Backlisted - The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Rosemary Tonks is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Our starting point is her fascinating third novel The Bloater (1968) - which is long out of print, unfortunately - but we also discuss her remarkable poetry, her friendship with Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, her eccentric career in fiction, radio and theatre, and her gradual retreat from the world. Joining John and Andy to discover more about this unique and enigmatic writer are two of Tonks's admirers, author and critic Jennifer Hodgson and the comedian Stewart Lee. Also in this episode Andy replenishes his enthusiasm for Elizabeth Taylor with her (bizarrely underrated) novel The Wedding Group (1968), while John shines a light on Andy Charman's Crow Court, a new novel of short stories set in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, in the 19th century, published by Unbound.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)23'15 The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness ends July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. uh jennifer where are you? How are you doing? What's been happening?

I'm in my bedroom in South East London where I've been since March. Could be anywhere. I'm all right, though. Is the correct answer. Yeah, I think that's all you can say. I think today's been quite bad, what with one thing and another. That's getting the energy level up.

Yeah, I can object to everybody's feeling good now. Well done, Andy. Stu, where are you? Well, I'm in the office bit of my house in Stoke Newington. And today my wife was running around the park and she saw Johnny Trunk of Trunk Records who put out lots of radiophonic stuff. And he asked her how I was.

He said he hadn't seen me around. He was worried that I'd spent the whole of lockdown just sitting in a dark room full of fall CDs going out. And that is exactly what I've done. But this week, I've been sitting in a dark room reading Rosemary Tonks, an equally objectionable character. Definitely, definitely. There's definitely a Mark E. Smith rosemary tonks i'm loving that's

great yeah definitely got that in early good all right hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast that gives new life to old books today you find us in late 60s london we're on a lunch break from the electronic sound workshop sitting in a seedy pub drinking stingos and eating cheese sandwiches that make our gums smart, and trading cryptic stories about our love lives, or the lack of them. I'm John Mitchinson, publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously.

And today, as you've heard, we have joined virtually by a new guest, Stuart Lee, and an old guest, Jennifer Hodgson, who was last on that listed for the Anne Quinn episode, which was number 67 in 2018. Hello, both of you. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Thank you for coming on this dark, dark day.

Stuart started performing Ye Olde Alternative Comedy in 1988. He has been called the world's greatest living stand-up comedian by The Times and Britain's worst stand-up comedian by The Sun. He is currently number one in the pop charts, quoting the Anglo-Saxon poem. The Wanderer has a guest at the Asian Dub Foundation on their Coming Over Here single. King Rocker, the documentary he co-authored with Toast of London director Michael Cumming

about Birmingham punk survivor Robert Lloyd of the band the Nightingales, is on Sky Arts on January the 30th. How long have you spent making that? Actually, it's been moved to the 6th of February now. Well, it took about two years to make, but obviously it was finished in March last year and then we were supposed to take it

around cinemas, and so it's sort of been in limbo for a year. Stu's tour, Snowflake Tornado, is currently on hold, with 50 final dates to be rescheduled for later in 2021. He is 52 years old, and most people have never heard of him. Stuart Lee, the last time I saw you was actually on the... I can't remember if you played the gig or not, but you were down here in Canterbury. What happened was it was a Monday night.

I was in Canterbury on the tour. Boris Johnson told people that they shouldn't go to the theatre but didn't tell theatres that they had to close. That was at five o'clock, which caused a massive confusion and all the people on the committee of the theatre had to turn up in Canterbury and decide what to do and then the public had to decide whether to go there was a mad atmosphere on the night which was nothing to do with me and uh because I think people knew it was the last time they were out and when I saw you I was hanging around in Canterbury waiting for confirmation

as to whether we would go ahead or pull it and um it was pulled that night and we went in the theatre and packed up and everyone was sort of saying, I wonder how long this will last. And lots of my set was actually put in the tour driver Merch Guy's sister's garage because we thought we'd be back on the road pretty soon. And, you know, that's coming up to a year ago. Mad.

When you get back out on tour, what are you going to do? Are you going to stick to that material from however long ago it was? Well, well if you remember the second half of the show was a story about dave chapelle's backstage rider right and that as far as i know hasn't changed it may have but then the first half was sort of about the culture war, I suppose, as I saw it in 2019 when I wrote the show, which is going to be three years ago by the time this gets finished. So, yeah, it will need it. And so many things have changed, you know.

Loads of things have changed in the last 24 hours. In the last few days. You know, in the last few days. So, really, I've got to wait till I know it's happening and then kind of take a reading and try and rewrite the first half so it's not like the description of the news of 2019, but in a way that doesn't mess up the second half. So it's going to be a real little puzzle.

And I think I've got a recording of the old first half that I think I'll put out there somehow. But, yeah, it's a weird, weird, difficult thing. It makes you realize how much has happened I mean I was talking about issues about perception of race and whatever and Black Lives Matter has happened since since this went down you know so many things but yeah well keep working on it in isolation That's totally healthy. We're also so pleased to have you back, Jennifer Hodgson. Hooray.

Hooray. Hello. Keeping it light. Yeah, keeping it light. Always light. Jennifer Hodgson is a writer and critic. In 2018, she edited a collection of Anne Quinn's short stories, The Unmapped Country.

She's currently working on a book that started out being about Anne Quinn's life, but has ended up being about a load of other stuff besides. She's calling it a heist road movie psychodrama about ontological wonder sickness. Yeah, that's how I'm pitching it. Are you impressed? I'm very, very impressed. Thanks, babe. Rosemary Tonks would approve of that.

She cried big prodigal daughter tears when they asked her to be reader in residence and programmer at Humbermouth, the book festival in her hometown of Hull last year. And during lockdown, she has been working on reinventing herself as an amateur contemporary dancer. Is that true? Yeah.

I was trying to be funny, but it is also true. It's based in truth. That's the main thing. It's very impressive. In your bedroom? Well, no, no. There's a a spare room i live in a shared house there's a spare room in the attic free and uh you know everyone has these kind of like flights of fancy escapism right and mine just happened to take place uh doing some serious mess cunningham stuff like sort of maybe

early 80s new york living in a flat with a fire escape jazz shoes those weird plastic trousers other than sit at my desk and think about a dead 60s writer for all year what the other thing I've done is be in the attic and it's brilliant do that uh John why are we here though what the book that you've chosen to discuss is The Bloater, the second novel by the English poet Rosemary Tonks, a writer Andy first brought to our attention on Backlisted in episode 45, the one on Anita Luce, where he discussed her collected poems, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012,

as Bedouin of the London Evening. The Bloater, however, was a 60s novel published by the Bodley Head in 1968. And for reasons we will explore, it's now unavailable. Now, we don't normally say this at the start of the Bat Lister, but we're going to today because this is the rarest book that we've ever featured on the podcast in 120 something episodes. So the only way you're going to be able to probably get hold of a copy is either by paying a lot of money for one or for finding one in a library, which is quite hard

because, first of all, it's a 50-year-old novel, over 50 years old, and it was never reprinted. And second of all, Rosemary Tonks herself, in her later life, made a point of going into lending libraries, borrowing copies of her novels and then burning them. Is that right? Yes, that is. Thank God.

That is absolutely true. Was she trying to increase their second-hand value? She was trying to protect people from Satan. I didn't know that. Wow. So we decided that it's okay for us to talk about novels that aren't easily available because we're not totally controlled by the market.

And we decided to talk about The Bloater because in different ways, everyone gathered here today. First of all, we're all fascinated by Rosemary Tonks and her work. And the second thing is we've all got a specific connection with this novel, The Bloater. And the second thing is we've all got a specific connection with this novel, The Bloater. Jennifer, as you will know, specialises in female experimental novelists of the 1960s, of whom Rosemary Tonks is one. Stu has a longstanding interest in the concept of the outsider artist and the Rosemary Tonks fits that bill. She's very active and very successful from the mid 60ss to the mid-70s. And then she disappears completely. She died in 2014.

And those last 40 years of her life, as we'll discuss, she's doing some quite eccentric things. I wanted to talk about The Bloater because, as John says, I've talked about Rosemary Tonks' poetry and this novel before on Backlisted back in 2017. Nicky was keen to discuss this novel because as our producer, it features characters based on Delia Derbyshire and the pioneering work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s. And John, John's connection to the book is because the lead character

is suffering from gout throughout. Correct. Which is no laughing matter, is it, Johnny? Sorry, I apologise for laughing. And he saw this as a chance to raise gout awareness. Gout Awareness Week starts here. That's a long-winded way of saying we hope you can get hold of a copy. We're going to try and talk around the book and give you as much of a flavour

of the book and of Rosemary Tonks as we can as we go along. But before we enter the realm of the essence of Tonks. What have I been reading? What have you been reading this week? Sorry, very pleasing joke. I have been reading this week? Sorry, very pleasing joke. I have been reading. Now, I'm sorry, this is shameless self-promotion. I don't often do this, but I want to talk about an unbound book

which is published in 10 days' time called Crow Court by Andy Sharman. It's the first novel. It's a historical novel. And I think it is, I obviously think it's brilliant. I wouldn't be bothering you with it if I didn't. I obviously think it's brilliant. I wouldn't be bothering you with it if I didn't. It's kind of spookily one of the best debuts I think I've read. It was actually discovered by Rachel, my wife.

It had almost no work to do on it. It's set in Wimborne in Dorset in 1840, and it covers 20 years. It is structured around 14 episodes, 14 characters. It has almost a musical structure. There is an overarching mystery to be solved. A child is found floating dead in the river, and a choir master who's suspected of having either killed him or forced him to commit suicide is found dead shortly afterwards. So you need to get that out of the way, that bit of plot out of the way.

But really what makes it, I think, brilliant is just the way Andy Sharman's written it. Each of the episodes, 14 episodes, kind of connect, although obviously it's not chronologically told in that way it's it's episodic yeah i suppose each one's written in a something you'd call it almost like a different tonal key really really brilliant writing it sounds from what your description of it reminds me of ulverton by adam thorpe does it have something yeah it does it's it's got that kind of historical ventriloquism he he uh. There are a couple of the characters speak in very broad Dorset dialect, which I'm not going to bother you with today. There is a short glossary in the back.

So it's got a bit of Olverton. It's got the sort of layering of, do you remember Graham McRae Burnett's His Bloody Project? Oh, yeah. That kind of feeling of a historical mystery. It's got the sort of, what we might call the powerful vernacular energy of Ben Myers, and indeed Ben gave us a brilliant quote for the book saying it's a book that, or the kind of, you know,

long shadows cast by ancient folklore of Essex Serpent. It's obviously also set in the mid-19th century, so it's about the ebbing away of people's faith and the growth of Darwinism. I just think it's a really, really beautiful bit of work, and he is going to be a writer, I think, who will write more, perhaps even better novels. But it's an amazing first novel.

I'm very, very, very happy, proud to be publishing it. And being a debut, it's been very difficult to get anybody to take even the faintest bit of notice. So it is available on all the usual places people do buy it. Shall I read just a tiny little bit? You had this same issue, didn't you, with the brilliant Mary Ann Sate? Yeah, Alice Jolly's Mary Ann Sate Imbecile. Yeah.

This shouldn't be as difficult. Mary Ann Sate Imbecile was Yeah. This shouldn't be as difficult. Marianne St. Imbecile was written in a kind of a verse, and it was 600 pages long, but brilliant, and was runner-up for the Rathbones Folio and shortlisted for several other prizes. We had a similar problem getting people originally interested in Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, which was written in a sort of hybrid Anglo-Saxon modern tongue.

But this is not, I think, this is not as forbidding. It's just very, very clever and intricate, like I say, like a piece of sort of chamber music, 14 movement, whatever. Anyway, do you want to read a little bit? Yeah, let's hear a bit. Just a very, very quick paragraph. This gives you the feel. When John sees the fabric floating among the reeds,

he merely thinks it strange that someone well-to-do should misplace their linen in the river. Even a recognition of the chorister's gown leads him to wonder why a choir boy would not remove his clothes before going for a swim. Then he stops waiting, stands still, and takes it all in, the one hand floating, the knuckles breaking the surface, the other arm obscured from view, the sheen on the fabric from the soaked-in water, and the dreaminess of the boy's gown where it wafts around in an underwater billow. He takes a slow step forwards, frowning, causing breaks in the stream as he does so. The weeds, the gown and the body move with gentle waves back and forth to

acknowledge his approach. He watches the body's open mouth as water drifts in and out, like ocean waves among the ribs of a shipwrecked hull. He knows the boy. He recognises the head of curly blonde hair, even though it's spread out, sullied with weed and specks of grain from the mill. John, standing midstream, water pushing against his legs, turns without moving his feet. He is looking, looking back over the fields for someone to bring help, someone to absolve him from the scene, to witness his innocence, someone to make it right. But there is no one. He thinks that maybe Bill Brown would be by the bridge and even shouts for him. Bill! While Bill calls back asking what the matter is, John has not the words with which to answer. He looks again at the body, and his eye catches the crow

that has been watching him. Black-feathered and cold-eyed, the crow seems to sense a threat, lifts its wings, and pulls itself into the air. It arcs up and across the field in a great long curl, allowing the wind to take it. John mutters to himself, Oh, Lord. That'llters to himself, Oh Lord. That'll do.

It sets up a bit. Oh, it's great. It's great, great, great. Is that out now, or is that out? It's published on the, let me tell you, the 21st of January. So effectively, when people are listening to this, it will be out sort of in two or three days' time.

Historical fiction, I think, when it's this good, is not really historical fiction i think when it's when it's this good is is not really historical fiction at all it's something else it's a kind of novel of ideas brilliantly done andy what have you been reading um so i thought twice about uh choosing another novel by elizabeth taylor but i've chosen another novel by Elizabeth Taylor. But I've chosen another novel by Elizabeth Taylor called The Wedding Group. And there are several reasons why. I thought fundamentally I chose it because although I've read other books

and although Elizabeth Taylor's had her own episode of Batlisted, just because Elizabeth Taylor's had an episode of Batlisted, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to read any more Elizabeth Taylor's or talk about Elizabeth Taylor when she's one of my favourite writers.

So humour me, listeners. You know how much I like Elizabeth Taylor. You're giving people permission to do the same, Andy. It's good. It's kind. That's part of the reading experience. Certainly at the moment, life is quite hard at the moment. And if I want to read and talk to you about something I've read before and insist on talking to you about it, I'm just going to jolly well do it. This novel, The Wedding Group, is one of the later Elizabeth Taylor novels, one of the ones she wrote in the 1960s. And these don't have a great reputation. In fact, she's sort of at her least fashionable in the 1960s. And like the novel we covered on Backlisted in a summer season, and the novel she wrote at the end of the 60s, like the novel we covered on Backlisted in a summer season and the novel she wrote at the

end of the 60s but didn't publish until the early 70s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont they're quite liked at the time but they become much loved later on the Wedding Group is published by Chatter and Windus in 1968 I think I'm right in saying in the same month that The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks is published. And I went and looked up reviews of both books in the various internet sites and microfiches to compare the reviews. And I can tell you that The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks was reviewed far more warmly and widely

than The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor. So Elizabeth Taylor is at her least fashionable in 1968. It's her 10th novel. But all the things that I love about Elizabeth Taylor are here in the book, the elegant sentences, the apprehension of character, and that sense that there's real venom in it. You're reading it, and then you look down at your stomach, and you're bleeding because she's knifed you on the way past.

But you haven't noticed it because she's done it so elegantly and smoothly. And the wedding group is based on her life in the 1940s. She was a neighbor of Eric Gill and his his commune and it has a character and a setting based on eric gill now when she wrote this she probably didn't know about eric gill what we have since come to know about eric gill she describes a painter called harry breton who lives in a commune called quain and i'm just going to read you a bit about him, which contains all the elements of the things I love about Elizabeth Taylor. And the fact that it's about such a sinister subject

makes quite clear what's going on really. When you hear the name Cressy, that's Harry Breton's granddaughter. At Quayne, the commune, everything was all of a piece. Everyone, everything, fitted in to the master's scheme. For Harry Breton had views on every aspect of life, and had, with what seemed to be the greatest luck, found that all formed part of his whole vision. Here, there was nothing he thought of as spurious, nothing meretricious, nothing counterfeit.

All was wholesome, necessary, simple, therefore good and beautiful too. The outside world had jerry-built houses, plastic flowers, chemical fertilisers, materialism and devitalised food. Beachwoods on four sides protected Quain. It was to that world beyond the beachwoods that his granddaughter Cressy was looking. She dreamt of wimpy bars and a young man with a sports car, of cheap and fashionable clothes that would fall apart before she tired of them. In that world she might find a place for herself. It was worth trying for there was none here. She knew that she was about to become, if it had not happened already, the one flaw in Harry Breton's way of life,

happened already, the one flaw in Harry Breton's way of life, the first blemish upon Quayne, something which did not hold good, which ruined the argument. Harry Quayne was a short man with a grey beard, rather long hair, thin on the crown and protruding eyes. Always he wore a blue painting smock and sandals he had hired a suit when he went to get his cbe and he and rachel in clothes borrowed from her sister a worldly woman had looked very odd as they set out he came now slowly across the courtyard on his way to the workshop cressy made herself stay there by the wall although she longed to dart away and knew that she should be in the kitchen with her cousins. She had always feared and disliked her grandfather.

When he came close to her, she stared into his brilliant blue eyes without blinking, waiting for the storm to break. He rested his hand on her head for a moment, as if she were ill ill and then went on towards the barn where does she imagine that um that commune is is that in wales or in london no it's um it's near high wickham right right which is where which is where yeah yeah yeah because he moved one he went out to wales in the end isn't he yeah with yeah david jones and people i just thought it was amongst the thing obvious things about that one of the things that i thought was really interesting in relation to the bloater is cressy wants to live the kind of life that uh

min in the bloater uh is either living or wants to live yeah and jen the bit i know you're going to read from the bloater is kind of of a piece with that yearning for for plastic materialism but anyway so that's the wedding group by elizabeth taylor plastic materialism love it one of the things about the bloater is it's got invaluable for a first-hand setting of the things about the bloater is it's got invaluable for a first-hand setting of the Radiophonic Workshop. But before we get on to that, Jennifer, where were you? When did you first discover Rosemary Tonks? Well, I came across our Tonks as I'm insisting upon calling her,

even though I know that she'd completely hate it and I'm slightly terrified of her, well not slightly I have been preoccupied in a way that's puzzling even to me with this sort of moment in British

culture in the 60s and with the writing of that period that was sort of full of possibility. And at the time met with like great critical hostility. Like, what are you doing with our precious, sacred novel form? So I came across her as part of that whole gang. Although, you know, Shared When Writers formed groups, like many of them, they didn't really consider themselves a gang. But there's a sort of loose grouping of people from that period such as oh yeah name names sir quinn of course

yeah but people like bs johnson and christine bruce and bridget brurphy and many of whom are sort of you know over the last 10 years or so have been kind of coming back to light and are being appreciated as being this awkward but really interesting period of cultural history in the uk where there's this moment where you know in the shadow of modernism after modernism and against the sort of like social realism that's happening elsewhere and the kind of like older generation of liberal intellectuals who are still wringing their hands about what culture can do in the face of all the you know the fall of civilization. You just get these people doing really weird stuff, these funny little novels that are often pretty self-consciously minor.

They're sort of novels of ideas. They're sort of social satires, like many of them, but they're not, they're really vicious. The worlds and the characters that they create are really insubstantial and strange and and like hardly rendered at all and I just think it it's this this moment that's really weird and full of potential I met Tonks as part of that whole group of weirdos and Stu what was it about the poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks the first attracted your attention well I I think I read the obituary when she died

and I was really surprised I'd never heard of her. And I read the poetry that was then newly available. And I really liked, I couldn't understand about half of it, to be honest, but what I could understand, I really liked. And I even liked the stuff I didn't understand. I liked the jarring of words that ought not to go together, that she somehow compounds and they create a real spark of excitement.

And then I wanted to find out more about her. And I found out on the internet that she'd written a book about being involved with the Rodeophonic Workshop. And I thought, well, I'm really interested in that. And I tried to Google it and then, bizarrely, the only person that appeared to have written about it at that stage was Andy Miller. She'd be appalled. She'd be appalled.

Who I knew. And he had got this, and he said he'd read it in a library. And I thought, well, I'd really like to get it. And I saw it was for sale on the internet for like 250 quid you know and i i undenied about it i mean i've never spent that i've never even bought a car because i'm really tired so i i undenied about it for about six months and it was still there right and then then i'd i'd had i'd done a tour and it had gone well. And my promoter, David Johnson, he said, you know, name what gift you would like.

And I said, well, do you want to get us this book? Because I would never have bought it myself. Anyway, he got this. And it was an incredible experience I haven't really had since, which was that I would carry it around with me, reading it, as you do on tubes and stuff. And I felt that it was so expensive and so rare. No one had ever even seen it.

The whole experience of walking around with it was terrifying for two reasons. One, because you felt like you've got this thing which you mustn't drop. And also because she's really frightening as well, isn't she, Jen? Yeah. Like you said, you're kind of thinking,

oh, God, she'll be really cross if I leave this book. Terrifying. But I remember the actual week or so of carrying it around with me. You can't escape from her. You know, she smothers you. Worse in the earlier book that I read, to be honest. There's no even plot in it to give you a break. You're being stared at very hard, aren't you, throughout that book?

So I just remember that being so exciting to have this precious thing. And it is ridiculous because I'm of a generation where things were rare. You might have a record that no one else had found or they might lend you one that it was impossible to hear otherwise. And it was strange to encounter that feeling again. Yeah. A couple of years ago, I saw it somewhere for like a pound or something. And it was because I'd bought the only other copy of it

that it had disappeared off all the algorithms. I'm lucky enough to own a copy because you spent a pound on me, which is extremely kind of you. Maybe we could all hold up pictures of the books because that would probably be the main copies that exist in the UK. You could all hold up your... I haven't got one. I'll hold this up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to take a picture, OK? I've made this little CD as well, you see, of the... Oh, wow. Oh, wow, look at that. That's a bootleg... Aww. We're like a weird club now, aren't we?

Afraid we are, yeah. I'm glad there are some weirders. Yes, it is. This is exactly how cults start. It's brilliant. Here we are. You know, it's really great to talk to other people that have read it or her at all

because it sort of burns a hole in you and you start to think you've imagined her tone of voice because it seems so the only thing i can think of it like it is bs johnson said and it's not really like that you know so let me read you the we read the blurbs on backlisted this is the jacket copy from the original and indeed only publication of the Bloater by The Bodley Head in 1968. And who knows if The Bodley Head had a marketing department in 1968, but I reckon Rosemary Tonks herself probably wrote this. The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks. A woman's most delicious problem is surely to be exposed

to the attractions of two utterly unlike men, to enjoy their rival magnetisms, to consult all her best friends, but remain incapable of knowing her own feelings until the last unexpected moment. This is the situation that Rosemary Tonks exploits with relish in her entertaining and outrageous novel. Min, married but like a reckless little school girl still unbroken is being wooed by the bloater a huge luxurious baritone who moves across europe from one concert platform to another he irritates her but attracts her enough to worry her her friends are helpful or unhelpful in their characteristic ways claudie you're keeping up with this, right?

Claudie, dangerously gay at 60, appropriates the whole affair as a new entertainment. Raquel, a girlfriend, is in turn attracted by the bloater. Jenny, de haute en bas, keeps her informed on current sex customs, but it is in confiding in Billy, an old cronian musicologist, that the danger lies, for here is the male equivalent of Min herself, clever, quick and gay, and therefore a man she

cannot mock or defeat. This is the story of a witty, capricious but vulnerable young woman of London, caught in the more than half-serious dilemma of whom to choose as a lover yeah I mean you wouldn't read that would you no WTAF as the kids say yeah in the words of Eric Morecambe he won't sell many going at that speed so um Jennifer yeah is that an accurate depiction of the novel I mean yeah it it's accurate in a sense, but like with most of the stuff I read by her, you come out of it at the end and you're just like, what the hell was that?

Like, what just happened there? Let's unpack that. The level of contempt, like she makes me feel like the most sincere and earnest person in the world and like awful for that. I mean, I made a list of um some of the images that she uses she's got this really peculiar attunement to like the gross mildewed corners of everyday life right when she like conjures an, it's going to be of bed sores

or meatballs or spits, stewing innards, bleached nurses' hats, freshly washed toilets, the airing of back bedrooms, old mattresses. So the world that she's created is just this one where she has this hyper-vigilant sensitivity to all the grossest stuff that's there, you know? It's funny you say that about the mildewed corners. The only other book I've read of hers is Emia from 1963, only other novel.

And that actually begins with her finding a massive fungus in her bedroom growing behind the cupboard, which she takes it to a restaurant to ask the cook if he knows what it is. Yeah. It's a disgusting thing it starts. I mean, the other novel that I've read of hers is Erpium Fogs, which opens with a scene where an old man who's eating outside starts coughing on a piece of mutton gristle.

That's how you hook them in. Where do you go next? That's the thing. You've got them, you've got them, but where? This book starts with a polishing scene, a completely random polishing of a wooden stool. In order to cover the sort of gamey scent of a large man. That terrible line about if you're that that big it must be difficult to wash everywhere

about god yeah yeah bloaters famously smell don't know that because they're they're fermented herrings with the guts still inside so they have a really gamey tangy thing is this is coming from the same place as some of her poetry comes from she has that kind of baudelaire yeah she she loved baudelaire this is a kind of fleur de mel yeah way of looking at the world i fruit when it's rotten and on the turn is at its most rich and most most pungent and there's a kind of she's that's got that the sixth reason why she's so appealing to me is that combination of that and but she's like it's Baudelaire in a 60s bedsit or a coffin bar exactly brilliant yeah yeah yeah and like we said to you this is like this is um got chapter set in the radiophonic workshop which is probably the reason why both um you and me and

Nikki for that matter wanted to first kind of get our hands on it yeah but I'm so glad that that led me to it because it's largely relevant to that book really um that whole plot line everything is um everything in the book is irrelevant to it really and but I'm just glad that it it um led me to read her and um one of the sad things about doing this is presumably people will listen to it and some of the expensive books, there's some knocking around for about 40 quid now. I need to get those before this goes on. You've got a week. This will make them go up more expensive, won't it?

It's awful. I will say this. She didn't manage to totally expunge the record. They are in libraries around the world. They are there. It's just that they're very rarely borrowed because such was her success in diminishing her own reputation. Do you want me to read the bit from the... Yeah, please read the bit.

Yeah, this is from Chapter 2 of The Bloater and it's just a description of her workplace. She did work in real life briefly on a sound sound a tone poem you know with with Delia Derbyshire uh in her capacity as a poet but in the novel um she appears to be working as a sort of studio manager for them although it's not really made clear what she's doing to be honest but anyway uh going along one of those dim brown corridors which led to the electronic sound workshop I met a musician I know we have in passing one of those exchanges which have taken the place of comments on the weather hello ron how are you oh sexually frustrated as usual inside the workshop no one moves the walls

are blocked in solidly with machinery and there are freestanding machines and wheels the light is so bright you don't even look ugly you simply look like yourself fred is brooding over a little piece of paper jenny is sitting in front of a dashboard of dials and switches today she's very got up a tight sexy green jersey a leather skirt in a very elegant brown with scruffy patches to prove it's real things on her wrists which she shakes about too quickly for me to focus and black hair combed down on her shoulders and then fixed in position with sparkling glue sprayed on possibly this is why fred is a bit glum when jenny is hunting her tea break is a 30 minute phone call and her lunch hour is interminable i'm very dashed by this long blue black hair and the corners of my mouth go down i could just hear claudie saying my god i would die for that blue

black hair jenny looks up but doesn't smile too much because she's only half made up and wants to hold her face more or less immobile until the evening when she puts on the other half. Inside this armour, she's amusing, temperamental and clever. There's no air in the workshop. We're sealed in like tin shepherd's pie. The clock is silent but the hands go round fast with that railway station stutter. with that railway station stutter. I'm late, of course, and the little silver music stand has been put out for me already. I arrange my papers, I stop being human. There's no time to make mistakes in here, they're too expensive. We're setting a pine about arrestees to electronic sound. We're taking the sentiment straight, no wit, no discords.

We know that however well we succeed, 50 experts, people who acquire theoretical knowledge without using it, will pour cold water on the results. And then five years later, grudgingly, and 10 years later, publicly stuff our work into the sound archives and refer to it incessantly to intimidate future electronic composers. That'll do, won't it? But it's really a...

It's marvellous though, right? I mean, the thing is... It's so great. You know, what happened there was, when I started listening to you, I was thinking, oh, is this going to play? I'm not sure if this is going to play. And as it went on, she's got such, the thing that Jen was talking about, about her range of imagery and how she uses disgust and energy,

that's got real energy, that prose, you know, real focus too. Yeah, it's got disgust and energy. But I worried that I don't like her you know the voice that she writes in as a person and when i was younger this would have been a real problem for me i remember seeing the importance of being earnest when i was about 18 and hating all the people in it so much that i couldn't really like the thing and then when i saw it again later, I realised that it wasn't necessarily endorsing them. I don't know enough about Rosemary Tonks to know whether the voice

she chooses to write in was how she was, or whether she chose to exaggerate the worst parts of her, which I don't want to make it about me, but that's what a lot of us do as comedians, for for example or whether she chose to exaggerate that part of the voice so that she had such such a distinct voice and a comic effect you know she's she's interminable a person in it she's so bored of everyone and so dismissive of people and she makes other people's lives such a misery why not um all characters, the characters in the poems and the character in both the novels,

who are exactly the same character, both of them. I must make this point very quickly. So I read the reviews of The Bloater, right? They're all, A, really positive. So she's widely reviewed and well-reviewed. And the second thing is they talk about it as a sparkling comedy. But this is totally revelatory to me it's pitched as a comic novel as are the ones that follow it they are she she thought she was writing this kind of furbankian yeah uh brophy-esque yeah sparkling dialogue as you say

she's by no means writing in a vacuum. I mean, there are kind of other people during the period with exactly the same kind of sort of like unremitting, sharp nastiness. I'm thinking of people like Muriel Spark or like Angus Wilson or someone like Penelope Gilear as well, who's sort of equally under-discovered. Yeah, that's what passed as sort of like a comedy of manners.

I think it's a kind of erotic charge, to be honest. And she does mention this in her poem. One of her poems, she talks about the half erotic convulsions of loathing. And it seems to me that that's one of know, one of the central things of the book, like this kind of, yeah, erotic charge of disgust and being like compelled by something, but completely repulsed by it at the same time and sort of shuttling around in that.

The great quote by John Horder, who says, listening to Tonk's talk, her talk had an intensity bordering on active aggression. I'd like to draw a distinction between the two novels that appear in the early 60s, which are Emere and Opium Fogs, which are reviewed together. They're published so close together, they appear together in a review in the TLS. So they appear. Nobody seems to actually know when Emere was published, 63 or 64.

Opium Fogs, definitely 64. I'd like to draw a distinction between those two novels and then the four novels that appear in 68, 69, 70 and 72. The Bloater, Businessmen as Lovers, The Way Out of Barclay Square and The Halt During the Chase. And those four novels are very of a piece. They're fundamentally the same novel each time. This kind of female protagonist uh one of whom

is even clearly based on talks what her name is even me me me me um and i found an interview with tonks where she was interviewed in she was being interviewed about the poetry in late 67 and this is what she says this is just before the publication of Iliad of broken sentences poetry is a luxury insisted Rosemary Tonks just before leaving for Ischia to write a novel designed quote to make a lot of red hot money unquote the novel was to be written in two weeks flat one suspected not only to make money but as a necessary tranquilizer to pre-publication nerves. Now, I found another interview with Rosemary Tonks where she says that the bloater actually took four weeks.

But this is the key element that answered a question for me. I couldn't understand how these books fitted in relation to her poetry, her poetry, which is so intense and laboured over in a good way? And the answer is she wrote each one quickly in the belief she was writing a sparkling comedy of mad. Red-hot sex comedy kind of potboiler sort of. It's mad, isn't it? For quote-unquote for the red-hot money.

Yeah, yeah. She called her novels porridge. I read another interview where you know she was like again fairly contemptuous about the reading public and she was like you know the kind of like these are entertainments that that that i'm making it is interesting to think about the the novels and the poems side by side because it seems like they're working through the same material and they're they are of a piece in a way, but the approach is different. Like, you know, there's the same disgust

and there's the same contempt, but what she's trying to do in the novel with kind of comedy or satire or a certain kind of wryness in the poems feels much more serious. Yeah. If she viewed the later 60s novels as, you know, an attempt to do genre then, do you think that the first two novels from 63 were more serious for her, were closer to her heart?

I do, yeah. Because I've got a letter from her, weirdly, from 63, where she's writing to Alvarez, you know. Where did you get that? I just found it. I don't even know. I bought the book somewhere and I wouldn't have spent a lot of money get that? I just found it. I don't even know. I bought the book somewhere and I wouldn't have spent

a lot of money on it and it came with it. I think I might have got it on set support somewhere, but I certainly wouldn't have spent a lot of money on it. And who's the letter to? To Alvarez.

He was the literary editor of the Observer, was he at the time? And she does see that she's asking him if the poem Orpheus in Soho is going to run soon, which he has accepted on behalf of The Observer, because she thinks that the novel is poetic. She says it has a good deal of poetry in it. This is the novel Lemire, and that people will understand

that the novel's supposed to be poetic if they see the poems run. She feels they're of a piece. And what you say about the idea that she wrote The Bloater for Red Hot Money as a sort of potboiler, it's interesting that you get this in a lot of Italian westerns that I love. They're genre and they're commissioned as genre and they're knocked out as genre.

Because very often frustrated artists were making them, they couldn't help but make artistic films even as they tried to make junk to fill up the cinemas of southern Italy. I should say with my publisher's head on, I know that Neil Astley, who edited the Bloodaxe anthology of her poetry, that they've set up an archive at Newcastle University, a Tonks archive, and they're particularly keen to get letters, Stuart, because he's trying to pull as much material together.

There's quite a lot of letters that have come to light since 2014, and the book was that the Bedouin of the London Evening was published. But I mean, I think he's trying to find somebody to write a biography. I think that's an amazing thing. You know, amongst the five of us who are interested, love Rosemary Tonks, for better or worse, that you just turned up her letter to Alvarez saying, please review this because, you know, it's heartbreaking.

Yeah, it is. It's a really sad letter, actually, because, you know, she's... But you can tell from the authorial voice that she's a proud person. I think it's difficult to ask for a review. Jennifer, her... So that distinction between those first two novels.

I think the first two novels are supposed to be a piece with the poetry. And for whatever reason, they don't work for her as well as the poetry does. And so when you read her interviews from the late 60s, she sees herself as a poet primarily, who is also turning out these novels one a year. So what do the novels have, do you think, that the poetry doesn't have? It's weird this thing this this thing about the distinction between the fiction and the poetry like thinking about the the letter that she sent to alvarez i know that that quinn because i'm i'm writing this book i'm currently in sconce well and my bedroom is the quinn archive because no

one wants to make an anquin archive so i I'm sitting in it. So I'm in her letters at the moment. And she called herself a poet, but she wrote novels which were deeply poetic. And actually, Quinn's poems are far less successful. And I know from her letters that she experienced the same kind of like critical hostility, you know, deeply, deeply sensitive to to what critics were saying. And this idea that if a novel was too poetic, that was that was bad. Like this kind of like genre anxiety that critics had where you'd get you'd get, you know, you'd get sort of dissed if your novel was too poetic. And it's interesting in the in the blurter, you can feel the poetic bits sort of trying to creep in yeah eternally there's this sort of unevenness i'm thinking of the section where she's uh describing

walking through the street in the light in hamstead and you can tell that she like is trying to write a you know she wants to write a poem but she's hanging back in this other voice that is my favorite section of the novel yeah because you Because you're quite right, Jen. She allows herself the luxury of writing something she really cares about. But, you know, the character, the lead character that is her is in a form of denial as well. She tries to reduce her romantic encounters to the physical and she's scared of them uh of them becoming um emotional

in fact there's a poem that's very explicitly about that about trying to i forget what it's called but the character's trying to have an affair in a in a hotel room uh she's trying to go to a hotel room to have a sexual encounter and she doesn't want any strings attached and no one is looking and can it just be a you know clean um moment and then the last two lines suggest that you can never do that and that you will be pulled into it emotionally. And so a relationship with poetry is not like a relationship with people here.

Jen, could you read us a bit from, I think this might actually be from that Hampstead chapter. It's just after this kind of moment of opening up into a description of the light in Hampstead. She's been on a successful date with this guy, Billy, who's a mate of hers, and she's kind of freaking out. Again, there's this human encounter and connection and love and affection comes. It's this really risky thing. So she's kind of freaking out and she's, you know, she's becoming obnoxious. I need new clothes, something in PVC with a visor. I want to change the shape of my face.

It should be absolutely round. Yes, I need a circular chin and a rosebud mouth to cope with Billy, and 10 hours sleep every night, and a complete don't care kit of cigarettes, records, hairdressing appointments, films and so on. Once I've decided on that, I realise it isn't enough. Even if I cram every hour of the day with phony pleasures, I can't get rid of the smell of Billy's face, or of the authority and care of his arms when they grip me. Two thousand cucumber sandwiches, a Ferrari, a summer, raspberry jelly, ping pong, a naked picnic in long grass might possibly take my mind off him. One has to admit that he knows how to woo. Oh God, why doesn't he make a few mistakes? He's bound to sooner or later.

You bet he's got some dancing routine hidden away, some David-in-front-of-the-arc caper that will really let him down. And I shall pounce on it without mercy. At all costs, I must go on being spoiled and petted. I need presence. Well, there's the D'Annunzio first edition and the painting, two of the most unsatisfactory presents I've ever had. Intellectual hard cash, a compliment to my mind, simply asinine. hard cash, a compliment to my mind, simply asinine. The annuncio can't write and won't think for a start. Still, I like the green ribbons. No, I want something I can eat or wear or go to bed with. Billy. Yes, I'm ungrateful, impossible to please,human malicious and demanding good it's the only way to fight Billy

I've started gliding about in the house practicing the way I'm going to look up at him next time we meet in height he's just about level with the coats hanging up in the hall I give them my sparkling practice glance not bad and then a really wicked little squib of a smile on and off in a flash. What a waste for a lot of other Kurtz. I might as well use it up on the bloater. Oh, it's magic. Thank you. That was so great. None of us have mentioned, tellingly, that in the novel she is married. Yes. And the husband is just this thing. He's in it twice. Once he's eating his dinner and she forgets he's in the room

and turns the light off. And then another time she says, oh, he must be lonely. I expect he's getting pornographic books out of a library. Crucially, the husband, the husband and his kind of turning his back on her in bed, she blames for her condition which is the condition of gout well now as we know this is really a novel about gout and uh john i know you've been waiting you are a sufferer from gout aren't you let me tell you about gout is gout is

a very mysterious illness and we it we know that it's called as i'll point out we know what it technically causes it but we don't know what causes the cause of it it's hereditary whatever but it's uh most people who suffer from it suffer from it you know in progressively it gets worse and the pain is appalling and it it's um it's just it's just it's just mysterious because you think you think you've got it figured it out and then it comes back finds another way to undermine you. But this is what she says about gout in the book. It's a very, very Tonksian take on it. So really, it was the malevolent emanation from George's, George is the husband, from George's back lying there in its dark blue printed silk pajama top that started off my gout.

It says here, a disease of disordered metabolism. Hereditary. That means it's been lying around waiting for me and only needed a few liquid lunches with Jenny in a sulky pyjama back to assert itself. Oh, my toe. I've got it propped up at the end of the bed. It's as red as a red hot poker and so sensitive that if Fritz opens the bedroom door to bring me a glass of milk, coffee is forbidden. I can feel the breeze and call out smartly, be careful, you're near the left side of my foot over there, don't go near the foot of the bed because you could jolt it. Just hand me the glass and keep clear. Don't circle around it like that, please, Fritz. Every time you circle, my foot registers

with a new wave of lava. Listen, can you make me up a bowl of hot water and bicarbonate of soda? It's time to bathe it again. You know what the doctor said? We have to control the level of your uric acid, my dear, like the level of the water in a swimming pool. I didn't even know I had uric acid. Now he calls it my uric acid. And I don't like that bit about the swimming pool either. Doctors are far too scientific these days. I don't want a scientist. I want someone to tell me I'm fabulous. No, not you, Fritz. Directly, they do that.

I jump up as fit as a fiddle. Oh, God, it's raging. But that is remarkably accurate. I've got to say red hot money. If that's not red hot money, I don't know what is. Yeah, it's supposed to be, obviously, you know, the disease of high living. There is a bit of that, but not that isn't. It's very, it's definitely, somebody said to me once, it's about repressed rage.

And there's a hell of a lot of repressed rage in Rosemary Thomas. Interesting, same as depression. But she calls it the welfare state disease, doesn't she? Just to get a bit of a kick into the welfare state as well. Don't like doctors being scientific. Just wants to be told she's fabulous. I think we should hear from Rosemary herself. Would you like to hear her being interviewed

about her literary inspiration? Or would you like to hear her read a poem with the backing of Delia Derbyshire well but I don't know if I want to hear either Jen you Jen you choose well either way she's going to have one of those like classic 60s RP voices oh yeah oh yeah that always really surprised me but they all talk like that and I think we should go with the second. Let's hear it with Derbyshire.

So here we go. This is her poem, Badly Chosen Lover. And what I've done is I've got two different recordings of Badly Chosen Lover. You're going to hear the first stanza read by Rosemary Tonks on her own. And then you are going to hear the second stanza backed up by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radio Phonic Workshop.

Badly chosen lover. Criminal, you took a great piece of my life and you took it under false pretenses, that piece of time. In the clear muscles of my brain, I have the lens and jug of it. Books, thoughts, meals, days and houses, half Europe, spent like a coarse banknote. You took it, leaving mud and cabbage stumps. Criminal. Criminal. Criminal.

Criminal. And criminal, I damn you for it. Very softly. Very softly. Very softly. Very softly. Very softly. My spirit broke her fast on you, and Turk, you fed her with the breath of your neck. The breath of your neck. The breath of your neck. In my brain's clear retina, I have the stolen love behavior.

Thoughts, meals, days and houses. Your heart, greedy and tepid, brothel meat, gulped it like a flunky with erotica. And very softly, criminal, I damn you for it. Do you know what? I spent the whole week not only reading Rosary songs, but listening to her talk. Yeah. And actually, listening to her talk and combined with the details

of her biography of her later life that we know, which is sketchy that we know, I ended up feeling really, not sorry for her, that's not what I mean, but really feeling, oh, you're really experiencing this. This isn't a thing you've put on. This isn't a pose. You're living this and expressing yourself a thing you've put on this isn't a pose no you're living this and expressing yourself as best you can she's living and experiencing this really intense

register you know she's this highly sensitive person who is has this sort of hyper vigilance to the social world and its performances and its violences and you see it in her books here people just kicking chunks off one another. Like every conversation is this sort of like pre-planned kind of battle, manoeuvres, you know, in a war, which is something that, you know, she reminds me a bit of the French writer, which maybe some of you will know, Nathalie Seurat, who was similarly sort of attuned to these subterranean,

tiny little nuances in human behaviour. Well, she writes seven novels in fact but the last of them she burns in the 70s um because of the changes in her life and that the last novel is reputedly a hundred thousand words long so all the all the late 60s and early 70s ones are short and then she she spends six, seven years working on a longer novel that she then decides to burn. The content of which was dictated by mediums, wasn't it, largely? Yeah, it's about her religious conversion experience, right? Yeah, yeah.

So let's hear from Rosemary. This is an interview that Rosemary Tonks gave in 19... And we should say the thing about Rosemary Tonks that Rosemary Tonks gave in 19... And we should say the thing about Rosemary Tonks is Rosemary Tonks was successful in her own era up to a certain level. You know, she has a platform. She works for the BBC. She gets widely reviewed. Her novels are published.

You know, she... But does she have an audience? That's a different thing. I'm not so sure she does. Do you find inspiration from literature in any way, not particularly literature, poetry, drama, but maybe historical works? Oh, yes, historical stories, not historical works,

which are usually so terribly badly written because historians can't seem to learn how to write. I find French 19th century literature tremendously exciting and inspiring. Well, once you've learnt that you can advance human sensibility in a certain way, you look at life in a new way, then you look back to literature, then you look out at life again. That's how it works, isn't it? Have there been any writers, though, that have been a notable influence on you?

All the great writers, from Shakespeare to Chekhov to practically all French literature. You've never found yourself writing like them and having to stop yourself consciously? Everybody does. The best thing about an influence is to realise it and to swallow it and never to throw it away. It's like throwing away all the advantages of meter or rhyme. Everything must be as grist to your mill. You want to be on guard but not afraid. One always tends to find somebody who's closer to oneself than the others or who one admires so desperately one wants to write like him.

But this can be cured. You'll only find your own idiom if you are grown up. If you're a person in addition to being a well-read person then you can cure your reading with your life yeah right here's the thing with rosemary tonk so that starts and i applaud any writer who when asked who influences them says shakespeare that's setting that's saying the bar high right but then as she goes on i was you listen to that and you think wow that's so insightful that's incredibly true. You can cure your reading with your life. Yeah, it's also interesting that the 63 novel I read

is really like Chekhov. The dialogues are like Chekhov in the same way as Hal Hartley, actually, the American indie film writer, is really like Chekhov, where people make these, have these huge speeches to each other and then say these incredibly pithy things. And he was actually very influenced by Chekhov where people make these huge speeches to each other and then say these incredibly pithy things and he was actually very influenced by Chekhov and she's clearly fought off the

Chekhovian influence by the time of the bloater so she's obviously aware and is doing she's making a process of trying to find a voice that is uniquely hers and she has obviously done that by the time you get to the time of the voter.

Does anyone want to say what happened to her? John, do you want to say what became of Rosemary Thomas? Her mother died at the end of the 60s, and then she had a lot of problems with her health, her eyesight in particular. And, I mean, as far as we can tell, she had some kind of cumulative, I mean, you'd call it a breakdown now. And she became more and more dependent on seeking sort of wisdom from the East, from Sufism, from mystics and from mediums. from um from mystics and from uh mediums and gradually that's over a period of time kind of focused in on finally a sort of christian fundamentalism where she came to see that

only god could save her and only the new testament could save her although being tonks of course she it was the william tindall translation of the new testament that she liked. But she ends up living in Bournemouth. She shuns all contact with the world, apart from she travels up to Speaker's Corner. Yeah, to hand out Bible, and totally buries Rosemary Tonks, the writer. She totally, literally renames herself. And as you said, Burns becomes to believe that her work,

her written work, was in fact evil, sort of satanic, and that if people read it, it would do them harm. There was a very sad obituary for the poet Val Warner knocking around in the autumn this year, where she died alone in a house she inherited in Hackney. She lived without any electrical power or uh lighting and the obituary rather sinisterly was unable to say how long the body had been there and um you know uh she hadn't written anything for decades and the last stuff she was known for was when she helped sort of repopulate charlotte new and it

just seemed to be a sort of thing of just being too much for them. But then we're romantically in love with the idea of a doomed poet, aren't we? Yeah. But she doesn't take her life like some of them did, like some of them kind of, she kind of rejects her life. And I mean, although I also was really moved by that one time warner

obituary uh tonks seems to have ended her life reasonably cheerful she yeah she you know she had friends who said she was cheerful and chatty and friendly and uh so when she found some sort of strange post-intellectual equilibrium through just basically deciding that she was going to she was going to dedicate her life to to god and that god would look out for her it's it's it's and then you know there's a whole other stuff about her father dying when she was very young and kind of slightly shonky childhood being moved around so it's it's really interesting story neil astley records this thing in the introduction to the poems which are available better into the London evening he says in no she died in 2014 he says in November 2012 she wrote to a cousin she

had cut off for 30 years and she said I was boxed up under the most frightful, frightful mental pressure, all underlined. I was not myself, underlined. All my decisions were wrong, inhuman, appalling. Give me time, please. I long to explain it to you. Slightly haunted by the line she writes in her introduction to her notes on cafes that she says, telling the truth about feeling requires prodigious integrity and you feel that that prodigious integrity that sort of wanting to

get to the truth of things it's almost like it burns her brain out you sort of feel that she's she's somebody who feels so sensitively you know like several skin layers fewer than most people, that she can't kind of continue living at that level of intensity and settles for the old-fashioned consolation of a book that's got all the answers. There's a good bit in The Bloater that is probably relevant to this, but I can't quite think how, where she talks about, she brings in a tape recording of her own heart or um that she's yeah and um the uh the radiophonic musician fred insists that he can fabricate a better one

from um from and then she dismisses him as a left-wing idiot or something in the on the next page but there uh she does seem to be talking about a primacy of authenticity of uh expression over uh fabrication and yet um a lot of the novels seem to be concerned with witty surfaces and um and yet in that moment the character she wants to make a case for the authenticity of the human heart literally against um against this fabricated version of it. And she gets very frustrated that she knows that her idea will get sidelined. And, yeah, you feel like she has burned herself out, like a hummingbird whose heart has to beat 10 times faster

than any other mammal in order to achieve the liftoff. If you go back and listen to that clip that we heard uh from the radio phonic workshop of her reading her poetry you'll hear that heartbeat in there yeah and and i and if if what is in the novel is true that's her heartbeat you'll hear her heartbeat there back in that clip right i didn't realize that yeah again this is what i mean about spending time with her you don't have to like her it's what stew was saying earlier about he didn't like her but that doesn't matter does it i'm terrified of her but i i get her but i'm talking as a person who's spent a decade sitting with and with it with with ann quinn you know

sat for a decade with a dead stranger. And so maybe I'm just more prepared to do that. I don't know. I think she's really funny and talented and witty, but she's the sort of person that if she was my friend, there would come a point where I would cause some offence to her and I would have to warn the teachers at my children's school about what she looked like. That's kind of what she's like that's kind of that's so great do you do you both do you both think that the bloater or her other fiction do

you think that do you think it would be interesting to should it be but should she be in print should people be able to be absolutely it's fantastic and that's why as soon as this is over i've got to get on ebay and get some of the books because everyone's going to hear this. But then it's like so many things. Sometimes you stumble across something that isn't known. And my wife and I talk about this all the time. And then your whole idea of the canon just falls apart.

You think, what else have they missed? What else have they missed, idiots? It's great that there's people like you, Jen, and this program being this important, you know, archaeological excavation work to get this stuff out there. Yeah, and there we must leave it. Huge thanks to Stuart and Jen joining us on this journey into the modern private life of a singular and important,

if not altogether likeable writer. To Nicky for running our very own Radiophonic Workshop and to Unbound for leaving the pate in the glove compartment. You can download all 127 previous episodes plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm. We're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too.

You can show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We aim to survive without paid for advertising and your generosity helps us to do that. All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early and for the 20th of a first edition of a Tonks novel they get two extra lot listed a month. Our very own boho cafe where we three talk listen read and watch the things that take our fancy so we'd like to thank um stewart and jennifer for joining us today to talk about rosemary tonks i'd also like to say specific thanks to three people for their help with this episode the first is to neil astley a lot of what we know about rosemary tonks is because neil astley

spent years finding, researching this stuff. And he's the publisher at Bloodaxe. And it's thanks to him that you can read her poetry in Bedurn of the London Evening. So thank you, Neil Astley. I'd also like to thank Giles Booth, that listed listener for Giles Booth, who helped me out with something for this specific episode. And also there are some really brilliant Rosemary Tonks pages written by Brad Bigelow at the website neglectedbooks.com. And Brad helped me out with a couple of things that I was hoping to read for this episode.

So if you enjoy Backlisted, there's no way you're not going to enjoy what Brad's doing at neglectedbooks.com. And certainly his Tonks pages are the next best thing to actually reading the novels. So please go and check him out. And also we need to say thanks to a lot of listeners who get their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks

and appreciation. And John, why don't you do the opening batch? Tony Dempsey. Thank you. Anne Ristick. Stephen Boo. Richard Sully. Gail Jay. Clark Everett.

Sarah Guy. Michaela Johnston. Anwen Crawford. Hayley Whitehouse-Jones. Carolyn Drake. Victoria Francis. Gail Johnson. James Wright.

Susan Baker. We'd also like to thank Peter Arvidsson. Laura Trott, I hope it's the same one, Michael Cordenbrock, Chantal Walker, Ty Egenberger, John O'Leary, Sarah Blenkinsop, Amelia Campbell, Jenny Stewart, Molly Peacock, Chris Senior, Laura Ann Evans, Donna Mcen and lloyd callaghan and we also want to thank the british embassy moscow book club set up by adam greaves as a way of introducing russians to english language authors they may not have come across before and a means for the british staff to discover russian literature beyond the usual classics they are all apparently keen fans of the podcast. So thank you.

And we'd like to say a second and special thank you and apologies to Relly Annette Baker for supporting us and for getting your name wrong last time. We're really sorry, but we've done it this time. Thank you very much. So thanks, Stuart. Thanks, Jen. Yeah. Lovely to see you.

It was really nice to see you too you too we'll see you next time yeah thank you bye you can choose to listen to backlisted with or without adverts if you prefer to listen to it without adverts you can join us on our patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of lock listed the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks