Backlisted - Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

We're back! Barbara Pym's second novel Excellent Women, first published in 1952, is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Joining John and Andy to discuss it are Pym aficionados and literary agents Becky Brown and Norah Perkins from Curtis Brown Heritage. In addition, John has been reading The Mabinogi by Matthew Francis while Andy and guests rave about two novels, Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy and A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)17'37 - The Mabinogi by Matthew Francis21'40 - Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy24'46 - A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau27'23 - Excellent Women by Barbara Pym* 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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Dine-in only until 11am. Hey, you know where I am? You know where I am? You know where I am? I'm in the room at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Where I normally am. So my life hasn't really changed very much. I feel like the question that we should ask is where is our soul right now? Where would it like to be? Because I watched Easy Rider last night

and it was definitely out in the wild, American on an open road. And that's where I'm imagining my soul. Had you seen Easy Rider before or was that a lockdown choice? Well, so I saw it a long time ago and I grew up with basically all the cast members in character of Easy Rider

around me so um but I haven't seen it I'm a child of the west coast of Canada and um there's a yeah it's like the whole you know cast reassembled for that it's like Dennis Hopper is our neighbor kind of thing not really but it felt like it sometimes but um but no I'd read I'd watched it a long time ago and we we watched it last night And can I just say that soundtrack is – Yeah. So I've been listening to The Wait ever since on repeat, just thinking about The Open Road. The Wait – I'm trying to do this from memory.

The Wait, Steppenwolf, right? Steppenwolf, multiple Steppenwolf. Wasn't born to follow by the birds. Wasn't born to follow by the birds. There's a Bob Dylan in there. That's very good, Andy. Very impressive. Yeah.

Hey, I've measured out my life in 60s soundtracks. I like Easy Rider. I love it. What a brilliant example of a film that means one thing if you see it when you're 17 and another when you're older than 17. Yeah, I think it captures both the sort of freedom and the malevolence of the era. It's sort of perfect.

Yeah, very good description. Johnny, are you all right? Yeah, I'm better now. I had a genuine panic there when I realised that there wasn't a there wasn't a whatever that card is called in the zoom but i've i've got found that i've got everything i have everything i need i've got everything you need i've got my notes here i've got my notes i've got numerous books i'm gonna have to slightly muck around the laptop while we

talk because i've got things i might need to refer to but i just just, yeah, I can't find my phone, which is probably a good thing. So that's off. Yeah, I think we've got it all. Well, we've been away for a while, listeners. We can't take any responsibility for what's happened. It wasn't our fault. We just thought we'd been doing it for four years we just wanted a bit of time off and then all this has happened well it was a sabbatical when we started it but now

it's become a furlough yeah we have been meeting regularly i suppose those of you who have listened to the lot listed so we've done which has been which has been uh i have to say increasingly an important thing that sense of connection with with uh people about and talking about things that matter we've been so touched and we've so enjoyed making shows carrying on making shows that we decided that we want to keep on doing it but uh we have to also acknowledge that it's uh quite a lot of work for all of us to to keep making that happen yeah we've had time obviously to reflect on how to it's you know how to do more of them how to keep the standard high and you know more time means more money

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only be available to the people who are patrons and there'll probably be some other stuff too we may even rustle up the uh the old T-shirts and mugs again. And we've got an amazing, amazing listener who's made backlisted bookmarks. So you can expect those featuring in the deal as well. And also, I'm very keen that we offer an opportunity to come. You could come and see or hear or both why not do both uh an episode of bat listed being recording because it's always nice to have extra people to laugh at your jokes and um also we would quite like to um we think we're gonna we're gonna institute some kind of come and have a go if you

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So, yeah. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in a drab square in the back streets of southwest London in the years after the Second World War, standing outside a Victorian church with an ugly stained glass window, waiting for the vicar to arrive so the weekday evensong service can begin. 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, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us today on this reunion episode of

Backlisted are Becky Brown and Nora Perkins. Hello, Becky and Nora. Hello. Hello. And Becky and Nora have been friends for seven years and colleagues for three. I want to ask, are those sentences running concurrently? I'm reading out what we asked.

We asked our guests for an intro and this is what they sent over. They sent over this. I have to say, we're back and our guests are already raising the bar for all future guests with this pithy introduction. Together, Becky and Nora are joint custodians of the Curtis Brown Heritage List of Literary Estates and authors that they look after, therefore, include Iris Murdoch, Stella Gibbons, Douglas Adams,

Elizabeth Bowen, Gerald and Lawrence Durrell. And Margot. And Margot. She doesn't make the blurb. She doesn't make the blurb. She didn't make the blurb. Margot, who in the television series, do you know this fact? In the television series, The Durrells,

Margot is played by Tim Waterstone's daughter. Daisy. Yeah, there you go. You did know. We did know. Margaret Kennedy and Laurie Lee. And in their spare time, Becky edits anthologies with the next one, Classic Cat Stories, coming out from Macmillan later this year.

And Nora. She's so embarrassing. Nora. No, like Nora. Like, you know on Blurbs listeners people go he was once a chicken wrangler and now divides his time between Naples and London

Nora divides her spare time between the garden and the very slow restoration of a Victorian printing press very slow when you say garden Nora you're not just standing out there screaming um you're you're you're actually tending plants and and

growing things these days I'm digging isolation potatoes but yeah and the book that uh Becky and Nora have chosen to discuss is one that many backlisted listeners were delighted to learn we were going to cover. And that is Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, first published in 1952 by Jonathan Cape and reissued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2009. And I must tell you this story. Our friend of the show and former guest, Andrew Mayle, his favourite author, is Barbara Pym. And when he spotted that we were we were going to be doing an episode about barbara pym he said he wanted to know which book you're doing who are

the guests and i sent him a dm that said two guests both women you probably won't know either but they're in charge of all the estates of dead authors at curtis brown and he replied saying are you sure it's two women you won't know, they're in charge of all the estates of dead authors, isn't actually a line from a Barbara Pym novel. So thank you for joining us. I wonder whether we could talk a little bit about, before I ask John what he's been reading.

So you look after literary estates, and for Curtis Brown, some extremely famous authors, some lesser-known authors. Becky, you were responsible, were you not, for getting the entire backlist of Patrick Hamilton back in print simultaneously for the first time ever. Is that right? Yes, although under the auspices of AM Heath, a different literary agency.

But yes, I was. It's still, and I probably shouldn't say it, two years into a different career in a different agency, but still the greatest achievement of my adult life. Amazing. No, it's amazing. Lots of backlisted listeners will understand this because most backlisted listeners like Patrick Hamilton.

That's the first thing. But the second is there was an era not so long ago where you could find three or four of the better known ones. And then the rest were just lost unless you had thousands of pounds at your disposal. So what were the challenges of getting those back into the shops? into the shops um well I mean getting hold of Monday Morning which as you probably know was Hamilton's first novel was literally impossible I mean some of the kind of mid-career stuff that weren't the big books we could pick up on Abe for quite a lot of money but it felt worth the investment but Monday Morning you know you were talking over a thousand quid for a copy and in the end we put out a sort of online appeal um I thought you meant the right you don't mean the rights you mean no I mean a physical I mean

yeah welcome to our world Andy Miller getting hold of the physical books is a nightmare that's that is incredible I hadn't realized that they would be so elusive um yeah and and it was impossible and but there was this this wonderful man sadly, his name I can't remember, but if he listens to this, thank you. So many people owe you a great deal. He had two copies, and he posted this one. Amazing. And we scanned it, and yeah, it was extraordinary.

Of Monday morning. An extraordinary act of altruism. Of Monday morning. Yeah, Monday morning. And were there any others? I've got a very old, battered paperback of Craven House, which I think you read recently, Andy. Did I see i see that somewhere yeah i thought it was fantastic it's a great book isn't it yeah um really considering he was about 12 when he wrote it it's like really

really it's got all the talents there it's just straight hamilton was never 12 he's one of those people who kind of was surely born into the world as sort of dissipated 50 year old. So you've gathered all the rights together. Did you then go round pitching to publishers saying there's an opportunity here to bring the whole backlist under one imprint or what? under one imprint or what? Well, no, you know, actually, this is one of the great moments where the industry acts in kind of, you know, comes together and does something that doesn't particularly help them in order to restore a legacy because the books were all over the place. Some were at Penguin, some were with Hachette, some were at Random House

and basically several imprints sort of nobly gave up their rights so that they could all be at Little Brown. So it was a significant diplomatic process, but everyone acted incredibly nobly. And very rare. Very rare. I was going to say that's an amazing story. That's brilliant. What a heartening story to kick off this new series with. You know what? That's because all To kick off this new series with. You know what? That's because all publishers love Patrick Hamilton. Bookish types like Patrick Hamilton, right?

And Nora, so we have covered quite a few of your authors on Backlisted over the years now, I think. Who have we done episodes on that you look after? Absolutely. And it's interesting because, you know, we're talking about people doing wonderful things for old books. I think Backlisted is one of the great voices for these books. And we are so thrilled whenever you do one of ours because it means we can sort of shout about it

and, you know, you get the word out even more. You're one of the great voices in that for us. Lovely to be useful, as I say say just want to be of use i think it's inspiring you know you bring them to life again um with backlisted and i think that's what so many of these people need so we've we've had um quite a few actually on the list and um so elizabeth jenkins tortoise and the hare one of our faves one of my favorite favorite novels and and again there's an author who you know know, there's more to do, I think. Yeah.

There's loads, right? There's only about three or four in print. Yeah. So Harriet, I think it's Persephone, and the tortoise and the hare is Virago. DMC, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I just read Honey, which is an incredible book about a kind of quite, it's not Becky Sharp, but that kind of sort of slightly more sort of voluptuous version of that, the reverse physical form,

but the same kind of strange impact on somebody's life. And oh, there's loads. And she was a wonderful landscape writer too. So she's an extraordinary writer. So Elizabeth Jenkins. Elizabeth Jenkins. James Hilton's Lost Horizon. Absolutely. He's a writer that we're sort of working away at finding a way to do another film or television something with because it's such a relevant story for right now

and it feels it's that sort of when the blue dot disappears from your Google Maps, you know, where are you? And the world of Shangri-La and that story is incredible. So we loved that conversation. And I'll be really quick, but Colin McKinney's absolute beginners you look after Colin McKinney listen listen I'll tell you what I'll tell you what I'll set up Andy Miller Publishing if you give me all the rights to Colin McKinney's books because that's the place they've always really wanted to go and Andy Miller Publishing I know I know I know well you know we can talk afterwards that's fine um. And who else? There's another author, isn't there? There is another author. And I think

this is where this, you know, backlist is so welcome for us is Angus Wilson. And you, I think, talked about Hemlock and After. We did. And Angus, yeah, Angus Wilson is one of those writers that every time at a party, I say, the people say, who do you represent? And I rattle off people. that every time at a party, I say, the people say, who do you represent? And I rattle off people. And I always say Angus Wilson because it's almost inevitable

that that's the one that they jump on and say, Angus Wilson. Oh my God, Angus Wilson. You know, why is he not in print? Where is Angus Wilson? And we have tried and we have tried and it's just about getting the right publisher and the right person who loves those books.

And so hearing you guys talk about it was a help, a wonderful help. I mean, one of our very, I mean, one of the favourite episodes. Without recapping it, I've been banging on about Angus Wilson, as lots of people do for years. But, I mean, such a remarkable and important writer, I think. Yeah. Anyway, brilliant. Okay, so Becky and Nora, you're here because you are great readers

and enthusiasts, because you love Barbara Pym. You're here because you work in a part of the industry, which is fascinating to the listeners, of course. And also you're here because you were just really nice about Backlisted. Yeah, with no agenda. With no agenda. Your gorgeous badges as well which we which i love and i've got i was trying to find it so i could wear it for the podcast which says make backlist front list again there you go okay so before we move on to barbara pym john what you've been reading this week i've been reading a wonderful book of poetry.

When you say poetry, it's really an adaptation in verse of the Mabinogai, which are the first four branches of the Welsh sort of myth, sort of, what would you call it, not a kitty, not a Philip Larkin myth kitty, but it's the great national epic of Welsh mythology. And it is full of giants and wizards and spectral hounds and magic cauldrons. It's a kind of a coming of age of a sequence of young men. And it's a bit of a ragbag. If you read the famous translation in the 19th century was by an English woman called Charlotte Guest. And most of us who read any of it will probably have read it in versions in Penguin Classics or retold most famously by Alan Garner.

One of the stories was retold in the Owl Service. So there is a kind of's a poet as well as a novelist, and he's a professor in creative writing at Aberystwyth. He's done something I think that is, works here in a way that I hadn't expected it to work. It's at once an amazing collection of stories, poised between this world and Unland, the kind of the Celtic world of the imagination but also full of precise and an exact poetic detail William Boyd says he moves one of his books of the year it's published in 2017 by Faber he said it was Ted Hughes meets Game of Thrones meets Gerald Manley Hopkins which is pretty damn good so it's it's just amazing how having a modern poet,

I suppose like Simon Armitage and Gawain or Ted Hughes and Beowulf, it's just taking this incredible material and sort of disciplining it into verse. It makes it fresh, makes it extraordinary and vivid. I'm just going to read you a very short bit, and then I think if anybody likes myths legends stories i mean is the kind of the dna the deep sort of marrow of storytelling in these things but also lights beautifully turned uh powerful surprising fizzing kind of metaphor and verse then i go back to to it. It's been an incredibly useful book.

I've read it over a period of weeks. You know, we've all been talking about how difficult it is to get knuckled down under these strange circumstances. This book has been a constant companion, but I couldn't recommend it more highly. So the famous story from the end of the fourth branch is about Blodwed, who is the Gwydion, the magician, the seer, the storyteller, has made a woman for Hlu, a bride out of flowers. So I'll just read you a little bit of this, just to give you some of the sense of it. Meadow sweet for sweetness, with its smell of stale candy. Shriveled cream flowers they strew between bedsheets. Broom flowers for silken gaudiness, oak catkins for the gentle tickling of the wind.

I, who had sculpted mushrooms, woven seaweed, and whisked a fleet from feathers and spray, could conjure what he needed from these fripperies. The air was golden with her pollen as I heaped her on the bed in frilly armfuls till a million petals fused into a woman. That will do for now. Oh, that was good.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very, very, very fine book. And yeah, and I think it'll last. I think it's, I think as far as these, these amazing stories go, this will be this, I mean, he's not Welsh. And it's, you know, he doesn't make any claims for this to be, you know, learned at his mother's knee. But he's a very, very fine poet. And he's really, I think, got to the, as I say, got to the marrow of the

stories. So that's the Mabinogi by Matthew Francis, published by Faber. Andyy what have you been reading well i've been reading i was going to talk about one book but then i realized that our guest the book that i'd read had been recommended to me by one of our guests and then i realized that our guests when i met them way back in January, had recommended four books to me. And I wanted to say to them that although I was supposed to be working, I ended up reading all four of the books that you recommended me. And they were all fantastic in different ways. So your professional expertise has been tested and withstood the test. So instead of me talking about them, backlisted listeners, go and get a pen and a piece of paper or pause the podcast while you go and do that. So because you're going to ask Becky and Nora, because they are top flight agents,

to pitch two of these books to me now. I'm giving them 30 seconds to pitch. No pressure. 30 seconds to pitch to you, the backlisted listeners, who are even more discerning than Johnny and me. So who would like to start? Becky, why don't you please tell the listeners why they should read Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy?

Okay, right. It's genuinely the best historical novel that came out of the 20th century and that is a hill that I will die on. Yeah, I'm on Twitter. DM me, I will fight you. This is how I pitch. This is something, if you don't mind me saying, it's a bit of a scorched earth policy for your friend and colleague

to follow that. But sure, sure sure go ahead the so it's the best i like the 20th century it's bold it's bold and it's clear and it's memorable i'm used to it yeah nora really is used to it um it is it is set in the regency era it is about an mp called miles lufton who has two his own self, the son of a rector, and a kind of rakish MP. And it is essentially about how that rakish MP conspires to stop him from ever falling in love, finding happiness, finding that home in the country where he can just be himself. Okay, so listeners, that's Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy. And just to add to that, we will be doing an episode in the next couple of months on another novel by Margaret Kennedy called The Constant Nymph. So we will be, you've got lots of time to read both of those ahead of that episode. Thank you very much, Becky.

Nora. Excellent work. Excellent work. Nora, turning to you. Why should you have 30 seconds to tell the listeners why they should read A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankel? Go. Absolutely. And Becky has completely stolen all the thunder in the world. But it's amazing, Becky. So Wreath for the Enemy. first thing to say is that all of Pamela's novels are out of print right now. And so sort of Becky and I both had the same experience reading A Wreath for the Enemy was to picking up a novel. I'm sure we've all done this sort of run your fingers in the secondhand bookshop over the sort of green spines of VMC novels from the 1980s, those lovely

green spines and sort of pick them out at random because you know that they'll be good. And I sat and read A Wreath for the Enemy on a train. And I missed my stop in London, because I was trying desperately to finish it, because I'd read it in a giant gulp. It was possibly the most satisfying book I've read in years, possibly, and was absolutely just revelatory. I think we're describing it as the love child between I Capture the Castle and Tender is the Night. And that's sort of extraordinary, rich, warm, sun-baked. Stop, stop. Oh, sorry.

You've done it. You've done it. Yeah, you've done it. I will vouch for that as well. It's inconceivable that anyone who has read and loved I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which everyone has and does, could read A Wreath for the Enemy and not get exactly the same feeling. Except there's a difference, which is Pamela Frankow's ear for dialogue

is just fantastic, right? There's one brilliantly turned phrase after another. So, okay, so that was great. Thank you very much. That's A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankow. I haven't read it. That's great. I'm writing it down.

I'm scribbling it down. I'm scribbling both of them down now. We'll send you a copy, John. Beautiful. Okay, and the other two books that Becky and Nora recommended to me, which I absolutely love, but we haven't got time to talk about today, but which I might talk about on a future episode. So if you still got your pens and your pieces of paper, listeners, you can safely write these down. One was Figures in a

Landscape by Barry England, which was shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize in the 1960s, I think I'm right in saying. And the other one was a really gripping and horrible novel called A Helping Hand by Celia Dale. And Celia Dale, actually, I think, might be a fantastic subject for a future episode of this podcast. Let's pick this up again shortly. Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. Three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast. Only $6 at A&W's in Ontario.

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bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment, and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness end July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. Okay, let's talk about Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

Barbara Pym's second novel and as we've already said, lots of listeners love Barbara Pym and rightly so. In fact, we've been asked repeatedly when we would be covering barbara pym on backlisted so it feels like a really perfect perfect fit to come back with very regularly becky when did you first read a book by barbara pym or when do you first remember hearing about barbara pym, I read my first Barbara Pym when I was 15. And at that time, I, well, I used to go into charity shops and buy books with funny titles, because I don't know, I don't know why. But yeah, I used to go into charity shops and buy books with funny titles. And so of course, I bought Crampton Hodnett, which I can offer no other explanation. And I loved it.

I loved it so much. And I grew up in a very religious family, but the type that Barbara Pym would have called Low with a capital L. In fact, beyond that, evangelicals, which I don't think were actually even on Barbara Pym's radar. And so the kind of Anglo-Catholic establishment was utterly fascinating to me, and I sort of fell in love from that point.

But although I didn't pick up another one for 10 years, I think I probably thought she was a one-hit wonder. How could you follow Crampton Hodnett? Well, precisely. But then Crampton Hodnett, that's her. Is that the first? That was an early novel that wasn't published when she wrote it. I believe so.

I think that's one of the ones that was unearthed after she found actual fame. Was that not published posthumously? Yes, it might have been. But also her first published novel, had you stumbled across that, has a pretty extraordinary title hasn't it oh some tame gazelle uh no gazelle i i hadn't you know i don't think i would have picked that up actually it didn't appeal in quite the same way it's a weird title it is a weird title but she's she's good at titles i think no fond return of love is one of um is one of my faves. They're all poems, mostly.

Yeah. And so, Nora, when did you read Barbara Pym, or when did you read Excellent Women, the book we're talking about today? Well, like most of my favourite books, it was recommended by Becky. So I don't read anything these days that Becky hasn't recommended to me. Did Becky tell you that it was the funniest novel written in the 20th century by any chance? My dear John Mitchinson, that's called Comfort Farm. Excellent Women was my first Barbara Pym.

And I don't really know how I lived without Barbara Pym. I feel like there's a sort of moment where the world shifts and I can see the world more clearly now that I've read it. And what does Barbara Pym. I feel like there's a sort of moment where the world shifts and I can see the world more clearly now that I've read it. And what does Barbara Pym do that continues to strike a chord with people, given that the subjects of the books, even in the era in which they were published, probably felt quite old-fashioned? Famously old-fashioned, yeah. probably felt quite old-fashioned. Famously old-fashioned, yeah.

What is it about her writing or her characters or her themes that means she continues to be discovered and rediscovered? My feeling is that they don't, in a funny way, they don't, some of the setting feels old-fashioned, but none of the sentiment does. None of the themes, nothing in it feels like I'm reading about old fashioned people and old fashioned thoughts. They feel absolutely immediate to me. And, and it's funny, I have a copy of some tame gazelle. It's somebody else's old copy. And it's full of dog ears and, you know, underlinings and scribbles in the margins.

And, and the amazing feeling is, is that where that previous reader had done that is exactly where I would have done that. And there's something like, it's so penetratingly and devastatingly reminding me of my own, you know, myself and my, my private shames of my like secret triumphs and my little secret jokes. And it's just me on a page. And I think it's amazing. She, she, she connects connects us I think to some more empathetic version of ourselves and that's that's that's immediate that doesn't feel dated at all. Becky what do you think? I think for me I feel like she writes between the moments that other novelists notice. It's lovely yeah. You know she'll sort of ignore the big scene that's sort of the

grief or the sorrow and she'll focus on the kind of bit that another novelist's pen would just slide on over to the next scene and it's those quiet moments where you're alone with yourself that I think are timeless. Yeah we've got a few clips from Barbara Pym's appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1977 from Barbara Pym's appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1977. And if listeners have never heard this, the whole thing is available to listen to on the iPlayer. Utterly glorious.

And it's probably one of my two or three favourite episodes of Desert Island Discs. I have actually listened to it several times because I just enjoy the delight that both participants are taking in the process. So here's a clip of Roy Plumley talking to Barbara Pym about music. Is music important in your life, Miss Pym? Well, I wouldn't call myself a musical person and yet I do like music, certain kinds of music. Have you any skill? Do you play the piano? I did learn to play the piano when I was at school,

but I've long since given that up, and I'm afraid I haven't any skill at all now. I might sing occasionally. Do you? I mean, have you ever sung in public? I've only sung in things like the Bach Choir at Oxford, and I like singing about the house or on the island. I'm sure I'd sing quite a lot of things. Have you a wide repertoire? Quite wide, because I'm very fond of so-called pop songs or what used to be pop songs when I was younger.

That's why I haven't chosen to take any with me, because I feel I could sing them myself. Oh, she's so great. It's just brilliant, isn't it? John, had you read Excellent Women before? Had you read Pym before? No, I hadn't. All I'd read before this was No Fond Return of Love.

That was the one Pym novel I'd read ages and ages and ages ago and I'd always thought I must read more. And I also really loved this, her very private eye, her diaries, which I just think it's sort of comfort reading of the highest quality. It's exactly what you say, Becky. She has this way of somehow writing about the ordinary, but making it feel much more that it's just the tip of the iceberg. It's like with this novel you know there's a whole other thing that's happening the movement of the novel she

doesn't address directly it's just mildred's kind of passage through the book is nothing particularly dramatic happens you know she doesn't get proposed to she doesn't elope it's so subtly done and so beautifully done and so funny. I mean, one of the very funniest books I think I've read for years. It's a joy. I think I said to you, Andy, when we first came back after Christmas, I mean, just the pleasure of reading Pym is, I mean, I can't think of a writer that I've enjoyed just looking forward to at the end of the day of settling down with as much as this.

And again, I'm looking at all of those 11 novels and wanting to go and read all of them, which is kind of the true test, I think. Let's set the book up for people who haven't read it. I've got the jacket copy here from a first edition. So it's actually dust. It's on the inside flap of the dust jacket of the British first edition of Excellent Women, which was published by Cape in 1952 and was Barbara Pym's second novel.

Her first novel had done quite well, I think it's fair to say. So here it is. This is what this book is about. Delightfully amusing, said the Manchester Guardian of some tame gazelle, and Barbara Pym's new novel invites the same compliment. The scene is London, and the story is told by Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman's daughter, one of those excellent women who tend to get involved in other people's lives and who's... Okay, there's a misprint. It says who's benevolence, not benevolence.

But that's so correct. That's so perfect. That's good. Benevolence. I like it. And whose benevolence is sometimes exploited by their friends. Mildred is a friend of the bachelor vicar and his sister and takes an active part in the life of the parish. The arrival of the Napiers, a married couple of about her own age who take a flat in the same house, enlarges her circle of acquaintances and leads to unforeseen developments. New para. Mildred is extremely observant with a rare sense of character and naturally humorous whether she is speaking of other excellent women or the emotional or social agitations in the parish. Further afield she has

a chance to observe the behaviour of anthropologists quite as keenly as they observe that of primitive communities. Looking back the gratified reader of this exquisite comedy remembers a great variety of characters all true to life and seen through mildred's sharp but kindly eye i mean that's quite good that's a damn fine blurb i'd say yeah i think the problem with pym and i i i ask our guests this as people who who've proved to us that they know how to pitch is there there an issue with Barbara Pym, Becky and Nora that this is the second time that I've read Excellent Women? And coming back to it, I was thinking now, Excellent Women, which one, what's that one about?

I had a memory of the feel of it and that I had enjoyed it tremendously as I have done with every barbara pym novel that i've read but in plot terms there's not very much to uh glom onto no and i i'm not going to challenge anybody to do it but i think if you were asked to recount the plot of excellent women you would probably have quite a tough time doing it. Things happen, but the developments aren't driven by events, are they, so much? They're more driven by responses to other people. Exactly like real life is what they are, right? There's no reveal, no plot twist. They proceed like life. I mean, that's the most extraordinary thing about them.

I think pitching them is hard, though. You know, you end up doing this sort of Jane Austen meets something. I don't know, Becky, who that would be meeting, but I think that's how you pitch them, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think as well, they often tend to start and finish in entirely arbitrary places. Obviously, with excellent women, you know, you do have the kind of arrival of the napers as this kind of, you know, sort of disruptive event. But actually, you know, almost all Barbara Pym's novels end just when they want to. You know, there is no there is kind of no sense of satisfaction of the realisation of anything. You've just been dropped into a life and then plucked out of it again.

You know, that's not what she's interested in. Certainly in Excellent Women, there's a sense that a series of events have happened. I mean, in a way, it's one of the melancholy elements of the book. Where is our heroine at the end? She's not really any further forward. She's had a tour around some of the slightly bleaker spots of her own life and been deposited slightly to one side rather than further on. And if you were going to say what the book is actually about, it's sort of about exactly that

feeling of being to one side, isn't it? That Mildred Lathbury is, not much happens to her insofar as there's anything that happens in this novel it happens to the napiers they they're you know they separate and then i'm not going to say but spoiler alert but they do separate and she is continually looking looking at other people things happening in other people's lives and then going back to her her own flat, cooking her chop, lying in bed, looking at the collections of poetry and cookery books and sort of comforting herself with the fact that she has an ordered life and she is somebody, as they say right at the beginning of the book,

she's somebody who looks after other people. Mildred is such a help to her father, people used to say, after my mother died. But the tension, I suppose, in the book is that she's at various points that almost comes to her head. And you think she's going to cut loose and start screaming at people, but she doesn't. Although I guess, I mean, in a way, and I don't want, you know, spoiler alert, I won't spoil it, but we are left at a turning point

at the end of this book. It feels to me there's a question that gets asked and I can't spoil it because, but in a way she is asking, or the reader's being asked, what next? Is she sort of going to be a very busy person? I think the last line is, well, I'm going to be a very busy person in you know i think the last

line is well i'm going to be i'll find it but it's you know i'm going to be a very um i'm going to have what helena called a full life after all one of the things that barbara pym does marvelously as her as her aficionados will know is characters from one novel pop up, pass by into your frame of vision in other novels. So she's got her little cast of characters who might recur. And again, without giving away what happens, we do find out what happens to Mildred. Mildred we do. But we don't find out until two novels later.

Exactly. But if you only read Excellent Women, it's left suggesting that something might happen, right? Something might happen. This really struck me when I was rereading. But this is what I feel this book is about. And it's in dialogue. It's Allegra Grey and Mildred having their slightly edgy, uneasy tea together.

And Allegra Gray says, What do women do if they don't marry? She mused as if she had no idea what it could be, having been married once herself and about to marry again. And Mildred replies, oh, they stay at home with an aged parent and do the flowers, or they used to, but now perhaps they have jobs and careers and live in bed-sitting rooms or hostels, and then of course they become indispensable in the parish and some of them even go into religious communities that that's her that's her world and her i think one of the the

great things about her as a novelist which lifts her out of the parochial and into the universal is she's able to take that relatively limited palette and invest it with so much colour and so much life and take something that could be slightly twee or slightly whimsical and make it feel fully psychologically realised. Becky, could you read us, you've chosen something to read, could you tell us what what part of excellent women you're gonna share with us yes well so I feel almost bad now because the part I've chosen it is probably the the least serious passage in the book and for me it's just comedy

in its purest form and I think that you know one of the wonderful things about Barbara Pym is that she is extraordinarily versatile. You know, she can go right into someone's heart and find a grain of terrible, like, misery that they can never hope to dislodge. And she can also just make you snort. And, you know, this really does make me snort, although I will attempt not to. So this happens when Mildred is taken by the anthropologist Everard Bone to meet his mother, who is an eccentric. My husband shot them in India and Africa, said Mrs. Bone, but however many you shoot, there still seem to be more. Oh yes, it would be a terrible thing if they became extinct, I said. I suppose they keep the rarer animals in game reserves now. It's not the animals so much as the birds, said Mrs. Bone fiercely. You will hardly believe this, Miss, but I was sitting in the window this

afternoon and as it was a fine day I had it open at the bottom, then I felt something drop into my lap. And you know what it was? She turned and peered at me intently. I said I had no idea. Unpleasantness, she said almost triumphantly, so that I was reminded of William Caldicott then lowering her voice she explained from a bird you see it had done something when I was actually sitting in my own drawing room how annoying I said feeling mesmerized and unable even to laugh and that's not the worst she went on rummaging in a small desk which stood open and seemed to be full of old newspapers read this she handed She handed me a cutting, headed, Owl Bites Woman, from which I read that an owl had flown in through a cottage window one evening and bitten a woman on the chin. And this, she went on,

handing me another cutting, which told how a swan had knocked a girl off her bicycle. What do you think of that? Oh, I suppose they were just accidents, I said. Accidents? Even Miss Jessop agrees that they are rather more than accidents. Don't you, Miss Jessop? So what's brilliant is that it's Miss Jessop. I love Miss Jessop. And then when she talks to Everard later about Miss Jessop,

he just says, he doesn't know who she is. Shall I read you to the end of the extract? Go, go, go. Miss Jessop made a quavering sound, which might have been yes or no, but it was not allowed to develop into speech, for Mrs. Bone broke in by telling Everard that Miss Jessop wouldn't want any sherry. The dominion of the birds, she went on, I very much fear it may come to that. Everard looked at me a little anxiously, but I managed to keep up the conversation until Mrs Bone declared that it was dinner time. You'd best be going home now, Miss Jessop, she said. We're going to have our dinner. Miss Jessop stood up and put on her gloves. Then, with a little nod which seemed to include all of us, she went quietly out of the room.

I eat as many birds as possible, said Mrs Bone when we were sitting down to a roast chicken. I have them sent from Harrods or Fortnnams and sometimes i go and look at them in the cold meats department they do them up very prettily with aspic jelly and decorations at least we can eat our enemies ever our dear which was that tribe in africa which were cannibals the thing is as well right the thing with barbara pym which is totally fascinating i've been reading Hazel Holt's biography of Barbara Pym and the reason why Barbara Pym wrote about the sorts of people that she wrote about

the Church of England, women without partners, anthropologists is because those were the things in her world I hadn't really appreciated that she's doing a fascinating, authorial double bluff, that she's basing something on her experience,

but then she's writing about it in such a way to make you wonder whether it is her experience. But then when you find out, you realise, oh, wait a minute, of course, that's why it's got the verisimilitude. That's why there are anthropologists in all these books. Yes, because that's where she worked. That's what she knew about, right? The Africa Society.

But also she does things that I think are really clever. I love this passage. There are times when Mildred is definitely Barbara Pym, and I love this, that she'd washed up, and she does this all the time. She goes to her flat and she kind of, as I say, it's almost a sort of self-medication. After I'd washed up, I went gratefully to my bed and lay under the eiderdown with a hot water bottle. I had finished my library book and thought how odd it was that although I had the great novelists and poets well represented on my shelves, none of their works seemed to attract me.

It would be a good opportunity to read some of the things I was always meaning to read, like In Memoriam or The Brothers Karamazov, but in the end, I was reduced to reading the serial in the parish magazine and pondering over the illustrations, one of which showed a square-jawed young clergyman in conversation with a pretty young woman, as it might be Julian and Mrs Grey, except that Julian wasn't square-jawed. Brilliant. The caption under the picture said, I'm sure Mrs Goodrich didn't mean to hurt your feelings

about the jumble sale. I finished the episode with a feeling of dissatisfaction. There was some just cause or impediment which prevented the clergyman from marrying the girl, some mysterious reason why Mrs Goodrich should have snubbed her at the jumble sale, but we should have to wait until next month're always interested here on writers' routines. And this is Barbara Pym talking to Roy Plumley again about her how she put a novel

together. How disciplined are you as a writer do you work regular hours or so many pages a day? I'm not pleased with myself. Do you keep notebooks? Yes, I've always kept notebooks. I find that very useful. things that have happened to me, almost like a diary, or things that I would like to put into a novel, or even things that I remember, you know, from the past. So we're all feeding you situations and information.

Yes, yes, one never knows when something may come in useful. You don't realise that you're doing it at the time. It's what did Wordsworth say? Emotion recollected in tranquillity. It's more like that, I think. I could just listen to that all day over and over again. I love that so much. It's a brilliant episode. She's the perfect guest.

Now, Nora, according to Hazel Holt, in her 20s, Barbara P. Now, Nora, according to Hazel Holt, in her 20s, Barbara Pym read, quote, at least two novels a day. Absolutely extraordinary. I'm going to repeat that for people. At least two novels a day. I mean, we like to think we have to read professionally. I can't.

Two novels a day. I mean, in your jobs, like Nora, how many pages can you read a day? Well, I mean, Andy, I thought you read two novels a day. I mean, you know, frankly. Well, you do a good job looking like it. I'm very envious. That's the trick. We actually read, I think,

sometimes I think I read less now than I ever did before working as an agent, um, or in publishing generally, I think just trying to find the time to read is almost impossible, but, um, how many pages? A lot. I think we get really good at, at sort of absorbing whole pages at once, like a sort of giant vacuum cleaner of words. But I think between us, we've been trying to cover as many books on our list as possible. I think between us, we represent about, what, nearly 3,000 books. And so we're trying, yeah, but we're trying to read them, at least enough of them, so that we can actually talk about them.

And so I don't think we're quite at Barbara Pym levels. And Becky, do you think one of the things I think is really interesting about Barbara Pym is all that reading. Barbara Pym, you know, extremely clever, went to Oxford and not afraid to demonstrate that in her fiction. Right. They are very elusive, allusive uh these books aren't they you know there's there's all sorts of references to english literature of all periods going on yeah i think um i don't know if you've read her a dictionary of national biography entry it's one of the most melancholy oh it's such a sad it's such a sad way to write a life, I thought. But it talks about how when Jonathan Cape dropped her, it was because she had just been basically in the boot circulating kind of library readership.

And, you know, they didn't see any value in her beyond that. But when you read it, you know, when you read Excellent Women and the sheer quantity of reference there is quite extraordinary. I mean, there's a quotation every five pages. I had to look all of them up, every single one. And she just had this compendious knowledge of English literature. And it wasn't really noticed, I think, a lot of the time. I made a list of the poetry in Excellent Women.

And this is not remotely comprehensive because I sort of... Of course you did. I didn't actually sort of do it properly. But Matthew Arnold, Keats, Pope, John Donne, The Earl of Rochester, which is my favourite one in there. There's an incredible play around which of Rochester's poems are we talking about and which ones are we not talking about? And it turns out that they're sort of civilised ones that the elderly ladies can read without blushing. And I think the books are so full of poetry and in a very private eye, you know, which Arnold poem, you know, made me think the most of this and which Larkin poem, of course, that comes later, makes me think about these books. And they're just suffused with poetry and with literature.

When Excellent Women was published, amongst the people who reviewed it, which is this pretty good for a second novel, John Betjeman reviewed it, one of her favorite poets and um he said this and i don't think this is a backhanded compliment i think writers recognize this as a as a straight compliment he said barbara pym is a splendidly humorous writer she knows her limitations and stays within them now you could read that as being slightly edgy. I don't at all. I think that is one of the steely brilliances of Barbara Pym as a writer. It's a genius, really.

She invents her own frame of reference and she stays within it. So all those things I was talking about a moment ago, these weird little ingredients that shouldn't fit together, she makes fit together through voice and personality and discipline, right? Proper discipline as a writer. None of her novels are longer than 250 pages or something like that. And I think they might indeed get shorter as they go on. John, could you tell us, just remind us, what happens to Barbara Pym after she has published half a dozen novels or so? She hits a wall, doesn't she? It's the pivotal moment in her career, isn't it? That she has up till now had decent reviews.

As you said, the books have been selling steadily but i guess this is at the end of the 50s beginning of the 60s and it's she is suddenly seen to be hopelessly outmoded old-fashioned and um and and and you know there's no place for on a modern publisher's list yeah so it's the early 1960s and she submits a novel to her publisher, Jonathan Cape, and there has been just been a change of regime at Cape. And the new publisher is a gentleman called Tom Mashler. And her seventh novel, An Unsuitable Attachment, is rejected. Now, I thought you might like to hear this. In the early 90s, the BBC made a rather quirky little drama called Miss Pym's Day Out. the day out in question was her going to attend the Booker Prize ceremony in 1977,

for which her novel Quartet in Autumn had been shortlisted. And you're going to hear two voices. The first is the voice of Patricia Routledge playing Barbara Pym. And the second voice is that of the actual Tom Mashler, interviewed about why he and his colleagues had rejected an unsuitable attachment. It was an awful and humiliating sensation to have my novels rejected for 14 years. But a friend had warned me of the dreadful things that were happening

at Jonathan Cape when Tom Mashler joined the firm. What happened is the book came in and we had two reports by two very eminent readers. One really disliked the book intensely and the other quite didn't like it at all either and in fact recommended rejection. I was the literary advisor. The two eminent people who were against the book had read all her previous books and just said, this is absolutely hopeless. In fact, the only thing I could be blamed for, I think, is I hadn't actually read Barbara Pym before that at all. I regret the fact that I didn't read the book at the time.

I mean, I should have insisted, but the evidence against it from these two eminent critics, both of whom wrote such bad reports, plus the chairman, was so strong that, frankly, it didn't occur to me to read it. Now, for the sake of argument, let's say a publisher said, I'm rejecting this because my readers tell me it's not up to snuff. And also I've never read anything by her and I'm not terribly interested in doing so. How would you feel? Take it to another publisher.

In a heartbeat. No heartbeat. No, I mean, it's passionless, isn't it? But, you know, busy guy. Trust his readers. But we do trust our readers. You know, we surround ourselves with people who we trust and who we trust know our minds about things. And, you know, you've got to trust them. But it's soulless, really.

This is Barbara. A year of violence, death and blows. The bad winter up to the end of February without a break. Death of Hugh Gateskill. Two burglaries. My typewriter stolen. My novel rejected by Cape. Dr. Beeching's plan for sweeping away of railways and stations.

Reading the naked lunch. The Bishop of Woolwich's book, to god my novel rejected by heath tropic of cancer by henry miller 60 000 copies sold on first day of publication daniel george's stroke and that's it i mean it's just like it's yeah it was she was she had a very very bad year but as as it was it was a long time before Macmillan finally came back and and and saved her 1977 um one of the things I found very interesting was that Philip Larkin her great friend Philip Larkin when an unsuitable attachment was indeed published in the late 70s early 80s Philip Larkin wrote the introduction to it and he says a very interesting thing about an unsuitable attachment, why I'm Barbara Pym being rejected, which he says, he basically says,

I can sort of see that this wasn't as good as Barbara's previous novels. But then he says, even if this is the case, it is more surprising there was not someone at Cape prepared to invite Barbara Pym to lunch and say that while they had enjoyed publishing her books in the past and hoped to continue to do so in the future, this particular one needed revision if it was to realise its potential value. It was the blank rejection, the implication that all she had previously written stood for nothing that hurt and reading about barbara pym i think that there's a a trap one can fall into which is to think there's the early novels and then there's this period in the wilderness there's this purgatorio she has to go through. And then she ascends to this glory in the 1970s and everyone thinks she's marvellous.

And I'm sure that was marvellous for her, but it reminds me of what happened to Jean Rees. That Jean Rees is lost for 25 years. People think she's dead. When she publishes What Wide Sargasso see and it wins the wh smith award she's interviewed and said well this must be marvelous miseries and she says famously it has come too late yeah and i sort of the the sadness of that is barbara pym gets some kind of happy ending to her career, but reading how awful it must have been to live for nearly 15 years writing and being rejected and rejected and rejected, that's really

tough. We talk about it with, you know, with literary estates, authors come in and out of fashion and there's a moment where suddenly there's a moment to reissue something and then it goes away again. But when that author is still alive and they're in that cyclical kind of out of favor, out of fashion, it's absolutely devastating for people. I think Barbara Cummins was another one who had a kind of late, late blossoming, you know, reissue. I think it was Carmen Kalil who brought her back and reminded everybody that she existed and she existed and she enjoyed that too she was there for that but it's it is a wilderness for for writers in some ways it's kind of very apt that it happened to Barbara Pym there's a line um there's a line again it's the final line of of her dictionary of national biography entry that says she will be remembered not for any impact on the society of her time,

but for the luminous works which she contributed to literature. And it's kind of, you know, for someone who was so religious and who lived for a much greater thereafter, it just seems extraordinarily wonderful that that's what she got. You know, it is afterwards, these things kind of mature and grow and improve with time. Famously, what led to her renaissance in the 1970s was that she appeared in, she was chosen by both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil in the TLS,

in a big TLS piece about the greatest underrated writers of the 20th century. This afternoon, I looked up that piece in the tls to see who else was featured in it and i thought it was tremendously good fun yeah but actually reading it it's that worst kind of high table okay they interviewed 30 people 28 of whom are men two of them are women. So it already feels quiet. And it's all really, you know, it's as unsavoury a selection of snobbery grudges and scores being settled as you could wish to see, right? So the most, and in fact, it was overrated and underrated. Underrated is Barbara Pym.

Overrated was E.M. Forster. underrated underrated is barbara pym overrated was em forster chosen by anthony pole anthony burgess and angus wilson as the most overrated author in the 20th century right would you like to would you like to hear a couple more of these because they are pretty they are pretty sour uh the poet dj enright chose three overrated authors of the 20th century, and he selected Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs and Pam Ayres. You know, 28 men and two women. That's quite blokey, I would say. And also David Hockney's most overrated book was the bible well and uh bob dylan's most overrated and underrated book was the bible uh and nabokov they interviewed

nabokov for this nabokov describes the passionate H.G. Wells as an unjustly ignored masterpiece. Amazing. H.G. Wells isn't one of yours, is he, Becky and Nora? He's out of copyright. He's out of copyright. Out of copyright. Well, get on it. Anthony Pohl chose the most underrated author of the 20th century

was Jocelyn Brooke. Yes. Hard agree. I really agree. Interesting another one. The other thing to say reading Pym's biography is I like to think she might have enjoyed Backlisted a little because she was obsessed with Denton Welch. She did love Denton Welch. Who we featured on the podcast some time ago, his book Maiden Voyage. And it was Maiden Voyage that she read first. And she would go on. She was obsessed with that.

And she was obsessed with A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Pohl. Yes, she loved Pohl as well. And she would go on pilgrimages to the places that Welch and Pole had written about in their books. But then I was thinking about, I don't know what you think about this, guys, but actually Denton Welch as a miniaturist, I would never have made this connection without knowing it, but actually the relationship between Denton Welch's writing and Barbara Pym pym's writing i found that quite illuminating in terms of barbara pym i think they are both have a very similar preoccupation with the small in in every sense you know it is it's the world in micro although i mean that really is the only similarity

yeah but there's a kind of um wel is very interested in the particular rather than the universal and his way into it is through aesthetic detail. Pym is similarly, the small perfect stitch is what Barbara Pym is about, but she has a different palette to work from. It's not perfectly realised a lacquer cabinet or whatever. It's a dusty hymnal. Nora, I don't know, did you have a bit of excellent women to share with us? Absolutely. And I wonder if this is sort of speaks to the small and well-observed possibly. It's not particularly funny, but we'll try. And so to give you some context, it's about lists of things.

And so Mildred is about to write a difficult letter to Rocky Napier because Rocky's gone, again, spoilers, but Rocky's disappeared off with a lot of Helena's furniture when he moves out of the marital house. So, and Mildred, who's always doing good deeds and helping people out, especially men, offers to write a letter to Rocky to get back some of Helena's furniture. And so she sits down, it's a very difficult letter to write, and so she sits down to write the letter. A list of furniture is not a good beginning to a letter, though I dare say a clever person with a fantastic turn of mind could transform even a laundry list

into a poem. I sat for a long time at my desk, unable to put pen to paper, idly turning the pages of a notebook in which I kept accounts and made shopping lists. How fascinating they would have been had they been medieval shopping lists, I thought. But perhaps there was matter for poetry in them, with their many uncertainties and question marks. Rations, green veg, soap flakes, stamps. Seemed reasonable enough and easily explained, but why red ribbon? What could I have wanted red ribbon for? Some daring idea for re- retrimming an old hat, perhaps. If so, it had been stillborn, for I knew that I had never bought any,

and that it was unlikely anyway that I should wear a hat trimmed with red ribbon. As for egg poacher, that was an unfulfilled dream or ambition to buy one of those utensils that produce a neat, artificial-looking poached egg, but I had never bought it, and it seemed likely that on the rare occasions when I had a fresh egg to poach i should continue to delve for it in the bubbling water where the white separated from the yolk and waved about like a sea anemone and it goes on that's great it's great so beautiful so johnny we need to wrap up we do we do um we should say i mean i was just the last thing I was just going to say on the remarkable last three years.

She died in 1980. She had that three years. She got shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well, which reminds me a little bit of the Penelope Fitzgerald story, you know, the kind of long years of neglect and then kind of suddenly coming to prominence and being, you know, the literary establishment being somewhat snooty and sniffy about it.

But yes, I'm going to give the final word to Miss Pym. I wish I had a recording of this. There is one that exists, but it's not available to us. But I'm just going to read it. She gave a talk on the radio in 1978 called Finding a Voice. talk on the radio in 1978 called Finding a Voice and this is how it ended. One of my favourite quiz games on television was one in which panellists were asked to guess the authorship of certain passages and then to discuss various features of the author in question. There were no prizes for guessing, no moving belt of desirable objects passing before their eyes, just the pleasure of recognising the unmistakable voice of Henry James or Graham Greene or whoever it might be.

I think that's the kind of immortality most authors would want, to feel that their work would be immediately recognisable as having been written by them and by nobody else. But of course, it's a lot to ask for. Lovely. That's lovely. Perfect. Perfect. So, as Barbara might say, sorry to intrude, but we really must go.

I want to thank Becky and Nora for helping us price the odds and ends of the Pym Jumble sale. Nikki Birch for once again deftly arranging the stops and the newly restored backlisted pipe organ to Unbound for dropping their promising looking envelope on the brass collection plate. And just a reminder, if you've enjoyed this episode, you can support us on Patreon for the cost of a soya latte. Go to patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Thank you. Yeah, a soya latte, go to patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Thank you. Yeah, a soya latte or, you know, I know what our listeners are like, John,

and, you know, put back that six pack of Tizer that you've got in your shopping cart. Give us that money. We like Tizer too, and we need to raise funds to buy lattes and Tizer and food. Indeed, a dandelion and burdock if you if you're so minded you can download all 108 episodes of batlisted plus follow links clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm and you can contact us on twitter and via facebook

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