Backlisted - Summer books 2025

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Books we think you might enjoy on a plane, by the pool or in the park. Andy, Nicky and our old friend Una McCormack discuss the following fantastic beach reads - Birch reads? - and a novel from Backlisted's own backlist: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre); The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, trans. Adriana Hunter (Penguin); Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes (Faber); and The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (Faber). This is Backlisted's 10th anniversary year, so over the summer, we'll be revisiting a few old favourites or titles by much-loved authors that somehow slipped through the cracks. We last discussed The Lowlife on Episode 64 back in 2018, but it has just been republished and is back in bookshops now. PS. Andy would like it to be known that books can also be enjoyed indoors. * 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 and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, a podcast which gives new life to old books. I'm Andy Miller, author of the year of reading dangerously and inventory, an unreliable guide to my record collection. And I'm Nikki Burch, the producer of Backlisted. And joining us on the sofa today is an old friend of Blue Peter. Sorry, sorry, Backlisted, sorry, Backlisted. Please introduce yourself, old friend. I'm Dr. Udama Cormack, science fiction author and associate fellow of Hobbiton College,

Cambridge. Well, that's told me. It's lovely to have you. Thank you very much. I've got a big box of unread books. Just tell me where to put them. All right. Very good. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Yeah. So John isn't here. We're really pleased that Una has stepped into the breach and will be our regular co-host for a bit. On today's show we'll be discussing a couple of new books and a couple of older titles. It's one of our summer specials. We've got The Ministry of Time by Colleen Bradley, The Anomaly by Irva Letellier translated by Adriana Hunter, Poetry in the Making by Teddy Hughes and a book

we've talked about on the show before and that we all love, Alexander Barron's The Lowlife, which has just been reissued and is back in the bookshops now. We hope to do a bit more of this over the summer. As you are no doubt aware, it's backlisted's 10th anniversary year and there are certain backlisted books or authors, or backlisted adjacent books and authors, giving nothing away, we would love

to revisit. Suffice to say we have a mixture of old friends and new guests lined up in the months ahead to help us do just that. Yeah, and over those last 10 years we've built up, I'd say, an incredible community of listeners, patrons and guests and of course a back catalogue of, I mean, at least over 200 shows on brilliant books for your reading pile. And there's one really easy free way to continue to support the show, which we're asking you to do. If you want to listen to some of those episodes from the backlist, please follow the show on whatever podcast app you use. You can easily explore the back catalogue. Plus it really helps us appear in charts and makes the show more visible. Nicky, what is the piece of professional jargon you included in your original script?

Well, I took out because you didn't like me to put it in there. Yeah, I didn't like it, but I'm now obsessed with it. What is it? Go on, say what you were going to say. Go on. I have to do a control Z to try and undo it. I can't remember. I'm going to say it because these words have never come out of my mouth before. It really helps us get surfaced in charts. Isn't that a normal phrase you use, Andy? Ted Hughes would have used it.

No, Nicky. Nicky, my dear, it's disgusting, but thank you very much. Well, I'm here to disgust you all if you want to help us disgust us by getting surfaced in the charts please do follow us or subscribe in whatever podcast app you you choose. This is the new look show. Right Una let's watch a film you've made about working on your father's farm in Derbyshire. When I wrote that joke yesterday our producer Nicky Birch said that's going to go over so many people's heads. And I said, yes, that means they'll know it's business as usual. Exactly. I think everyone, that was a Blue Peter reference.

Yes, thank you so much. Those people who don't know what Blue Peter is, don't worry about it. Oh, come on. They're not our people. Yeah, they've got their own batches, surely. Yeah, exactly. Guys, guys, we still want you. Anyway, Una, never mind that. What have you been reading this week?

Okay, well, it's an exciting time of year for the science fiction community because we're just all reading through the shortlist for the Clark Award, which is the novel given annually for best science fiction novel published in Britain. And I've been trotting through a race of great knots. I've got a couple still to go, but the one I've just finished is The Ministry of Time by Carly Ann Bradley. Ah, we know her.

Indeed, recent guest on the show. So I picked that one up and I loved it. I just really enjoyed it. I think it's a, I'm sort of a bit jealous of it actually, because it's a bit... So all those books you pick up and you go, I can see why this, you know, there was an auction on this book and there's already an adaptation. Her first book? Yeah. Immediately, I wish to make two observations. First of all, Una needs to be congratulated on her correct use of the word jealousy there, because she fears something will be taken away from her

by Collian's success. So that's excellent. Thank you. So thank you, Una. And the second thing is, I think I just want to go back a bit. Before we talk about Collian, I want to say you are a prodigious reader.

Like in the whole time I've known you, I've been able to say to you things like, have you read, uh? And you go, oh no, I haven't. But then I speak to you the next day and you go, Oh, I finished that. Yeah. Yeah. How do you do that? How do you read so much? How do I read so much? It's because I've got a massive brain. It's as simple as that. Oh, I love that. That's true. That's true. I think I am time you've and that's the second time you've drawn attention to it. So my massive brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, people can't I imagine they can see it kind of emanating through the ether.

But I'm very good at reading things quickly. And any teacher will tell you this, any particularly undergraduate teacher. You read things and then you forgot them by the next week. So you got them in your head for as long as you need it. Nikki, we have the same thing on this show. But instead of memories, we have 200 old episodes to remember what we said. Of which you've been on most of the moon anyway.

That's a fair few. Yeah, yeah. Double figures now. So back to Colleen Bradley, do you want to just give listeners who, I mean, the book is a big best seller. Yeah. I'm sure lots of people listening to this will already have read it. It came out in paperback a few months ago.

And we touched on it a little bit when we had her as a guest, didn't we, on the monkey show? But Una, from your perspective, give us a synopsis of not just the plot, but where you kind of feel it fits in the firmament of, I don't know, is it science fiction? I suppose fantasy writing, I suppose. Speculative. I'd call it speculative, yeah. It's a romantic, time-travelling science fiction novel and it's basically at the heart of it. Oh, there's also some polar

exploration, so let's get that in up front as well. At the heart of it, I think, is this romance between an unnamed Cambodian British civil servant near future and a figure who's come back civil servant, Near Future, and a figure who's come back forward in time, who's a real person, Graham Gore, who was a sailor on Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage mission. So he's been brought to the Near Future, a government project to dabble in time travel, and a lot of the book concerns their romance. And I think what I really love about this book, and I hope Colleen takes this as a compliment, is that it presses all my fan fiction reader buttons. Yeah. So this is like a big compliment from me. Hey, tell me and listeners what fan fiction is.

Oh yeah, right. Okay. So fan fiction is fiction Oh yeah right okay so fan fiction is fiction based on other sources so you might write a little Star Trek story or you might write some uh Doctor Who stories or you might write something that's inspired say for viewing the terror uh something like that or it might be based on books yeah but also like say books that have gone on to achieve great commercial success which we've all heard of such as 50 Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction right? Exactly that yeah yeah yeah. And Uno what is this a fan fiction of then? So if I'm right Colleen was watching The Terror during lockdown. She was yeah. So I think she was

inspired by that to kind of delve into the polar exploration. But when I say it kind of presses my buttons, I think it's more to do with the kind of choices she makes about dramatizing things, what she's foregrounding in the text. It's got this wonderful kind of focused female gaze that's very focused on this romantic figure and Gore becomes like a piece of whimsy. He's a sort of semi-idealized male lead and I absolutely love it. I just really enjoyed it. But there's always other choices as well. There's a lot of focus at the start of the book of him kind of getting used to being in contemporary times. So there's lots of sort of, you know, what does this button do and why are there no, what does this button do? And

why are there no, how does this house function? There's a good bit, isn't it? He learns to love Spotify. I love him on Spotify. It's amazing. But he hates texting. Yeah, exactly. Which doesn't seem that unreasonable. Yeah, yeah. Texting is evil. And also, it's very short order before he's dressed in motorbiking leathers. So this is another reason. Oh, it's that kind of fan fiction. It's absolutely wonderful. So I mean, this is a compliment because I'm sure regular readers know I've write a lot of it. I've professionalized. I've thought a lot about it and written about it. And I think it's a particular place where women get to do a certain kind of writing and I loved this book. I thought it was tremendously clever, tremendously readable and well done. I've got an observation about it which I like very much about

the book actually, which especially when we know it was written in lockdown, it seems to me this one of the subtexts that Colliani is working with here is the idea of how although we are constantly boats against the current being born back into the past etc the benefits of living in the present are to be acknowledged as well. So that if you're a man with PTSD, for an example, or a lesbian woman, you are, you are, the world of the 21st century, whilst not being perfect, is a better place for you to be than any previous century. Yeah. I thought that was really, for you to be than any previous century. I thought that was really, really useful. Yeah, I agree. I think it really asks, doesn't it, like, are we, by taking Gore out of, you know, the Arctic expedition and placing him in the Spotify world, let's call it, he is,

at first, in his previous life, he was part of the British Empire. He was, you know, that was his work. He was, you know, a commander in the British Empire or lieutenant in the British Empire. And, and, and in this life, in this world, in the modern day, you know, he's not that anymore and he has to adjust to the new world order. And it sort of says, okay, are we the same person in different circumstances? And you know, what happens and he does change, doesn't he? And he does adapt. And that's what's so interesting. Nikki, I've got a note for you there.

You can go back and edit this in. You said, take him out of the Arctic. How about this? By taking him out of the Gulf Stream and into the world of streaming. Oh, I like that. Ooh, eh? And speaking of which, this is going to be a TV series.

Yeah. For the BBC, I hasten to add, yes. Is it? But it's been optioned. Oh, I wonder who they're going to cast. Una, who should they cast as Gawr? Because he's so sexy in it. Oh my goodness.

I don't know. Oh, I hadn't even thought about that. So yeah, I'm going to have to go away and look through lots of pictures on the internet. That would be terrible for you. Really. Sorry for your research. Una, I can't say that sort of thing on here. Imagine if I did that. That would be a terrible thing to say. Suck it up.

This is fun. Right, Una, would you like to read us a bit of the Ministry of Tumultuous? Yeah, I've got a little bit that sort of focuses on his sort of trying to come to terms with things. I think it covers everything that we've been saying about its sort of domestic on his sort of trying to come to terms with things. I think it covers everything that we've been saying about its sort of domesticity and its intimacy, but also what he needs to get used to. So he, this is great. She's just been taking him, you know, around the kitchen and showing him what, how it works. He opened the fridge and stared inside. An ice box, he said, interested. Pretty much powered by electricity. I think electricity has been explained to you. Yes, I'm also aware that the earth revolves around the sun to save you a little time. He opened a crisper. Carrots still exist then, cabbage. How will I

recognise milk? You do still use milk from cows. Small bottle, top shelf, blue lid. Hmm. Maid got the day off? No maid, no cook either. We do most things for ourselves. Oh, he said, impaled. He was introduced to the washing machine, the gas cooker, the radio, the vacuum cleaner. Here are your maids, he said. You're not wrong. And where are the Thousand League boots? Oh, we don't have those yet. Invisibility Cloak? Sun-resistant wings of Icarus? Lightwise. He said, you have enslaved the power of lightning and you've used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help. Well, I said and launched into a pre-planned speech about class mobility and domestic labour, touching on the minimum wage the size of an average house load,

and women in the workforce. It took four or five minutes of talking, and by the end, I'd moved into the same tremulous liquid register I used to use for pleading with my parents for a curfew extension. When I was finished, all he said was, a dramatic fall in employment following the first World War. Beautiful. Okay, so my observation about that is simply thank you, Una, for reading that so brilliantly. And also, I love comedy that is generated by logic.

Yeah. So the logic of ideas, if you set up a proposition, what would it be like if this man was in a kitchen in this time is then mutated via Collier's excellent prose into stuff that's funny as well. It's that they're not, they aren't jokes, but the ideas are funny

and the rhythm of the expression of it is funny. It's really good. And it arises from the people as well, from the characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that is The Ministry of Time by Colleen Bradley. It is published by Septran. It's out now. Una, direct a question to Nikki. So Nikki, what have you been reading this week? Very good. Thank you, Una.

Thank you. this week. Thank you Una. Funnily enough I've been reading a book that I think follows on very nicely from Ministry of Time. A book you might pick up for your summerholst. So if you want to take two books on your summer holiday that you're going to rip through I'd say one Ministry of Time and the second one be The Anomaly or La Nomaly it's by Erervé Letelier. La nomalie. La nomalie. Thank you. Thank you. That's in its French incarnation. Hervé Letelier. I love it when you talk French. Do you like it? Moi non plus. I don't. And it's translated, we're always keen to mention the translator. So it's out as an English translation and it's translated, we're always keen to mention the translation, so it's out as an

English translation and it's translated by Adriana Hunter. And it won the Prix Goncourt in 2020, which is the big kind of prize for literature in France and after that became a huge bestseller. It sold a million copies in France alone. Wow. The key thing is, Letelier had published, I think, over 30 books before then, right? So he's, you know, this is not his debut. It's an overnight success that took decades.

Good. Yeah. So he may have, he only actually won 10 euros for the prize, but he then went on to sell a million copies. So I think it's kind of balanced. I'm sure he's doing okay. So this is about five years old. I'd never actually heard of it before, but you'd read it, haven't you? Yeah, it was shortlisted for the Clarke Award about two years ago. It didn't win, but it was on the shortlist. That's when I read it. So of a science fiction, again, I'd say it's also sort of speculative

fiction too. It's kind of similar, it has similarities between Ministry of Time. It reminded me also a little bit of the power because it has 11 different characters and each character has a sort of different chapter. Okay, that's the power by the author, Naomi Alderman. Exactly, Naomi Alderman. So lots of different characters, but each character is also told in a different style of writing as well.

So there's a lot going on in this book, right? The first character is Blake, who's a family man in France, but he also doubles up as a hitman. There's a Nigerian singer called Slimboy, who's concealing his homosexuality. And then there's a French author translator called Victor Mizel, who has written a book called The Anomaly, you know, so there's a bit of a mess of fiction going on here. Yeah, we'll get on to why that might be in a minute, right? There's a lot of things.

And at first, each, you're reading it going, well, they're all really well told, but you're having to sort of jump between all these characters. And you realise the thing they have in common is they all go on this Air France flight from Paris to New York in 2021 and something happens. I'm actually not going to say what happens because I think that will, that it's much more fun this book if you don't know the key story arc in it. May I make a comparison? I found it quite interesting because it unfolds, to me it unfolds very like a TV show and is structured very like a TV show. That's not a criticism at all. In fact, I'm really, one of the things I think is impressive about the book is

I'm really, one of the things I think is impressive about the book is how it's building in the developments in narrative, which maybe streaming television has created in the last 20 years. It seems to me to be inspired partly by the leftovers or by lost. Now I don't, now, you bleep lost if you think that's giving too much away. I don't think it does.

No, I think you're right. I think it is inspired. There's lots of things that you may have seen TV shows or you may have read things just like the Ministry of Time, to be honest, where you're picking out bits that happen. But I don't think that takes away from the enjoyment of this. This thing happens structurally. The novel then takes a kind of sharp turn and the rest of the novel deals with the outcome of the thing that happens across all of the characters that we've met. So you sort of meet them before the thing happens and then you meet them after,

again, after the thing happens. Then it reveals is the book is then not just science fiction. It's sort of, it asks about politics and philosophy and questions of who we are and how the world responds. And it's sort of, suddenly becomes a kind of like, oh my gosh, how, and it makes you think about how you would respond in that environment. V, V, V French. V French. Yeah. Do we read the book or does the book read us?

Exactly. The book, the book puts us down after 20 pages. It does, yeah. Possibly does. But, Oonid, when you read it, because you said you read it ages ago and then you reread it in five minutes recently. I want to know, did you notice the different writing styles and the sort of pastiche in the chapters?

Did you kind of get that? I did, yeah. A little bit. I think what I really like talking about the way it's sort of based on streaming television, there's a thing that streaming television does, which is that you'll be following a narrative and then it will go, no, but this, in this episode, we shall just be looking at the backstory of a very minor character. And the whole start of the book in many ways is that we just look at the backstory of these minor characters. It's completely conscious because he's too good a writer for that.

And also the other thing that I really like about this, for an experimental book, we'll come on to that, it's just soaked in popular culture. There's a joke about a Steven Spielberg film that is so brilliant that even when I reread it, I just put the book down and laughed and laughed and laughed. It's completely brilliant. Also, there's a Star Trek reference, isn't there, Dr Una McCormack? The US president only perks up when they start referencing Star Trek to help him understand what's going on. Oh, I know that. Yeah, because his world is mediated through this. Exactly like all the tech bros, the world is mediated through Ayn Rand and

Asimov, you know, that's how they see it. And misreadings of Douglas Adams. Well, misreadings of Douglas Adams. In fact, when I did the Arrival podcast episode about Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, I did make the point on that, that I feel like we now live in a world governed by people who read Watchmen growing up and didn't understand it. They were rooting for the wrong characters in that particular book. Anyway, can I say a little bit about Hervé Letelier and why this novel is fascinating that he's managed to create a million copy bestseller. Hervé Letellier is the current president of a literary movement

called Ulipo, which some of you may have heard of, I'm sure, but for those who haven't, Ulipo is an abbreviation of Ouvroi de littérature potentielle, workshop of potential literature, Potentiel, workshop of potential literature. And it's a French literary group that likes the idea of imposing a set of seemingly arbitrary rules on a text to seeing what new ideas or shapes or forms can be generated by doing that. Didn't one of the founders of Oulipo write an entire novel without using the letter E? George Perrick did exactly that. Translated by Gilbert Adair in the 1980s as A Void, one of the great feats of translation. Yes, it was founded partly by the novelist Raymond Quineau. And this novel indeed, one of character mentions if on a winter's

night a traveler by Italo Calvino Calvino was an Oulipo writer and I myself in my own very modest way like Oulipo as a way of forcing you to organize your thoughts in a slightly counterintuitive way it's a nice little frictional thing I don't know Una do you ever do that? Do you ever feel, do you ever have like a way of writing that you like to push yourself into ways of thinking that perhaps you wouldn't otherwise achieve? Yeah, there's a little form of writing that I think, particularly when I was writing fanfiction, there's a little form of writing that people use, it's called a drabble. It's exactly a hundred words. Yeah. And it's really, I think you do it. It's like, it's almost like

doing scales if you play an instrument. Yeah. It's like, it's like doing practice scales, but it forces your language choice and you can, you can sort of follow a train of thought through very closely. It just really, it laser focuses you. So I've done some things like that. It's like the difference between writing a sonnet and writing free verse, I think. Yeah, sure, sure. So my question to you, I've got two questions. Now look, did one of you do this book on audio? I did it on audio.

Okay, so you did it on audio. Now, the ending of this novel is a, checks notes, calligram. You know, what is a calligram? Right, so a calligram is where you represent an idea or a theme in the shape of a picture, a picture that represents that. So a very simple thing would be if you wrote a poem about an elephant and the words on the page were shaped to show you an elephant. Right, okay. So that would be a letter picture, calligram. Thank you so much. So the ending is a calligram. Now, Nikki, you listened to the audiobook. What did they do about that? Did they drop in the sound of an elephant trumpeting or something?

No, there's a clear moment at the end. That's also just say the ending of this book works, which I think some of these kinds of books, they don't quite nail the ending, but this actually does work very well. So it's a very satisfying book from start to finish, but the ending and audio book, they couldn't obviously do a shape.

So they did a kind of, they sort of petered it out using, it just kind of phased and kind of cut in and out to fade away, which doesn't quite have the same effect, I think. But it's a very difficult decision by the audio producer as to what to do. And I think that's the best they could probably do in this instance. So yes, I think I would say it was an enjoyable audio book, but I think this is one to read because I think you'll get the value of reading it. Can I just, I don't think we've ever talked about this,

but audio books tend to not bother with footnotes. The performer will read the main text, but not the footnotes. And I became aware of that when I was listening to Eleanor Braun reading Craig Brown's book about Princess Margaret and then comparing it with the copy of the book I had. Which is full of footnotes. It robs a whole chunk of the energy of the book and actually just the content of the

book. It's not like Craig Brown's footnotes are academic. They're integral to the text and the jokes and all the rest of it. So I think that's a bit of a, I think that's a real shame. But you don't know that, Nikki, do you? You don't know what you're missing. No, having said that, there is an American voiceover artist, narrator for this and I think it works

very well. He is very good. And actually, I think having an American in this rather than being French works well, better for the story. And so I would, if you listen to it, it's a black American, I'm assuming, because he sounds like it is. and I think that works better for the way the story is positioned, because it's quite a global story. But so it is a good audio book, I would prefer to have read it. Yeah, I'm sorry it's not done in full L-O-L-O style. That's a missed opportunity. That's true. Good morning. Good morning, yes. The anomaly, it would be. The anomaly. Anyway, listen, we're going to have a

quick break. We're here from our sponsors. When we come back, we've got another surprise guest here. He's the most surprised. It's Ted Hughes. So we'll be hearing from him when we come back from this. Thanks a lot. And we're back. Hello everybody.

You're listening to Backlisted with me, Andy Miller, her, Dr. Una McCormack and her, Nikki Burch. And her. We're just, so we're talking about a few books that we've been reading recently. I was up in Scotland a few weeks ago. I was asked to chair a panel at the Scottish Publishers Association Conference

on the subject of backlist publishing, quote, giving new life to old books. I wonder where they got that idea from. So who did they turn to to chair that? They asked me to do it. It was really interesting, really good fun. Thank you so much to the Scottish Publishers Association for asking me. And I had the great good fortune while I was up there to have a little time in Edinburgh and a little time in Glasgow. You'll know I was

in Glasgow if you've heard the episode about Adrian Mole because I retraced both my and his footsteps by going to look at Salvador Dali's painting of Christ and sending people postcards. But while I also did what I would have done when I was 17 years old, which is of course I went to a record shop. And in- Natch. Natch. And I bought two records while in that record shop,

just around the corner from the art gallery in the kind of studenty area of Glasgow. I bought two records. The first was a copy of the Rizzillo's debut album, Can't Stand the Rizzillo's. And the other was this LP, which I will put on social media and things so you can all see the wonderful cover.

Nikki, it was issued in 1971 by BBC Records. There used to be a BBC Records label, the BBC Records study series. It's called Listening and Writing, Two Talks by Ted Hughes, Capturing Animals and Learning to Think. When I got home, first of all I listened to the Rizzillos, that was good, but then I listened to this Ted Hughes album. I was blown away, but it made me sad Ted Hughes didn't make more albums because this is amazing this record.

I'll say a bit more about it but I quote unquote needle dropped a couple of minutes from the LP so we could listen to the actual Ted Hughes. Imagine everybody at home, I want you to imagine that you're 10 years old in Mr. or Miss So-and-so's class and they go, oh, today everybody we're going to listen to a nice man called Ted and he's going to instruct us on learning to think and this is what you hear. There is the inner life of thought which is our world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, feeling, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time, consciously or unconsciously, like the heartbeat.

There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. in a life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. And that process of raid or persuasion or ambush or dogged hunting or surrender is the kind of thinking we have to learn. And if we don't somehow learn it, then our minds line us like fish in the pond of a man who can't fish. Now you see the kind of thinking I'm talking about. Perhaps I oughtn't to call it thinking at all. It's just that we tend to call everything that goes on in our heads

thinking. I'm talking about whatever kind of trick or skill it is that enables us to catch those elusive or shadowy thoughts and collect them together and hold them still so we can get a really good look at them. I'll illustrate what I mean with an example. If you were told, think of your uncle. How long could you hold the idea of your uncle in your head? Right, you imagine him. But then at once he reminds you of something else and you're thinking of that. He's gone into the background.

If he hasn't altogether disappeared, now get your uncle back. Imagine your uncle and nothing else, nothing whatsoever. After all, there's plenty to be going on with in your uncle. His eyes, what expression? His hair, where is it parted? How many waves has it? What's the exact shade? If he's bald, what's the skin feel like?

His chin, just how is it? Look at it. As you can see, there's a great deal to your uncle. You could spend hours on him, if you could only keep him in your mind for hours. But when you've looked at him from head to foot, in your memory you have all the memories of what he's said and done, and all your own feelings about him and his sayings and doings. You could spend weeks on him, just holding him there in your mind and examining the thoughts

you have about him. I've exaggerated that, but you see straight away that it's quite difficult to think about your uncle and nothing but your uncle for more than a few seconds. So how can you ever hope to collect all your thoughts about him? At the same time, you obviously couldn't do that with everything that came into your head. Grip hold of it with your imagination and never let it go till you'd studied every grain of it.

It wouldn't leave you any time to live. Nevertheless, it is possible to't leave you any time to live. Nevertheless, it is possible to do it for a time. I'll illustrate the sort of thing I mean with a poem called View of a Pig. Not yet, Ted. I'm still thinking about my uncle. I think that's magical, actually. I think both what he's saying and the way he's saying it, and indeed his performance there, which is what that is. It is really incredible. And it was a, first of all, it was a really beautiful experience to get us, if anything, it sounds better a bit scratchy. It's like, it's sort of wonderful. It's like a little cylinder from the past has dropped into your lap.

So it was amazing to listen to it. But then I went ahead and bought the book in which Learning to Think and the other talks for schools that Hughes wrote is reproduced, which is called Poetry in the Making. Now I'd never read Poetry in the Making. It's unlikely I would have read Poetry in the Making if I hadn't stumbled upon a record in a secondhand record shop in Glasgow. But my goodness, that's why we follow our nose on these things. Because if you you do that you never know what you might find under that rock and this was mind-blowing for me. This book is fantastic regardless of how everyone has a strong opinion about Ted Hughes, regardless of that it's extraordinary I think. Una, can I ask you first now you teach creative writing very well because I've seen you do it.

What did you make of this? Yeah, I hadn't read this either. I did a very, very fast read and I'm going to come back to it. And there was just, there was one piece of advice. I feel a running joke is forming already. I read it just while we were listening to that bit of brawl. It's so heavy.

There was one little bit of advice at the start. So I'm always on the lookout for kind of good tips for tips. Thanks Ted, Ted's tips. Ted's tips. There was just one little thing that he said, and I thought, I cannot believe I didn't think of doing this with creative writing and it's so clever. And he says, I always thought it would be productive

to give out at the beginning of term, some of the subjects that are going to be written about during the next weeks, the pupils would then watch the intervening lessons more purposely. So basically you just, you set all the tasks at the start of the semester and go, you know, guys, just dip in and out of those and work on it. And it's absolutely brilliant. I can't believe I've not thought of that. That's very interesting. It means that the work sustained, yeah, and not just for the moment. We would read some things written in the 60s, which I think this was written in the and feel perhaps they had dated in style or attitude or, you know, whatever, whatever way of seeing creativity would have been most prevalent then. Did you feel this was dated?

No, I didn't actually. And I think because a lot of what it's doing is asking people and I say this, you know, pay attention, pay attention and sustain that and that's what that's craft and then that's process. So it had this very clear, I think, discussion of just, I think like you were saying, this was aimed at kind of 10 to 13, 14-year-olds, yeah? Mind-blowing, isn't it? Mind-blowing. I've got to ask... This is what I want to ask Nikki. So, Nikki, what would the young Nicola Burch sitting at her desk at school... It's English, we don't know how she feels about that particular lesson. She wants to be out kicking a ball

around outside, we know that. But why? How do you think you would have reacted to that had you heard it then? And how do you react to it now? Just the audio, just the audio. I think I honestly would have probably ignored it as a child. As a 13 year old, it would have just kind of been a bit like, yeah, yeah, yeah, old dude. You know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, old dude, you know, and, you know, because it's not, it would have felt really dated in the way that, you know, any kind of teaching materials feels, you know, if somebody's not reading to in person, if, you know, someone just puts on a TV here, watch this and learn from this or listen to this, it's quite difficult. But now obviously I'm listening to it going, this is fascinating, isn't it amazing? And actually it it's all the richer that it feels dated to me.

Okay, so one of the rather nice knock-on effects of this discovery is in the 1990s, I can remember going to an event in the basement of Waterstones in Camden with no more than 25 people there, which Ted Hughes was reading from whatever his then... You saw a Ted Talk? New Vol... Ted Talk. Very yes! Exactly. Welcome to my Ted...

They should put these out under the title, Ted Talks. Oh my god. Nikki, get onto the BBC. Anyway, I went to this event, like I say, in the basement of Waterstones in Camden, a couple of dozen people there maybe, and one of the results of, you know, you kind of take these things for granted, don't you? Things that happened a long time ago that you lived through. You saw Ted Hughes. Right, you know, what time, but that's exactly what I mean. Listening to that and reading this book, it made me go, wait a minute, I remember, I saw Ted Hughes. That was a thing. And for what it's worth,

I remember that what I, all I can remember is that the talk was good, that he was terribly nice, which not all authors were with their readers. And suddenly that's a lovely little thing in my life, like dropping a flower into water that then unfolds. You know, and memory that you had forgotten or meant one thing, it now means something different to me, which is really a lovely thing for me. I've just been writing in inventory, I've just been writing an entry about spoken word recordings that I own, and one of the things I always,

I just want to say to listeners, if you're looking to get into vinyl, let me tell you, you can buy LPs of poets reading their stuff from the 50s and 60s for buttons. Really? And the experience of listening to... I just got an amazing record of the actor James Mason reading all of A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman. It's absolute rapture. It's not like an audiobook. You wouldn't walk around doing something at the same time. It's you get the thing and you put it on the record player and you sit there and you listen to it. It's got a little bit of crackle that makes it seem, it's just magical. So if you're looking for audiobooks but you want them to be inconvenient and easily break off.

These LPs are in the shops now. Recreate the third program at home and you know. Yeah exactly. Okay so that is both listening and writing. What's the book called again? Okay yeah absolutely. So the book is called Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes, an anthology of poems and programmes

from listening and writing. The LP is called Listening and Writing, Two Talks by Ted Hughes. It is not on any streaming service, including YouTube. I'm so sorry. There was also a CD version released by the British Library about 20 years ago called The Spoken Word, but that is long out of print. But if you look around, you can find the vinyl or the book or the CD, they're out there somewhere. And I really, you know, for me,

the nicest thing about making this show other than spending time with people like yourselves is these tiny moments of happenstance that lead to important discoveries. And so, yeah, so that is, also, you know, we could have made this program about the Rizzillos, but I thought it wasn't really appropriate. It wasn't really on brand.

Now, should we move on to the final book? Our final book, yes, please. Nikki, what is it? No, Una, Una, come on. Oh, right, okay. Well, our final book is A, what is it? No, Una, Una, come on. Oh, right, okay. Well, our final book is a blast from the past. Not for me though. And it is The Lowlife by Alexander Barron,

newly issued in a very attractive Faber Editions volume. Yes, it came out in May again, this book. Shall I read the blurb, which is what we would do on a backlisted? It is a backlisted, yeah. In fact, Una, why don't you read the blurb? This is just, this is head spinning stuff. No, but hold on. Una's going to read it so fast, no one's going to be able to listen. There you go. Blinked and I did it.

So in this, yeah, two paras on the inside flap. There is, yeah. Harry Boy Boas is a lowlife gambler. When he's not at the track, he lives in a hackney boarding house, reading Zola, eating salt beef, pressing trousers and repressing wartime memories. But when a new family moves into the apartment downstairs, his life starts to unravel,

and Harry Boy soon finds himself sinking into a murky East End underworld where violence, guilt and gangsters are the inevitable result for those who cannot pay their dues. A celebrated cult classic, The Lowlife brilliantly evokes post-war East London, dog tracks, sandwich shops, tenements, sex workers, newly arrived West Indians and Jews leaving for Finchley, all seen through the tragicomic eyes of Harry Boy, our picaresque rogue hero suffering from existential burnout in the shadow of the Holocaust, Ian Sinclair, and driven to bet, brag and beg to survive. Hey, fun. Whoever wrote that, whoever wrote that blurb, you smashed it.

You did actually. Yeah, some lovely alliteration there. Yep. All right. So before Nikki and I give you our thoughts on this, because long time listeners will remember, we made a whole show about this novel. When was it, Nikki? How long ago is it? I mean, I think it's six, seven years ago. Yeah, at least it was in my early years when I just started. So seven years, I'd say. Like I said at the top of the show, we're quite keen to do a little bit of revisiting of things. Enough time has passed since we last did it and also because you know perhaps partly because it was featured on backlisted not entirely clearly but partly the book

is available again you can now as you couldn't when we when we talked about it walk into a bookshop I saw a table in Wallstones the other day covered in copies of The Lowlife by Alexander Barron so we have some history with this book but I know Una you didn't and you read it for this show. I did. So you go first. Right yes had a very nice time. I was traveling to and from the Hay Festival, very exciting for me because I don't do that regularly and this was my traveling companion. No I hadn't read it before but I really trust Faber Editions and I just you know I get them as soon as I see them, not read all of them.

And I've got time before me tea. Yeah, I think what I hadn't realised immediately, you know, like we all do, went looked up his biography and I went, oh, right. Okay. I've actually seen things written by this guy because he was a regular contributor to things like Play for Today or more importantly A Horseman Riding By which I have consumed with great delight. And is that is that Delderfield? That is Delderfield. Yeah yeah it's lovely yeah yeah proper 70s you know Sunday night stuff and then I think I probably brought that sensibility. We were talking about this with Letellier, weren't we? You can see modern TV form in the writing.

I think you can see sort of late sixties and seventies TV script writing here. It's very tight. There's a clear cast of characters. It's got kind of narrative propulsion. He's running around trying to get the money at the end and that kind of drives the last act of the book. Reminds me of a movie from the 90s, Tom Taitworth film, Run Lola Run, where she's got, yeah, yeah, she's got to get money to save her boyfriend and mobile phones haven't been invented.

Also, I know we played a little bit on the show we made all those years ago. It's very similar to the film The Small World of Sammy Lee. Amazing 60s film, which I really love, starring Anthony Newley. Very much in the same Jewish milieu and very much about trying to get the money before somebody gets to you. Exactly. But you enjoyed it, right? Oh, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was amazing. Yeah, I thought it was great. Yeah. But all of these things about it being a thriller, about it being, you know, a TV show. Sinclair Nails said it's absolutely about this repressed,

this thing that he's, it's not even a thing that he's done. It's a thing, it's a thing he's neglected to do. And it just, he can't get past it. He's just stuck in the loop again. He's like, don't go around. This is weird for a thriller but the MacGuffin in a sense is the existential sense of not having addressed something you need to go back and look at clearly before you can then move on. I think reading it again, that element was more present to me. I think the first time I read it I was really gripped by it. Nikki, what could you remember of this from when we did the show and how does it compare when you read it now? Well I think one of the key points that I felt all the way along was that it's just there's no redemption here. There's no kind of oh it's all going to work out okay but

then it's also there's no terrible thing that's going to happen so it's a kind of this weird there's this sort of quiet unease throughout the whole thing. Yeah. It's ever present in the book. And, you know, there's these moments where Harry Boy things might work out and then they don't work out, but it's never terrible for him. It's just kind of consistently failing all the way along. And that is actually that feeling that it leaves you, you don't dislike him as a character, you know, you really don't.

Yeah, and you feel that awful things have happened. And I think the point you were saying about this sort of being a post-war, and the things I learned when we did this on Backlist, it was how much, how that sort of post-war Jewish experience really feeds into it. And I think I didn't really understand that, like you, when I first read it, until we talked about it. And then I went back and looked at it again, I thought,

okay, that really makes me and feels like I understand him more. It's an absolutely spectacular book. I'm so pleased we're revisiting it. It's absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I always say it's one of my all time favourite books that we've done on backlisted that perhaps I wouldn't have read and considered have we not made a show and I feel very, very fortunate because I think about this novel often, which is not true listeners, I'm afraid, of all the books we cover. This one I think is very, very special. Can I ask you a question, Andy, about it?

Yeah, sure. So this is set in London in the 60s. And I would argue London in the 60s is one of your, one of your. It's one of my mastermind subjects. Yes, that's right. Yeah, exactly. But this isn't Swinging London. Okay, so the first thing to say is swinging London in itself is 2000 people tops, and they weren't all in London. But yes, you're absolutely correct. One of the reasons this novel is so special

and so important as noted by Ian Sinclair, but other people too, Ken Whipple, the biographer of Alexander Barron. The milieu it describes, an area of London, Nikki, you live in, right? I do. In fact, my son goes to the same school that Barron went to, the version of it now. Like Sammy Lee, in terms of representing on screen or on the page, the North London Jewish experience. There are so few examples of this. And therefore, as you say, Swinging London, it's so far out, Swinging London isn't

any relevance to these characters. I have something to observe that, you know, I'm in a position, I wasn't when I first read this book and we made the last show, but I want to ask you both, because I find this hilarious, Una, I know you went and listened to that episode before doing this, didn't you? So to see what on earth it was like. And also, Nikki, you did too, didn't you? Now, listeners, I never listen back to the shows because that's how you drive yourself mad, I think. But I will defer to my two colleagues.

What did you discover from episode 60, whatever it was? Everybody's hair was darker and your suit fitted better. Thank you. I don't think I even had glasses then. Everyone had had a few drinks before the show. We don't do that now. We're much more professional. Yeah, it was very relaxed. What do they sing in Frozen 2? The

wind grows a little bit colder. We're all growing older. Yeah, that's a welcome to the new look back. Exactly. But what I remember about the recording, Nikki, is, as has happened again today, just the joy of sitting with three or four people who've read the same book you have, confident that they've really enjoyed it. So it's partly the drink, but it's also that, it's also the enthusiasm. What did you think listening back to it? Yeah I mean I think it was a great show, this one's better. Oh it was so much better than last week, thank you Bruce Forsyth. We had some people, you know the guests were kind of experts on London as well so that

was good. There was a lot of great kind of in talking about London writing and that was really nice. That's a really good point. So I think you could listen to this and go back and get a lot out of that show too. So listen to them both. Subscribe. Thank you. Subscribe. Am I too desperate? She's good, isn't she listeners? Very subtle. Yeah. Well, you have given me a mic. Do you know what I mean? I'm here just doing my job. Do you want me to read a Very subtle. You have given me a mic, do you know what I mean? I'm here just doing my job. Do you want me to read a bit? Yeah, before you read a bit, can I just make two brief observations?

So when we recorded that show, The Lowlife was out of print. And I've really noticed, this is a thing we'll probably talk about in episodes to come, I've really noticed how some of the books that we've done years ago, since we've done them have become much better known, not because we've done them, they just word of mouth works like that. And I can think of a few, and this is certainly one, I think The Low Life by Alexander Barron is a much better known novel now than it was a few years ago. For instance, I have friends, hello John, hello Helen, hello Paul, who organize walks of Dalston and Stoke Newington

based on the different locations mentioned in The Low Life. I know for a fact there've been big events about Alexander Barron at various literary festivals. The LRB Bookshop relaunched the Lowlife a few weeks ago with an event. So I think it's really heartening to see the good stuff. Once you get it out there again, it's what always happens. Somebody reads it. Somebody reads it and then somebody and says, you ought to read this. Has anyone reprinted the sequel?

No. The sequel is called Stripjack Naked. And unlike I hadn't read it when we recorded the last show Una but now I have. I got a copy out of the library. Okay this book the sequel to the lowlife which I think was written in the mid 60s often gets mentioned pejoratively because it isn't as good as the lowlife, but also it's very difficult to find a copy. Secondhand copies are extremely expensive and so that kind of take on the sequel is more handed down by hearsay than it is based on experience, right? Now, it's not a great novel, Stripjack Naked, but Una, in the light of what you were saying about Alexander Barron's ability to turn his hand to different forms of script, novel, genre,

it's a very interesting book, which repositions Harry Boy Boas, not as a kind of desperate runner in North London, but almost as kind of like a Michael Caine-like dodgy gambler in the Mediterranean. And I could understand that if you go to that thinking, great, I'm going to get the low life part two, you're not. And if you're going to go to it thinking I'm going to get a great novel, well, maybe it isn't a great novel, but it's not awful.

It's a solid piece of work that's attempting to be something very different using a character, which was his to use. So, you know, I can't see that it'll be reprinted anytime soon, but it's a shame. It's a shame you can't even get an electronic version because people should be able to discover it for themselves, shouldn't they? So, yeah. James Mitchell does this with the Callan books.

So Callan is the TV show, the spy played by Edward Woodward. He writes three or four in the late 60s, early 70s, writes three or four really, really tight thrillers, yeah, and then comes back and writes one about 20 years later. And it's really... Una, if you were writing a fan fiction piece about Harry Boas, what would you do? Oh, you see, I wouldn't... Do you know, no, actually, no, you say it. I'd write about Evelyn, the Evelyn Tensions, as I call her. Yeah, she's because she's so it's I know she's really is the villain. She lives in his house, doesn't she? She does.

Yeah, she's a she's a very unhappy young married woman who's stuck at home scrubbing things that will never be clean. And I think that's, you know, she's clearly the villain of the piece, but at the same time, he's too good a novelist to not go. There are reasons for this. And this is frustration and being stuck at home all day with nothing actually to do with her talents and her single mindedness and all of that kind of warps into racism and bad parenting. Yeah, really interesting. That's someone I'd like to prize open. Nicky, I'd just like to say that another reading of this confirms it in my personal

pantheon of literature as one of the great, I mean, everyone knows it's one of the great London novels, but for me, it's one of the great novels, like Absolute Beginners, there's no higher praise, of a particular way of life within London. So in Absolute Beginners, it's young people's lives, and in here, it's low lives. It does what it says on the cover.

It's a running hound. You know, can he get to the line? So yeah, it's as good as that. Nikki, why don't you read us a little bit? Okay, I'll read a little section from about a third of the way through the book. He lives with this man, who's kind of his landlord and Vic is a bit of a small-time wheeler-dealer and he's taken him to the races in Haringey. Vic's never been before.

Our first bet was on the third race. We put our money on the second favorite. Vic had Virgin's luck. The dog won. He followed me for two more races. I showed him how to do a forecast and a reverse forecast, and the reverse bet won. Beginners always win, and they always react the same.

They get wildly elated. They fill with conceit, and all of a sudden you can't tell them anything. There floods into them the feeling that they're at home here, that they're enjoying themselves and like kids they want to show that they're big boys. They don't need you anymore. There were three good dogs in the sixth. I told Vic to try a combination which means that if any two of your three dogs come first and second

you win. Not that boy. He wanted it straight, the winner, and he knew. He pointed to a dog and said this one was gonna walk home. He knew poor Goomp. Yes, he did though. He won. He was crazy now, laughing, flushed. He swaggered about like an old hand, told me airily he was just popping up to the tote and rubbed in what an old hand he was by talking about the two dog and the three dog instead of number two and number three. I said, all right, boy, all right, keep it down. It's not nice for a beginner to do his nut when he's standing on a terrace full of gamblers, the real sweat blood brigade who are losing their week's wages in an atmosphere of grim respectable quietness. Just before the last race, he vanished. I was too bored to put

any money on. I bought myself a scotch and a ham sandwich. People were going home and after the race ended the stand started emptying out faster. Still Vic didn't appear. Then he came running. He was like his own kid, almost tumbling over with excitement. Like a kid he was in that feverish state when tears are only a few seconds away. He shouted to me, I won, I won, I won. So you won, I said. You don't understand. Look, he pulled a fistful of notes out of his pocket. Fourteen pounds. I won fourteen pounds. They gave me this. I won. I said, what did you have on? He said a pound. I was fed up with the favourites. I had a hunch about this outsider. He had a hunch about an outsider. He won, didn't he?' The boy was still punting. It was an instinct. I tell

you, I knew. You knew? Put your money away before one of the wiz artists decides to take it off you. Come on, wiz artists, pickpocket. We were on our way out. Vic, I'm delighted you won. It made a nice evening. Only don't get the wrong idea. Everyone has luck the first time. After that the bookies start taking it back from you. Oh I know, I know, I wouldn't come again. You were only going to bet two Bob, you bet a quid on. It was just once. It was just for fun. You've got to have your go once in your lifetime. All right boy, only remember you've had your once. Oh wonderful, thank you so much. Also, you know, I was saying,

make that comparison to absolute beginners. It occurs to me hearing you read that, Nikki, that the similarity between the two books is complete mastery of narrative voice and character, even though it's an act of ventriloquism, that when Colin McInnes is writing a teenager, he's not a teenager. I can't speak as to whether Alexander Barron was an investor at Gamba, he may well have been, but still, I reckon he didn't talk like that, and even if he did, getting it on the page.

Una, what do you think? Una McEnany I was just thinking about what Ted Hughes was telling us about attention, I was just thinking about what Ted Hughes was telling us about attention, just real attentiveness to the detail. And I just loved a Scotch and a Ham sandwich. I thought that was just- Yes, absolutely. ... absolutely brilliant. Scotch and a Ham sandwich. It's just to follow the detail. And the more you pay attention, the more precise you get.

There's another lovely bit as well, which is almost the subtitle of the book, A Grim Respectable Quietness. That's it. Yes, I love that. Yeah. I think it could not be said of Alexander Barron, that his mind lay in him like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish. Was that Ted Hughes? It was. Yeah. That's my favourite line from Ted's speech back then. Ted's talk. Anyway. Like, listen, thank you so much, everybody. That's where we must leave it today.

Thanks to Una for joining us and giving us the perfect excuse for revisiting our past regenerations and to our producer, Nikki Birch for buying. She bought a new mic for today. Thanks Nikki. It sounds good though, doesn't it? It does sound very Thanks, Nikki. It sounds good though, doesn't it? It does sound very good. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the previous 240 episodes, I can be heard 10 times, which I believe is a tie with Andrew Mail. Um, not for long, Andrew, not for long.

Please visit our website at batlisted.fm. And if you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit the shop at bookshop.org and choose Batlisted as your bookshop. Now it's time for me to do the pushy bit again. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, that's okay. That's my role So please do subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted remember if you subscribe at the lock lister level you get two extra exclusive podcasts every month and

Installments of Andy's new writing project, which is fantastic. It's called inventory And it's where he goes over his one record every week. One record every week. You also get the chance to join a community of dedicated listeners and readers like ourselves. And people who subscribe at this level also get their names read out like this. Elin Dupour, thank you. Thank you so much. Duncan King, you're a legend. Thanks Duncan. Emma Milker. Thanks. Emma, thank you. Thank you so much. Duncan King, you're a legend. Thanks Duncan. Emma Milker. Emma, thank you. And Daniel Mudford, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you Daniel.

And Mel Bale aka Walking the Hills. Thank you Mel. Thank you. Also thanks, must go to Julie Stapleton. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers, a cheers? This is an innovation. I'm enjoying this. Martin Arbor, thank you so much. Thanks Martin. Lauren C Guthrie. Thank you. Thank you. Bless you. Thank you. Sarah Jane. Amazing. Thanks Sarah. Many thanks. And finally, a special thanks to Catherine Morton who signed up at the highest level available to our patrons. She is a new master storyteller. All of you and Catherine, thank you so much. Especially now, we really appreciate your support and for being here. Thank you. Now, before we go, Una, is there anything last thing you'd like to say about joining us on Batlisted or about giving a new home to

Shetland? It's really nice to be here just please don't make me climb up Nelson's column that's all. Yes health and safety. It's not the 60s anymore. And you've got you said a brilliant thing yesterday we, we were chatting when we had our meeting before the show. You were saying like, you've got one of the reasons you were looking forward to doing this is because you said you've got, for all the books you have read, you have a significant quantity that you've yet to get to. That's right. And my intention is to persuade you to choose those so that I can read them. All right, good. Listen, thanks so much everybody, we're really grateful. We will be back in a fortnight with Backlisted, giving new life to old books. See you next time. The End