Backlisted - The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them (1948) is the subject of this episode, almost ten years since Backlisted covered the same author's classic debut Lolly Willowes (1926). Joining Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss this magnificent and inimitable historical novel - and to consider what, if anything, we have learnt during the last decade - is our friend Tanya Kirk, author, editor and the Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge; Tanya appeared on previous episodes about Winifred Holtby's South Riding and Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes. Described by one commentator as the ultimate workplace novel, if your workplace happens to be a medieval convent, The Corner That Held Them reflects Sylvia Townsend Warner's love of nuns, nouns and nonconformists. It is a story without a plot that somehow grips the reader from beginning to end; a work of fiction, according to the author, written "on the purest Marxian principles", that foregrounds the struggle of the individual within enclosed systems i.e. a hastily-constructed nunnery; and an epic novel spanning two centuries of religious persecution, plague, murder, famine and betrayal, that still locates humour in the bleakest, dampest prospect. It is a truly magical book and it was an absolute delight to return to it here, for the first time. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive music writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. And the book featured on today's show is The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner, first published in 1948 by Chateau and Windus in the UK and Viking Press in America. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously and inventory, an unreliable guide to my record collection. I'm Dr Una McCormack, science fiction author and associate fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. And I'm Nikki Burch, the producer of Backlisted.

I'm here to give you the info. This podcast has been running for 10 years now. And in that time, we have built up an incredible community of listeners, patrons and guests. Plus, of course, a back catalog of nearly 250 shows, covering everything from Moby Dick to Moomin Valley in November. There's one really easy free way to support the podcast and to listen to episodes from our backlist. You just follow backlisted on whatever podcast app you use. You can explore the back catalogue. You'll get the new episodes dropped into your feed as soon as they're published. Plus it really helps us get surfaced in charts and makes the shows more visible.

ALICE Yeah, that's visible surfaced drops everybody. NICOLA That's what I'm here for. ALICE That's how they talk in podcast everybody. That's what I'm here for. That's how they talk in podcast land. That's right. Nikki, if a drop gets surfaced in a chart without anyone being able to see it, can it really be said to have dropped? Well, I think it will be a drop in the ocean of the many podcasts that exist in the podcast

sphere. What Nikki is trying to ask you listeners is podcast sphere. And listen. What Nikki is trying to ask you listeners is please subscribe. Please subscribe. Enough of this technical banter, I think. Joining us today on the show to discuss The Corner That Held Them is an old friend of the podcast, Tanya Kirk. Hello Tanya.

Hello. Hello. Tanya Kirk is the librarian and a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. She's co-author and co-editor of Realms of Imagination, Essays from the Wide Worlds of Fantasy, and has edited five collections of classic ghost stories for the British Library's publishing arm, including Chill Tidings and The Haunted Library. Also, Tanya can say she's worked as Shakespeare's editor on a facsimile edition of the first folio. Tanya can say she's worked as Shakespeare's editor on a facsimile edition of the first folio. Tanya, did you offer him any notes, any editorial

suggestions? He didn't take them well, so I won't try that again. More evidence that he's probably the Earl of Oxford in that case. Exactly. You put him on the spot there, Tanya. Yeah, yeah. Didn't take it well. Too posh. Tanya previously joined us on episode 158, Winfred Holtby's South Riding and episode 177, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streetfield. Coincidentally, I also appeared on those episodes. Oh, yes, of course.

How did that happen? How did that happen? The band are back together. I know, I know. With another excellent, very excellent book. Tanya, you've still a little way to go before you challenge either me or Andrew Mayall as most invited guest. But the comeback starts here. I love that Una is trying to get some kind of grudge match going with Andrew. Poor Andrew. Tanya, how's your leg? You've not been too well, have you?

I have had a very weird year. So I left the, I used to work for the British library. I left there last summer and I started at St. John's and I was loving it. And then 10 weeks in I fell over and shattered my shin into several pieces and 25 days in Ardenbrooke, six hours of surgery later and a month in a wheelchair. It's not been fun times. Would you call yourself fully mobile now? I'd say I was mostly fully mobile. The bones are still not totally healed, but I've got eight pieces of titanium now that hold it all together. So I will be setting off airport security for the rest of my life.

When you were reading this book, did you think to yourself, well, things could have been worse. I could have been a nun in East Anglia had this happened, it wouldn't have been good news for Tanya. If you were a nun, they just would have killed you off, wouldn't they? They didn't care. Which to be fair, Nikki, is a bit like the guest process on this podcast. So anyway, The Corner That Held Them. Let's talk about that. The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel that details the lives of the residents of Obie, a medieval convent in the fenlands of East Anglia. The novel starts with Obie's establishment in 1163 and stops, and I'm

using that word deliberately, it stops 300 pages later rather than ends in 1382. I dare say we'll discuss why that might be in due course. The novel is built around a series of episodic incidents concerning the residents of the convent – not just nuns, of course, but also cooks, bishops, lepers, paupers, sages and conmen. One theme of the novel is how social conditions result from economic circumstance. Sylvia Townsend-Warner herself described it as a novel written on quote, the purest Marxist principles. And I'm thrilled to be able to report that this may well be the most entertaining novel ever

written largely to have dispensed with anything so bourgeois as a plot. The quarter that held them was Sylvia Townsend. Do you know, it's quite a mouthful saying Sylvia Townsend. Can we just call her Sylvia? No. Okay. All right. I don't like that. Do you not? Too chummy. Warner.

Townsend Warner. She's filed in bookshops under W. Is she? Yeah. We have an adjudication here, I think. I don't like it when there's a documentary about the venerable bead and they start referring to him as Ven. My buddy bead. Does that ever happen, Andy? Yeah, oh you know what I mean. Henry VIII. Henry was feeling sad.

Harry. Because, you know, I don't like that. Don't it's too familiar. All right then. Ms Townsend Warner to you. As long as she calls me Dr McCormack. Do your best. Yeah. The corner that held them was Sylvia Townsend Warner's sixth novel following on from Lolly Willow's a bestseller in 1926 and then Mr Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart, Summer Will Show and After the Death of Don Juan.

It took her six years to write beginning in, and it can be seen to reflect some of her experiences on the home front and those of her partner, the poet's Valentine Ackland during the Second World War. It was her favourite of her own novels and a bit like the Convent of Obey itself, it seems over the years to have taken on a life of its own. It's been reissued by Virago Modern Classics, then Penguin and now NYRB Classics. The novelist Sarah Waters has called it one of the great British novels of the 20th century, a narrative of extraordinary reach, power and beauty. And just a few months ago in The Times,

critic James Marriott declared it one of the best historical novels he'd ever read, if not the best. Now I know many listeners will be listening to this saying to themselves, hang on, Backlisted did a show on Sylvia Townsend Warner nine years ago. It was episode eight, Lolly Willows, and it went out in March 2016. What is going on? This is chaos. And they'll be cancelling their subscriptions faster than Nikki can beg for them. Well, when we come back, we'll explain just why and how we came to pick the corner that held them for today's show. But first, let's hear from our sponsors. When planning for life's most important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing

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Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial branding is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. Welcome back. Now, as regular listeners will be aware, we usually kick things off by asking our guests when they first read the book under discussion. But in this case, Tanya, I happen to know it was this week. Shush. No one's supposed to know. I know. It's the teaching law, isn't it? You only

need to be an hour ahead of your students. So Andy, I'm going to turn to you instead and ask, when did you first read The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner? Thank you, Una. Well, I remember where I was. It was in the run up to episode eight of Bat Listed in March 2016 on Lolly Willows. And can I just say Tanya, very well done for reading The Corner That Held Them, nearly as fast as Unigine. Impossible. You actually read, I listened back to that episode, Andy, you said you read two of her books as well. What was the other book you read at the same time? After the death of Don Juan and The Corner that held them and Lolly Willows.

Those were the days. Those were the days when I used to read as much as I could before an episode, right? I read the Claire Harmon biography as well. So just put that. Hey, hey, hey, hey, it's, we're all, we're all putting the hours in. We're old friends. It's fine. It's fine. But just to say it's a good episode. It is episode eight. If you want to have a double bill, this one and that one would be good back to back. Wouldn't we? Well, look, I always, over the years, I've always said that my favorite book that I've ever read for Batlist did that we never

actually done an episode on is The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. And because we're in our 10th anniversary year, I just thought it would be fun to make a show with our friends about this book, which I think, like James Marriott, I think this is one of the best, if not the best, historical novel I've ever read. I made the time to reread it about five years ago and I read it again for this, so I've read this book now three times in 10 years. I just think it's so, so wonderful. It's such a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to discuss it all with you. But I'd also like to say that I want to note something. So we made that episode, Nikki, you weren't here

then. We made that episode in early 2016. And Lolly Willows, as I'm sure many people will know, is a novel about a witch. And I couldn't help noticing that of the original backlisted team, I am currently the last man standing, not person, man. Surely not a coincidence. And it began to occur to me that was that show from 10 years ago, some kind of hex induction hour. And that in fact, the shade of Lolly Willows had in some way cursed the show. And that the way to put that right is today, is to placate the goddess by making a show with a female guest, a female co-host, a female producer

on a book written by a woman on the subject of nuns. Does this make you Nickies familiar now? I don't know. I wouldn't like to say that for fear of bringing down more retribution. So I have read this several times and therefore I will sit back now and listen to three people who hadn't read it before. Tell me if they enjoyed it or not. Let's just begin with you, Tanya. Did you enjoy this novel? Tanya No, I will say I enjoyed it very much, but it took me quite a long time to understand what I was reading because I spent the first

... I didn't know anything about it before reading it. And I spent the first sort of hundred pages being like, where is the plot? When is the plot happening? And then once I realized that there was no plot, I enjoyed it very much. It's the wonderful minutiae that make it really special. You don't need the plot, you just kind of get swept along like the river. It's the most entertaining novel with no plot ever written. I think it's an absolute page turner. And part of the magic of it is I would struggle to tell you why, apart from the sheer pleasure

afforded by the way she doesn't tell you a story. You just get a deep pleasure in what I call their doings. The things that they are doing, you just become very absorbed in it. You become in the minutiae of the gossip, of the sort of tiny feuds that are going on. The witch, minor aristocratic family is sort of got a little bit ahead in the politics of the conference. You get tremendously absorbed in it. And then in the background, there's just like stuff going on, like, you know, another rep... The Black Death.

Yeah, you know, peasants' revolts, I don you know, another rep, the black death, you know, peasants' revolts. I don't know. Some bit of the hundred years war, that's all going on. And occasionally they go, Oh, the duck pond's looking a bit mossy. We probably ought to do something about that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd read it in like a day and a half. I just, I just sat down and I, I always, I always have a little crib first. So I knew there wasn't a plot and I thought, Oh lovely, I won't have to pay any attention to stuff happening and work out what's going on. So it was like sitting with these women, just, you know, Oh yeah, spring plague rent, and it all comes around again and again and again.

It occurred to me, Nikki, that reading it again this time, that it does have a 21st century equivalent, which is a bit like a workplace novel. I completely agree, actually. The other novel that I thought of- It's like people falling out or bitching behind one another's backs or getting on with the boring stuff of the office, i.e. the convent.

It reminds me of the Joshua Ferris novel, When We Came to the End. Ah, yes, I love that. That ebb and flow of people. And people just leave and then don't come back and that's like being at work, isn't it? Oh, they've gone. I was very involved in their life and now they've quit. Now they've dropped dead of palsy. Nikki, what did you make of this? I think a bit like Tanya. I think I first, I felt really kind of, okay, where's this going? It's set in a, to be clear, it's set in a nunnery, but over quite a long period of time. So the characters just sort of come

and then they die and then the nuns come and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, okay, we're with a whole new set of people. And it just sort of has this pace between people coming and going and you're still with the nunnery, you're still in Obi and that nun's dead and those ones have died of the plague and those it's like okay but the next lot are coming and they're still worrying about the same thing which is the you know the bureaucracy and the sort of petty money the petty squabbles and the money of course and how much wine they can drink they do like to drink don't they. Marxist principles. You listened to it or? I did listen to it.

Yeah. Was it, did that make it harder to follow because I kept having to look about which is, which one is Dame Adela, which one is Dame Philippa? Yeah, because you don't tend to do that when you listen, but at the same time, actually, I think you don't have to, having not having to follow a plot particularly makes listening quite kind of pleasant. And what happens is you get really brought into the words. So the words come up much more because it's the words, the language gets, they repeat a lot of language and she's got this amazing use of words, which I'm sure we'll go into. But so you just get

used to these things that we can, otherwise pestilence comes up quite a lot. Yeah. Also, but it is a very good audio book. I did some of it on audio this time. I really recommend it. It's excellent. Who's the reader? Who's reading? It's narrated by Emma Gregory, and she does a brilliant job. Yeah. So I've got a little feature that I'd like us to roll with today. Yes, new co-host. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. This lovely, lovely power that I have. Indeed.

And I've called it Nuns and Nouns. Nuns, ladies and gentlemen, nun or noun. No, it's not a big creep thing. It's just a... Nuns and nouns. Nuns and nouns. Because just like you were saying, Nicky, as I was reading it, I was constantly stumbling over these words that I've got. I've absolutely no idea what these are because I'm not a medieval historian. I'm a sociologist. So history starts in 1789

and then you just get on with it. So all these medieval words, I had no idea about. I wasn't even reading it on Kindle, so I'd be kind of thumping text with my finger and no kind of explanation would come up. So, you know, as you're reading it, you realize, well, this is part of how she's building this world, part of how she's immersing you and immersing herself in it. But I started to pick out my favorite nouns. So I asked, I've asked the good folks here to choose some of their favourite nouns that they found in the book. And I think we shall start with Tanya, tell me your favourite noun. Let's hear your three favourite nouns.

Your three? Or do you want me just to do one now? No, please. No, you're right. We should string these out for a whole show. No, let's hear your three. Let's hear your three. My three are Corodian. Oh, that was sort of mine. What does Corodian mean?

It's a well-to-do lay person living in a monastery or nunnery, paying for their own food and accommodation with the rest of their lives. That is a useful word to have though now. Corodian. It's like the residents in the hotel at Fawlty Towers was the way I was thinking about it. Yes, Miss Tibbs. Miss Gatsby and Miss Tibbs. And the majors. Yes. Of course. Corodians all. Brilliant. Yes, thank you, Tonya.

Crockett. Oh. So this is an interesting one. So at the time the novel is set. This is gold, McCormack, absolute gold. At the time the novel is set, it was used to mean a curl or roll of hair. But in this novel, it's actually used in its later sense, which is a small ornament placed on the inclined sides of a pinnacle, pediment or canopy in Gothic architecture. But that usage only came in from 1677. Who knew that we needed a word for that? Watch out, Susie Dent. Don't get complacent because we've got people coming for you. Do you think that Sylvia Townsend Warner, what research would she have had to do to

get all of these words? Because they are, it's littered with them. The whole thing is littered with these, as you said, medieval words. What would she have done when she wrote this? You wrote it in the war. Yeah. Yeah. She didn't have the internet. I was just about to say there was no internet.

There was no internet. There were only, there weren't one TV channel. So what's she doing? Is she going to her local churchyard and like picking this stuff up? I think she was a London library member. So maybe she was using things from there. I don't know. Her father was a teacher at Harrow, wasn't he? And I think he was a historian. I don't know if he was a medievalist, but actually I think she just had one of those minds. I think that she just accumulated information and

knowledge and that she would file a word away and then it would come back. She's a poet as well, isn't she? So I think there's a pleasure in word and sound and what's behind that word. Tanya, what was your third? My third, I'll go for Verdera, which is a judicial officer of the King's Forest. Do you reckon? Oh, that's really good. Do you reckon we still have those? Because some of these words, do you think, I bet these roles still exist.

Someone somewhere will be on like 40 guineas still doing that job, I reckon. This is actually a job app available on gov.uk for a Verdera right now. There you go. Yeah. Oh. Don't mess around. In the New Forest, that could be used. Yep.

That tells you everything you need to know about this country, both good and bad, I think. And also the level of research that she did. She wasn't just making this stuff up. No. Well, I would like to, I'd just like to read a little bit, which stood out to me on this, the third reading, because you were saying how, Nikki, you were saying, and Tanya also, that you weren't sure what was going on for the first hundred pages, which I think is perfectly reasonable and presumably what part of what Sylvia Townsend Warner wanted to achieve, which is you're not quite sure whose story you're reading or if you're reading

something about the history of religion in that period. And then I was going through this again a few days ago and I found on page seven a paragraph that occurred to me would never stand out to you on your first or second reading, but perhaps after a few readings you go, oh wait a minute, I think this is the whole book being presented slid across the table to you if you are wily enough to spot it. So she writes, a good convent should have no history. Its life is hid with Christ who is above. History is of the world, costly and deadly, and the events it records are usually deplorable. The year when the roof caught fire. The year of the summer flood which swept

away the haystacks and drowned the bailiff. The year when the cattle were stolen. The year when the king laid the great impost for the Scotch Wars and timber for five years had to be felled to pay it. The year of the pestilence. The year when Dame Dionysia had a baby by the Bishop's clerk. Yet the events of history carry a certain exhilaration with them. Decisions are made, money is spent, strangers arrive, familiar characters appear in a new light, transfigured with unexpected goodness or badness. Few calamities fall on a religious house which are not at some time or other looked back upon with wistful regret. In such an out-of-the-way place as this, anything might happen, said the first sacrist of Obi,

staring at the listless horizon towards which the sun was descending like a lump of red hot iron. Anything or nothing, replied the first prioress. That's what that book's about, isn't it? It's laid out almost like a pitch or a mission statement. A manifesto, I would say. Specifically a manifesto, I think. This isn't great metaphysiology, I think. And also that sense that the artificiality of history, history demands that we log the significant

events thereby sacrificing 95% of the detail. And Nikki, you asked me about the research or you asked us about the research. I think part of the purpose of the novel is to give back detail to the reader, to the lives of these people who were not intimately bound up in historical events. They just sort of might have accidentally seen them from a distance or passed through them. Does that sound plausible? I think it's really interesting how they treat the major historical instance that are going on at that time, or even the kind of what you might think of as the major historical incidents that are going on at that time, or even the kind of what you might think of as the major instance in the book, like there is a murder

in the book. And that's just kind of a minor thing in comparison to some of the absolute minutiae. So I know that Sylvie Townsend Warner had said that she actually didn't think it was a historical novel. She wrote it as a kind of an anti-historical novel in that sense. And everything is very present, isn't it? You're always in the moment, the immediate experience of what's happening to these people. It's a meditative book and it can sort of touch on the universal, but it's just very grounded in the moment and the immediate sensation and experience, I think. That's where all the nouns come from, I suspect. Before we do another round of Nouns or Nounss, Nones and Nouns, I'll just read,

I've got an actual first edition here out of the library. Oh, look at that, that's beautiful. There's some Crockett's on that cover. She's not wrong listeners. I'll read the blurb on the, on the inside front cover. It's from 1948. She's not wrong listeners. I'll read the blurb on the inside front cover. It's from 1948. Yeah, I love the idea that somebody in the Chateau and Winders marketing department crawling through the ruins of bombed out London during a paper shortage

had to think of a way of selling this novel. But this is what they came up with. Here we go. Planned on a generous scale. I'm gonna stop immediately because that made me weep with laughter the first time I read it. If Sylvia Townsend Warner didn't write that herself,

I'll eat my hats, my wimple. Planned on a generous scale, this novel presents the Chronicles of Obie, a Benedictine convent in eastern England during the latter part of the 14th century, the Age of Chaucer. It was a time when to become a nun was often a business transaction rather than a spiritual vocation. Miss Townsend Warner describes, with rich detail and very similitude and with glances

of discreet irony, the more worldly side of conventional life. Can we just say even the blurb has a great word on it. Conventual. Yeah. Conventual life. An outbreak of the Black Death, the fall of the Convent Spire, the Bishop's Visitation and none running away. break of the Black Death, the fall of the Convent Spire, the Bishop's Visitation, a nun running away. Such incidents break with dramatic violence upon the community, but

are soon woven into the quiet tapestry of its life, together with the everyday squabbles, ambitions, jealousies, boredoms and pleasures. Miss Townsend Warner has brought all her powers to bear upon giving us a picture of a community. The nuns, the novices, the successive prioresses, the nuns' priests, Sir Ralph, all are treated primarily as members of a community, individuals whom the intense, ingrown communal habit moulds to a pattern unaided by sensationalism or any spurious devices the author has carried through a work of sustained historical imagination so convincing that we might almost be reading a contemporary chronicle.

Yeah. Although like, I think that's, do you know what? I think that's a brilliant book. I would buy that book if I were in the unlikely event anyone would write a blurb like that now. Although it's Tanya says it's actually full of sensationalism, isn't it? You know, murders, illegitimate children, theft, yeah, crumbling architecture. It's full of incidents, but it's all turned into this flow of life happening on a daily basis. Oh, we said... Una, there is a dramatic irony, isn't there, as well, running through the whole novel? Yes, to do with the... Yeah, to do with the priest. Yeah. Yeah, well, she says it herself on like page five or something.

Pretty much, yeah. The priest isn't a priest. So they're all living in a state of mortal sin. They're all, they're all heading straight to hell. Because the priest is, the priest is burying them. He's hearing their confessions, he's shriving them, that's another great word. But every sacrament they take is being given by someone who's never taken holy orders. They're all damned. So there's dramatic irony at work in a novel supposedly with no plot, but there's also, as you've just suggested, while saying this is a novel with no plot, it is full of incident. As you say, there's all sorts of dramatic, there's the plague and there's murder and

there's fires and there's collapsing buildings. But one of the reasons I love the novel so much is they're almost included in an insolent way. It's almost like saying to the reader, oh, you want a bit of plot, do you? Yeah, here's a bit. I'll throw you a chunk of plot. There we go. Feed on that for a few bits while I write the thing I want to write. Do you think why it's considered to be, as you said, lots of things happen in it, but people say there's no plot because there's the characters, they don't always happen to the same characters. You know, the characters evolve and they move on and there's new people come and new things happen to new characters. Do you think that's what it is? Because it's hard to get a handle on it. It's not just

all about Sir Ralph the priest. It's not just all about Ursula or it's not just, you know, it's about different characters who come and go throughout the book. Conventionally, I think you would expect some sort of, you'd expect some payoff for, you know, does Ralph get a come up answer as he found out? And there are moments where they, you know, they hear, they've heard rumours that he's not a priest, but they kind of, you know, it's just people gossiping or somebody's playing a bit of politics or anything, that it happens to be true, doesn't seem relevant to how things unfold. Whereas in a novel that you are kind of planning or plotting conventionally, not conventionally, there'd be a payoff or an irony worked out.

But it doesn't. The irony is just one amongst many ironies that happen in this book. It's one of the particularly funniest ones, I think. I think the book is, maybe the word that's key to it is polyphony and polyphonic. I think it sort of builds this set of voices up, some of which come in and out and we hear their song for a bit and then they drift away and we might not hear the notes as they fall away. I also think, you know, we said in the introduction that she saw it as a novel written on a sound Marxist foundation, which perhaps our instinctive response is to think

it must be terribly dry, therefore. But of course, one of the things that wrong-foots you is it's very funny. I found it repeatedly hilarious, and both in terms of events described and the way in which they were described, the prose style is constantly wonderful in terms of finding the right funny word wherever. But also because it's a Marxist novel, it is engaged with

subverting what you would find in a bourgeois novel. So Nicky liked the idea that character is the thing, and emotional in a life is what leads a bourgeois novel. A Marxist will say, no, that's all propaganda. Here is a novel whose lead character is a community within a building, is a community within a building. And therefore the emotional, the internal colours are not available. You need to rethink what you expect from a novel. It's interesting that the bishop kind of criticises them for having personal possessions and not taking due care of the confidence possessions as if that's like you're not being sufficiently Marxist within this community. And then there's the bit with the peasants, when the altar cloth gets stolen and those people are saying, well, you're not actually looking after the poor. So are they really fulfilling a kind of a Marxist role? Yeah. And it's concerned with the economics of the situation, like down to the detail. Exactly. But also, I think it's self-consciously saying, look, what's interesting about history

is not the great men. It's not the kings. I think they refer to the young king at the end, don't they? It's not all that detail. What history is about is the ebb and flow of human interaction. I think it's actually an anarchist novel. I think her head is Marxist. I think her heart is with the sort of bubbling up of human life and human freedom and human failure. It's a mischievous novel. Also an anarchist novel in terms of its use of language, right? Because the Marxism in terms of the principle of the thing is one thing, but the manner in which it's expressed is probably quite bourgeois. She has access to a vocabulary which is perhaps not going to appeal to someone in the shipyards of the Clyde, like say Robert Tressel and the Ragged Trousers of Philanthropists.

It's not that kind of Marxist novel. But also I would like to say, in that blurb, if it was Sylvia who wrote this, which let's be honest, it probably was, the author has carried through a work of sustained historical imagination, so convincing that we might almost be reading a contemporary chronicle. I think that's the Easter egg there. Tanya, I think this is also a novel about women during the second world war, just after the war has ended. Yeah. Well, she was in the WVS, wasn't she? And she was involved in maintaining the day

books or something. So that was literally lists of kind of minutiae of things that had happened in the war and this kind of striving to make things last when they weren't going to last very long, which is again akin to what their nuns are doing. I definitely think it does come across as being written at that time, definitely. So I'm going to take a break now, but when we come back another round of eagerly anticipated The The Welcome back everybody. We're talking about Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel, The Corner That Held Them, which is set in a 14th century convent, stroke nunnery in East Anglia. And what you just heard there was recorded a hundred years ago, 20 years in fact, at least before Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote The Corner That Held Them. And that is some nuns

singing in Notre Dame Rime, the Cathedral of Rime in France, and it was available on a French 78 RPM disc. Thank you, the internet, for providing that for us. Una, do you know what they were singing there? I think it's in both tets, isn't it? But I think the composer is of sort of relevance to the book, Guilin de Marcheaux. Now, I'm not going to pretend I know anything about this other than what I'd ginned up as I was reading this, but there was a moment in the book that I'm going to read in a moment. I thought, oh, there's something going on here. Townsend

Warner was, she was originally a musicologist. She sort of composed in her youth and she did the sort of first stage of her career. She's editing Tudor church music. So she was very well informed about music. And there's a scene in the book where some singing happens. And what I kind of discovered as I sort of delved into this was that along with the sort of plagues and the peasants' revolts, there's a major change happening in choral music and it's called Ars Nova, the new art. Right. Yes.

Yeah. And that's happening around the back of the book. So I've picked out a little section where somebody hears this music for the first time, and it's a character called Henry Yellowlees. And basically he's there to do the bishop's dirty work. He's sort of traveling around trying to sort out the mess of the finances. I can hear Suzanne's influence all over that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The crustos. Yeah. Another good noun.

Excellent. Now hold on. She's had four. That's not fair. And she nicked one of mine. So it's outrageous. Tanya Kirk doesn't fight fair. I know when it comes to nouns. So I picked out this little bit of Henry where he has this beautiful moment and he's talking to a chaplain and the chaplain summons in a local leper to do some singing with them. So here we go. Shuffling footsteps approached. The leper came in. In the dusk of the doorway, he seemed to glimmer like bad fish. He stank, too.

He stationed himself at the further end of the room and it was clear that he knew his place as a dog does. There he stood, rubbing his scaly hands together, drawing proprietary breaths. His expression was professionally calm. Now John, the mashal Kyrie. The three voices sprang into the air. If Trist'lwazir had seen the foretaste of paradise, the Kyrie was paradise itself. This was how the blessed might sing, singing in a duple measure

that ran as nimbly on its four feet as a weasel running through a meadow, with each voice in turn and kindling the others, so that the music flowed on and was continually renewed. And as paradise is made for man, this music seemed made for man's singing, not for edification or the working out of an argument or the display of skill but only for ease and pleasure, as in Paradise, where the abolition of sin begets a pagan carelessness, where the certainty of Christ's countenance frees men's souls from the obligations of Christian behaviour, the creaking counterpoint of God's law and

man's obedience. It ended. Henry Yellerlees raised his eyes from the music book. The rays of the levelling sun had shifted while they sang and now shone full on the leper. His face, his high bald head, was scarlet. He seemed to be on fire. Again! Let us sing it again. I told you so, said

the Chaplain. I tell you, there has never been such music in the world before. Wow. Thank you so much. There's some music writing for you, I think, Andy. You know what? I could actually, this will sound absurd, but you've almost moved me to tears reading that because one of the things I want to say about this book is it's a very rare thing for me to be able to remember what the joy of reading in childhood was like. But when I read this book, that's how I feel. Now, I wouldn't have read this book in childhood and experienced that, but now I do. The perfection of it could move me to tears. As a youth, I used to weep in

front of butcher shops and all that, but As a youth, I used to weep in front of butcher shops but nevertheless, oh, it's so beautiful. Is it the language or what is it Andy about it? Okay. It's the mixture of ambition, language and success. Imagine, Nikki, when I sit down to write an inventory and I have a piece of music that I want to try and drill down into the essence of it and communicate it to readers in such a way that they don't notice that's what I'm doing because it's so well written. And I'm not saying I ever achieved that, but to read somebody else doing it, not because it's music, just like you don't have to ask me about nuns and nouns, Una, because one of my answers was a cheat and it was a couple of sentences where no one noun stands out, but what tumbles past your eyes is a succession of perfect choices.

Again, I'll read it to you and I think you'll see what I mean. Just listen to this. I might slow down a bit just to land happily on various words. As a house, built upon sand, is liable to be inhabited by imps, apes and serpents, the house of Obie was full of pride, sloth, greed, falsehoods, worldliness, pet animals and private property. His grieving eyes had beheld spiced meats, soft cushions, perfumed and flowing mantles, better befitting harlots than the brides of Christ, whose joy it should be to feed on roots and wear narrow garments. Instead of the silence of the tomb, which to the ear of religion is music, his hearing had been tormented by the yelpings of little dogs and the clattering of egg whisks.

Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite bits. Tanya, you were talking about, apart from anything else, apart from the constituent bits of that sentence, that's a very Townsend Warnerish device, isn't it? The lists, the beautiful lists. Yeah. She's amazing at lists. So the other one that I really love is she kind of sketches in the character of the new bishop who comes in right at the end in

a list which has the perfect ending. So the new bishop was Perkin de Cray, a Fleming of a great money lending family who was said to be a fat, smooth, proud man with a stammer, caring only for our lady, works of art, Ritual and Foreign Cheeses. Can I just say as well, a fat, smooth man, who would ever come up with three such simple words and make them work together so brilliantly? I think we should hear, Una, I think you should direct nuns and nouns towards our producer, Nikki Birch. Yeah, Nikki, let's have some nouns from you. I mean, you're not going to better imps, apes and serpents as a triad, are you? No, I've got one actually that I really liked. You probably know this already, but I'd never

heard of the word napery before. Do you know what napery means? No, no, I've no idea. Okay, good. That makes me feel less stupid. Household linen, especially tablecloths and napkins. Who knew? I liked, I liked Celeres. Oh, I liked Celeres too. Yes, I had that. As the name of a job which you understand what it is without knowing what it is, Celeres. I really liked Indicorum. Not Indecorous or Decorum, but the state of Indicorum. I thought,

well, you rarely also Martin Mass. I don't actually know what Martin Mass is. Does anybody know? Quickly Google's Martin Mass. Hold on. No, it's a day Tuesday, the 11th of November. Martin Mass. Historically called Old Halloween. Well, there you go. We are educating, entertaining and informing one another like crazy on this show today. Also for our Scottish University fellows it's the first and full term of the academic year. Well so Nikki let me ask you said a thing then which I'm sad to hear you say that you that we don't want to make you feel stupid we we want to make you feel enlightened, right? Did you, so did you enjoy this or not?

Be honest, speak up. No, I did enjoy it. I did enjoy it. I liked the fact that I could probably come and go to it. You know, I could miss out bits and it's still okay and still had me, yeah. But no, I did enjoy it. I love, I think there was a phrase used there,

the historical imagination. And that's what's so good about it because this is set in medieval, in the medieval ages. Thank you. And yet the sort of constructed detail about their day-to-day life, about discussions. Does your nunnery not have a moat? Oh, how do you survive without a moat? You know, since the one nunnery to one nun to another and, you know, things like that. It must be terribly damp. You know, yes, yes. You know, and I love that. And, you know, she does such a good job of putting you in a small petty detail what life was like in the medieval times for nuns where you, and one of the great sort of story arcs, if there is indeed,

is about wanting to build a spire, right? Do you remember the name of the nun who wants to build a spire, the prioress? Go on. Prioress, Alicia. I think Alicia de Foley, she has this big vision to build a spire in the nunnery and it collapses and goes, they rebuild it and it's her sort of life's work. And once it's built, she steps down. This is sort of long arc and her obsession with it. And I got me thinking, I was thinking, well, if people weren't obsessed by these things, how were they ever built? You know, how did things get built? You know, because it was so difficult to make these complex things. How do we have medieval churches? So we must have had people- It took hundreds of years.

Yeah, and would have taken a really long time. So that level of detail and minutiae and pettiness, it really does put you in that time in a way that I've not experienced before. So I really enjoyed it. Also, Nikki, Can We Just Repeat? Done with wit and humor. This is a significantly funnier book than William Golding's novel, The Spire, about the same thing. There's more laughs in this. It is very funny. It's very funny. The characterisations are funny. The nuns are quite kind of catty about each other. Tanya, would you be kind enough?

I know you've got the bit with the bee. Could you read, could you read the bit with the bee please? Yep. To preface this, they're all thinking about who the next bishop is going to be. So you need to know that because it makes sense for this. So, O.B. continued to speculate until the eve of Palm Sunday. The nuns were out gathering Willow Palm. It was a sudden hot day, as hot as summer. Bees were lolling from one golden tuff to another and

followed the cut boughs into the chapel. Lightheaded from the conjunction of Lenten abstinence and this luxurious weather, the nuns were frisking about and pretending to beat each other with the willow boughs when a messenger rode up amongst them. Where was the prioress? There was the prioress trying to put a bee down Dame Philippa's neck, but she came up with her usual sturdy dignity to receive the letter. The new bishop was Walter Dunford, who greeted his beloved daughters and begged for their prayers. Sturdy what was it? Her sturdy dignity.

You've all read Lolly Willows, have you? Yeah. How did this compare to Lolly Willows for you? I should also say if you'd like to hear what everybody felt about Lolly Willows 10 years ago and indeed, I think Nikki, you went back and listened to that show and there's lots of biographical detail about Sylvia Townsend Warner in that show, isn't there? We haven't really done it here, but- Yeah, there is.

So were you minded to listeners, you could travel back in time yourselves to London in the winter of 2016 to hear more about Sylvia Townsend-Warner. But may I just ask our panel here, how does this compare with Lolly Willow's? After all, it's written, to be fair, only 20 years later, which in career terms isn't really that much. They are intriguingly different. As I understand it, I haven't read any of her other novels, but I think they're all quite different. They're remarkably different from one another, yeah. It's the kind of turns of phrases that make you realise it's by the same person. So it's

completely different kind of setting, storyline. Setting's very important to both of them though, I guess, in its own way. Ollie Wales has also got humour in it. There's the unexpected though, that's right. I wouldn't be surprised that they're by the same person. She has, I would say, an Elizabeth Taylor-ish ability to surprise you with what a character does while at the same time, once the thing they do, they do. You totally buy it. You see, yes, that's what people do.

Una, how did you feel this compared to Lolly Willows? Very, very different books, but I think there's this playfulness, this mischief, this impishness, maybe these, you know, a focus on women who are surplus to requirements, but still their lives are worth not just narrating, but absorbing and being with and taking on board. They are worthy of being the subject of literature. I loved that about this book, that these women's lives matter. They mattered. And why shouldn't we record, you know, not just the great men of history, but everybody else?

Exactly. You know, there's a guiding intelligence. That's what I would say in every one of her novels. Of course, of course there is. There's a lovely sketch, verbal sketch, written sketch that a friend of Tamsa Warner makes of her. It's an American poet called Jean Starr and Tamir. And she's describing Tamsa Warner in her diaries. And I just think it captures everything about I think that intelligence, but also why this book works. So she writes about her. She is so alive that her vital awareness is translated into everything she thinks and does. She can make an event of the fact that the carrots have come up

large and healthy in her garden. A casual stroll on the lookout for mushrooms becomes a kind of picnic. A passing remark on one's appearance is by an affectionate inflection, almost a caress. Sylvia is all in one piece. Everything has been assimilated. Music and learning and country law and wit and her letters flow spontaneously into form like her conversation. And I think your question, Nikki, earlier about where was all this learning? I think she just hoovered it up. Her mind was just full of this and then it bubbles up on the page and describes music or people or change. Yeah. I have a question for Andy. Andy, like, this is your favourite of hers, correct? This is like, this is the one. One of my favourite historical novels as well,

in fact, which I'll talk about in a minute. Yeah, I suppose I want to know just genuinely, like, why this one? Why do you love it so much? What is it about this book above her other books that you think really works here? AL – All right, that is a good question. Can I put that in briefly in just some kind of context, because I think it's relevant and I'll pick this up in a sec. I have a quote here from Colin Richmond who was writing in the TLS and Colin Richmond Richmond noted an important historian. And this is what he wrote about The Corner That Held Them. He said, every historian has a favorite historical novel. Mine is Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them, a chronicle of a nunnery in Lincolnshire, well it's not Lincolnshire, it's East Anglia, between the 1340s and the 1380s.

The book's chief strength lies in the fact that historians know nothing about life in medieval English nunneries. It has other strengths, no main protagonist, no plot, no historical personages. It is also good on economics, which rarely feature in historical novels. Sylvia Townsend Warner was a writer with strong Marxist-Leninist principles. She had closely observed the WVS in wartime Dorchester. Her deeply felt novel took six years to write and was published in 1948. And here's the crucial sentence, if you want to know what life in a small obscure 14th century nunnery might have been like,

it is the book to read. Now that for me is why I think it's one of the most interesting of her books and one of my favourite historical novels. And in that respect, it has something in common with a couple of my other favorite historical novels, which are Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy and Penelope Fitzgerald's The Beginning of Spring. They are novels, these are novels, and they use the unknown to create space

and magic and fiction, which isn't a forgive me a Patrick O'Brien style pseudo authentic log of historical terms and attention to detail because when it comes down to it we can't do that. What we can do however is use fiction. What we can do, however, is use fiction to bring something to life in a way that works as fiction. I think with The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald, the thing I love so much about that novel is massively important historical events are happening just off stage or are about to happen, which the reader will be aware of, but no one in the novel is. What I love about Hilary Mantel's books is unless you are one of those people, unless you are a specialist on the politics of the reign of Henry VIII, you know only what the characters know. Okay, and so you are kind of certainly in the first volume, not really sure what's going on. I think what the unique quality of

the corner that held them is, and in this sense, Nicky, therefore is the most enjoyable of what Sylvia Townsend-Borner was good at, is it's like she's got a toy box full of things to do with nuns and life in that century, and the pleasure she is taking in rummaging through it and showing you things and is taking in rummaging through it and showing you things and captivating you with her enthusiasm for what she's doing. It's a writer who knows their good, being brilliant, but not bashing you over the head with it. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Have you got any nouns? Another noun. No. I have got a quiz. I've got my nouns. Oh, who's got your nouns? Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I liked Harriet, which is the one that got me here. Yeah. And that's a death duty. It's the right of a feudal lord to reclaim a serf's best beast or piece of equipment to the event of the serf's death.

That's a really best beast. Oh, that's a great one, isn't it? So good. And to my disappointment, it was not the inspiration for James Herriot. I think that's a football or something. And then the other one, I suspect this is one that people will know, but it's not the kind of thing I know because we didn't have animals in Merseyside when I was growing up.

There are none. There are none. Yeah. There's still none. It's, it's tear-sul, which I, I suspect there are people who already know that this is the word for a male falcon used in falconry. That'll come in handy in my life. Nicky's checking the RSPB website right now to see if there's a job going for a tear-solver angler. Yeah. I was at a Cambridge dinner the other night in Hull and the local Raptor charity come and they bring

owls. So we had some owls flying overhead. What a life you lead. That could be in the book. It could be in the book, couldn't it? There I was sitting and the owls were flitting around the rafters. Well, Una, you were saying something about, to me the other day, which I've thought about a lot, where the comparison in this novel is not to ecclesiastical novels, is it? It's to novels about communities of women. Exactly, yeah. Of which non-novels are a subset, I think.

So give me some examples, please. All right. Well, I've been rereading for a little essay I'm writing, I've been reading Urshila Gwyn's Tombs of Atwan. Yeah. But also I was thinking of things like Gordie Knight and the- Yes, which we did on this. Yeah. Yeah. And then one of my favourite books of the last, I'd like to say 10 years, but who knows when it was published. It's a book called Quen, C-W-E-N by Alice Albina. It's a contemporary novel about a little all-women

community off the Northeast coast and the founder goes missing and then the plot ensues. But there's a lovely quote in corner that held them about all-women communities. Men fight like so many stags, thought Dame Isabelle, and to live with them perpetually would be intolerable. But from time to time, from time to time, a male quarrel is refreshing, like heart's horn or catnip. That's right. They have a fight, don't they? The bishop and the so-called priest have a fight. Oh, God, it's so good. And then basically, he nearly gets lamped, doesn't he? They have an actual fight.

He does. And then they say, oh, it's just a moment of madness. And that was it. I will throw into the pot here as well. I mean, it's very much darker than this novel. Miriam Tave's Women Talking, which came out about five years ago. Tanya, are there any novels that you could think of that fit the bill here? The Collectives of Women. Has your mind gone blank? I was really thrown by how many times in the corner that held them, the nuns compared to women in a brothel. It's many,

many times. There's repeated metaphors that are used for them. And one is a brothel, bees come up again and again. And the other one is there's a quite interesting description of the nuns as bums on a tray. Yes, that's a great one. I guess the bees are all busy doing work that doesn't, doing busy work and mate work and rushing around and have no kind of individual purpose. Yeah. Perhaps Sylvia Townsend Warner felt a brothel the closest female staffed economic institution to a nunnery. Yeah. In a dark mirror version of a nunnery. Women being the kind of managers of their institution.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So listen, we're going to have to go in a minute, but fortunately, before we go, I have a quiz for my dear friends here today. Okay. So we're going to play a little game called, um, OB or non-berg OB as we've discussed is the name of the nunnery in the corner that held them. And as everybody knows non-berg is the name of the Abbey in the sound

of music. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give everybody one at a time, I'm going to give people the name of one of the nuns from the corner that held them or one of the nuns from The Sound of Music and they have to identify which book, film or stage musical they come from. What a shame incidentally, can I just say, as far as I know, there is no stage musical yet of the corner that held them, but that would be magnificent.

It's coming, it's coming. A marxist stage game about nuns. To the music of, whose back catalog will it be? It's a jukebox musical, amazing. Beyonce, Convent Carter, that's right. Beautiful. Right, okay, here we go.oncé, Convent Carter. That's right. Oh, beautiful.

Right. Okay. Here we go. I'm going to start with you, Tanya. And as you're our guest, you can have this one. Is it Obie or Nunberg? Sister Maria. Nunberg.

But is that a trick question? Because Maria doesn't become a nun. She's only a... She's fraulein Maria. All right, all right. She's a postulant. Okay, you're right. I have misunderstood. She climbs every mountain. I have misunderstood the sound of music.

She has a little relationship, doesn't she? She does. I have misunderstood the sound of music. She has a little relationship, doesn't she? She chooses Christopher Plummer over Jesus, doesn't she? You're quite right. As indeed we all would. Yes. Yes. Okay.

All right. Well, Tanya, of course you get that one. Thank you very much. Let's turn to my co-host Una and sister Bertha, Nornberg or Obie? Oh, it's Nornberg. No, it's oh yes. It is non-berg. Sorry. I do. Oh, the tension in the room. Someone's bringing Richard Osmond sound of music. Uh, Nikki, sister Matilda, non-bergie? Obie. Yes, you are right. It is Obie.

It is the corner of the hell them. Tanya, Sister Isabelle, Nuremberg or Obie? Sister Isabelle. Don't help her you two. Obie. It is Obie. It is Obie. It is Obie, yes. Isabel and Isabella know that.

Yes, indeed. Let's try, let's try, Una again for this one. It's Sister Sapphire. Obie or Nornberg. Sister Sapphire. Oh, that's Notre Dame High School St Helens. That I think is, oh, I'm not sure actually. I think that's Obi. It's Nunberg.

How do you solve a problem like Una? Yes, it's Nunberg. Which one's she? She's one of the four or three nuns in The Sound of Music. Well, they weren't all nuns, were they? in the sound of music. Well they weren't all nuns were they? No, no, one is the, yes I know, one is the mother superior. Yes, I know. Nobis, that's the word I was looking for, she was a novice. And finally, Nikki, sister Blanche, Obie or Nunberg? I'm going to say Nunberg.

I'm so sorry,, Nornberg. I'm so sorry, it's Obi. Blanche! You, you, you, you've lost a million pounds. Oh, we've, none shall pass. None shall pass here. Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So listen, we probably ought to finish now before everyone starts singing and we have to pay some kind of fee. Shall I go straight into this now? Yeah, the rest of us are just novices. You're the professional. Oh, and that's where we must leave it. Thanks to Tanya for granting us sanctuary in the precincts of the convent and to our producer, Nicky Burch for being our own mother superior. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the previous 241 episodes, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. And if you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our

shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. Yeah. And you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Remember if you subscribe at the lock listener level, you get two extra exclusive podcasts every month, plus installments of Andy's new writing project, Inventory, which is fantastic, and the chance to join a community of dedicated listeners and readers like ourselves. But before we go, Tanya, is there any last thing you'd like to say about the corner

that held them that we didn't manage to get to in the podcast? I wanted to ask you about the title. Is there some reference in the title that I'm not aware of? Is it just that the corner is obi? Is it about the corner of the altar cloth that they've not finished? What's the significance? I thought about this a lot when I was reading it. Anna My edition has the Wisdom of Solomon. Oh. For neither might the corner that held them keep them from fear. Wow. There you go. Does that transform your understanding of the book? Have we got to go round again?

Yeah, scrap all of that. This changes everything, Una. Record scratch. Yeah. I think that that is a fascinatingly, to me, but appropriately elliptical kind of title, because it doesn't change, does it Tanya, at all what you think? But what it does, in a sense, it doesn't matter what the corner is. What matters is life and death go on. Whatever you choose to believe or disbelieve, you'll be prey to the same set of conditions

as everyone else, unless they have a lot more money than you. What do you think, Una? Well, it seems to me that it is the convent. It is the place where they're sheltered throughout, you know, plague, war, all the rest of it, but it doesn't give them complete protection from human nature. Yes, complete protection from human nature. Well, there's a theme that never dies. Right, listen, I would like to say thank you so much to Tanya for coming on, for doing the work, for joining us, for being such a brilliant guest.

I would like to thank my co-host Una McCormack for being super professional. And I would like to thank Nikki Burch for using her new microphone so skillfully. Thank you, Nikki. Nikki, is there anything else you wish to add? No, I'm really excited to say that we've got the next few shows lined up and they're all going to be brilliant. We're cracking on. We're not repeating this summer, are we? We're just going shows, shows, shows. We do indeed have a really brilliant lineup all the way through now to September. I'm very excited about what we've got coming up. So Una, any last message for humanity? Read the book. Yes. Please read this novel. It's not out of print.

You can get it easily. It's hiding in plain sight on the shelves of your library or your bookshop. It is a masterpiece, a masterpiece. And I don't just say that lightly, it really is. So thanks very much everybody. Thanks for joining us. See you in a fortnight. Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.