Backlisted - The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

It's Halloween! Daphne du Maurier's The Breaking Point AKA The Blue Lenses is a collection of psychological horror stories that was first published in 1959. Joining John and Andy to discuss it are academic and du Maurier expert Dr Laura Varnam and, returning for Halloween, writer and critic Andrew Male. We also talk about the haunting books Andy and John have been reading this week: Copsford by Walter J.C. Murray (Little Toller) and The World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts by Christopher Maynard (Usborne).Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)6'19 - The World of the Unknown: Ghosts by Christopher Maynard12'16 - Copsford by Walter JC Murray17'53 - The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier* 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

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights.

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 end July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. I would just do a podcast as Werner Herzog.

That's what I would do. I don't think you would like that. Really asking kind of deadpan, serious questions. What would it be about? Everything. I would just do a podcast as Werner Herzog. That's what I would do. I don't think you would like that. Really asking kind of deadpan, serious questions. What would it be about? Everything, the universe, the whole thing, asking people. Can I call it Dear Werner? Yeah, to talk about, you know, things that really matter. Dear Werner.

Werner is an agony now. It'd be brilliant. Werner, what should we do about Brexit? What would you say? He'd say, I do not know what this Brexit is. I like the things that he professes no knowledge of.

That's one of my favourite things about Bernard. What was that thing about the house? The exquisitely decorated house. It wasn't a serious bullet. Right. So you're opening your log? Well, are we recording? Yeah.

Oh. So I thought this year we'd... We normally have Halloween snacks, don't we, in this episode? So I thought we'd have it instead. We do have a slight bonfire night theme. So we've got a bottle of Faustino Rioja with the gentleman on it looks a bit like Guy Fawkes. Well, there isn't much Guy Fawkes-themed wine.

And we've also got some Cambry Mini Bonfire Logs. They're good. They're really nice. What are they nice? Are they nice? I would just say craft beer can go fuck itself. It really can. We can say that.

You've told the world. Yeah. I'm moving to the wine. I'm just amazed at that craft. The wine is nice and wintry, isn't it? Yeah. What are these like? Bloody delicious.

They're like orange mini rolls. Crunchy. There's a bit of crunch in there. There is. Yeah, it's like a bit of crunchy. Soft orange crunchy. The perfect marriage. Do you remember them?

A crunchy that's mated with a Jaffa cake. Yeah. What an unpleasant image, Joe. The sort of transgressive image Daphne du Maurier would have very much appreciated, I think. We started early. Is there a more batshit crazy

author in the history of the world? In a nutshell, you've flushed out the editorial theme of this episode. We haven't even started yet. Can I just thank you for not mentioning the Book of Christ? All of you, thank you. It's OK. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today you find us celebrating Halloween and frankly we're all over the place. Entering a seedy flat in Chelsea, crossing the Grand Lagoon in Venice on a Vaporetto, basking in a lush Cornish garden during a heatwave, hiding in the cloakroom of an LA nightclub, driving through the snow on Exmoor and scrambling over rocks in pursuit of chamois in northern Greece. But there's one thing in common, wherever we find ourselves we're feeling uneasy, haunted, close to breaking point. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. It's Halloween, everyone! Well, it's nearly Halloween. Well, it might be Halloween when you're listening to it. Joining us today is Dr Laura Varnum. Hello, Laura. Hello, thank you for having me.

Laura is a lecturer in English literature at University College Oxford, and she is currently writing a book on Daphne du Maurier. Yay! She regularly appears at the Foy Festival of Arts and Literature. The reason why I said Foy is because I've just listened to an audio book in which the narrator refers to Mandalay and Fowey. No! I'm afraid so. It's Foy to rhyme with joy.

Exactly. Thank you. That's the sort of expertise we'll be turning to for throughout. She regularly appears at the Foy Festival Arts and Literature in Cornwall and was one of the experts consulted on the documentary Daphne du Maurier in the footsteps of Rebecca. That's right. And when I asked you in the pub earlier what author you would choose

if you weren't choosing Daphne du Maurier, what did you say? I said, could we do Angela du Maurier? So Laura is very much the right person to be here at the table today. So Laura is very much the right person to be here at the table today. She is joined, as is traditional, for the darkest time of the year, the night when spirits walk. Friendly, desiccated revenant. Our favourite, ambulant. Our jack-o'-lantern about town, Andrew the spook male. It's lovely to be back.

The more times you come on this show, the more you have the piss taken out of you, I'm afraid. Andrew is the Senior Associate Editor of Mojo magazine and writes about books, film, radio and TV. For The Guardian, Sight & Sound and Sunday Times Culture, this is his fifth time on this podcast and his fourth at Halloween. Please, Andrew, list your previous episodes. And for a bonus point, their episode numbers.

Okay. The High Window by Raymond Chandler, which was episode number seven. Wow. He's actually going to do this. A Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aikman, which is episode number 22. And then we did Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was episode 37. And then we did Ghosts by Edith Wharton, which was episode 51.

I can honestly say that all those figures are completely incorrect. Who won the Derby in 1932? Way off my mind, sir. Thank you. Right. The book that Laura and Andrew are joining us to discuss today is a collection of stories known as either The Breaking Point or The Blue Lenses by Daphne du Maurier, first published in 1959 by Victor Galant and first issued as a Virago Modern Classic in 2009. But before we plunge into the strangeness of the du Maurier universe,

Andy, what's been on the Miller bedside table this week? I saw that in the script. The Miller bedside piles and piles of unread books. So what I have here is a copy of the recently republished Usborne book, The World of the Unknown, All About Ghosts. First published in 1977, republished in a very backlisted, friendly manoeuvre by Usborne last week. We're recording this at the beginning of October.

And as I speak, this is in the top ten children's books. I had that book. I loved that book so much. So they brought this back from the dead and it's become a bestseller. Once again. Now, I'm sure lots of people listening to this, certainly if they are of a certain age, will remember this book from childhood.

It seems to have deeply affected and scarred many of the people who either bought it when they were children or got it out from the library repeatedly, as I did. It's 30 pages, heavily illustrated of an investigation into whether or not ghosts exist. What is a ghost, it says on page four. Ghosts are supposed to be the appearances of the spirits of the dead in a form visible to the living. And it's a brilliant mixture of the macabre and the reasonable. And that seems to have been the combination of the thing that seems to have sparked children's imaginations in the 70s. It has an introduction by Rhys Shearsmith of The League of Gentlemen and Inside Number Nine.

And he says, morbid little tot that I was, my discovery of the Osborne World of the Unknown series in the school library came as such a blessing. Here was a whole series of books seemingly targeted specifically at me and dedicated to everything I was becoming fascinated by, a go-to resource on monsters, UFOs, and, of course, ghosts. And reading it again, I did read it from cover to cover this week. The thing that works about it more than anything else,

apart from the spooky photographs and the illustrations, is the tone, that it manages to treat the subject of the supernatural as though it were a science. There's a long and glorious history of that. And it totally works for its presumed audience, that it isn't too scary, but it's the plausibility of it that makes it kind of horrible at points to read. It really reminded me of the television series

The Mysterious World of Arthur C. Clarke, which presented itself, I don't know, Laura, you must surely be too young to remember that. Yes, I don't remember that. The other old buffers around the table will remember it. It sort of presented the supernatural as deeply plausible until at the end of every episode Arthur C. Clarke would say something like, well, UFOs, I don't believe in them, but you might. How did Usborne, who are a famously solid,

perhaps conservative publisher, come to do something as reckless as bringing back an old book? They wouldn't do it unless they felt there was an audience. It's a good question. What conversations do you think were had to get this off an editor's desk and out into the shops? The first time or now? Now.

No, I mean, it must, I had assumed that it was the kind of the pressure from the Shearsmith-Gattis kind of ghost brigade saying, you know, there's a whole, and then that thing of discovering that all of us had this book. I mean, 77, I was in my teens, but I loved anything ghost-related. And as you say, it was a bit like a kind of proto-Dorling Kindersley kind of approach. So the book was written by a guy called Chris Maynard,

who was the author of about 80 Usborne titles. And Usborne tended to keep all their creative people in-house. So Peter Usborne would think of a subject, would come into the office, say, I think we should do ghosts you two go and write me a book about ghosts and they retain all the rights and they sell those rights all the way around the world so john what happened is the the reissue campaign back it began in finland where in the 70s the the Haunted Houses Mysterious Powers and Vampires books had been licensed and collected under the title Nwaudain Kajarikera.

Sorry, Finnish people listening. He doesn't say anything like that, does he? A Facebook group formed by Finnish fans gained almost 3,000 members and led to an August 2018 reprint that sold out within a week. Amazing. With the country's latest sale figures now surpassing 18,000 copies. Which is big for Finland.

Meanwhile, the makers of a documentary, an animated feature on Borley Rectory, found themselves in touch with Usborne marketing director Anna Howarth, herself a fan of the book, who was inspired enough to set up an online petition hoping to convince the publishers that a uk reissue was a viable proposition brackets andy ads while also making good um word of mouth publicity for the early republication of the book i think the conversation

that was had in addition to all those things what were the adult ladybird books. Yeah. I think the market has been proven for people wanting to revisit with a slight twist things they loved as a child. And this book and the success of this book and the others in the series will surely be back with us soon because of the success of this one. Yeah. So that is The World of the Unknown, all about ghosts, back in your bookshops now. I imagine this will go on to sell, I don't know,

I think they could get up to six figures on this. We'll see. It's Christmas as well, isn't it? Absolutely right. Anyway, John, what have you been reading this week? Well, it's not really a ghostly book, but it has a marvellous opening. It's a book called Cotsford by Walter J.C. Murray,

brought to us by the excellent Little Toller. As you know, I have to ration my Little Toller habit out quite carefully. But this is such a simple and beautiful idea. A young man working as a freelance journalist had enough of living in London. He's clearly depressed and decides he needs to live in the country. It's a very old, basic urge. So he finds a properly dilapidated, absolutely dilapidated cottage. John's waving the book at me, listeners, to prove how dilapidated the cottage is. Most of the windows have gone.

It's full of rats. It's completely filthy. It's not been lived in for 20 years. And he goes and has a classic conversation with the farmer, persuades the farmer to rent it to him for a tiny amount of money. And he sweeps it out, gets himself a dog, attacks the rats, manages to win the battle against the rats, and then spends a year gathering herbs and drying them in the cottage

and he ends up putting them into sacks. There's a quite steep learning curve in learning how to do that. And then selling them. And he survives one winter. I mean, I don't mind about spoilers, but he decides the winter is so appalling, it's so cold, it's so wet that he can't live there anymore. And by this stage he's already found the music mistress who he's been going on herb gathering.

And then he leaves. So it's, but it's a book about being solitary. It's a book about being deeply kind of enmeshed. It is to some extent, I think, a book about depression. And as far as the nature cure idea of you know nature is quite his relationship with the house as I'm going to read you a very short passage it's quite a visceral complicated relationship I mean the language can occasionally a bit be a bit fruity it was I mean it was written in the 40s in fact the story of it being written is really interesting

because he once he left Copsford the house he became a headmaster and the book is written shortly after his 15 year old son died and one of the beautiful introduction by reina win one of the the things you feel is that he's almost trying to recreate this glorious kind of beautiful summer that his own son had the thing that's most is most moving about it apart from the fact that he writes he does write brilliantly about really interesting things like scent and how scent works and how your senses become sharpened by living on your own and living in silence and living amongst nature, is the species, all the species of butterfly and flower. And it's a pre-lapsarian, pre-DDT, pre-climate change vision of the English countryside. I think it will chime with people who like their sort of nature writing. It's not just, you know, the Fotherington Thomas, hello trees, hello sky, although there is quite a bit of that in the book, to be fair.

But it's better than that. I don't think it's one of the undying masterpieces of English prose, but he takes an idea and he delivers it beautifully. It's quite haunting. I'll just read you the spooky bit, I thought. I quite like this. When he first goes to the house, this is before, obviously, he's triumphed in his war against the rats, but I'll just read you a little passage. I found myself in what had evidently been the living room, an old-fashioned kitchen range tottered half in and half out of the fireplace. There was no hearthstone. Instead, there was a great hole in the floor choked with soot, crumbling mortar and broken bricks. There were two windows, the larger one I had seen from the outside beside the door. The other smaller one was on the right-hand side of the chimney and faced south. Both frames were

loose at the sill and the sash cords had long since rotted. The panes that were unbroken were so curtained with cobweb and grime that they let in little light in and the room cords had long since rotted. The panes that were unbroken were so curtained with cobweb and grime that they let little light in and the room was darkened in consequence. The cracked ceiling was neither white nor black and here and there the dirty, damp-stained walls boasted a few square feet of discoloured and peeling wallpaper. Between the skirting and the floor I counted some half-dozen rat holes and in addition I noticed a big hole in the lower panel of the front door,

evidently the rat's front entrance also. The floor was thick with their filth and the whole atmosphere of the place reeked of these vermin. And then he can't really deal with it. He says, I heard a movement overhead. I paused in the midst of my dust-raising investigations and listened and then in the instant the chill loneliness of the place swooped down upon me, the cold hand that had rested upon my shoulder now clutched me violently by the throat, and the appalling dreariness which so many years solitude had fashioned held me motionless. Those few seconds of my life are graven so deep in my memory that I think that nothing can ever efface them, yet they are altogether indescribable. It was as though the place resented intrusion,

as though human life had no further right there. It resisted passively while I moved and made a noise, but the moment I stood still it reasserted its own character with an intensity that was appalling. Its grip was icy. I was frozen motionless, numbed in heart and mind. Dun, dun, dun. Oh, that's good. So that's published by Little Toller.

Little Toller. It's honestly, you know, it's such an appealing idea. I think we've all had it. You know what? I'm just going to go and look. There's a brilliant Tony Hancock episode about the wild man in the woods, you know, going at it. But it is that thing.

And it is, that sort of reminded me of that as well. I mean, there is a comedy to it because it is obviously, and the farmer is particularly funny in it. Now, here are our sponsors telling you what to do. In the privacy of her West Country home, we meet the

famous author of Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, The King's General, and other bestsellers, Miss Daphne du Maurier. Miss du Maurier is the wife of Major General Browning, leader of the airborne Red Devils, and is mother of these charming children, Christian and Flavia. This is the sort of relaxation that Miss du Maurier enjoys. By the way, she's a keen archer and bird watcher, but her novels and film scripts leave her very little spare time. When ideas come, they must be worked on and put on paper before they slip away again. It's in these grounds that Miss Dumouriez has created many of

those characters who have thrilled millions with their vitality and zest for adventure. Laura, what is the source of that whistle-stop tour of Miss Dumouriez's achievements? Oh, it's just absolutely fabulous, isn't it? It just really makes my heart lift to hear that music. It's a Pathé newsreel with Daphne Dumouriez striding the grounds of, well, it wasn't her house, was it, Menabilly? No. She rented Menabilly. She rented it.

So the house that utterly possessed her for all of her life was a symbol of her imagination. She adored the house. We were one, the house and I, she used to say. The house would whisper its secrets and stories to her, but she could never own it and fully possess it. So there was always this extraordinary fragility about her relationship with the house.

And is the house the model for Manderley? It is, it is. I heard Manderley described as the most famous house in 20th century literature and instantly I think, is that right? But then I couldn't think of a better example. I think that is right. I went again to Manderley. We may hear it later. The other one would be Hill House. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, I think it's Manderley. Top ten countdown of famous houses in literature. Of course, sorry, Brideshead.

Brideshead also. But Rebecca was a massive best-selling book as well as one of the greatest films ever made. It is a... Do we know approximately how many copies Rebecca sold? I mean, it is in the millions, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. It was a phenomenally...

It's like Gone With The Wind or one of those. And I would imagine it probably still ticks over quite nicely for Virago. Absolutely. No, never been out of print and was being printed in the tens of thousands within months of publication on August 5th, 1938. If you buy a vintage copy of Rebecca and you have a look at the list of when it was being published, it had been reprinted three times

before it was even actually published. And then it's every couple of months in 1938, 1939, it just keeps running. According to the internet, it says between 1938 and 1965, it sold 2.8 million and it's never gone out of print. Wow. And, Laura, what do you think it is about Rebecca? Let's ask this question immediately.

What is it about Rebecca that spoke to people, women readers in particular, then and continues to do so now? I think it's partly Rebecca herself and it's the unnamed narrator and her fascination with this extraordinary figure of Rebecca that she's built up in her mind from our first moment of hearing about last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again and the association between Rebecca and the house. And then perhaps Rebecca turns out to be rather different

from what we might expect. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it.

Change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again. And little by little had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. I wrote Rebecca when I was, I'd been married about two or three years. And I was rather a shy, rather naive sort of person in those days. And I think this did come over quite a lot in the person of that young second Mrs. de Winter. Although Mark, my husband, had never been married before, but I imagined what it would be like if he had and so on.

And so it rather took shape as it did. Daphne du Maurier sort of splits her personality within this novel. The apparently shy, naive narrator, who in fact, of course, controls the entire narrative, and then the extraordinary Rebecca, the wonderful woman that we all wish we could be. And it just has this incredible haunting quality

that we constantly want to return to Mandalay, just as the narrator does in that incredible opening. And it's a novel that certainly I first encountered in my teens and constantly reread, but it reads very differently as you grow up and as you think more about the character of Rebecca and Maxim. And rather like books like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, we perhaps have a rather different view of the male characters when we're older. I've never read it. I don't know why, because I do love that film to bits, and it is one of the great moments in 20th century cinema

when he says, loved her, loved her. I hated her. What? What? Yeah. The great plot twist. Is it that good in the book? I mean, is it done with that kind of degree of shocking? Absolutely.

I've never had anything where the floor falls away from you. John, so I read, the first De Moray I read was a couple of years ago. That was You'll Never Be Young Again. I'll Never Be Young Again. I'll Never Be Young Again. I'll Never Be Young Again. I thought that was absolutely nuts. I could not believe it. I think I talked about it on here.

Then I read Rule Britannia. I thought that was absolutely nuts. And then I thought, okay, well, you've read an early one. You've read the last one. You ought to read Rebecca. And the thing about Rebecca, which really surprised me, especially for such a best-selling, famous book, is it's absolutely nuts.

That is the recurring theme in du Maurier's work. It took me aback that such a crazy book could be so popular and resonate with millions of people. The power of du Maurier's imagination is just extraordinary. She hooks you in and then doesn't let you go I say this from personal experience um but also from from talking to du Maurier fans at the Foy Festival every year they come back year on year and year um and if I said we would run a reading group on Rebecca every year they would come because there's always something to find and and du Maurier fans and I'm such a huge du Maurier fan, are just passionately

obsessed with her books. When did you, let's return to your childhood. When did you first read Daphne du Maurier? When I was 14. And I was given the book by my mum, who had taken this book out of the library she'd never read Daphne du Maurier before but she chose this book she thought it sounded good it wasn't Rebecca it was The House on the Strand which celebrates its 50th birthday this year and is in a very strange way for my life speaks to the my own sort of split personality The House on the Strand is the medieval time travel novel of Daphne du Maurier. Of course.

You weren't expecting that. I mean, that is the thing about du Maurier. You never know what you're going to get next. And in my day job at University College Oxford, I teach medieval literature, but actually by night, I work on Daphne du Maurier. So my first du Maurier had everything in it. It had the medieval and it was Daphne.

And that was it. I was hooked. So we're talking about this book, The Breaking Point, a.k.a. The Blue Lenses. Andrew, because you've read a lot of du Maurier, I know you have. But when did you read this one? I discovered or started getting into the short stories only recently, only in like the last three years. And I think it was going back to what John was saying about Rebecca being a book that you feel that you know but you never read.

I think she's one of those authors who, partly because of how she's represented in popular culture, you feel that you know her, you feel that she's a romantic author or, you know. Oh, don't say that word. Exactly, exactly. But there are certain preconceived notions that they're very easy to have. And I started reading these collections of short stories and I just found her to be deeply strange and cryptic and haunting. And the other thing was that the next story was never the same as the previous one. She would be trying out different ideas.

But there was also a kind of just something quite sinister and macabre running through a lot of her stories. These aren't kind of sweet tales of romance. There is, you know, there is, you know, there's a sadisticness running through them and there is a kind of, there's something brutal at their heart. And when she's on form, she pulls you in and you're taken along. And one of the things that I found absolutely fascinating is that a lot of the things that i found absolutely fascinating is that

a lot of the time these stories are being narrated by people who might well be insane but this close up narrative voice pulls you into their world and you're with them you find that you're following that path that and that story that they're telling, even when you know that there's something deeply wrong with the person telling the story. John, we haven't really discussed this between us beforehand. Was this collection what you thought it would be, whatever that might have been? I had only read before Don't Look Now, that collection. So I knew I wasn't in for some light twinkling of teacups. But this is a totally insane collection. This is the recurring theme we're coming to, right?

But there's a throb of pain in her stories, which really interests me. I mean, I sort of feel that this is not these are not stories that are written from any kind of settled authorial you know that you feel that she's she's worrying away at something really deeply troubled and troubling in her own in her own experience and psyche they are unhinged they are unhinged there's there's an amazing freedom, though, in the way that she approaches. You know, obviously, that something's going to happen that is going to be troubling and unpleasant, usually, in the stories.

And sometimes they're more or less kind of... Some of them are not so unpleasant. Some of them are awful. You know, there's a story with the Venice one in this book. It's just everything about it. It's like a sort of low-rent death in Venice. Laura, could you tell us a bit about how this book, just the background of the book?

Yeah, because it's an important part of her life, isn't it, where it happens, this book? It is, and it's a really interesting collection of short stories for du Maurier because she does set up this thread, this very deliberate thread that's running all the way through them. And this is why I'm particularly pleased that Virago republished

the book as The Breaking Point. The Blue Lenses was one of the stories that really took off and captured people's imaginations. And when the book was republished as The Blue Lenses, it often wasn't given du Maurier's introductory note. So I'd like to read that note. And so her note explaining the theme, this theme of Breaking Point, she says, There comes a moment in the life of every individual when reality must be faced. When

this happens, it is as though a link between emotion and reason is stretched to the limit of endurance and sometimes snaps. In this collection of stories, men, women, children and a nation are brought to the breaking point. Whether the link survives or snaps, the reader must judge for himself. And what was happening in du Maurier's life in the late 1950s when she was writing these stories? It was a difficult time in her life. In the great biographies of du Maurier by Tatiana Geroné and Margaret Forster, they talk about Daphne's personal sense

of breakdown and also her husband's breakdown during this time. And she's also spending a lot of time up in London rather than in her beloved Cornwall, her beloved Mennebilly. And some of the London stories have a real sense of kind of claustrophobia and feeling trapped and feeling imprisoned. In her literary life, she's also thinking about in the mid to late 1950s, she, in 1960, the year after she publishes The Breaking Point, she publishes The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.

So she writes the first serious biography of the black sheep of the Bronte family, of Branwell, the brother who had all the talent, supposedly, and great creativity and great energy, but somehow never quite made it. So he came to his own breaking point and failed. And du Maurier's biography is, it's sensitive, sympathetic, empathetic to Branwell. And one of the key themes in it comes really through these short stories

as well, this idea of the relationship between reality and fantasy and what happens when fantasy takes over. And that that can be a very dangerous place to be. So in the preface to The Infernal World of Bramwell Bronte, one of the things she's fascinated by is the childhood fantasy worlds that the Brontes created, the kingdoms of Gondol and Angria. And in fact, in du Maurier's own sort of code language, to Gondol became a word that she used,

meaning she was pretending, she was fantasizing this sense of make-believe. But that became very dangerous to Branwell because he wasn't able to break free from this infernal world. So she says that the downfall of Branwell Bronte was not the abortive love affair described by Mrs. Gaskell with such gusto, so the supposed affair he had with Mrs Robinson, but by his inability to distinguish truth from fiction, reality from fantasy, Branwell failed in life because it differed from his own infernal world.

So being caught up in this infernal world is a very dangerous business. I'm very interested in death. I can't say I look forward to it. Nobody can look forward to death, but I'd love to know what is the ultimate answer. I mean, either there is something, we go on, God knows to what, or we burn out. And I don't see that it rarely matters,

which it is if we go on. Well, then it's frightfully exciting, as exciting as going to the moon. Much more exciting, I suppose. If we don't go on and we just fall asleep, well, that's that. We don't know, finish. But it doesn't worry me. Andrew, we're all going to say a little bit about one of the stories

from The Breaking Point. Which story did you choose? Well, I chose the first story, The Alibi, but I think maybe we should also sort of say why these stories work so well for Halloween. And I think it's because they all seem to be about this kind of passing over, this kind of thin veil between worlds, that all the stories seem to be about

crossing over into another realm or an attempt of a character to expand their vision in a way and enter into these kind of often secret other worlds, or they're given glimpses of other worlds. And it's a question of whether they sort of understand them. But I think it's also related to that fact that reading the biographies, this sense right from the start that Daphne du Maurier believed that she was two people in a way, you know, sort of male and female. Absolutely. She has a male alter ego, doesn't she?

Oh, can you remember his name? Yes, when she was younger, Eric Avon. Eric Avon. So a lot of the stories they're about, even when she's writing about the male or these male characters there's a sense that she's writing about the male aspect of her herself and i thought the alibi was i was the first it's the first story in the book so i picked up and i started reading it another one of the ways in which it's fascinating is it comes out of that world of the kitchen sink novel it comes out of that world of the kitchen sink novel. It comes out of that world of John Wayne and everything.

And it's also very similar to The Horse's Mouth, you know, the Gully Jimson. It's a sort of seedy Chelsea. I've got the blurb on my penguin cover, which actually gives a one-sentence summary of each story. So you chose the alibi. Yeah. Here is what the alibi is about.

In the alibi, a would-be murderer turned artist is hoist with his own petard. That's pretty good. That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah. So the extract that I've chosen is the point where this would-be murderer kind of moves away from the world of kind of secure domesticity and marriage

and into this kind of flirting with possible murder, which then becomes something else entirely. The idea of escape had never come to him before. It was as though something had clicked in his brain when his wife made the remark about the Allisons. Remind me to telephone when we get home. It's their turn to come to us. The drowning man who sees the pattern of his life pass by as the sea engulfs him could at last be understood. The ring at the front door, the cheerful voices of the Allisons, the drink set out on the sideboard, the standing about for a moment and then the sitting down. These things became only pieces of the tapestry that was the whole of his life imprisonment. Beginning daily with the drawing back of the curtains and early morning tea.

The opening of the newspaper. Breakfast eaten in the small dining room with the gas fire burning blue. Turned low because of waste. The journey by underground to the city. The passing hours of methodical office work. The journey by underground to the city, the passing hours of methodical office work, the return by underground, unfolding an evening paper in the crowd which hemmed him in, the laying down of hat and coat and umbrella, the sound of television from the drawing room, blending perhaps with the voice of his wife talking on the phone. And it was winter, or it was summer, or it was spring, or it was autumn, because with the changing seasons

the covers of the chairs and sofa in the drawing room were cleaned and replaced by others, or the trees in the square outside were in leaf or bare. It's their turn to come to us, and the Alisons, grimacing and jumping on their string, came and bowed and disappeared, and the hosts who had received them became guests in their turn, jiggling and smirking, the dancing couples set to partners in an old-time measure. Now suddenly, with the pause by Albert Bridge and Edna's remark, time had ceased, or rather, it had continued in the same way for her, for the Allisons answering the telephone,

for the other partners in the dance, but for him everything had changed. He was aware of a sense of power within. He was in control. His was the master hand that set the puppets jiggling, and Edna, poor Edna, speeding home in the taxi to a predestined role of putting out the drinks, patting cushions, shaking salted almonds from a tin, Edna had no conception of how he had stepped out of bondage into a new dimension. The apathy of Sunday lay upon the streets. Houses were closed, withdrawn. They don't know, he thought, those people inside, how one gesture of mine, now, at this minute, might alter their world. A knock on the door, and someone

answers. A woman yawning, an old man in carpet slippers, a child sent by its parents in irritation. And according to what I will, what I decide, their whole future will be decided. Faces smashed in, sudden murder, theft, fire. It was as simple as that. Laura, what is that story, The Alibi, about? I mean, I've got a theory. I'm interested in what you think. It's a great story, isn't it? I think it's about the danger and the doubleness and the deception that's within all of us, that we could suddenly become someone else. Or in fact, we've always been that person on the inside.

And then that suddenly comes out. Daphne said that we are all doubles, all of us. Everyone has their dark side and that dark side might slip out. And there was a specific thing, wasn't there? These were written shortly after her husband's mistress had come to her and said that she had been having an affair. And definitely hadn't been faithful either, but it really affected her. And she worked kind of not terribly successfully

to try and patch the marriage together. She was living in London in a crappy flat. Yeah, so she called the rat trap. And then there's the kind of her not being able to deal with the deception that her husband has practised against her. But, Andrew, what else is the, there's another theme in the story, isn't there? There is. One thing I do want to say, which I think doesn't always get said about Daphne du Maurier,

is how convincing she writes as a man. You know, that is eerily sort of convincing. And it's about that doubleness and it's about that kind of veil between worlds, her ability to sort of, in a way, move across gender. She's incredibly talented and sort of inhabiting the man in which she felt that a sort of man and sort of inhabiting the man in which she felt that a sort of man was sort of inhabiting her in a way.

But the other thing that I think it seems to be a story about writing. Yeah. About having that going off to create something. Yes, definitely. And also about... Away from the domestic environment. But also about the need to, yeah, the need to escape. And sublimating murderous rage into daubing paint onto a canvas.

But also about the need to escape the conventional. There's a line in it where he's quite mad and he's talking about the paintings and he goes, they're unconventional, I know that. Not picture book stuff, but they're strong. Yeah. And it's just, it's fantastic that. And he's just made this up.

He had to buy the paints because he kind of got tricked into having to say he was going to be a painter. Yeah. And then the fantasy of actually he's become this extraordinary painter. I think you're absolutely right. But then there's that final line at the end where you suddenly doubt it and you think, has he created this whole alibi in his head? You know, is this all a fiction?

Yes, this is a painting. Yeah, and you constantly flip between those worlds. Absolutely. I think this really is about writing and what Daphne is able to do as a writer. She's able to kill off characters. She's able to play them like a puppet master, and we have that imagery.

A room of one's own is somewhere you go to murder people. Yeah. Absolutely. You become someone different. And when she was writing a novel, she would, particularly the first-person novels, she became those characters. And often when she was brewing a novel, to brew was one of the, again, part of this du Maurier language,

she'd spend whole days wandering around as these characters. So all of a sudden you're not just double, you're multiple. And many of her books, I'm thinking of something like The Parasites from 1949, where there were three characters, Maria, Niall and Celia, who were all part of du Maurier's personality and writing life. She becomes all sorts of people and that can be dangerous. Laura, which story from The Breaking Point is your favorite or would you like to tell us about my favorite is the blue lenses now i'm saying immediately spoilers here so flip

forward about five minutes if you don't want to hear a spoiler to do with this story because you can't talk about this story without giving away the so laura tell us what the mcguffin of the story is um so it's a story of a of a woman um called marda west who has had an operation on her eyes and um having done this this story at the foy festival with some friends of mine who've had eye operations um they found this utterly terrifying because she has the bandages removed. And this is going to be the moment when Marder is finally able to, the surgeon says, you will see more clearly than ever before. And she really does, but in a very strange, disturbing and intensely creepy way so when she wakes up when the the bandages are are removed the first nurse that that that comes into the room to talk to her nurse brand um this is this is when nurse brand enters Smiling, she saw the figure dressed in uniform come into the room,

bearing a tray, her glass of milk upon it. Yet incongruous, absurd, the head with the uniformed cap was not a woman's head at all. The thing bearing down upon her was a cow. A cow on a woman's body. This is one of the other incredible things about du Maurier is her humour. And her humour really should be better known. And what's superb about this is that, you know, I can imagine if I was trying to come up with this story and I was thinking, oh, all the staff at the nursing home have animal heads.

I think I'm going to start with something, something awful. It's going to be a wolf's head. But no, du Maurier builds up in stages, going from the absurd to the whimsical to the strange. So then the surgeon comes in and the surgeon has the head of a terrier, ears pricked, inquisitive searching glance. In a moment, surely he would yap and a tail wag swiftly. And Marta, she just doesn't know what's going on. She thinks this must be some kind of conspiracy. It's some kind of trick. It's a deception.

So she doesn't immediately go to the idea of horror, that they must be dressing up. They must be pretending and acting. And so we then have other characters who appear with a weasel's head, a kitten, a proud lion. So we're still not fully in the realms of horror. A boar's head until Nurse Ansel enters the room. And Nurse Ansel, Marder has really become very fond of Nurse Ansel, her calming voice during the time she's been looking after her. And she thinks Nurse Ansel is going to be my saviour. Nurse Ansel, her calming voice during the time she's been looking after her. And she thinks Nurse

Ansel is going to be my saviour. Nurse Ansel would never lie. So she's waiting for her to come into the room. And this is what happens. Marder was sitting at the dressing table, putting some cream on her face and the door must have opened without her being aware. But she heard the well-known voice, the soft beguiling voice, and it said to her, I nearly came before, I didn't dare, you would have thought me foolish. It slid slowly into view, the long snake's head, the twisting neck, the pointed, barbed tongue swiftly thrusting and swiftly withdrawn. It came into view over her shoulders through the looking glass.

That is good. Absolutely superb. The husband is even worse. He kisses her. He's a vulture. And he kisses her. And the detail is she feels the hardness of his blood-stained beak against her cheek.

But the other thing that needs to be said about that is what a brilliant way to also evoke mental illness yeah as well absolutely that sense that you you finally see these people for who they are and and they're not who you thought they were and no one else can see it everyone everyone she looks at is isn't it yeah and it's the only it's there are no comforting humans to look that's what's absolutely terrifying about. And also the way in which it's against type. It's the caring nurse who is the snake. I think that's the man, and then the husband is the vulture. That's the master strike.

I'm particularly loving the cover of your penguins, sort of 60s classic penguin. Well, it's a dog wearing a tie. The description of the story here on this Penguin Edition is as follows. The blue lens is the terrifying post-operative nightmare of a woman who sees, in inverted commas, a new dot, dot, dot. These are quite good little pithy little things. Andrew, at the head of which animal would you hope they saw?

I'd hope they saw a dog. But I don't think they would. It's kind of how we want to be seen, isn't it? I'd like to be seen as a kind of lovable dog, but I don't. What about you? Come on. Me. Whippet.

Yeah, now. It would have been an old English sheepdog six months ago now, but now it's like a whippet, a highly strung Whippet. Johnny? Well, obviously just kind of one of those stupid-looking bears with their eyes too close together. You see the one that broke in and was playing the piano? That's my spirit animal.

Laura? Probably a bird. Also because bird imagery is very popular in Demoria. It's one of the... Well, also incredibly dangerous. Birds are both a symbol of freedom and independence. Any particular bird? Well, I'm a fan of my garden birds, so maybe a robin.

Oh, yes, OK. And finally, a question to you, Nicky. If I was looking at you through the blue lenses, you'd hope I would see? That's a rather pointless animal, like a stick insect. That's harsh. The head of a stick insect is actually a powerful imaginative... I can give you the names of people if you want to talk to them.

Laura, that thing you said, which I think totally sums up De Moray, that how she kind of equates freedom with fear. You know, the two go together. So like the bird imagery is really important. Obviously there are images of freedom and kind of, you know, poetry and expressiveness, but there are also images of fear. I mean, like going back to the alibi there's there is this fear of experiment at the heart of this collection of experimental short stories there's also a fear of experiment it's

really weird that's the thing that's the yin and yang going yeah absolutely all the time yeah fear yes fear is extraordinary that the chamois story yeah which is all about fear about conquering fear um again without without spoilers but but I thought the ending of that story is just one of the most remarkable things I've read. One of the things I think is fascinating about Dorie, even when the stories don't work, and some of the stories in this collection don't work, what I like about her is there's a sort of fearlessness

and almost like an outsider art thing going on, where she will try anything. And there doesn't appear to be a voice inside going, well, don't do that. That won't work. She really embraces the type of story. And I think that's one of the reasons why the stories don't go in the directions you might expect them to. We've got a clip here of the writer and actor Christopher Douglas talking about the story Don't Look Now. Now, some listeners will know, and I know Andrew will be very familiar, that

Christopher Douglas writes and acts the genius writer Ed Reardon in Ed Reardon's Week. So I have included this as a treat for all fans of that programme. Every now and then on this programme we say, is this a woman's book, is this a woman's writer? Shame to admit I haven't read anything else of hers, but this collection I'm afraid I had some difficulty with. And I think the problem really was with the characterisations. I can see that in detective fiction and thrillers where the story is everything,

characters sometimes have to be a bit sketchily drawn in the interests of moving the thing on. But I think any fictional character, like a dramatic character, has to be convincing for you to want to spend time with them. And I'm afraid these just aren't to me. In Don't Look Now, you spend about 50 pages with two people who seem utterly devoid of individuality to me. And then at the end of it all, there's a homicidal dwarf in a pixie hood.

Oh, you've given away the ending. Well, I'm sorry. I sort of think, well, why have we got this homicidal dwarf? I mean, you've just made that up. Where did he get the character of Ed Reardon from? Absolutely. I don't know. That's so brilliant. With all due disrespect to Christopher Douglas,

hasn't he just articulated the thing that's so brilliant about the story? Yeah, absolutely. Completely. It's not what you're expecting. And I think that, for me, is what is so fascinating about writing about du Maurier, talking about her to fans at the festival. Everything you think you know about Daphne du Maurier, you don't. And she's always doing something new, something different.

She does the unexpected. Again, there's a spoiler here for the story. If you haven't read it, the story, Don't Look Now. But Laura, what is the last line of the story, Don't Look Now? What a bloody silly way to die. Now, I think Daphne du Maurier had that as the point she knew she wanted to get to and in a sense the the dwarf in a pixie hood the famous dwarf in the pixie hood is almost a way of getting to that the fact that that image is as we know because of the film incredibly

horrific and seems primal in some way, is actually, I think, for du Maurier a way of getting to that line. I can almost see that she has the line as the genesis of the story and then reverse engineers everything to get there. Yeah, she often does have the kind of opening and ending and she knows exactly how they are going to work. And I think one of the wonderful things about that ending is that John is expressing, how did I get to this place?

And actually many of her characters are swept up, like the character in The Alibi. How did he get to this place? Things have swept him along. I think the other point that needs to be said is that language is so convincing as the language of some, as Christopher Douglas says, some rather uninteresting middle-class Englishmen. Oh, what a bloody stupid way to die.

You know, there is a sense in which, again, if we're talking about twin worlds in Daphne du Maurier, that world of kind of suburban safety and then danger, that's exactly what Don't Look Now is about, isn't it? Again, it's about crossing over from that world of suburban comfort into nightmare. Completely. And a refusal.

I mean, Don't Look Now is just a fantastic title and opening for the story of Don't Look Now. But also it's talking about the very fact that John can see, but he won't look. Yes. He's refusing to get in touch with that side of himself that we see kind of breaking out in these stories. I mean, I know what he's saying in that way,

but I think it's an absolutely brilliant story, don't you? Give me the one-liner. The pool delicately evokes the fantasy world of a young girl on the brink of puberty. Yeah. Well, that is a very good one-line description of it and deborah in the story is a highly articulate very imaginative child with a brother called roger who is you know not as uh he's younger and he wants to play

cricket and she is having all kinds of extraordinary thoughts about the universe about faith she's just been confirmed about religion um it's beautifully evokes something that I don't recall in any story, that thing of children staying with their grandparents. She feels sorry for the grandparents and their ageing and their routine and their life and the sound of the grandparents murmuring downstairs. And then it reminded me of the wonderful Alison in the Owl Service. And then it also reminded me, she wakes up in the clock, strikes 11, doesn't strike 13,

but she goes out at night into the magic of the garden and decides she wants to sleep under the stars. I'll just read you a little bit. The stars were thicker now than they had been before. No space in the sky without a prick of light, each star a sun. Some, she thought, were newly born, white hot, others wise and colder, nearing completion. The law encompassed them, fixing the riotous path, but how they fell and tumbled depended on themselves. Such peace, such stillness, such sudden quietitude, excitement gone. The trees were no longer menacing, but guardians, and the pool was primeval water, the first, the last. Now, it's about time for it to go batshit crazy, and here we go. Then Deborah stood at the wicket gate, the boundary, and there was a woman with outstretched hand demanding tickets. Pass through, she said when Deborah reached her. We saw you coming.

The wicket gate became a turnstile. Deborah pushed against it and there was no resistance. She was through. What is it, she asked. Am I really here at last? Is this the bottom of the pool? It could be, smiled the woman. There are so many ways. You just happen to choose this one.

That reminded me, funny enough, Andrew, it's exactly what you were saying about the veil, the idea of passing from one realm to another, if you can, if you are able to do so. That reminds me strongly that story of an Arthur Macken story, the idea of nature being something slightly eldritch and we can only half understand. And the start of Rebecca, the nature coming back, the pool and the grasping.

Passing through the gates. Wonderful thing when she's lying at the end, stared at the empty sky. She does this brilliantly. She said, the heaviness of knowledge. This is after she had her first period. The heaviness of, sorry, spoiler. The heaviness of knowledge lay upon her,

a strange deep sorrow. It won't come back, she thought. I've lost the key. It's an incredible story. It's an incredible story. Also, I very quickly want to say, before we run out of time. You've got to do your story, Andy. Well, Laura, you were talking about du Maurier's humour.

I'm just going to read the opening paragraph of this story, The Menace. The Menace was slang, wasn't it? It was du Maurier's slang. Yeah. Sexually attractive man, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a menace. Yeah, he's a menace.

Someone was menacing yeah so the first thing I want to say is this is the menace doesn't even get its own description on the back cover right it just says the menace and the chamois each throw a different light on aspects of modern sexuality they'd given up

by that point hadn't they they thought I can't do any more of these yeah so did I the first thing because it features a character up by that point, hadn't they? They thought, I can't do any more of these. Absolutely love this story. Yeah, so did I. Firstly, because it features a character whose name is Barry Jeans. Now, even Martin Amis might think twice before calling a character Barry Jeans. But I'm going to read you the first paragraph, everybody, because it is really funny and great. Barry Jeans. You can't imagine anything less menacing. Oh, no, I'm going to get it.

I had no idea that Daphne Memorial wrote stories like that. Yeah. Barry Jeans, when his fans did not call him Barry and wanted a bigger word for him, was known as the menace. The menace in movie language, and especially among women, means a heartthrob, a lover, someone with wide shoulders and no hips. A menace does not have long lashes or a profile. He is always ugly, generally with a crooked nose and, if possible, a scar.

His voice is deep and he does not say much. When he does speak, the scriptwriters give him short, terse snaps of dialogue. Phrases like, lady, take care. Or, break it up. Or, even just, maybe. The expression on the ugly face has to be deadpan and give nothing away so that sudden death or a woman's passion leaves it unmoved. Only the muscle at the side of the lean jaw tautens.

And then the fans know that Barry is either going to hit someone and hit him hard, or stagger in a torn shirt through a jungle carrying on his back a man who hates him, or lie in an open boat after shipwreck with the woman he loves but is far too honourable to touch. Barry Jeans, the menace, must have made more money for the movie world than anyone living.

He was English by birth, his father was a clergyman and vicar of Herne Bay for many years. I mean, if that isn't a great set-up to a story. Before we pass through the Vale to the pub, here is the end of Daphne du Maurier's appearance on Desert Island Discs. When I turn on the gramophone in the evening, I would like what I do here at seven o'clock. I have my nip of whiskey and ginger ale,

and that should keep me going with the gramophone. Right. I shall see there's a supply to give you a nip an evening for as long as you're on the island. And one book, and you're not allowed the Bible or Shakespeare or big encyclopedias as obvious choices. In that case, I'd have Jane Austen

and there's an edition I have at the moment beside my bed which has three novels in it. That's fine. So if that's not cheating, the one I'd take would be Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice. All three in one thing.

And thank you, Dame Daphne du Maurier, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disney. Well, don't forget I'm on my way in that cockle shell, sailing. I shan't be long. Goodbye, everyone. It's brilliant. I'm afraid that all tricks and treats must come to an end at some point, and that's all we have time for Thank you to Laura and Andrew for their uncanny insights

and to Nicky Birch for her spine-chilling audio effects and to Unbound for letting us stay up late You can download all 100 and blah episodes There's over 100 now 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, Facebook and Boundless. Good evening, listeners.

We'll be back again with more troubling tales this time next year. Goodbye, everyone. If you prefer to listen to Batlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films

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