrows. Come on then. Come on. Let's begin. Should we do it? Let's go. Hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast that

gives new life to old books today you find us in the home counties in the late 1950s it's a lovely spot the common especially as the white fog lifts on a september morning revealing the high-powered homes with their high-powered cars and their bronze and gold gardens. There's the peal of church bells, the smell of roasting mutton. And if you could listen closely and hear the faint hum of conversation about what exactly? Domestic help? Children?

Dogs? Golf? All of those things. And sex, of course. Always that. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers

crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller,, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are welcoming back two guests, Lucy Scholes, returning for her fourth visit to Backlisted, and John Williams for his second. Hello, John. Hello, Lucy. Hi, guys. Hi. Lucy Scholes writes about books, film and art for a variety of publications, including the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, NYR Daily and Granter. She is the managing editor of the literary magazine, The Second Shelf, Rare Books and Words by Women,

and hosts Our Shelves, Our Shelves, a podcast from the legendary feminist publishing house Virago. Who thought of the title for that podcast? Not me. I'm very bad at coming up with titles, unfortunately. The team at Virago, it was a team effort, I think. They had a lot of different ideas, but Our Shelves won out. Our Bodies, Our Shelves. Yeah.

She also writes Recover writes recovered a monthly column for the parish review about out of print and forgotten books that shouldn't be she previously appeared on backlisted episode number 14 to discuss the vet's daughter by barbara cummings a classic here classic backlisted tm backlisted number 49 on look at me by anita brookner classic backlisted tm and episode number 88 on human voices by penelope fitzgerald top tier so welcome back lucy thank you very much thank you for having me if backlisted had a rabbit's foot lucy it would be it would be you

no one's ever said anything so nice to me john thank you meanwhile john in new york john in brooklyn new york john will John Williams is the daily books editor and a staff writer at the New York Times, where he has worked since 2011. Before that, he spent several years on the editorial side of book publishing and founded and ran the literary website The Second Pass. John's previous appearance on Backlisted was on episode number 117, on episode number 117, top tier, classic, bumper-backlisted TM on William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, which also had a sort of little annex built on it

about J.D. Salinger as well, didn't it? We always like to have the order. The Salinger room. How did you feel about the episode afterwards? I felt great about it afterward. Yeah, well, I mean, Andy, you had those great musical clips from the Beatles that were part of it. And I thought that really enlivened it. I felt better about those four than about me.

And of course, you too. So that's six. No, that's not true. That was the seventh wheel. We've had such amazingly good feedback for that episode, I think. Well, it was unusual. It was unusual. I mean, even for me, as much as I love that book,

I'm more of an Anita Bruckner, normal backlisted episode kind of reader. But I think since it was an outlier, people probably found it especially interesting. Well, which author could possibly bring back this Avengers endgame of backlisted episodes? Yeah, the book they're here to talk about is Daddy's Gone a-Hunting by Pelin Epi Mortimer, first published in 1958 by Michael Joseph and reissued by the excellent Persephone Books in 2008. But before we get to that, let's do the traditional thing. And I'll ask you, John, what have you been reading this week?

I have been reading this week Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla, former guest. Former guest, Nikesh Shukla. Wonderful writer and known, I think, best probably for being the editor of the groundbreaking anthology, which I have to confess, again, an interest that Unbound published, The Good Immigrant. But Brown Baby is a memoir, and it is a memoir framed really as a kind of a series of letters to his five-year-old daughter, Ganga. I mean, anyone who's read Nikesh's nonfiction before his essays will know that he's I mean he's a wonderfully um strongly

opinion opinionated writer but there's a there's a tenderness in this book it's really a memoir about I would say about two things it is about growing up as an immigrant uh from an immigrant family in this country that is the theme that he he he speaks to most I think most eloquently but it is also specifically a memoir of grief about his mother. And I'm going to read a short passage from the book, which really, really struck me. It's big-hearted, it's funny, it's fiercely intelligent. Let's just posit for a moment that there is a kind of a difference

when people talk about racism in this country. White people tend to think of it as a personal experience and pretty much every person of colour sees it as a structural fact of life. Now, I think this book has done more, I think it does more to explain how it feels to be part of that structural experience than any book I've read recently. But it is also, as I i say it's very funny very moving um and and there's an amazing thing he does which i think um he he loves food and he has

problems with food um and he's very very he's i mean absolutely uh punishingly honest throughout the book but particularly about um about his snacking habits. But there's a little passage I wanted to read because part of the way he deals with his grief is through eating food and eating snacks and it's kind of crappy food that he and his mother used to enjoy, but she was also a wonderful cook. So there's just a little, I think a beautiful passage. cook. So there's just a little, I think, a beautiful passage. His dad has told him that there's some food in the freezer. So he opens the freezer. Hoping for something disgusting in the freezer, I opened it, expecting to be greeted with bags of frozen samosas and chips. These I could work with. These would momentarily take away the pain. This is not long after his mother has died.

The freezer is empty. There is nothing there. A bag of frozen peas frosted over with age. There are two old, clear, plastic takeaway containers. I open one and am met by a familiar smell. It's mum's food. Some bhajas. And another container. This one has sweet corn khaji in it.

The smell is so soothing. I can practically feel the coarseness of a cumin seed between my front two teeth. I don't know what to do. There I am in her kitchen, holding her food, clutching it like a second chance. If I eat her food, that's it. That's the last of it. That's all there is. That's all there will be. No more. Only memory. Only a space where it becomes perfect and not something I tasted. If I want to experience it again, I will spend the rest of my life trying to recreate those tastes on my tongue. There's no way I can recreate her food perfectly. I worry that Indian food to me will become restaurant food, and the one chana masala dish she showed me how to make when I moved out after university,

I could never get it to taste like hers. I could never instinctively recreate the amount of spices, oil, yoghurt, cooking time, each time I tried to recreate food in her own image. It was too thin, wasn't warm enough, wasn't quite there. None of that matters with this Tupperware in my hand, throbbing like the Tesseract, Avengers capsule containing Infinity Stone edition. I defrost her food in the microwave for five minutes before plopping it into a saucepan and heating it up. As the food unfreezes, something happens. Like a swirl, a whisper, a groan, a warmth. The kitchen swells with that smell of mustard seeds and garlic and cumin and turmeric and frying and my mum

it smells like my mum it's like she's there in the kitchen with me it's just lovely it's a lovely lovely lovely book is this a good book if because nikesh has written several books is this a good book to start with? Yeah, I think so. Sounds like it. It's a good memoir about growing up in this country. It's a particularly good memoir about growing up in an immigrant family. He's very, very funny about his relations. But the writing about his mother is really heartbreaking.

There's a lot of very strong political stuff in there as well, but it's not a book that's overburdened by polemic in any way. He manages, he gets that balance, I think, beautifully right. I think Andy is reading something very emotional as well. Yeah, well, you said, like, full said you mentioned the books that are full of food i just want to reassure anyone who's tuned into this episode that yes coming up james mason will be reading the entire menu at the region park zoo cafeteria uh which i know a lot of people have been attracted to this episode about this before it's coming it's coming but yet you have to wait

a little bit longer i'm opening the the backs the the back door of my of my dad's ford anglia we're going in we're heading off north andy and where where are we going and where are we going to stop off i can't you've got to ask that you don't unlock the next level unless you say the right phrase andy what have you been reading this week thanks john well until about six hours ago i was going to talk about another book but i decided to hold it over because i got off the shelf my copy of david lawrence's always a welcome the glove compartment history of the motorway service area and i'm holding it up so that everyone can see it and how beautifully designed it is. It's a beautiful book. And just to say to listeners, we discovered before we started recording this

that John, I and our producer, Nicky, we probably don't have loads of books in common, but always are welcome. The Glove Compartment History of the Motorway Service Area is one of them, of all the books in the world. Also, I'm going to be talking about this book in terms, I'm apologising to you listeners in advance. I looked'm going to be talking about this book in terms i'm apologizing to you listeners in advance i looked this up to see if it was available and not only is it not

available it's very expensive second hand so i apologize in advance when was it published so it's published about 20 years ago john and what format is that a bastard format it's a glove compartment it looks like a car manual format. It's sort of long and thin. And, Nicky, where does your copy live? In the glove compartment. So there you go. It's the right shape for your glove compartment,

and it looks a bit like a manual. As you drive around the motorways of Britain, you tick off what service stations you've been to. Voila. So the book is like a mixture of investigation of the history of the motorway service area, lots of incredible photographs and promotional materials reproduced of motorway service areas

since their inception in the 1950s. And I'll just, just let me read a little bit from the introduction and then I'll, and then I'll say why I got this off the shelf. Motorways are the trunk routes of the road network, writes David Lawrence. Unavoidable conduits along which millions of us travel for work or leisure. Parts of this travel experience are the motorway service areas, those much maligned outposts, once representative of Englishness at its most basic. Since the early 1950s, when the newly motorised masses joined the throngs of private hire coaches travelling from city to country, or just participated in the pastime of going for a drive, the culture of the motorway service area has been linked with that of the lorry driver,

the family saloon car and the seaside. I knew that in the phrase north of Watford Gap, British folklore had incorporated a vision of that territory supposedly beyond civilisation. A look at names proposed for service areas, Newport Pagnol, Farthing Corner, Leicester Forest East, Clackett Lane, suggested a peculiar link between the tarmac ribbon just four decades old and an ancient land. Granada, Fort Smotersheff and the Blue Boar conjure up reminiscences of the road. Or maybe we just remember the weird decor of a stop on the M6.

Most claim the service area to be prosaic, a suburb in the country. But photography, films, literature and pop songs feature the service area for the very reason that it is a place with distinctive or memorable qualities. I was curious about these brief interludes of activity, these oddly schemed spaces and apparent communities the feeling of being somewhere else strange and isolated were they oases of rest and refreshment entertainment venues or just necessary journey breaks which only had to be endured okay so that's it is the thing it says it is it's a book about what the function and design of the motorway service area tells us about how we felt about travel in the 50s, its rise, and how we feel about it now. This was published in 1999, so I suspect things have changed significantly again. I was talking to a friend of mine about whether a visit to a motorway service area, if you weren't traveling en route to somewhere else, was acceptable under current lockdown restrictions.

No, no, no. Hear me out. Because when we, and that reminded, when we went to visit some former neighbours of ours when I was a kid in about 1982, we went for lunch at their new house in Cirencester. And then after lunch, the dad says, well, what should we do now? Why don't we all go to the service station and the kids can play the slots? And that's what we did. I can still remember the look on my mum's face. But that's what we did. I can still remember the look on my mum's face. But that's what we did. And so I was thinking, is that still a thing that people do? Do people go to a service station just to hang out?

And are they allowed to do that at the moment? And so that made me dig into this book again and start thinking, oh, I'd love to go to, you know,, I'm always interested in the suburb in the country. I'm always interested in what Happy Eater would have been like. Happy Eater, where I had my 12th birthday party in 1980. Don't look for it. It's not there anymore. Happy Eater? Happy Eater. john we i chose this because i thought it was so inclusive for somebody from america well it is i mean we have we have a

very romanticized highway culture here as you know and uh and the rest stops are not not a part of that but this this book is such a terrific book also because so this was published like 22 years ago and i mean it is in a sense quite a nostalgic book the design is quite nostalgic the photographs that go through the 50s 60s 70s 80s but actually i remember where i bought this book which was in the ica bookshop in london and um this kind of book i think, is now very evocative of its time. It's a very kind of psychogeography, turn-of-the-century publication. It's really well written, well designed. It is a brilliant book.

Kind of clever with it as well. Tongue-in-cheek, but also quite serious too. We should probably move on to the the topic in hand though shouldn't we nicky let's take the next exit if you will nice very good like it we'll be back in just a sec the book that we're uh that we're here to talk about is daddy's gone a hunting by penel Mortimer. And let's say straight away that Lucy Scholes has been in discussion with Backlisted for some considerable time about bringing

Penelope Mortimer to the podcast. When you say discussion, it's more me messaging you really regularly going, Andy, can we do Penelope Mortimer? Andy, can we do Penelope Mortimer? Are you on a crusade on Penelope mortimer's behalf uh yeah i like to think of myself as uh out there trying to get more people to read her but i think a lot of people have you know already aware of her if they haven't read her already which is quite interesting but you wrote a piece for the new york review of books yeah for the daily online yeah you wrote a piece for the New York Review of Books. Yeah, for the Daily online. Yeah, you wrote a piece for them,

and you wrote the introduction to Dawn's recent republication of her short stories, her terrific short stories, Saturday Lunch with the Brownings. Most of these stories were originally published in the New Yorker. And so we're talking about her novel daddy's gone hunting which was published in 1958 we're talking about her new york short stories from the late 50s and early 60s and her most famous novel uh the pumpkin eater from 1962 is that right what is it about her writing particularly in that period that you find so interesting? I think first and foremost, I was attracted to the writing itself.

I think she has this very clear sort of eagle-eyed way of looking at, I think we can probably talk about this a little bit later, but she seems to be able to sort of pierce to the very heart of the problem very quickly, very succinctly, even when her characters are really struggling to articulate it to the people around them. But her, you know, as an author, as a narrator, there's a sort of, there's a great clarity there. And also, I'm very interested in her life and the sort of figure, I think, you know, she's at this point where women are starting to

struggle with the idea of trying to you know reconcile being working women while also bringing up families the kind of demands of domesticity and she's just that little bit too early I think to have really fully embraced the sort of sexual revolution and have got the most out of it so she's on a sort of cusp and I like that I like people who are sort of slightly between either between genres or between time periods, on the edge, as it were. So to me, she sort of brings a lot of that together. But I think, you know, first and foremost, I think she's a brilliant writer. I think she should be more well known.

And John, we asked you to take part in today's episode because we knew your enthusiasm for The Pumpkin Eater. because we knew your enthusiasm for The Pumpkin Eater. When did you read that and how did you find that book, which is a book about a very particular time and place? Well, this is all serendipitous for me. I'm a very recent but enthusiastic convert to Mortimer because I actually only read The Pumpkin Eater for the first time a couple of months ago. And the way I found it was completely serendipitous because the place that publishes it in the US, it's the only book of hers I think that's in print

here unfortunately. And the publisher here is New York Review of Books Classics, which has an incredible line of books that is very much in keeping with Backlisted's interests. And they had a sort of flash sale earlier this year. And so I went on their website and I was browsing through the options to get a few books. And to be honest, clicking on the Mortimer book and reading the description of it was the first I'd heard of it. And it just sounded up my alley in that sort of Bruckner-esque way, at least in the description. And so it was one of the books I ordered and that I read quickly when it arrived, and I'm not quite sure why I picked it. I often buy books and read them 10, 20 years later. And then Lucy was kind enough to suggest to you guys she had seen, I think, on social media, I wrote something about how much I enjoyed

it. And so she suggested I might join you all. And so I quickly read Daddy's Gone Hunting, which is terrific. And in some ways, I think maybe a better starting point for people with her. It's a little bit more plot driven, but they both have very similar concerns. And then I made the kind of mistake, we're going to talk about some adaptations of watching the film adaptation of The Pumpkin Eater the night that I finished the book, because I was just following my curiosity very quickly. And I think that was both interesting, but also probably not the ideal way to watch the movie, although I liked it. I only read The Pumpkin Eater a few years ago,

because I love the film so much. Everyone who listens to this will probably know my enthusiasm for this particular era of filmmaking. And within that bracket, this is one of the very best films of that era. And let me give you a quick quiz. First, fingers on buzzers, please. What, other than previous episodes of Backlisted, what other than previous episodes of backlisted connects penelope mortimer f scott fitzgerald muriel spark and ray bradbury our buzzers are not broken we're just all sitting here stumped. Is it Pinter? No, it is that Jack Clayton, the film director,

made films of all books by all those authors. Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer, Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, Memento Mori by Muriel Spark, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. He also adapted books or stories by Gogol, John Brain, Henry James, Julian Gloge, the brilliant film and very, very obscure, Our Mother's House, flawed but fascinating,

certainly in relation to The Pumpkin Eater. Oh, that's a brilliant film. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a book about a gang of children with no mother, as opposed to The Pumpkin Eater, a gang of children with a mother who is troubled. And Brianne Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearn, he made that as well. Oh, right.

I like that book. So, Mitch, had you read Penelope Mortimer before we lined this episode up? No. I slightly embarrassingly thought I had read The Pumpkin Eater, but I hadn't. It was actually another novel by Muriel Spark. So, no, I hadn't read it, but I've become mildly obsessed since I started having read these two novels. And I amazingly, Andy, had never seen the film. And I amazingly, Andy, had never seen the film.

I've seen quite a lot of Pinter screenplays and generally liked them, but I had never watched this. And I'm still reeling from it, actually, having finished the book sort of earlier in the week and then watching the film last night. It's just extraordinary. I now want to read all of Penelope Mortimer. And I wish I could go back in time, Lucy, and say, yes, we should do this sooner rather than later. She feels like a bit of a missing link to me.

I mean, a missing link between the Elizabeth Jenkins 50s novelists that Virago have done a great job of and Spark and much darker, much more interesting. I mean, it's not Angela Carter, obviously, quite, but there's definitely something in there that's psychologically so acute. And as you say, that strange thing, the characters are in a fog, but she is so precise in her rendering of inner states. I think she's, so yeah, really interesting.

Let's hear the voice of Penelope Mortimer now. We owe Lucy and Penelope Mortimer's son, Jeremy, a debt of thanks for the audio that we have today of his mother talking. Here she is talking about her father, about whom we'll say something in a moment. It's Sunday morning. I'm about nine years old. We've just got back from church, and my mother is about to dispense china tea and bath olivers to a couple of lady parishioners who, after listening to my father's sermon, look more in need of salve latterly.

My father, still in his cassock, charges into the house looking neither to right nor left. His fine baritone has just blessed us with grace and love and fellowship and he is, as usual, about to blow up he slams his study door my mother and i tense ourselves expectantly prometheus is unbound perhaps my father made me unduly skeptical although i'm a terrible sucker for i mean i find i'm just like him i mean I have short periods of enormous enthusiasm about things which are really the answer to that. But the only difference is that I...

There's that still small voice that says, uh-huh, just like your dad. So in a way, I've never been able to join anything. I've never really been able to commit myself to any sort of cause because I've always felt there I go again you know just like him. I mean I think you get

from that clip the sense of her kind of Lucy her kind of honesty and self knowledge is almost reckless. You know she's not a reckless writer but the extent to which she's willing to just tell you stuff about her her state of mind or her her upbringing is her candor one of the things that you think distinguishes her as a writer yeah i think so i mean i think it's you know it almost seems like a cliche to describe it as kind of raw

honest candid you know those are things that we like to praise writers for but she writes on you know many occasions how she mined her own life for her work um and she's doing something you know she does specify the women she writes about are never her they're never penelope mortimer but everything that's sort of in those novels the kind of reality of the truth of them is reality and truth that she knew firsthand and again i think that's what makes her brilliant this ability to not be writing autobiography but to be speaking so truthfully about things that were happening in her life and the problems that she was facing when we talked about rosemary tonks a few episodes ago um i read out from michael hoffman's essay here's the comparison between tonks and gene reese and it strikes me again again that gene reese is a is a point of comparison for

penelope mortimer don't you think the idea that the i can't make stuff up what i can do is Mortimer don't you think the idea that the I can't make stuff up what I can do is write down what happened to me and once it's down on paper finesse it into yeah what we'll call a novel or a short story you said they're not Penelope Mortimer but they are Penelope Mortimer aren't they oh yeah that's the magic of it right like because then I think you know thinking about time too she says you know these women are not me they're not they're I know. Also, she always writes about women who don't have jobs. She writes about women who are literally just mothers, just wives. And she obviously herself was always writing. You know, she and her husband, John, they published their first novels at the same time.

John Williams, one of the conditions of you taking part in this episode is you would attempt a capsule review, a blurb description in the absence of us having access to one of Daddy's Gone Hunting by Penelope Mortimer. Yeah, this will be less dazzling than the actual back of a book probably, but I'll give it a shot. It's actually a fairly simple story, so it won't be that difficult. And in a way, The Pumpkin Eater is also simple. Daddy's Gone Hunting is from the perspective of a woman named Ruth. She's 37 years old. She has three children, Angela, who is 18 and at university, and two younger boys, Mike and Julian. Her husband Rex is a dentist. action of the novel. Yeah, that's enough about Rex now. We'll get to more about Rex in a bit. The primary action of the novel, such as it is, is that one day, Angela, the college-aged daughter, comes home with a sort of sketchy-looking boyfriend on a Vespa, and Ruth looks askance at this. And soon after, Angela tells Ruth that she's pregnant. And Ruth recalls getting married to Rex very much because she was

pregnant and has deeply mixed feelings about all that ensued, suggests that perhaps Angela should get an abortion and Angela feels the same way. And so the novel is essentially, the plot is them trying to secure this procedure right around the holidays. It might even end up falling on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day without letting anyone else in the family know what's happening. And so there are doctors involved, one of whom thinks this is a scandal and sort of tells Ruth that she's beneath contempt because she would even consider this for her daughter. And then enlisting certain acquaintances and trying to find someone who would be willing to do it. And that's the structure of the book. But really, as in The Pumpkin Eater, what drives it is this internal voice of Ruth thinking about her own marriage, her own dissatisfactions,

the ways in which she and Angela's generations are both similar and different. Her milieu and her theme, her great theme is the dissatisfaction of the mid-century housewife in the way that it blossomed into something much more vocal a few years after she wrote these books. But if that was all it were, it would be a bit polemical. But her psychology of her characters and their complications and their complexities and her prose are really what drive the books and keep you reading, aside from just sort of capturing the social mood. Bask in the skills displayed by John Williams there. That's great. Brilliant.

10 out of 10. Thank you, John. Lucy, the novel takes place in a commuter belt south of England, a place referred to as the Common. Do you want to read us the part of the novel that's the description of the Common? Yes, let me do that. This is on a Sunday, a particular Sunday. And so this is when all the families are there on the Common.

The husbands who often stay in town during the week, they're back and the women are very busy with their families at noon all over the common like a series of elaborate cuckoo clocks the various front doors open and the stockbrokers and dentists company directors and charged accountants directors of advertising agencies and manufacturers of plastic step out onto their bays green grass and reverently breathe the sunday air the literary agent the film director and the playwright their tenure less secure emerge a few minutes later hurriedly and guiltily inspecting the gravel for weeds while nobody is looking high yew hedges roosters and domes of privet sometimes an acre of wild land separate these houses from each other and yet an aerial view would show a solitary figure in each garden the same flash of doggy yellow or hunting pink the

same white flag of newspaper carelessly folded after breakfast and in a little while the same tiny wives popping out like an afterthought into the sun the wives have less resemblance to each other than the men they conform to a certain standard of dress, they run their houses along the same lines, bring their children up in the same way, or prefer tea to coffee, or drive cars, play bridge, own at least one valuable piece of jewellery, and are moderately good-looking. That is all that can be seen, but it isn't all. The relationships between the men are based on an understanding of success. Admiration is general, affection not uncommon. Even pity is known.

The women have no such understanding. Like little icebergs, each keeps a bright and shining face above water. Below the surface, submerged in fathoms of leisure, each keeps her own isolated personality. Some are happy, some poisoned with boredom. Some drink too much and some, below the demarcation line, are slightly crazy. Some love their husbands and some are dying from lack of love. A few have talent as useless to them as a paralysed limb. Their friendships,

appearing frank and sunny, are febrile and short-lived, turning quickly to malice. Combined, their energy could start a revolution, power half of southern England, drive an atomic plant. It is all directed towards the effortless task of living on the common. There are times towards the middle of the school term when the quiet air seems charged ready to spit lightning, when it is dangerous to touch a shrilling telephone and a coffee cup may explode without reason. There is however no sign this. As dressed for Sunday in tight check pants and cashmere sweaters, the wives join their husband in the bronze and gold September gardens. A few, the hosts for the morning, stay where they are. Some take their dogs and set out slowly, couples meeting and greeting

on the winding, spongy paths, sometimes going on together, sometimes parting. Those who live on the periphery of the common get out their carts and bowl like black glinting marbles along the unfenced roads. There is not one heretic, not one commoner who, on this mellow Sunday morning, does not taste the sweet comfort of sherry, the content of a cheese straw. So good. Oh my God. It's such a brilliant passage i mean that line about the energy being yeah she talks about how much energy there is and then she says all applied to the effortless task of living on the common which is such a great sort of play on opposite and yeah but that's that that's the dynamic of the book isn't it it's this sort of you feel it's this negative capability that's there that could

it's just potentially could blow the whole thing sky high what's so brilliant about it i mean god god knows i've read a lot of books about the kind of the hollowness of middle class life and the and the the vapidity of you know of people who you know who all they want to talk about is money and on one level rex is a is a kind of a stock character the husband but i've not read anybody who makes you think she's it's that kind of ability to make you to take a familiar situation and completely fill it with a completely different emotional atmosphere and temperature sort of some amazing writing i think i think i share with andy a kind of um defensiveness about the suburbs and both their interestingness and the interestingness of the people who live there. And I think there's nothing easier in the world than to flatten these

things out. But what she does is, I think even in that passage, Lucy Red, you could tell she's itemizing that all these different people do live there. You just don't necessarily see it all the time. I mean, I only waved this episode through when I discovered Penelope Mortimer had been partly educated at Croydon High School. There it is, the C word, so early in the podcast. Can I share with you the TLS review of this novel? This was written by Walter Keir. Tell me if you think Walter got the book or not.

Do you think Walter's still with you? If he is, sorry, Walter. If he's a keen podcast listener. He's reviewing four books by women. Great start. Yeah, of course. Okay. Would you like to know what the others are?

Who the other authors are? Yeah, I would actually, yeah. Nelia Gardner-White, Janet Agle and Rachel Trickett. Interesting. He says, all are concerned with personal relations and the big bad outside world is most of the time kept very firmly in its place outside. The best of the four is clearly Penelope Mortimer's

Daddy's Gone a-Hunting. Pellucid, taut, poetic and compassionate by terms, it is written with considerable distinction and, blessedly, with the sense of English as a still living language. Hers is the world of expensive commuting to London, of unhappy marriages and weekends and chintz and punch and dogs and ostentatious silly Christmases. The sons are packed off to prep schools where they lie, quote,

strangers in some silent dormitory twitching and snapping in their sleep like small dogs. The grown-ups, capable of every crime and greatness, lie side by side, paralysed by triviality, and the daughter, unmarried, becomes pregnant. And while it is one thing, of course, for Daddy to go hunting, about his daughter's predicament he cannot, armoured in hypocrisy, even be told. So, the unwanted, unloved brat... Spoiler. This is the world...

I'm editing live, this is the world about which Louis McNeice wrote about the war and for which he prophesied extinction. And he now quotes McNeice, none of them can endure, for how could they possibly without the flotsam of private property, Pekingese and polyanthus, the good things which in the end turn to poison and pus. the good things which in the end turn to poison and pus. However, it has obstinately refused to die, or even to recognise that in one sense it was dead from the start. And here it all is, beautifully and even poetically evoked.

The structure may creak a little. The parallel histories of daughter and mother, caught the same way years before, maybe a little contrived. But otherwise, this is a remarkably fine novel. That's such a damning otherwise. He likes it, but does he like it in the wrong places? I feel slightly like he likes the wrong things about it. I think one of the great strengths of it, and maybe people here will disagree, I'd be interested to to know but I think one of the great strengths is the way that she puts the mother and the daughter

stories side by side and the way they resonate with each other and I think this ties in with something that I am always very fascinated about Mortimer's work is that idea that she is just a little bit too old to be part of this younger generation I think in no actually in no other book of hers that she's written is that made as clear as it is in Daddy's Gone a-Hunting that she is of a generation who didn't have or who don't, you know, don't have the access to things that her daughter already does. These women who are not much younger than her because Ruth is only in her late 30s. I mean, she's younger than I am. So I think that's very important in the book. And also something about that review,

obviously, without giving away too many spoilers, it's true that Rex is not, you know, this goes on behind the scenes, the husband is not a part of what's going on, arranging the abortion. But it almost reminds me of something that Andy and I have talked about with the pumpkin eater and the way the film is made. And this idea of whose point of view is more important? Is it the husband's or is it the wife's and from which point of view you're looking and that strikes me as a very like there's a particular way of looking at that that review there it's a i don't i hate sort of saying it you know it's a man writing the review but that's a male point of view i would if you're not going to say it i'm happy to say it it's very much no well we talked about the Pumpkin Eater, and I think Pinter's adaptation and Jack Clayton's adaptation

of The Pumpkin Eater is brilliant. But it is a man's version of the story Penelope Mortimer tells in her own novel. And Lucy, what did you tell me about Pinter when he, I mean, they were friends, Penelope Mortimer and Pinter. What did you tell me about pinter when he i mean they were friends penelope mortimer and pinter what did you tell me that about when pinter handed over his screenplay yeah he he scrawled i'm sorry on the front of it to her so he knew what he was doing you know he knew that it wasn't um you know it might not have been exactly what she wanted and i think she was sort of you know she knew that that's what was going to happen to it and that

was fine but i think also you know i re- that that's what was going to happen to it. And that was fine. But I think also, you know, I rewatched it again last night in preparation for this. And I noticed something I hadn't ever clocked before. I'm sure you guys probably have already. But the very first line in the film is him. It's Jake, the character, saying, you know, you're making my life a bit miserable by being miserable, basically. So from the very word. It's a really interesting interesting frame isn't it right and i hadn't thought i had never clocked that in my previous

you know viewings of it but it was so kind of straight from the book i think where he says um you know is this phase going to last because it's very depressing for me or something like that and yes and um but it does i think establish that i i think in that moment you sort of even though you haven't felt the full weight of it yet, that seems like an unkind thing to say to anyone. I mean, there's a sense that why is this person asking her that in that way? Why would anyone approach your situation as something that's depressing for them if you're not feeling well? Why is he not more concerned about her? And I kind of at least felt that tone

from early on. But I also want to underscore what Lucy was saying about her relationship with Angela being, I think, one of the few but best things that are structurally consistent throughout the book is that there's this, on the one hand, there's an interesting psychological thing she does where Ruth sometimes confuses the baby as being hers. And she talks about how she had a dream in which Angela doesn't exist and the baby is hers. And there's this feeling of what familial attachments do in an overwhelming way and in an identity-blurring way a bit. in an identity-blurring way a bit. And there's also, I thought, a very moving way in which I think all that happens with parents and children of sons and fathers too, is that they look at each other suffering and they never actually describe it to each other.

They just assume that the other one doesn't know what they're going through, but they actually, each of them does completely. Angela would understand her mother feeling tamped down by this existence of hers because Angela already feels that way about life. And I think her mother obviously knows the fear that comes with, at that juncture of your life, having to make a decision like that and having to choose a fork in the road. And late in the book, there's this great moment, I don't think it's a spoiler, where Ruth says to her something about understanding and Angela says, oh, do you?

And Ruth says, I came right up to the edge of telling her that I was pregnant when I got married and I didn't. And you just sort of want them to share more with each other because they could give each other more comfort than they do. That relationship is so subtly done. There's an amazing thing where when Ruth has been in to see the doctor and comes out, she has to prove that she's a bit balmy to get the operation. She comes out and we've been inside Ruth's head and she's overly friendly to Ruth.

She said she hugs her urgently, needing to express delight and make up for thinking as she came back into the room and saw Ruth standing by the window like a child on a rainy day, how insignificant she looks, how stupid. Just those little nuances of the relationship between a mother and a daughter, the daughter looking at her mum and feeling sorry for her, and then being overly friendly. Just beautifully, just brilliantly observed. I feel like Penelope Morton is a writer who, when given the option to, I don't think she's a cruel writer, but she never discards the potential for putting something cruel in

if it feels emotionally correct. Like the bit you just described. Could we hear another clip of Penelope Mortimer talking? This sort of picks up something Lucy was saying about the generation. Penelope Mortimer, Penelope Fletcher, in fact, was born in 1918. So she's 40 years old when this novel is published and she's yet to have her great successes. They're going to come in the 1960s.

This is from a programme Penelope Mortimer recorded where she chose pieces of music. And here's what she has to say about one of them. Having done my best with my education, my parents sent me to London to become a shorthand typist. But my real education, as I'm afraid is the case with many women, came as a bonus with love affairs. I was the sort of girl who,

if I'd gone to bed with a vegetarian and enjoyed it, would have got up determined to eat nothing but lettuce. Fortunately, my bonus was music. Overnight, as it were, I was drenched in sounds I hadn't known existed. My mother was born in 1876, my father in 1880. Until I left home, I'd largely relived their 19th century youth with all its frustrations, sentimentalities, and, I suppose, discoveries. To be released into the 17th and 18th centuries was like being let out to play with seraphim. 17th and 18th centuries was like being let out to play with seraphim. The violin, the oboe, the cello and clarinet, the trumpet and the flute filled me with a kind of giddy joy. The basset horn and the viola da gamba transported me.

Only the human voice still passed me by, which is quite an admission for someone who claims that their life was changed by Bach. Only the human voice passed me by. I think that's just such an incredible sweeping yet specific phrase. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Lucy, you recommended me on the grounds that I would enjoy the stories about Bette Davis which you were quite right you recommended me her second volume of memoirs about time too and I agree with John an abject failure when it was published

so much so that her third volume of memoirs closing time is still unpublished. Yeah, no one will read them. But these were wonderful, wonderful, funny, illuminating, brilliant books written. When was this published? Early 90s, is it?

93. So it's kind of when we were, I was at Harville, you were at Waterstones. Yeah, yeah. One of the things she writes so brilliantly about is the lack of communication between women. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of like the places where those things fall down, like John was saying. And she has a piece of self-analysis at the beginning of About Time Too that I just want to read out because I thought this was an amazing piece of writing. I thought this was an amazing piece of writing. Everyone has a number of alter egos, however shadowy.

I live most of my life as though I were triplets. They shared an adequate but untutored brain, but as far as behaviour went, it was touch and go between the three of them. First, there was my father's daughter, swinging between romantic optimism and bewildered despair, a Puritan, agonisingly shy but intolerant, rebellious but longing for acceptance, pouring it all out in writing which was little more than an elaboration of what had

been poured in. Passionate discontent, wild speculation. Then second there was the young woman my first daughter Madeline adored, who knew the words of all the popular songs, danced like Ginger Rogers, behaved outrageously and was always beautiful. Perhaps she had her origin in my mother's spark of flightiness. That's the nearest approach to frivolity I can find among the glum ranks of my ancestors. True, a few of them had gone to the bad, at least one alcoholic, a couple of defrauders, a suicide. Imitation Ginger might have gone the same way if it hadn't been for her alter ego's cumbersome conscious. The third and possibly most powerful was my mother's daughter. Competent housewife, devoted mother, successful victim.

From now on I shall lump these diverse personae together and call them, however inaccurately, myself. So in a novel like Daddy's Gone a-Hunting, Lucy, is there an extent to which we find her interesting because there's like a debate going on between those the different persona for women she's identified within herself yeah i think absolutely i mean i think that probably comes to the fore more in the pumpkin eater that's also more autobiographical obviously so what i think makes this book so good is mortimer's understanding of the psychology of her character of of Ruth, right? And the way that we're allowed inside Ruth's mind and that we're seeing her go through. And actually, I suppose in one way, maybe that's a cliche, but underneath the sort of quiet exterior, there's a woman who's really wrestling. And we get these, they're not flashbacks exactly, but she sort of inserts conversations that she had in the past with when she's telling her then boyfriend, who then becomes her husband,

that she was pregnant, you know, and we get these into, they're inserted in with the story in the current. And so we work out this very sort of multi-layered idea of a life. And I think that helps us understand that this is a woman who, like these icebergs that she's describing, these, you know, all the women there, they've all got these different layers beneath them, and Ruth is no different to that. And she's torn between these various things that she thinks she should be doing. She doesn't know who she is when she's not a mother, but also motherhood has been so important to her, right?

Before we go on to the James Mason reading, which is why everyone's here, I just thought I would, if you don't mind me reading just a brief section, because I also want to point out a couple of things that we haven't touched on, which is one, her,

we've touched a little bit on her humor, but she's very arch. And I was going to use the word brutal. Andy said cruel. And I think earlier, Lucy said something like precise.

You said you didn't want to say cruel either, but she can be. And as often as the case, cruelty can be funny. I think we can all agree. This is mostly told from the perspective of Ruth, but in terms of technique, she's playful and she hops in and out for brief scenes into other people's perspectives. And she also has this brilliant thing she does where she moves between the third person and the inside of that person's brain in entertaining ways. She does it with an abortion doctor at one point, but she does

it in this scene with Rex, poor Rex, who is here described waking up next to a woman who is not Ruth. And she kind of sets the scene very straightforwardly in third person, Maxine turned away from him, sleeps like a child, et cetera. So then she says, he wanted love. Why shouldn't he have love? She thought he was attractive, generous, even witty. She laughed at his jokes.

He knew they weren't good jokes. So did she, but she laughed at them. Well, that's what I mean by love. I know I'm fat and she knows I'm fat, but she says, goodness, I think you've got a fine figure. Really, I do. I hate those scrawny men like her. That could be more tactfully said, perhaps,

but it's the lie that matters. The love. Oh God, it's the lies one wants. She's a good liar. Oh Rex, I feel perfectly awful. Really, I do. You've got such a sweet wife, but I just feel you need me. That's all. And if I feel anyone needs me, well, I just can't help it. I just can't stop myself. Oh, Rex. Silly little fool. Silly, uncomplicated fool. Tell me I'm young, Maxine. Tell me I'm a success. Tell me everyone loves me. Tell me I'm nice, Maxine. Go on, tell me I'm nice. Pliable, not a bone in her conscience, she does it. Gratitude softens his face as he sleeps. The open mouth slackens into a smile of relief. Ruth, Ruth,

he whimpers, this heavy aging man, wakes with his mouth drawn down at the corners as though he is about to cry. It is grey and cold and Friday. He turns, his stomach falling like a loose heavy sack between himself and Maxine. He hasn't the courage to wake her. He lies looking at the back of her head, uncomforted's it's just it's just so good but what's also so brilliant about that is that she is cruel she is brutal but she's also incredibly compassionate towards her yes so true i'd like to play a a clip now this is from the pumpkin eater in the novel of the pumpkin eater this scene is set in a tea shop um but uh pinter is relocated to a hairdressing salon uh what you're going to hear is anne bancroft who plays the main character

uh being talked at by uh the actress utah joyce they're both they're both next to one another they don't know one another they first met about two minutes previously under the dryers at the hairdressing salon. And what I found really extraordinary watching this a couple of nights ago again is, on the one hand, this is like a scene between Anne Bancroft's character and her own internal monologue as a woman that Lucy was referring to about these different women she's supposed to be, these different roles that she's supposed to play, made flesh by this other woman who's talking at her. But I also thought, wow, this really reminds me of something else. What is it?

And I thought, oh, yeah, I know what it is. This is like Twitter. of something else. What is it? And I thought, oh, yeah, I know what it is. This is like Twitter. This is like, this is like, Eustace Joyce is the voice of Twitter.

It's like, you know, we are, in the future, everyone will be Anne Bancroft for 15 minutes. You've got such wonderful children. Well, they're wonderful, wonderful. I think you're wonderful, too. You must be a lovely woman. You must be such a lovely woman. I think women are the only ones. I think they're the only ones.

I can see your grace and sweetness just sitting there. What does your husband think of you? Does he find you attractive? Hey, I've been thinking. Do you think your husband will find me desirable? Look, I'd show him some tricks. I'd show him some tricks, you want to bet? I'd show him a few things I bet you don't know.

My love. My little darling. Anyone ever clawed your skin off? Hmm? You see these claws? Ever had your skin clawed off? Is your hair dry yet, madam? Have these claws ever had your skin clawed off? Is your hair dry yet, madam?

Are you going to give me two little curls this time? Are you over the ears? You know, one each side. Are you? Are you? Oh, God. If you want to see the look on Anne Bancroft's face at the end of that scene,

simply go to Lucy Sculls' Twitter profile where you've got a freeze frame, haven't you, of Anne Bancroft looking down into the camera with total devastation. I love that shot. That shot's just brilliant. As they say on Twitter, at me next time, Euthy. Yeah. So that's a clip from The Pumpkin Eater.

Pumpkin Eater was filmed in 1964, by which point Penelope mortimer had already published far that was her fifth novel i think i'm right and say is that right lucy one two three four five yeah yeah so i just want to say a bit more about her she was born penelope fletcher daughter of a vicar went to seven schools in seven years when she was 19 she married the Reuters journalist Charles Dimont she then went on to have four daughters uh two of them by two different lovers her first novel appeared in 1947 and she began writing for the New Yorker as well as being in Britain a newspaper agony aunt in 1949 she married John mortimer another daughter and son were born and john and penelope mortimer become a very fashionable london couple daddy's gone hunting

is published in 1958 the pumpkin eater is published in 1962 that's made into a film as a result of that being made into a film and being a great success um john and penelope mortimer write the script for a film called bunny lake is missing and then penelope mortimer went on to write two more novels two volumes of memoirs and an unconventional life it says here of the queen mother and her book about the queen, which was published in 1986, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was considered fairly radical at the time. But goodness knows who asked her to do it. It seems a very peculiar thing.

Her agent, the late Giles Gordon, said of her, all or nearly all writers are difficult. But speaking as one of her former literary agents, Penelope was impossible well listen before we um everyone's hanging on desperately waiting to hear james mason read the entire menu of the regents park zoo cafeteria so before we hear uh james mason john and lucy i'd just like to ask you both this is putting you on the spot slightly, but given we've talked about Penelope Mortar as a product of her place and time, England in the 50s, upper middle class, middle class, upper class. What is it about her work which really continues to speak to us now? Why read her in 2021? Johniams i'm going to give you

that one first very kind of you andy i'm going to answer broadly and maybe boringly i read so much now in this time period i read just a lot throughout the 20th century and my answer is always just that like luc Lucy said, I think near the top of the episode, it's the imaginative prose that brings people to complicated life. And that's all it is. It doesn't really matter what the milieu is. I mean, she's working in a very specific place in time, like anyone would, but her humor is not dated. Her insights into what it means to struggle against social norms is not dated. The norms may have changed a bit, but there's a sense in which these people could have lived in 1720 or could have lived

today. And what you get is a sense of their internal imbalances and the way that they try to figure themselves out and live this life as best they can. And that's such a broad existential thing to say, but that's really what I find myself, what appeals to me in most of the books that I love. And she has it in multitude. Lucy? I sometimes hate the question of why you should read something now. Why is it timely in that way? Because I don't think it needs to be. But what I would say, particularly about Daddy's Gone a Hunting, something we maybe haven't had the chance to talk about, but this is a novel about a mother

trying to procure an abortion for her child. And that is revolutionary for the time it was written. That's not something that a lot of people are writing about. And even though it's not half as complicated to get an abortion today, this is still something that people don of people are writing about. And even though it's not half as complicated to get an abortion today, this is still something that people don't talk about. And particularly the sort of ambivalence that one might have about it, sort of all those other feelings around it, even if you're quite happy going through with it, you know, there's a lot of stuff. And this book does that so brilliantly. Showing our hands slightly, we hope to do an episode on Margaret Drabble's novel the millstone

on backlisted at some point maybe later this year which is another novel about abortion but they're very very different books aren't they uh daddy's gone to hunting and and the millstone because of the generations from which those two particular writers come they're born not just 20 years apart but they're born on either side of, I suppose you'd call it the revolution that comes in with one level, with birth control in the early 1960s. And so while The Millstone is a novel by a young woman about a young woman's predicament, Penelope Mortimer's work

is often about a mature woman's predicament in a more constrained time. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the issues surrounding, you know, trying to be a working mother, trying to be a writer and a mother, these are still things that a lot of women are writing about today. So I think that's another thing that draws me to her. I think anyone who, you know, if you're going to be reading Rachel Cusk on this topic or Deborah Levy, you might as well be reading Penelope Mortimer as well, because she's another brilliant writer who does something similar. Just a brief mea culpa for me, because I'm remembering Andy reading that wrap-up of four novels by the guy earlier in the episode, and here Lucy's looking at us three guys saying, excuse me, the abortion angle. And yes, it is. I didn't mean to erase

the book's sociological aspect, which resonates today for sure. She unpacks it fully, right? The full moral kind of complexity of abortion is really brilliantly represented. And I certainly know people who still have many of, I mean, you can touch these attitudes. These attitudes are not, you're not reading about the Stone Age age these are people who still believe these things have these ambivalences and and it helps you understand where they might be coming from well i think the only way to follow that is at last with james mason uh in a scene from the pumpkin eater one of the greatest scenes in all british cinema of the 1960s, he has asked Anne Bancroft to meet him, she doesn't know why,

at the cafeteria of the Regent's Park Zoo. She's brought her children, she's sent them off to play. It's just the two of them. Here they are. This is nice. I hope you don't find my gig grating a little party. Oh no, not at all. Well, why don't we have some tea? Well, now, we can have brown bread and butter and jam, brown bread and butter and marblets, scones, toasted tea cakes,

lettuce sandwich, cucumber sandwich, cakes, gato pastry, wolf shrapnel, anything you like. It's true, isn't it? What? We can have anything we like. Oh, anything that's on there. Yes, well, what's it going to be? Just tea.

Just tea, is that all, really? Well, tea for two and... tea for two. Wait a minute, what about lemon tea? Look, it's on the menu. All right, lemon tea. Lemon tea for two. You know, I nearly missed that.

Nearly missed it on the menu, I mean. I didn't see it, and then suddenly I looked and there it was. Lemon tea. Ah, lovely. Thank you. Thank you. This is fun, isn't it, like this? Just the two of us. All alone. You're an intelligent woman. Why don't we make a habit't it, like this? Just the two of us, all alone. You're an intelligent woman.

Why don't we make a habit of this, Ed? What do you think? I'd have to ask my husband. Yes, of course, we're married, aren't we? Yes, of course, we're married, aren't we? It's just perfect. The script is perfect, the performances are perfect, and the sound of the animals in the background,

absolutely perfect as well. I mean, I don't think you kind of mind that Pinter pinters up some of those scenes. The Euthyjoice scene, that scene, he definitely, you know, they're big, fat, bleeding slabs of classic Pinter as much as they are Penelope Mortimer. I like the fact she said the film can still be found at unlikely hours on TV, comfortably sandwiched between commercials.

Time for the music box to stop turning. Huge thanks to Lucy and John for reminding us of just how original and vital Penelope Mortimer's fiction remains. To Nicky Birch for gathering the unruly horde of various recordings and weaving them into a single unified theme, and to Unbound for the spin into town on a Vespa. You can download all 133 previous episodes, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website, batlisted.fm.

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