Backlisted - Locklisted: Children's Books Special, Part One

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

This Locklisted special on children's books was recorded in August 2020 and was previously available exclusively to supporters of our Patreon at patreon.com/backlisted. Join us on a journey through time and space as John, Andy and producer Nicky discuss the books they loved as children. The discussion covers the importance of libraries, the Proustian aroma of parquet flooring, the challenges of the display spinner, the significance of the Puffin Club, the utility of book tokens and the joys of early audio books. The books mentioned make for an eclectic mix and include Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner, The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars, the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams, I-Spy books, the epic sweep of Sweet Valley High, Great Northern by Arthur Ransome, The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, the audiobook of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (as read by Glenda Jackson), the audiobook of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, comics such as Mandy and Look-in, the sublime Peanuts collections by Charles M. Schulz and last but definitely not least, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke. We so enjoyed making this episode that we recorded a sequel on our favourite teenage reading, which will be shared here soon. Backlisted is entirely funded by the contributions of our Patreons - many thanks to them! If you would like to hear all past episodes of Locklisted and support Backlisted in the process, please sign up as a Locklistener or Master Storyteller at patreon.com/backlisted.* 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 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 yamx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted and Happy New Year. Hello and welcome to Backlisted and Happy New Year. We enjoyed recording the Dark is Rising episode, which was our Christmas special, as most of you will know. We enjoyed recording that so much. We enjoyed the response that we got from listeners so much. We thought we would start the year with something different. We thought we'd share with you an episode of Locklisted that we recorded uh in the summer this year about about children's books about children's books in particular that andy me and nikki had

loved when we were young it is obviously something we made originally for our patrons but it's something that we think that um that all of you will enjoy if you do enjoy it and uh you want more of this we record a lot listed every second week so that's two lot lists a month and they are available to all the people who support us as patrons on patreon at the lock listed level so if you want to hear more of it there's more there's more there and i think about now 20 episodes already that we recorded over the past year and more to come this year. Oh, I'd like to add that we're back in a week's time with an episode on The Bloater, a novel called The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks. So we'll be back as normal next Monday with the first Batlisted of 2021.

OK, see you. Enjoy the show. Without further ado, here it is, Bat Listed on children's reading. Well, thanks very much to Nick Riddle for sending us that arrangement of the Batlisted theme music, which brought to mind a tea dance or the string quartet from the Lady Killers or Johann Sebastian Bach, which I think is why Nick has entitled it Bach-listed. Good afternoon, children. Oh dear, that's sinister.

Sorry. So, hello everybody. Thanks for tuning in to Locklisted. We thought we would break from our already short tradition with Locklisted today, and we talk a bit about books from when we were kids, or books that our children read, or just the experience of reading in childhood.

Because have we ever done a... John, have we done a children's book on backlisted the closest we got was there were two probably randall jorrell randall jorrell and the animal family and there are some fools who consider red shift by alan garner to be a book for the young and indeed the movement verona by jane gardham but those are all books which without meaning to i have to say but they're all books that you can see i mean a long Way from Verona by Jane Gardham. But those are all books which, without meaning to, I have to say, but they're all books that you can see. I mean, A Long Way from Verona is now published as an adult book. Redshift is an incredibly challenging read, whatever age you are. The Moomins have all sorts of adult melancholy and felt schmerts in them.

But in terms of the actual, you know, joy, I suppose joy is one word for it. But the joy, were you enthusiastic readers as children? Nick, were you? Yeah, I was. Yeah, I was. I think I was probably more of an enthusiastic reader then than I am now. If I'm honest, I was, you know, I absolutely loved going to the bookshop and the library. And I was always very disappointed by my local library because it never changed.

It only ever had the same books in it. You know what I mean? You go there and you hope there'll be a whole new stack of books. But did your parents take you to the library? Was the library part of your family life when you were growing up? I was very lucky enough to live about three minutes' walk from a very small but lovely library. And so, yeah, that was very much a part of my life.

I can even visualise the books that were on the library, you know, that are there and were ones, and the racks, you know, the lovely spinning racks. I love to spin a rack. You don't get spinning racks in bookshops these days, do you? No, the Waterstones, we banned them in the 1990s. Yeah, that is actually John's. John is partially responsible for that.

Well, good work johnny good work get those spinners out of this shop why why um because they were publisher branding and what we felt was that books should be on shelves in alphabetical order so people could find them not they they cluttered they got dusty they were inadequate at displaying books nikki what it was i can tell you anyone who was alive at that point is waterstones was intent on making the b format novel synonymous with waterstones rather than picador when customers would come in they would say where's your picador spinner because picador pioneered the format of B-format literary fiction. They did.

And in the 80s, that became the big market. And it's true. The B-format paperback was what drove Waterstones. The front shot, the front tables in Waterstones, that was the sort of the tipping point. And I think we've said this before on the podcast, there was an amazing group of younger writers, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Bruce Chatwin, being published. But there was also publishers like Picador publishing them in B format, sort of slightly bigger paperback format, which people seem to associate with literary fiction and literary nonfiction. And Picador were the best. I mean, amazing, amazing. And Waterstones wanted a piece

of that pie. We didn't want them in Picador spinners. We wanted them on tables piled high. Good to have that confirmed. I remember in my library, in the spinner, I remember the library had June. It always seemed to have Frank Herbert's June. It was like the kind of classic library book that I remember. And me was going, oh, I don't know if I want to read that. A bit scary.

But yeah, that was the kind of book. I was very lucky. We lived very close to two libraries sort of equidistant from two libraries and my parents didn't buy many books but they were very enthusiastic library users so we used to go to the library every weekend right and the thing about libraries when we were growing up is you know libraries have become for for economical political reasons often de facto social hubs but in the 60s and 70s, they weren't those things. They were big rooms full of books in which you were expected to be quiet.

And that was fine. And I can really remember, I associate specifically the smell of the polish they used on parquet floors with literariness and books and the enthusiasm for reading because that's what I grew up in a place called near Croydon called Coulsdon there was one library in the in Coulsdon and just up the hill in old Coulsdon they both used that polish on their parquet floors and they hadn't covered up their parquet floors they were still old-fashioned municipal buildings they weren't being made more user-friendly the idea was you went there and you met them on the terms they wanted to set yeah no primary colors right no no no beanbags how did you know what to choose if you were saying your parents didn't buy a lot of books so did you

did you have Andy Miller a lot of books in your house when you were growing up well we didn't I mean the thing is I always I love asking people what I'm going to ask you John in a minute what was on your what were on your parents bookshelves because my parents didn't believe in buying lots of books and I think the notion of buying lots of books, funnily enough, we were just talking about Waterstones, is probably a thing that starts in the 1980s. I think you're right. And reading, they love reading, they would borrow books all the time. But the idea of book shops as destination places and cultivating your own library, that was just that that was not on their in their cultural bracket, I suppose you would say. So the books that we had, mum had subscribed to a monthly book club that sent you

a novel once a month in the 60s. And we had like a glass fronted bookshelf full of those things, which is sort of Neville Shute and Elizabeth G with gouge and none of the none of the books had um dust jackets because mum and dad had thrown them away immediately the book arrived because they were that was the thing they were there to keep the dust off and then you threw them away and then on the main the main books were kept on a shelving unit that dad made in the garage i can remember him making it in about 1975 and it was a he got a design out of a magazine and my dad was quite a skilled carpenter so it had it doubled as a kind of a shelf on which the glassware lived and there was a drinks cabinet built into it and there was

also on those bookshelves were things like an aa guide to something or other and Alistair Cook's America. And everybody's parents seem to have Alistair Cook's America when I was growing up, John. Do you think it was about people kept hold of the sort of big nonfiction things and the fiction was much more than you got from the library? Yes. Also, my parents were the types of people for whom books were there. John, I'm sure, will back me up here in terms of why people buy books. And my parents were very much in the category of they preferred to have books that were useful rather than books that inspired reflection, whether they were fiction or nonfiction. That's not to say they weren't people who reflected about things. They did. fiction that's not to that's not to say they weren't people who reflected about things they they did but what i'm trying to say is we didn't have iris murdoch lying around because they didn't

read that kind of fiction they weren't interested in that a book had a function they were much more comfortable books as functional things whereas john i think grew up in an environment i mean your parents were teachers were they john they were both teachers well yeah my my dad my dad was a teacher who became a priest vicar and my mum was a teacher and my mum the thing that's most i most remember is my mum did an open university degree in the like late 60s so and it was incredible it lasted five years and she was doing it was a humanities degree so the bookshelves we had a lot of books relatively to most of my friends at home i mean mean, your friends would come over and go, oh, God, you've got loads of books in your hand. And there was a lot of theology, quite a lot of radical theology, Honest to God by John Robinson and sort of lots of Marxist texts.

My dad was a very keen left-wing priest and lots of history. He was very keen on archaeology. We were a member of one of those book clubs when I was probably about 10. He'd got a book called by Geoffrey Ash called In Search of Arthur's Britain, and he decided we were going to go and search sort of tin tangle at various kind of archaeological sites. I also really remember him once being outraged

that they'd sent him a free copy, hardback copy of The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene. I don't want this he said you know i don't you know he's if he read he did read fiction but he would read it on holiday and he would read it in paperback and he didn't want to own it and it was like this is just a i don't want to have this book in my house it says nothing it's almost like it says nothing about me but also it's presumptuous right it's presumptuous of them to put your dad in a bracket where he becomes the sort of person who would want to read

the new novel by Graham Greene. My mum was having to read classics. So we got an amazing collection of classics, you know, all of the English 19th century classics that you would imagine, but not a lot of contemporary fiction. So, yeah, it was a strange collection, as I say, of sort of history, archaeology, radical theology, and 19th century fiction.

And did you read any of it, John? Well, I used to do this thing. I kind of felt I needed to educate myself. I don't know. So I would pick really hard-looking books off the shelf and sort of get bored quite quickly reading them. I remember one book called The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, which is a kind of a handbook of Latin American radical

theology. But sometimes I'd pick up things and I'd be really amazed. So there was one book, Achilles' Armour, by a classical writer called Peter Green, who it turns out was a great friend of William Golding's, I discovered in reading John Kerry's autobiography. And I suppose, great friend of William Golding's, I discovered in reading John Kerry's autobiography. And I suppose, like you, Andy, that the library was an important thing for me. But the most important thing, I would say the influence on my reading, when my parents decided at some point in 1972, or something like that, they were going to give me 5p a week pocket money, I saved up that 5p every week. I mean, you said at the beginning about reading, reading was everything. It was the thing I loved most about my childhood. I mean, I loved a lot of stuff,

but I loved reading more than anything else. I think, you know, without getting too personal about it, but my parents' marriage was not great. And there was a lot of anger and tension in the home and reading was what I did to escape. And it's funny, as you get older, I sometimes think that it's still what I do. You know, it's still my happy place. Can I add to that? Reading was an escape for me as well. But also, I am going to say, I've said this in the year of reading dangerously,

but it was quite important to me to say it again. Reading was, and probably still is, the only thing at which I have excelled. I was really shit hot at reading from the age of about four. That must have made you pretty good in other areas. Let's be honest. It does have a knock on effect. No, no, no. But the point is, that was the thing that it was the only thing I was good at at school, right? But listen to you now, how good you are explaining and how good you are, you know, and talking, that's only come from reading.

I've learned nothing since the age of four. I've learned no other skills. So I report this as a statement of fact, because it is a fact, that I'd read pretty much everything in the school library at primary school and the head teacher rang up mum and dad and said can you start sending andrew in with his own books because we've run out of faith we've run out of stuff for him to read you know we were talking about books our parents had i just want to add one on on john i was john so interesting to what about john was saying that he had the books that came in from different sources and nikki you were saying about books that you tried to read the best book that mum and dad owned was a book called the People's Almanac by David Wolochinski and early dad had been given by an American business contact and it was like those guys went on to do the book of lists which were big bestsellers in the 1980s

but their first book in the 70s was this book, The People's Almanac. And The People's Almanac was basically like the internet before the internet. It was just like this massive thousand-page book of just stuff. It probably influenced QI, Jonny. It's just this book full of interesting material, right? And so there's a thing I wrote here that i say it was like the wikipedia of its day a 1500 page repository of whatever information its compilers found colorful revelatory or entertaining the useful and the useless side by side it was with the people's almanac that i first scared myself stupid with the doomsday prophecies of nostradamus studied the inconsistencies in the

warren report into the assassination of President Kennedy, and at the age of 12, convinced myself that I had somehow contracted syphilis. What a book. True, all factually accurate description of that. So, Nikki, were there books like, were there many books in your house when you were growing up? Well, my mum is a big reader and now quite a big audio book listener, I'd say. She's probably transferred onto that. So she's always read, but we didn't have a very big house. We had a flat.

And so there wasn't very much stuff. It wasn't a house with lots of stuff. It was a house with less stuff. And I think, you know, you were saying about how we didn't collect books. And I wondered if it was of its time, like you didn't own a TV, you rented a TV. You rented a TV. You know, and I wonder if that's sort of part of the whole thing, if you rented a telephone.

Nothing, ownership of stuff. It was definitely not in our house anyway. That was in the sort of 70s and 80s. It was like less stuff. But that's not to say, she loves classics. And so there was lots of E.M. Forster's and things like that around and and Austin. And, you know, so of the books that were there and War and Peace, obviously everybody's house had to have War and Peace. Not mine, mate.

OK, there was that War and Peace. But and she would be the one who would kind of push me to read and do cultural things, perhaps more than I was inclined. So she would be the sort of the pusher of high quality literature. Sometimes I accepted it and sometimes I was inclined. So she would be the pusher of high-quality literature. Sometimes I accepted it and sometimes I didn't. But that's very interesting. So you did have, is that true with you, John, as well? So you had a parent who was plugged into the canon, if you like, and had a literary sensibility.

Yeah, I don't know that my mum did really because i mean she she did she was an english english and drama teacher so she she was incredibly supportive we were always making nature tables and doing stuff and going on and you know improving walks but i was so you know my my my five p's basically puffins little early puffins of which i've got loads of them, were 25p. So, you know, you could say in the early 70s, you could, yeah, you could save up. So why don't we just say what we're all holding up to show one another? What have you got there, Johnny? I've got the 1972 paperback, The Book of Goblins,

edited by Alan Garner. Yeah. And a 1968, Giant Under the Snow by John Gordon. Oh, John Gordon. Yes. Great. Nookie, what have you got? I've got, this must have been my mum's.

Oh no, here we go. 1971, Emil and the Detectives. Oh yes. Eric Asner. Yeah. And it's got my brother's name in it, Jerry. There we go in the front. So that was our book as a kid.

I'm holding up The 18th Emergency by Betsy Byers, which I talked about on Batlisted before. I think I talk about it on the long way from Verona episodes but I can I just show you so this book is really significant for three reasons the first is I just loved it it was my favorite when I was being bullied at school this is a book about being bullied and I found it very helpful uh and funny and I first came into contact with it because it was read out on Jackanory and Jackanory was a major, Jackanory was a bigger influence on me probably than my parents were in terms of what I read or the school library was.

You know, Jackanory was great. Can you also see what's in the front here? I'm just going to show them. Can you see that? Oh, I love that. Oh, he has your own sticker. Yes. We had exactly the same ones, Andy.

It's a Puffing Club book plate. And you can see from the library of Andrew Miller, there it is written on there. Were either of you in the Puffing Club? Yes. I can't remember if I was. I remember the Puffing Club, but I don't remember if I was there. I mean, I was absolutely, I mean, you know, I was born in 63.

So I was seven in 1970. And that's the thing. I didn't need my mum's recommendations because, I mean, at school libraries, reading aloud at school was a big thing. So the John Gordon I was read aloud at school, Jackanory. My mum was reading all the time, so my mum just was happy that I was reading. And I think, you know, Puffin Post and the Puffin Annuals.

What did the Puffin Club do did they send you books or how did it work? They sent you you had a magazine called the Puffin Post and then you'd get a Puffin Annual at the end of the year and you got a badge. And back then that was enough. The brilliance of it was Nick that actually they tried to revive the Puffin Club a few years ago. Unfortunately, this is lockdown, so it's unlikely someone from Penguin will hear this. But they really misjudged how to do it because it was too transparently a way of shilling their books to kids or their parents.

Looking back at the Puffing Club of the 70s, it was really skillfully... I mean, I'm not saying it wasn't a selling exercise, because it was, but it was editorially led right it was very much about k k who ran puffin in that era very much about her trying to spread an enthusiasm for reading they used to do these amazing mini festivals the puffing club in the summer holidays and i can remember coming up to london at least twice and going to one big puffin open day at the commonwealth institute in kensington and meeting like quentin blake wow and km payton i think uh spike milligan maybe oh yeah and somebody in a

fat puffin suit and then going to another one at the ICA. They had it at the ICA? In my first 20 years of life, I went to the ICA twice. One was to go to the big puffing club day, and the other was to see a gig by Bogshed in 1986. So those were my two introductions to the institute of contemporary art were were an enemy sponsored gig and a puffin sponsored event do you know what's so great though actually is that we they might not have got the puffin club right but books still really matter to young young people right now and and and the passion and there's brilliant books being written for

children and it's still I think you know and actually I'm just speaking for my own kids but you know for their whole childhood authors have mattered more than anyone else there's no celebrity that interests them more than authors and those have been the big people in their lives and it's really it's really brilliant it hasn't changed wonderful really to hear that I mean, I think that's been true with my boys too. But I used to get very cross when I was at Waterstones, is that you'd be, you know, those annoying middle-class dinner parties when everybody's saying, of course, children don't read anymore. And you say, well, your children read, your children read,

my children read. Who are these people? Oh, you mean people who are not sitting at this table? Their children don't read. Well, I can tell you they do. You know, if you go into schools. I mean, I used to love going up to hang out with Elizabeth Hamill in the Waterstones in Newcastle.

And the amazing events that they would put on there. Like you, Andy, I remember that clearly from school. I remember meeting Michael Bond once at a bookshop. Oh, yeah. And the guy wrote Paddington. It was like, this is incredible. But the great thing now is that kids can... So my son was tweeting Robert Muchmore the other day and he wrote back and it's a that's amazing I think I

mean authors not unreasonably sometimes feel uneasy or complain about the extent to which they can't be the person who sits behind the desk and does nothing else. And I have a lot of sympathy for that. But I do think equally in the children's world, it's very inspiring, I think, for children and for young people to have that dialogue of the kind you're talking about, Nicky, that writers aren't these people off in an ivory tower doing this thing they can't do, but actually they're human beings like them. And if they put the hours in and they, they can aspire to it. Who was the writer that you aspire to be? You know,

who was your favourite writer? Did you have one when you were growing up? Now that is a good question. I think like lots of people, I don't think I got my head round the idea of the writer being the person who sat there and actually did it until I was slightly older. I think when you're a child child, you identify, probably identify with books before you identify with writers and you begin to understand. I mean, I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was 11. I remember that coming out in paperback because I love the radio series so much. And I, I remember that coming out in paperback because I love the radio series so much. And in my own mind, I think of Douglas Adams as the first person who I got my head around the idea of writing being a thing that you did. Of him as a writer sitting, not writing, funnily enough.

Which is what he did a lot of. A great inspiration for me. But also Adams kind of built that into his shtick. You know, his public persona was very much about being the writer who missed deadlines and so he kind of understood how that worked but that's not to say there weren't books but there were there were books series of books that i liked and we've talked about this on blacklisted before but i really loved the moomin books and i understood all the moomin books for why one person who was called, as I called them, Tove Janssen, which I now know is incorrect. Tove. Tove, is that right? Tove. You

can never get this right. Tove Janssen. So I like those sets of books. I like a boy, I think, probably, if we're going to make that judgment. I did like, you know, sets of things. I like the Moomin books and I liked Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. I like those sets but then Nikki you were saying that you really liked the Sweet Valley High books didn't you? I sort of love hated them I mean I have to say they're awful books they are they are and I but I probably read I read I read a ton of them and there's about I looked up now just on Wikipedia there's 181 of them you know and I thought I'd read quite a lot. Yeah, but you say they're not awful, are they? Because you wanted to just read another one and read another one. No, you're right.

They're not awful. They were sort of very readable and the library had a lot of them, right? So that would be one you wouldn't buy. You go to the library because you read them in a day. And they were about these pair of twins, Jessica and Elizabeth, who were kind of blonde and one was a goodie and one was a baddie. Good things would happen to Elizabeth and Jessica, she was baddie. And, you know, evil Jessica, lovely Elizabeth. And sometimes they sort of switched over. But generally, that was the vibe

by Francine Pascal. And you can see speech marks here because Francine Pascal, it turns out, did not write 181 books in four years or something like that. You know, she obviously had a team of people. An atelier. Yeah. That's right. The school of. Well, it reminds me of my daughter recently, well, not recently,

God, when she was probably about the same age, about eight or nine, got into Flower Fairy's set. There's a load of books called Flower Fairy. And they go things like the To tooth fairy or the babysitter fairy anyway i'm not going to judge them she loved them and they were by daisy meadows what a name daisy meadows she was really into this yeah she was really into this so i suggested she write to daisy meadows and tell her how much she liked them and we were she was writing this letter oh lord i thought this is a kind of you know good educational thing i and then it i looked into daisy meadows and of course daisy meadows was a another speech marks because yes

she is not i read it i hate to tell you listeners but daisy meadows is not a real person but but that's just like a series there's a series where they called are they they when when my son was a this is about 10 years ago now and my son was really into are they called dragon quest or yes yeah beast quest beast quest he was really into the beast quest books and they're written by the same guy whose name escapes me and i remember we we were on a easter this is a very thing that families do we were on an easter break in york why not because it's educational and you go to this terrible yorvik center with all the smell all the smelly vikings we did john indeed anyway we went

into like either smith i know smith it wasn't all stones it was smith we were in smith in york my son struck up a conversation with the chap who was stocking the shelves in the children's department about how great the beast quest books were and he was going uh so i think i need so he's chatting away and he says i'm gonna get these two new ones i haven't got these i hope they keep making them and the guy who worked in smithson york just looked at him very sweetly i went i'll tell you what son if you keep buying them we talk about i voted for you as an independent candidate. That phrase has become, if you keep buying them,

they'll keep meching them, has become a phrase we use a lot. This sending in stuff is interesting, isn't it? It's sending in to authors. My obsession when I was really young, before I'd really started reading fiction, in the mid-60s, I got into this I Spy series Nick do you remember the I Spy books no let's have a look oh I do I do big chief I Spy I can remember where he lived can you Shepard's Bush Green John hold it up again hold it up again I want to see it's cool

that's my starter book and this is my this is the one I loved. It's almost falling apart, my birds book. And if you filled a book out, you'd send it to him. Shepherd's Bush Green. And he would stamp it and send it back. And there were all these codes and really exciting things you could do. But unfortunately for me, all the codes were in the Daily Mail and my father would not have the Daily Mail in the house. So I felt like it was... Brilliant.

If you were a red skin, there's a whole sort of thing you're supposed to do. You're supposed to make a totem pole out of bolts of wood. It can be carved in with a sharp pen knife and a broom handle makes a good totem pole. A nice fine meeting round a campfire has a magic all of its own. When you meet in the open air, try to have a real fire of sticks but get permission from the grown-up pale faces and see your fire causes no danger i love this and then you'd have books they were the sort of books that your parents would buy you or my parents would buy me if we were going on a long car absolutely right so they'd they'd say i spy book of pylons it's only to look at some of them were really not difficult to find. Like a butcher wasn't so difficult to find.

Have they got your writing in there from when you were a kid, John? Yeah, look. Show us, show us. Well, where is the finder? There's a couple of funny ones. Yes, there's May 1971. I'd seen some sort of calf in Planky Woods. Oh, look at that but the my favorite ones are

the birds I get very aggressively look look at that all all sort of really badly handwritten in 1970 which is when I would have been six wow okay so here's the question so I have as you know I have children aged 11 and 14 13 and they're forever clearing out their books. At the moment, there's a pile of David Walliams and whatever ready to go. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, get rid of it. But how much of that stuff should we keep? Because I can't keep it all. There's so much of it.

I know. We got rid of a lot of it as well. I mean, it's tricky, isn't it? I'm glad I kept the books I kept. And the books I kept tend to be the ones that were precious. I don't know. I don't know what the right advice on that is i mean look look at this this this is this look how beautiful that just as a bit of design great northern yeah okay that's the one that's the that's the book i first got i remember borrowing

from a library because i i was nuts about birds and i said said, I want a book. Is there a book where one of the characters is a naturalist or a bird watcher? And my mum, bless her, somehow found that's the last of Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons. It's a book about the rare sighting of a great Northern diver up in Scotland. And that was it. I was away.

I read, I couldn't put them down. And I honestly think the children in those books became my friends you know they were friends who didn't judge you you could go back to them and you know John was still being mature Nancy was still being kind of lively a me and Nikki like that for you now you know this is an event this is an adventure we're not judging you no but you know what I mean it's yeah yeah the great things that i always say to to people about reading is that you can go back you can go back and you can reread and you can and you they're still there

those people are still there still doing stuff i think audio audiobooks offer a lot here as well actually so i listened to a lot of audiobooks as a child and i and i got a lot of comfort from that particularly at night time and both my children do the same thing. And my son listens to Arthur Ransom every night. Does he? Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Still? Yeah, he's making his way through.

Because if you're an Audible subscriber, you get one a month. So he's making his way through and he's probably on about book eight or nine now. And he loves them. Who's reading them? That's good. God, I'd have to look it up because I haven't listened to them. I read them. Who's reading them? That's good. God, I'd have to look it up because I haven't listened to them. I read them.

I mean, one of the great things, obviously, also, is having kids and reading your favourite books to them, which doesn't always work. But I remember reading The Arthur Anson's to the Boys. Not all of them, but I certainly read Swallows and Amazons and a few more. And you do learn pretty quickly who could write from those books that you loved in childhood. It's narrated by gareth armstrong

whoever he is yeah but like um and do you that's quite interesting though nikki that i mean i think the thing is the widespread listening to audiobooks is something that's really happened in the last five to ten years because obviously there's less need to abridge stuff because it can be put on a phone and it's much easier to access and everybody's got audio devices that they carry around with them and all that kind of thing. It must have been quite unusual for you as a youngster to be listening to audiobooks. I think that's quite an unusual thing in the 1980s. So I listened to two audiobooks pretty much religiously, which was Secret Garden, read by Glenda Jackson. Brilliant.

Right. Brilliant. Glenda. And Glenda Jackson, which was very strange when she came knocking at my door because she was standing to be an MP. And we had a, as I said, we lived in a flat. And so we had one of those intercoms. So I answered the door and it was, hello? And I was just totally like, oh my God, it's Mary Abbott.

I'm having a nervous breakdown. Excellent. Yeah, The Secret Garden. No, well, no, tell us, we both, John and I had to read The Secret Garden a little while ago. Well, it was probably about two or three years ago. It was the last thing that we did with Matt, actually. It was before Nicky, you joined us. Anyway, we had to read The Secret Garden.

I'd never read The Secret Garden being a boy. I'd seen the TV series that was on the BBC in the 70s, which I really, really loved. But I thought The Secret Garden was just a fantastic book. I thought it was terrifically interesting as well is the um i can't remember having read it i remember it much more having listened to it but is it all written in yorkshire dialect because it's spoken a lot of the yorkshire is spoken there's a lot there is a lot of dialect there's a lot more dialect in it than you would normally get in a in a ostensibly children's novel, I would have to say.

Yeah. And also there's much more, you know, the Secret Garden falls into that category of books where they pile on the misery for the protagonists early on because kids love reading about other kids being either captured or tortured or bereaved. And they do that in the Secret Garden. It's really, they really set her up to be an, you know,

she's an orphan and she's sent halfway across the world. And she's a brat. She's horrible. Do either of you remember the first book that made you actually cry? Good question. I certainly cried when I read it to my son. And I imagine I cried at the time, is the final chapter of The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Mill.

If you need me, if you want to find me, we'll be playing forever in the Hundred Acre Wood. Even as I say it to you, I might have to pause for a moment. I remember just one book called I Am David. And Home. And Holt. And Home. And Home. And Holt. And Home. And Home.

And, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'd ever sort of cried real tears at a book before, but it was so, I mean, it's an incredibly moving story. Not that I can remember much except the final words are I Am David. Oh, it's in the tradition of we quote the title in the last line. And that's how I knew I am David at the end. Good night, Mr. Tom. That was quite sad. That's pretty sad.

Yes. So what were your, Nicky, so you were saying you were listening to, going back to you saying you were listening to audio books. Did you have them like on a Walkman? Yeah, I would have had them on a cassette player of some sort. Probably one of those ones was, you know, buttons. How many cassettes? Well, so my favourite, which is what I really, you know, absolutely loved and listened to for about, I don't know, years and years, was Ballet Shoes by Noel Stretfield. By Noel strepfield and i i mean i listened to it so much that i could probably i could probably still recite it to you you know it's that it's that you know and i have

30 years later whatever i could still probably you know definitely bits of it and i just it's just comfort it's so comfortable and i and i'm saying my my daughter listens to harry potter in the same way now in that she's over Harry Potter. She's 13 and she's past that, but she's still listens to it as a sort of like retreat at night into comfort listening. And I did that with ballet shoes, which I absolutely love. What was it about about ballet shoes which appealed? Did you do ballet when you were a kid? No, not at all. I got kicked out of ballet class pretty much first or second lesson for being kind of, you know, absolutely it's never going to happen.

And you know me, right? I am not a – I wouldn't say I'm a particularly girly girl. I've never been like that. And yet all the books I read were consistently very much like boarding school. I loved all that kind of, you know, autumn term, summer term, spring term. Mallory Towers boarding school i loved all that kind of you know autumn term summer term spring term you know all that stuff and and uh and i i love noel strepfield and i just and i liked you know judy bloom i like going progressed into kind of romance and teenage books like that and i i just think it was just real escapism and and i love yeah so

and funny enough one of the things you were saying about, John, that you had your five pence and you would go and spend it on books. I would go and I had a very good ruse going on for a while where I'd stay the Friday night at my friend Lucy's house and get pocket money from her mum on Saturday morning and then go home and get pocket money from my mum. That was a double dipping.

Double dipping. The grift. The grifting a double dipping double dipping the grift the grifting yeah always working the grift and what i would do is i'd go to the shop right and i would get me and lucy but particularly i'd love this mandy comics oh yes and mandy and they you know they would be things like they're letting girls into St. Justin's. That's the story. Trading places, city or country. And I love that. I just, you know, and it's really interesting because it's not at all who I am and it's not. But it just shows you that what you read is not necessarily related to who you are in that way. Also, can I just say that you was asking us, what do you hold on to?

you are in that way also can i just say that you you was asking us what do you hold on to you've held on to those copies of mandy yeah where you might have cleared out other books right so why did you hang on to those well yeah absolute nostalgia i think they come to a point where you hang on to them for so long that you can't possibly you know it's not very there's a period of time where they're recent you think i'll get rid of it and then if you've held on to them past that point you can never let them go can you you can never get rid of them because they're recent you think i'll get rid of it and then if you've held on to them past that point you can never let them go can you you can never get rid of them because they're already historical artifacts in your in your life i i know that i would go to the library and if i read a book that i liked i would borrow it again the following week so i could read it again and then i'd read it again and in that way I suppose that and then I would

occasionally buy books my auntie Joycey bless her rest her soul would always send me a book token for birthday or Christmas there was a poll of the crap children's presents of the 70s which was won by book tokens again I don't really fit in I think that was not that's not my experience everybody also this is an important point to make i would take the book token and i wouldn't go to an independent children's bookseller because we didn't have one i'd go to smith's in the wickes center in croydon and guess what it was the best bookshop around good shop it was brilliant right and and so i mean i've talked on backlisted about the sort of the children's novels we We've been doing this for a while.

So there's been several opportunities for me to talk about them. I loved a book by Mary Stewart called Ludo and the Star Horse. Oh, I bought that on your recommendation. There you go. I bought the 18th, I love the 18th Emergency by Betsy Byers. We talked about the Moomins on Backlisted. They were my favourite books. But I also, childhood reading is very catholic you know

you haven't yet learned about the tls or the equivalent you haven't yet learned about the canon and you just read whatever you want and my parents were brilliant i must say they would let me in the kind of as long as they're reading bracket they would just let me read anything and also because i was so keen to read to some extent they just let me just hoover up whatever was around so in addition to those more more librarian approved titles i also i love marvel comics and i love the little bind-ups of peanut strips and you know how i feel about peanuts i think it's one of the great artworks, text, comic of the late 20th century. I love Winnie the Pooh. Oh, I was going to show you something, Andy.

Of the few books that I've kept. I love Peanuts too. Oh, my goodness. There they are. There's all the Coronets ones. Just show them that here's to you, Charlie Brown. I've got loads. I love them as well.

Watch out, Charlie Brown. Yeah. Playbill, Snoopy. them that here's to you charlie brown i've got loads uh i love them yeah watch out charlie brown yeah uh play ball snooze don't go so the thing about those books as well is those books were and this is a really important thing you could buy those books in you couldn't you didn't have to go to bookshops to buy those books but those books were on spinners outlawed by the evil waterstones those those books were on spinners in like the beach huts where you went on holiday as a kid and they were in in news agents like mad books i love mad books the bind-ups of mad magazine and but the books i loved above all others of that kind i'm just i'm showing i'm holding one up now doctor who brilliant doctor who and the cave monsters by

malcolm hulk and the reason Monsters by Malcolm Hulk and the reason I chose this was two reasons why I chose this one we might do a show later in the year about Terrence Dix who died last year who wrote many of these books and was one of the great Doctor Who writers but also because Terrence Dix is so important in encouraging thousands and thousands of children to read via these books that lots of lots of kids who did not grow up in a bookish environment would buy Doctor Who books because they loved Doctor Who and Terence was so brilliant about transferring the thrill of Doctor Who onto the page and also Terence Dicks, as we might talk about, Terrence Dicks came from a working class home,

went to grammar school, studied under F.R. Leavis. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Did not get on with F.R. Leavis. Him and Howard Jacobson famously. You can see a lot of the choices that Terrence Dicks made in his life in terms of a democratic instinct. Was a fuck you to leave it.

Was a fuck you to leave it, absolutely. So we might talk about that on Ballast of the Day of Geneva. But I just want to talk about The Cave Monsters, Doctor Who and The Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulk. And there's two things to say about this book. The first is Malcolm Hulk was a regular Doctor Who writer in the John Pertwee and Tom Baker era of the early 70s. He was a communist and most of his stories can be interpreted

from an extremely left-wing, subversive perspective. And this one, The Cave Monsters, is his novelisation of a story called Doctor Who and the Silurians, which was one of the early John Pertwee stories, the third Doctor stories. And Simon Gerrier on Twitter reminded me this week that Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters has something in common with a book that we've talked about on Backlisted quite recently.

I'm just going to read you a bit from the prologue, a couple of paragraphs in the prologue. And when I've read those, I want you to tell me if it reminds you of a specific novel. So here we go. Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, Malcolm monsters malcolm prologue the little planet ochdel stood watching as the last of the young reptile men and women took their turn to go down to safety in the lift the gleaming metal doors of the lift were set in rock the doors slid open and shut soundlessly taking another group of ochdel's people to safety below the ground group of octal's people to safety below the ground across the valleys the sun was already setting and its last light made the green scales of the young people shine brilliantly octal wondered when he would see the sun again and then we we meet a few other characters of the fat of octal's

family and then the last paragraph of the prologue goes the surface of the earth changed and changed again whole continents moved their position the earth's crust folded over on itself not once but many times the underground shelters of the sleeping reptile people sank deeper and deeper below the surface in many places rocks and mountains formed over their shelters. The reptile people remained in their state of hibernation, knowing nothing of the world they had lost. They were to remain like that until man, Homo sapiens, started to probe beneath the crust of what he now considered was his planet. Now, what novel does that remind you of?

So, so, so perfect, isn't it? It's like The Inheritors. Yeah. To his lock and far. And Simon Guerriere and our guest, Dean McCormack, were saying that they, and Simon was saying he was a Doctor Who expert, that this had never occurred to him.

But that perspective of the reptile people looking at homo sapiens, it's hard not to think that Golding, whose book had been published 10, 13, 14 years earlier, had fed into the culture in exactly the way that we were talking about on the podcast and was appearing in things like 2001 A Space Odyssey and Doctor Who. And as Una said, it's a first contact. It's a first contact narrative.

She did, didn't she? She called it. And that's exactly what that story is about. It's a story about this ancient civilisation, far more sophisticated than man, who when they meet Homo sapiens is utterly repulsed by them because they're clearly apes. You know, it's just it's so wonderful

i think we could um i think we could do a part two on children's books don't you i think we've got there's a lot here this is a rich scene we've only scratched the surface haven't we can i read you a bit from one of my faves just a tiny little paragraph because i was just also thinking you you know how we were talking about escape and solace and reading. At the age of 12, I went to New Zealand, and I felt I had to sort of somehow keep my English kind of connection with England and English landscape alive. And, you know, I'm fascinated by how we end up selecting.

So I kind of was – I'd obviously read Alan Garner before I'd left, and I'd started to read. Again, it was one of those books I got out of the library, I got a book called The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper out of the library. And I just remember arriving in New Zealand in probably the end of 1975. And she, and Susan Cooper was the way I kept in touch with what I thought was my English, my English family, my grandparents, English landscape. But the beginning of The Darkest Rising, it's one of the best descriptions, I think, of how a landscape that is familiar and dull, you know, it's Thames Valley, sort of kind of small village. There are too many kids. It's just before Christmas. And then the snow

falls in an amazing and unstoppable way. And Will Stanton, who's just before Christmas. And then the snow falls in an amazing and unstoppable way. And Will Stanton, who's the hero, wakes up in the morning. I just love this. He was in the twins' room still. He could hear Robin's breathing, slow and deep, from the other bed. Coal light glimmered round the edge of the curtains, but no one was stirring anywhere. It was very early. Will pulled on his rumpled clothes from the day before and slipped out of the room. He crossed the landing to the central window and looked down. In the first shining moment, he saw the whole strange familiar world, glistening white, the roof of the outbuildings mounded into square towers of snow, and beyond

them all the fields and hedges buried merged into one great flat expanse unbroken white to the horizon's brim will drew in a long happy breath silently rejoicing it's just that that moment that every child who lives in this country has of opening the curtains and everything has been transformed. I mean, there's the book obviously goes fairly wild and wonderful. And there's a truly one of the truly great, execrable adaptations as an American adaptation of it as a film, which if you want it just for shit and giggles, it's worth watching. It's a terrible adaptation. But I don't know, there's that those I remember the very moment of reading that book and sitting there and thinking,

oh, this is like me. I want it to snow, and I still always want it to snow. And I want to open the curtains, and I want to see that, and I want to be in the middle of an adventure. I'm really interested by that, that idea that it plugs into some aspects of yourself that you either aspire to or see as an alternative way you could be living your childhood, your life. You know, what Nikki was saying about, so John, you were saying,

you know, it was a projected view of country you knew you had roots in but didn't live in. And Nikki saying that she wasn't a girly girl but she she gravitated towards perhaps more traditional kind of books yeah and you didn't even want to do ballet but but ballet shoes becomes the thing that's kind of the projection of a version of you that you're not but that you wouldn't mind being i don't know i'm trying to think my favorite in that regard is probably Winnie the Pooh, just because, you know, well...

She's also good on snow, you have to say. But Eeyore, you know, I just thought... I never... I just... I've really... I've based my whole adult life and persona on that because Eeyore always struck me as the as funny i mean the he's the best one line same with peanuts you know the kids in peanuts that's what a brilliant idea

for a strip a depressed kid can only talk to his dog and his dog isn't interested you know that's oh that's harsh his dog doesn't even know his name. His dog just refers to Charlie Brown as that round-headed kid. It's just, that's real life. That's what my childhood was like. And in Winnie the Pooh, you know, over there, there's Pooh and Piglet and their

best mates. And who's that over in this gloomy place? Oh, it's Eeyore making mordant jokes about things. So, Nicky, do you want to – we should wind up, really, for this part. I had one question for you, Nicky, though. I just – do you think – I'm intrigued, Matt.

I love the way you were talking about your tape recorders. Do you think your kind of audio, your interest in audio, was sort of cultivated by the fact that you were kind of, I mean, I think Andy's right. I don't think I know kids who are listening to audiobooks. You were an early adopter. You were an early adopter. Maybe it was because I went on from, the next step on from ballet shoes was talk radio.

So I listened to talk radio at night. What, LBC? It was the equivalent of, it was Robbie Vincent. I think listened to talk radio at night. What, LBC? It was the equivalent of, it was Robbie Vincent. I think it's a perfectly natural extension. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. And I think it is... No street feel to Robbie Vincent. Well, it's basically somebody talking to you.

That's what it is. It's somebody giving you... It doesn't really matter what they say. And I still listen. I'm the same. I have always listened to talk radio throughout the night, and I still listen I'm the same I have always listened to talk radio throughout the night and I still do now and so I think it's just that sort of lulling lulling you to sleep by gentle chatter and and I think you know there's nothing more gentle than than ballet shoes and

you know unfortunately now it's sort of replaced by all night news but but I you know perhaps I should go back to i'm thinking now if i i can't really listen to audiobooks at night now because i worry that i'll miss what happens and it doesn't you know what i mean there is on ballet shoes it doesn't matter because i knew what happened oh yeah that's that's the thing it doesn't matter i can listen again and again i think that's really i think there's that i think you've really identified something there, Nick. There is that kind of sweet spot, I think, somewhere between childhood and proper teenagerdom where you do get real comfort from the familiarity of something.

And so we were talking about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I must have listened to it. I taped those off the radio and I must have listened to them over and over and over again. You know, right, the tiniest intonation is totally familiar to me and so the jokes had worn out i mean i thought they were funny the first dozen times but that's replaced it's a bit like you then transfer that to music probably when you really begin to identify with records or records that that really who's every nuance you internalize

yeah you know what we should do next time? Yeah, what should we do? We should do teenage reading. So we've done childhood reading. I think that's a good idea because that changes for me. That gets American. That's the thing. It goes from Britain to America.

Although Sweet Valley High accepted. Well, I'm just about, the day we record this, I'm just about to reread The Catcher in the Rye for the first time since I was 19. So I will report back on that for the next one of these that we do. OK, that's good. Yeah, let's do Teenage. That's very cool.

OK, great. And I suppose to anyone who's listening, you know, come tell us the important books that were big to you as well, right? Everybody's got them. Absolutely. Yeah, we'd love to know. Also, I'd love to know to know you know you can email us and we'll read some of them out books of course but also less traditional things you know if you had an annual if somebody gave you the shiver and shake annual in 1975 and you just read and

reread that tell us about that or comics that you liked you know my mum and dad were brilliant they let me read everything with one exception. Do you know what the only thing we weren't allowed to have in the house? What was that? Looking. Why? Yeah, because it was a bit common because it was ITV. I mean, we watched ITV, so I don't understand why my mum wasn't.

My cousins weren't allowed to watch Grange Hill for the same reason. And we were all like, what? You're not allowed to watch Grange Hill for the same reason. And we were all like, what? You're not allowed to watch Grange Hill? Did you get those really ridiculous, like the Treasure Book of Answers and the Wonder Book of Wonders? Yes, the How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs was one of the most read books of my childhood because I was also dinosaur mad as well. So I had loads of dinosaurs.

I think it would be interesting. Should we just keep going? Yeah, we could talk about this forever, but I think it would be interesting to hear from younger listeners, people who are young in their 30s. There aren't any. There must be some. What the big books were for them.

That's what I'm interested in. But not Harry Potter. Not Harry Potter. Read another book. Not Harry Potter. Yeah. We better stop, right? Otherwise we could be here forever.

Oh, what fun. Thanks very much, everybody. We'll be back for teenage years next joyous bye bye everybody Thank you.