Backlisted - The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Joining John and Andy this week are Natasha McEnroe, the Keeper of Medicine at the Science Museum in London, and novelist Lissa Evans, Backlisted's old friend and the show's Original Guest, both of whom are Betty MacDonald superfans. The Plague and I (1948) is the author's unflinching and hilarious memoir of the nine months she spent as a patient at a TB sanatorium in the Pacific North West of America. We discuss this book and the eventful life of its million-selling author (The Egg and I, Anybody Can Do Anything, Onions in the Stew), are exposed to a selection of TB-related public information films and music, and there is even a 'communicable disease in literature' quiz. Also in this episode Andy is grabbed by Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943) by Donald Henderson, reputedly Raymond Chandler's favourite crime novel; while John has been enjoying Olivette Otele's recently published history African Europeans, which traces a long African European heritage via the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)08:16 - Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper by Donald Henderson15:49 - African Europeans by Olivette Otele20:37 - The Plague And I by Betty Macdonald* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 card. Other conditions apply. Natasha you work at the Science Museum. How long is it since you set foot in the Science Museum? Well, actually, I was in yesterday.

Oh, well, thanks for that. I have been working from home mostly for the last year, but we're starting to put actually on display and we're starting to prepare for opening on the 19th of May so I am I am going in to to do to do some some work on gallery which is mega exciting how exciting Natasha do you actually prefer going to the science museum when no one's there is it really lovely it must be well it's sort of turned on its head to be honest because you know if you work in museums it is always a perk of the job that you get to go through early in the morning or late at night and there's no one there. And it's amazing. But actually, when it comes to a pandemic and we're closed a lot of the time, it's actually miserable because you're doing all this work and you want to see what people think of, you know, the exhibitions and the galleries.

And it's just really disappointing. But I think we all cannot wait to reopen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lissa Evans, when were you last in? Oh, no, I can't ask you about the library again, because I know you practically live in a tent outside the library. I was in 0.2 of a second after they opened the doors on the 8th of April. Shall we get this show on the road?

Do it. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in a sanatorium near Seattle in the late 1930s, shivering under paper blankets as the wind and the rain rattle the window of the ward and the squeaking wheel of the food trolley edges closer. In the bed next door, a woman begins to bark like a dog. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we're joined by

two guests. For the first time, Natasha McEnroe. Hello, Natasha. Hello. Hello, Natasha. Thank you for coming. And the OG herself, teenagers everywhere, screaming in horror at what I just said. The original guest, Lyssa Evans. Welcome back, Lyssa. Welcome back.

Thank you. Thank you for asking me. Natasha McEnroe is the Keeper of Medicine at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. Her previous post was Director of the Florence Nightingale Museum and prior to this she was Museum Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy and Curator of the Galton Collection, oh Galton that's a nice coincidence we're going to hear that name again later, at University College London. Before that she she was curator of Dr Johnson's house

in London's Fleet Street and has also worked for the National Trust and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Natasha was editor of Medicine and Imperfect Science, Scala 2019, co-editor of the Medicine Cabinet, Colton 2019, and co-editor of The Hospital in the Oakfield,

The Art of Nursing in the First World War, Strange Attractor 2014. Her research interests focus on 19th century public health and the history of nursing. She is a trustee of Dr. Johnson's house in London and of the Erasmus Darwin Museum in Litchfield. Again, Litchfield. Hooray!

This is our special Litchfield Memorial episode. Croydon is taking a back seat today, everybody. We're talking about, we're all about Litchfield. you are a freeman and I say this with feeling because everyone who joined this meeting commented on how bad my hair is you are you are a freeman of the worshipful company of barbers Natasha that's right I'm a proud barber what does that What are the duties that that involves, please? Well, it's one of the livery companies. So there are two medical livery companies, the apothecaries and the barbers. And the barbers, of course, are based at Barber Surgeon Hall.

And this dates right back to when surgery and the duties of a barber, the more traditional duties, were combined. And people would travel around and they might pull your teeth out or they might give you a haircut, depending on how they were feeling. Good Lord, that's the full Sweeney Todd thing. The barber surgeon, I love it. Excellent. Can you do anything for my hair? Yes, when we're out of lockdown, I will certainly come over and do my best.

All right, thank you. Thank you. God knows. Thank you. Lisa Evans writes for both adults and children when she's not guesting on Backlisted. Her recent novel, V for Victory, which is out in paperback from Black Swan in June, you're only days away from being able to enjoy it, listeners, is set in London at the end of the Second World War and completes a loose historical trilogy which began with Old Baggage and Crooked Heart.

This is her seventh and a half backlisted. That's the extra. Measure out our lives in episodes of this, yeah. For as well as appearing on the very first episode on JL Cars A Month In The Country. Wait till we do that one again. episodes for this year for as well as appearing on the very first episode on jail cars a month in the country ah wait till we do that one again lissa has been a guest on episodes 36 78 90 108 and 125 discussing variously the work of patrick hamilton ed Wharton, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, and Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, as well as a one-off mini-cast on George Saunders' Lincoln the Bardot,

in which we were all the worse for drink. She has the range and the stamina of a true reading pro. Lyssa, welcome back. Thank you. I sound so erudite. It's fabulous. Proust to Molesworth. It's an autobiography if ever you want to write.

Well, Lissa, we agree that Backlisted would not have been possible or Backlisted without your ongoing involvement in the podcast. So thank you so much for coming back again. Absolutely. Central, central to it. Oh, it's been my absolute pleasure. So thank you so much for coming back again. Absolutely. Central, central to it. Oh, it's been my absolute pleasure, yeah. And we've got a cracker today. The book that Natasha and Lisa have chosen to discuss is The Plague and I,

the second in a sequence of best-selling memoirs by American writer Betty MacDonald, first published in 1948 by J.B. Lippincott & Co. in Philadelphia. But before we start, John, we have to agree how we are going to pronounce the title The Plague and I. Because we are British and we ruin the joke by saying The Plague and I. Because if you're American, you say something like The Plague and I. Because if you're American, you say something like The Plague and I. And The Plague and I is closer to The Egg and I. Oh my God, I never got that. The Plague and I.

The Plague and I. The Plague and I. Okay. Oh, okay. So we, by saying The Plague and I, while adding elegance and heritage to the title, are killing the joke. Except I definitely read The Egg and I first. Aegonai, while adding elegance and heritage to the title, are killing the joke.

Oh, except I definitely read the Aegonai first. The Aegonai, yes, that's right. The Aegonai was her first massive best-selling memoir. And the Plague, the Plague, the Plug, the Plugonai, that is her second book, and that's the one we're talking about today. The Plug and I. That is her second book, and that's the one we're talking about today.

But before we start filling our Blue Henrys with sputum, Andy, what have you been reading this week? That might be the best one of those ever. Natasha can tell us what a Blue Henry is later. I can't really follow. What? The sputum? That's ruined the quiz later. We all take a sputum test and see what happens.

I've been reading an absolutely marvellous book, which thoroughly transported me and entertained me. And it's called Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper it was written by a man called Donald Henderson and it was published in 1943 and the good news is it's currently in print it was brought back into print after a very long time about three or four years ago by Harper Collins so unlike a few previous books in the last few weeks which are hideously expensive and difficult to get hold of or you can only get from the library this one should be widely available mr bowling buys a newspaper by donald henderson

and this uh was recommended to me by a very nice chap on twitter called rob Haynes, who is at Rob on a bike. And he was raving about it and saying, somebody on Twitter recommended this to me and I can't remember who it was. So if you know who you are. I think it might be Christopher Fowler. Christopher Fowler. I bet it is Christopher Fowler. And a very good writer himself.

Indeed. And a great lover of obscure lost writers and books, indeed. Well, if it was Christopher Fowler, and for Christopher Fowler and Rob Haynes, thank you very much. The thing that distinguishes Mr. Bellingby as a newspaper is, first of all, it's like reading a novel that is a cross between Hangover Square by patrick hamilton in terms of the point of view of a murderer we know he's a murderer from very early in the novel it's a cross

between hangover square and brighton rock by graham green in as much as it's possible if you are guilty and a simon on roman doer in as much as it's a kind of like horrible um visceral seedy non-flinching depiction of life in london and its suburbs during the early years of the Blitz, where people do bad things to one another. So listeners, if you like the sound of that, a cross between Patrick Hamilton, Graham Greene and Simon, Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper is the book for you. The second thing about it is in his essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler said this about this book. I have a book called Mr. Bowling Bison Newspaper, which I have read half a dozen times and have bought right and left to give away. I think it is one of the most fascinating books written in the

last 10 years, and I don't know anybody in my limited circle who doesn't agree with me. Yet I doubt it has sold 5 000 copies over here there is something wrong with the book business this was catnip for me this was the most enjoyable enjoyable you know sometimes when a book sounds so good and you get to it and you think oh well it was good but it was a bit too much like things i like this was just the right alchemy of those different elements that i was talking about earlier i absolutely loved this inside out i'm just going to read you a little bit because what this book is about while seeming to be about a murderer going about his business it's's really about Mr. Bowling, the personification of evil at

large, and another character who is a personification of kind of motiveless good. And it's how those two qualities and characters complement one another and how one can or can't save the other. So here's a little bit. This section is set in one of those giant modern apartment blocks, which were very popular, built in the 1930s in South London, blocks which were very popular built in the 1930s in south london like in ballum or or or uh uh areas such as that and we are in a squash club where dancing and is going on within one of these buildings and cocktails are being drunk and sitting at the bar is a man called mr farthing and sitting at the bar is a man called Mr Farthing.

Lisa, you will love this. So like a Patrick Hamilton. It's not true. Mrs Farthing often told everyone that Mr Farthing ought to be dead. He was far too good for this world. There was a kind of hint that she meant it, but nobody quite knew for certain what her reactions to him were. Poor Mrs Farthing had twisted legs due to a prenatal fall, and she was obliged to walk as if she was

on a very wide horse. Everyone said she's such a dear it's so sad and that loathsome man. Mr and Mrs Farthing were employed by the company which ran Addison Heights and for a salary they looked after the squash club, the restaurant and a kind of furniture shop full of things to put on mantelpieces, nothing heavy, bookends and lampshades and paper knives and so on. Mrs Farthing spent all day in the restaurant and when dinner was over, two and thruppence, five courses, took the lift down to the basement. Mr Farthing spent all day in the shop which was in the reception hall next to the restaurant and on all possible occasions hurried down by lift or stair to see how Daphne was getting on in the club bar. Although there was nearly always something very wrong with the world in general

and on this particular evening Mr Farthing was in an excellent humour, Daphne having been nice to him and a reasonable allowance of draft beer in from the brewers, it was getting a job to get Scotch ale at all. Mr Farthing's particular grievance, speaking generally, was against an entity which he sneeringly called capitalists. It was understood all round that Mr Farthing was that very thing in embryo and this was the very reason for his bitterness. He said in the same sentence what he thought about capitalism, and what he would do when he made his pile, which as his wife said,

and as Euclid said, was absurd. You're impossible, Alfred, she said. Do dry up. He never did dry up. His well was inexhaustible. He sat on that red stool of his, on the client's side of the bar, looking like an anthropoid ape. He had no forehead and a bald, sloping head and a great, stupid jowl set in a soured line. His neck was yards thick. The moment Mr Bowling came into the club for that first time, he spotted him. His little eyes appeared to vibrate in unison with his lips as he labelled him out loud. Hello, he said behind his hand to Daphne. Another bloated capitalist from the look of it? Well, you'll be pleased to hear, everyone, that Mr Farthing comes to a very sticky end.

And not long after that scene. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. Sorry. A slim little book as well. I read it straight through in one go, Lissa. I never do that. I couldn't put it down.

Mr Bowling buys a newspaper by Donald Henderson penson absolutely wonderful john mitchison what have you been reading this week um i've been reading a truly i think uh wonderful work of contemporary history um it is african europeans an untold history by olivette otelli now olivette otelli is the professor of the history of slavery at Bristol. I think she's the first woman in Britain to be a black woman in Britain to become a professor of history. And this book is just one of those. It's one of those books where, you know, you're so familiar with the kind of pattern of the European history. It tells the story of, I suppose, the relationship between the continents of Africa and Europe through people of African descent who have played a huge part in the development of the history of Europe. But what's great about it is that nobody's put all of those stories

together in one place and told it sequentially so that you're getting a history of Europe. It's almost like, it's like standing in a completely different place in the house. So you're unfamiliar, you know, you've got used to where everything is and now you're looking in a completely different place and suddenly the house is totally different and you're noticing all kinds of connections and patterns you'd never seen before. You know, some of the stories are, I guess, and patterns you'd never seen before. You know, some of the stories are, I guess, people,

Septimus Severus was born in Libya, so was definitely African, probably black, emperor of Rome. But I guess the thing that enlivens the story, it's a very, very good book of history and an important book of history. It's restoring a kind of perspective to to our understanding of of the relationship between between europe i mean two of the things that stand out one is that race wasn't terribly important until slavery what mattered for most of the first as you would say the first of half of european history up to the 17th century was religion. And in the early church, there were black saints. That was part of the kind of the Christian church's boast is that Christianity

was good for anybody. So that's the first thing that really strikes you. And I suppose the second thing is that, you know, the baleful influence of slavery and how that has completely now shifted the way that we think about European history for good reason. But she fills it full of amazing stories from, you know, a lot of people I'd never heard of. For example, Alessandro de' Medici, who I had heard of but didn't realise that his mother was African, Juan Latino, the Renaissance humanist scholar and poet,

right through to the present, through the 19th century. Amazingly, I didn't realise that Jeanne Duval was African, the lover of Baudelaire and probably, arguably, one of the most influential women on the development of his poetry. But also through into the 20th century, Battling Siki, who was a, again, heavyweight champion of the world, born in Senegal but grew up in Marseille. It's full of great stories.

The scholarship is impeccable. But you feel, yeah, it's one of those books you feel, I'll be recommending this to anybody who wants to understand that European history is in fact black history and the black history is in fact European history. This book does it brilliantly. It's a bit like, it's not as, obviously it's not as personal as something like Empire Land, which I've also just read

by Seth Van Sangera. Well, I was just going to say, I've just read, by interesting coincidence, I've just just read by Seth Lansangara. Well, I was just going to say, I've just read, by interesting coincidence, I've just read Black and British by David Olashoga. And I was wondering whether this, when I saw you were going to talk about this, is this more, I mean, that's a terrific book, I have to say. It is. Is this book more academic?

It sounds like it's an expansion of the idea in Black and British. I think it is. It is definitely academic, but it's very well written. It's very readable. And it's, as I say, anything that's got lots of great life stories in it is going to be. But she does also put it in a fantastic context that brings it right up to Black Lives Matter last year. This is exactly the kind of book that ought to be being taught in schools. I'm going to read one sentence. The aims of this volume are to understand connections across time and space, to debunk persistent myths, and to revive and celebrate the lives of African Europeans. It totally succeeds on all those terms. It's a

really fine bit of history. What's it called? It's African Europeans, An Untold Story, Olivette Otele, and it is published by Hearst Publishers. Really great bit of history. We'll be back in just a sec. Natasha McEnroe from the Science Museum. You contacted me to say you wanted to join us to talk about this book, The Plague and I, by Betty MacDonald. When did you first encounter this book? So I first read it as a teenager. My mother was a big influence on my reading and all of the Betty

MacDonald books were at home, as with many others. But The Plague and I grabbed me because I was already aware of tuberculosis, even as a young age, because like Val McDermott, I'm a massive Shelley School fan. And the Shelley School books, the school was aligned to a sanatorium. So the fear of TB was a massive thing for the girls. So I was initially grabbed by the TB link. But then, of course, the funny writing, the world, then the world, you're completely immersed. It's like Middlemarch.

It's all going on, the characters, the humour, the drama. Yeah, I was absolutely grabbed by it. And how old were you the first time you read it then? Probably about 15 or so. But I mean, I think I read them all quite close together. My mother always quoted Betty's fourth book, Onions in the Stew, which was very influential for the way that mum treated teenagers. Ah, that's interesting. You see, I think one of the things that's interesting about this is Betty MacDonald was extremely famous and successful for a period in America,

but it's very hard to gauge the level of her fame in the UK. I had never heard of Betty MacDonald until I heard her mentioned by Lyssa Evans. In fact, you said to me when I mentioned this episode, Natasha wants to do this, but you said to me, I will kill you if you let anybody else talk about Betty MacDonald. Sounds violent. I came across her much the same age and it was a friend's house when I was about 15.

And I always gravitated to bookshelves in anybody else's house and spent ages looking at them. And I found this book, which has got a very, very ugly front cover of a merry girl in jeans sitting on a whole load of egg boxes. I subsequently covered it with brown paper, but I came across this book and maybe I was staying overnight, I think, and I read it and it had the most violent effect of it. It was so funny, so unlike anything I'd ever read. And somehow it came into my possession. And I don't know how, whether I inadvertently took it from that house and then kept it forever. But anyway, yeah,

I liberated it from the bookshelf and never gave it back and I covered the the hideous front cover with brown paper and I totally fell in love with this book and then I subsequently painfully acquired all the others as you had to do a pre-internet days you looked in any secondhand bookshop you could go to and slowly slowly I accumulated her other three books, which I have in hardback. So I've been a groupie since I was about 15. John, had you read her before? No, I hadn't. I was aware of her for one reason,

is that my grandmother, who was a keen reader and particularly a keen reader of humorous American writers, she was a big Ogden Nash fan, had a copy of The Egg and I. And I remember it on the shelf and I remember looking at it. It was a sort of cartoon of a woman with chickens. It's curious.

It was one of the books I never picked up and read, although I wish I had now. They're so good, aren't they? She's an amazing writer. Absolutely right. Amazing writer. Do you think discovering Betty MacDonald's prose, how she makes stuff funny at that age,

did influence your desire to write stuff to make people laugh? Yes, without doubt. I mean, you could already say that I was interested in reading her because I loved reading funny books, and therefore I stumbled across her. And, in fact, I'd acquired a book when I was interested in reading her because I loved reading funny books and therefore I stumbled across her. And in fact, I'd acquired a book when I was about 11 in somebody else's house that was given to me rather than me stealing it that time by Jean Kerr. Jean Kerr, I think she's another American woman, very funny writer. So I had come across that similar voice.

But yes, it really did because she doesn't write like anyone else. voice um but yes it really did because she doesn't write like anyone else she she takes prose by the scruff of its neck and gives it a good old shake and bettyfies it and and to write with such originality about what is in front of her she is not a novelist or no we will discuss this later but but ostensibly this is observational humour and she writes whatever comes in front of her and she writes in a completely original way. It's almost like you've been buttoned hold by a funny ancient mariner. She does not let up.

An absolute stream of anecdote, of throwaway humour, of incident, but within this stream are the most perfectly crafted one-liners. She writes with such precision. It's not just somebody who's funny. It's somebody who crafts their writing. And it's an extraordinary combination. The thing I kept thinking was, wow, I'm reading this in 2021. She very rarely pulls a punch. What was it like reading this in its day? It must have been anarchic to read some of it. It's so unsentimental.

And she writes about health, about sex. She swears all the time. She manages to keep it within limits. She obviously has an eye on her market. But it's extraordinary. I keep on coming back her market but it is it's extraordinary it's i keep on coming back to this in my head and not saying it but it's not like a woman writing it's not the way it was expected that a woman would write decorous while while often playing the housewife role within the the framework of what she's writing about so there's a fascinating

yes or andy rather than playing the housewife role, observing what is in front of her, which is so often denigrated as domestic frappery, but is actually the way that most of us live. So, Natasha, that's how Betty MacDonald influenced Lyssa. How did Betty MacDonald influence you? I think, actually, she did have a huge influence on me. I mean, I was interested in how people used

to live. I was interested in history as portrayed in fiction, for sure. And I read a lot in, you know, in my long lost youth. But somebody to actually take what is a really hard and difficult subject and to write about it so engagingly and so and and so accurately and be so funny i think really did really did grab me well natasha we're going to talk in a minute about the subject of tb and the culture of presenting that to people here's how they did it in the uk in 1950 this is an an excerpt from a public information film called Defeat Tuberculosis. And I want you to think of it as a short story about two sisters called Betty and Joan. Two sisters work in this factory.

Joan has a job in the workroom. Betty is the manager's secretary. Recently, she has been feeling thoroughly run down and doing her work badly. The manager, suspecting that ill health is the trouble, advises her to see a doctor. She tells her sister Joan, but she says she is going to take no notice of this advice. Joan eventually persuades her. Tuberculosis is not hereditary, although you can be infected by someone who has it. The doctor tells her this when he examines her. He finds her a bit anemic,

otherwise there's nothing much wrong. All the same, he wants her to be x-rayed. Then he asks Joan how long she's had her cough, and after examining her also, advises both sisters to go and have an x-ray taken under the national health scheme this service continues to be provided free soon betty can see the result of the x-ray for herself her lungs are perfectly healthy and she needn't worry anymore now it's jones turn let's have a look at jones x-ray that patch on her lung is evidence of tuberculosis the doctor knows what a shock this is for Joan but because it's been detected at this stage

she's got every chance of getting well soon for a time however she will have to go into a sanatorium that's like a Chekhov short story it's like Joan Joan nags Betty into getting her diagnosis but it's she joan who is she joan who has the the the consumption tragic irony yeah yeah natasha how please tell us for people who don't know how tuberculosis was treated in the pre-antibiotic era there wasn't really a standard

cure i mean tuberculosis is an ancient disease. We tend to think of it as a post-industrial disease because, of course, it did become much more widespread in overcrowded conditions in poverty. But really, the best way of treating it was the sanatorium cure, which became popular starting in Europe from the middle of the 19th century onwards. And this had two benefits. The first one is that you could actually get people, often from very poor backgrounds, feed them properly, keep them warm, isolating them from the general population. The other way of treating it is for TB that for tb that often is is located with it well it generally starts in the lungs is it actually the rest cure encourages the patient to wall off

the infected area within their lungs so absolute enforced rest was the order of the day which is one of the themes of the plague and i isn't't it? It's these women who have been used to some, you know, freedom, quote unquote, circumscribed freedom, but freedom, not being allowed to, for instance, read. There's a really shocking part where reading is considered exertion and therefore is forbidden. Except the men can read. The men can read from the minute they come into the sanatorium

because they, as Kimmy, a character in it, acidly points out their brains are bigger. And they're allowed to read, whereas women have to rest for a month or two before they can manage the funny papers, you know. That whole relationship with authority is one of the things that is, one of the themes of the book, isn't it? It is because Betty thanks the doctors in her foreword, you know. But a whole theme of the book is how the doctors are trying to cure TB and the patients are doing their absolute best to stop them in any way they can by ignoring the advice,

by taking no notice of what they're supposed to be doing. And yes, this push me, pull you, it goes throughout the book. The book was published in 1948. The book is actually dedicated for Dr. Robert M. Stith, Dr. Clyde R. Jensen and Dr. Bernard P. Mullen, without whose generous hearts and helping hands, and Dr. Bernard P. Mullen, without whose generous hearts and helping hands I would probably be just another name on a tombstone. You know, it's not nothing. It's not nothing. So it's a book about life in the sanatorium. I'm going to read the blurb in a minute, but I thought it'd be interesting to hear a counterpoint to the UK approach to public health tuberculosis films. Here's an American one from the same year, 1950.

This is an animated cartoon called Rodney, which I commend to all listeners. It's on YouTube. This will only give you a flavour of it. We had the Chekhovian stoicism of Betty and Joan. This is what was happening in America at the same time. Rich or poor, little or big, anyone can get TB. I guess coughing, sneezing or spitting is bad anywhere.

It sure is. But everyone has the same good chance to be cured. Okay, how do we start curing it? What sort of medicine do I take? The best medicine for you is plenty of rest. I'll start today. The best place to rest is in the tuberculosis hospital. So Rodney entered the hospital, but it wasn't up in the mountains and it wasn't off in a desert. This where I'm going to stay, doc? That's right. Right here near home?

Well, this isn't so bad. Of course not, Rod. What's going to get you well is good food and rest. Mostly rest. You don't have to go to a special climate. We can cure TB in any climate because you can get plenty of rest and the proper food in any tuberculosis hospital wherever it is that's classic disney music isn't it hello little fella am i gonna die pop natasha i'm gonna ask you to read a little bit about life in the sanatorium

but i've got a copy a penguin penguin copy of The Plague and I. So this is the way this book was described to UK readers in the 40s and 50s. They'd already had some success with her first book, The Egg and I. Betty McDonald's The Egg and I, already published as a penguin, proves that she is at her funniest and best when recounting her own experiences. But even Betty's sense of humour and proportion fail when she learns that she has TB and must go to a sanatorium. It just reminds you what a tough sell this book must have been.

How are we going to cushion that? Let's not bother. Urgent problems face her. What will become of her children until she comes home? And supposing she does not come home? However, her natural buoyancy soon reasserts itself and her gift for laughter is used on herself, fellow patients, nurses and doctors for the period of her cure. Her gay pen makes the detailed routine into delicious entertainment.

The reader shares the amusing festivities of an American Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Pines Sanatorium, the occupational therapy of making wallflowers, the excitement of receiving visitors. This is a brilliant use of this word. Whoever you were who wrote this, well done. Her penetrating caricatures of people. You know, that sells it short, right?

Her penetrating caricatures of people and her infectious interest in the trivia that make up daily life. Chateau. Combine in a diverting and irresistible book i mean i think that's good that's good very sell a hard sell to an audience in that era natasha could you have you got a little bit now to to give listeners what what betty actually sounds like yes so I chose this extract because I think that we can all relate to perhaps sharing our personal space with somebody who is a bit annoying you know we've all we've all been in offices or other areas where day after day you know someone is actually getting on your nerves but I think this is just a reminder of what it must have been like to be in really really close

quarters you know sharing a bedroom 24 hours a day you know potentially for weeks or months um you know at a time um with somebody who is deeply annoying every single morning seven days a week when the washwater girls had finally roused minna she yawned and stretched and rubbed her thick white eyelids and said, Oh my, I'm so sleepy. Right after she had washed, she snuggled down again saying, I'm sleepy. And I wanted to scream. Every time I looked at her, she was asleep.

Lying on her back, her pale pink mouth moist and partly open, her white eyelids pulled down and rounded over the slightly bulging pale blue eyes. Her sleeping was as unnatural and nauseating to me as watching someone eat or drink themselves into a stupor. She was apparently as complicated emotionally as a bowl of mashed potatoes. That's right. But you get what? Now, first of all, Natasha, very, very funny. But second of all, that thing, what this might mean about her not pulling her punches.

She is not kind. No. Betty MacDonald. And you would expect everything to be American and syrupy and giny, and that's not what you get with her, right? No, she nails people. She nails characters quite brilliantly. I mean, I would say that was one of her finest characteristics,

that she can pin down a character in a couple of sentences. And yes, as you say, they're not always kind. I mean, she's not this is not kind there's a terrible scene where the woman who barks like a dog who i'm sort of hunted but but also smells like a skunk yeah i mean it's like this is not kind writing at all and i think she was defining herself against when she wrote her first massive bestseller uh the egg and i it was it was those kind of soupy syrupy, you know, I married my husband and we went and we opened a farm and it was all wonderful. And I love the fact that

at one point she said, it still irritates me when women say they prefer to live without running water or electric lights. I know it's a damn lie. And you feel that there's that kind of energy in her writing. It crackles with this sort of, you know, wanting to wanting to penetrate through the bullshit. Betty is, above all else, a raconteur. And when she's when she starts writing, these are stories that she's told over and over again. And the true raconteur will not stop to be kind. And also they won't stop to be discreet. My dear friend Amanda, you know, I've said to her,

please don't tell people that because I told her to you in absolute confidence. She said, I'm sorry, darling, it's just too good a story. Absolutely. And the story is, here's another thing, the story will be diminished if you change the names because by changing the names, you're already letting out a bit of the energy and a bit of the truth of the story. Even though the story is legally problematic, you know, or unkind, you're still letting out a bit of the air from that particular balloon. The genius, though, that woman Minna that you read about, Minna's got her husband called Sweetie Pie.

Sweetie Pie. So I looked kind of just this really short, but it's just so good. After he had gone, Sweetie Pie, Minna sat up and ate every crumb of a supper. And Minna obviously is a hypochondriac and goes on about her illness all the time, including two helpings of the main dish. Kimmy looked over at her wearing a new pink Angora bed jacket and happily eating soup while the mournful steps of the deflated sweetie pie dragged along the corridor and then said softly, with what a vast feeling of relief, he will close the lid on your coffin.

I choked on my soup and Eileen shouted with glee. Minna said only, next week he's bringing me a pink hood to match this jacket. I mean, it's just brilliant comic writing, isn't it? So nothing really happens in The Plague and I, Lisa. So why is it funny? You love plots. There's no plot. Why is it funny?

Well, you're saying that, but in fact, there's far more plot in The Plague and I than in her other three books. It does have a bit of a middle and end and she gets better at the end. That's true. That is true. Yes, spoiler alert. Betty has the original Gimlet eye, but she's also got the most extraordinary ear. She's got that musical ear for comedy.

So that, as Natasha said, she's a raconteur, but she's a raconteur who also polishes her anecdotes to a sort of gem-like brilliance. But this extraordinary ability to turn a good line into a great one. I mean, I noted this bit down. She's talking about when she first gets to the sanatorium. I braced myself for a year-long stay. These casual mentions by other patients of staying two, three,

or even five years made me feel as though I'd just finished a hearty dinner and then been informed by my laughing hostess that she'd canned those funny-tasting oysters herself. It's not just by her hostess, by her laughing hostess that she can. And she takes the mundane and she looks at it with an intensity that unearths wit and brilliance from what other people would not notice and would let it just pass by. people would not notice and would let it just pass by.

But she also is able to combine the tragic and the funny over a single paragraph or a single sentence. And I've got a bit here from the sanatorium, from Thanksgiving in the sanatorium, which is Betty has noticed that it's very, very quiet. And I lay and thought about the quiet until it finally dawned on me that it was the night before Thanksgiving. That everyone was thinking about home. That the air was so thick with longing, so crowded with memories that it was difficult to breathe. There was a sigh from the room next door.

I too sighed as I thought of candlelight and the dear faces of the family around a dinner table. Of the delicious Thanksgiving morning smells, of cranberries, freshly chopped parsley and boiling giblets. Of the time Dee Dee made the gravy thickening out of powdered sugar. Of how, invariably at the last minute, somebody in the family unearthed a big bore who, of course, had no friends, no other place to go for Thanksgiving. I remembered the year we'd sat at the dinner table for four hours listening to a deservedly lonely man from Mary's office recall every bridge hand he had

held since 1908. The old Alaskan friend Cleve had produced who sharpened his knife on his tongue and spit tobacco juice at the fireplace. The girl from my office who ate four helpings of everything and then ran around the table so that we could all see how full she was, how her stomach rang like a drum. Oh, thanks for the memory. Da, da, da, da, da. Brilliant. The deservedly lonely man.

That's the thing, right? The deservedly lonely man. That is where the humorous writer has gone, to find that beautiful rhythmic phrase encapsulating a truth which is which is could be perceived as unkind but what she's done is she's gone for the thing that's why i say she never pulls her punches natasha one of the things that betty mcdonald does in this book i was thinking as a humorous writer myself how is she going to deal with the deaths of characters or people she mentions in this book and the way she does it is fascinating she tells you straight and then she

tosses it over her shoulder and she keeps going right because she doesn't want to deep six the the tone of what she's telling you but the tone of what she's telling you is this fantastic balancing act between total honesty and um light-hearted humor because that's the situation she's in and everyone there is in yeah and and that is acknowledged, as you say, absolutely upfront that death is suspended over all of and you're going into a sanatorium, it's like she was rushing around, she had errands, she's got to get her kids to school, she's got a job, and suddenly that's all just gone. And exactly the same with us. We all had, oh, but I was meant to be visiting so and I was meant to be doing this, and now we're in lockdown. But actually, for the same reason, you're not mucking around. The reason for that is the threat of death that is hanging over it.

Betty's absolute brilliance is that she takes it and it's not shied away from, you know, there are a couple of really difficult bits in the book, but she uses that as a focal point for this slice of life. That's what she shares with us. for this slice of life that is what she shares with us. And she is very good at putting death far enough away without ignoring it, but extracting the humorous value about what's happening in the moment. So I think one of the reasons why this works as comedic prose is she's very alive to the moment she's writing about or the moment she's very alive to the the moment she's writing about yeah or the moment she's recalling you know

she she's brilliant at extracting the value from that and then just telling you and so and so she died six months later she does that with her own father in the book darcy um fairly early on just sort of says he he died and then doesn't dwell on it, I think. In the biography, I remember reading that she had a sister that died that she never mentioned. I think it is that sort of laughing in the face of death thing is definitely her kind of modus operandi. Yeah.

The egg and I does the same thing. Here's the situation. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't terrible. Within that truth for you and me readers we can find some space to laugh that's how she does it it's brilliant and i mean that book in particular the relationship between the two of them we know that like we know her biography we know that she and her husband the marriage you know ended but she doesn't you

know she doesn't give any she doesn't do any of the the syrupy stuff in that book because she's basically traumatized trying to to trying to live in a dilapidated house running a chicken farm with a an annoyingly kind of distant but very positive man who doesn't consult her about anything as you say she's her her willingness to her willingness to cut to the chase, the comedic chase. I mean, she'll always go. If there's a possibility of writing a funny line, she'll write a funny line. Yeah, you're right, John.

You're totally right. But she won't do it if it isn't true. No. And that gets her into hot water. No. And that gets her into hot water. So this idea of Betty MacDonald being someone who's so good at finding the joke that it sometimes gets her into trouble. I read The Egg and Eye for this, and I was really shocked

at the chapter about the Native American characters. Yeah. Anyone listening to this who reads those books i think will be similarly kind of appalled it's it's really it's not merely of its time i think it was pretty it was probably pretty close to the edge in its day and certainly in the edition i've got from 1989 there's already a health warning in that copy yeah i've got a a quote here from a letter that she wrote to her agent about characters that she may or may not have libeled and she indeed did have a a terrible court case about people who felt they'd been recognized in the egg and eye but i thought this perhaps illuminates the thing about the racial stereotypes as well

and her attitude to what she's writing about. She was writing to Bernice Baumgarten, Bernice Baumgarten who incidentally, everybody, was also the agent of Shirley Jackson at the same time. And indeed, Shirley Jackson was the author of not just her famous horrible stories and novels, but also family life, hilarious family life memoirs called Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, which were published in the same period that Betty MacDonald was publishing her books with

the same agent. So I suspect there's something going on there. Anyway, this is Betty MacDonald writing to her agent about how she approached the characters in The Egg and I. I wanted to show how magnificent the country is in comparison with the unsavouriness of its inhabitants. Now I wonder if perhaps my youth, inexperience, loneliness and upbringing didn't make me think the people were worse than they were. Perhaps if I were able to move out there now, I would be as discouraged, as lonely and as cold, but would find the people less horrifying and more amusing. flavor if i were to forget the truth and make the people less like the ignorant immoral amoral unmoral foul mouth group they were and more folksy and quaint if depicting people as they are

is libelous then by all means let's show them as they aren't you know i so i think she's trying to tell the truth as she sees it and she was in the wrong but we have to understand that that place is like john and i are always saying it's all one song you know she the thing that allows her to talk about one aspect of her life in such an engaging way might be related to the way that she talks about a different aspect in a way we find totally unacceptable. And, you know, she plays that to great comic effect when she's lying there, you know, the major irritation was my roommate, who was so damned happy all the time, so well adjusted. She loved the institution and the

institution loved her. She loved all the nurses and all the nurses loved her she loved all the other patients and all the other patients but one loved her that one used to lie awake at the long dark cold winter nights and listen hopefully for her breathing to stop oh yeah that's right so naughty i was going to ask you, Natasha, about the treatment of TB, because that is something that she comes to recognise, that this extreme kind of rest, which seems almost like kind of cruelty when it starts, that they're kind of sadistic.

She actually comes to realise in the end that it is what's enabled her to heal. I mean, it's pretty terrifying TV, isn't it? And the range of the treatments in sanatoria just, you know, is very dramatically different because you have the very, very posh elite ones over in the Alps at Davos. We were in the Alps at Davos. And, you know, if you're paying for that sort of treatment, then I can imagine you're not actually going to allow yourself to be bullied by the staff in the same way. The FERS sanatorium, the Pines it's called in the book,

was largely charitable. It was self-supporting. And if people were going to be not obeying the rules, they were told very, very clearly, you're going to be out on your ear. Yeah. There's a bed for another patient who probably needs it more. We're going to hear in a moment the film trailer for The Egg and I, but I just wanted to, before we do that, I thought it would be fun.

Like last year I read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Well done. Even as I was reading, I was thinking, why am I reading this? And the answer is, it turned out to be preparation for The Plague and I. I knew it would all come good in the end, Andy. I knew it would come good in the end. Anyway, I thought this really made me laugh. This is the start of Chapter 17, Privileges, and I know our backlisted listeners will appreciate this, and I'll take this relatively gently so you can soak it up.

Thursday night was library night, and after supper, pulse and temperatures, we eight-hour females put on our robes and repaired to the library to choose books silently and under the watchful eye of the charge nurse. The library on the first floor was lined with bookcases, had a fireplace and leather furniture and could have been a very pleasant reading room. It wasn't. It was dark and cheerless and cold and the inside of a fireplace, like the inside of every fireplace at the Pines, had been scrubbed and waxed and never tainted by fire. And then she says the books had been donated, and then she lists them. Remember, these are the books that are in a TB sanatorium, everybody. Meet yourself as you really are.

My hand is in the hand of Jesus. Daddy long legs. Psychology and industrial efficiency. Black beauty. Office wife. Elizabeth beauty. Office wife. Elizabeth and her German garden. The magic mountain. Away from it all.

Let the people know. Jottings from a cruise. Fear. The conquest of bread pollyanna and over the top by guy mp was side by side and at our disposal now i thought when i when i read that i thought that's so brilliant that's such a brilliant combination of books maybe it's true but even if it isn't true, it doesn't really matter. I love to think that just the possibility that it's true, that a copy of The Magic Mountain would be incorporated

in a US TB sanatorium in the 1930s or 40s as standard because in some ways it would be helpful. I just think it's perfect writing. Actually, I mean, Elizabeth and her german garden is a brilliant book and probably very unfashionable at the time when betty was writing which is why it pops up there but again about isolation a woman completely on her own throughout the throughout the entire book and um yes i just wonder if there's a bit of a linking there. I don't know about the Black Beauty connection, though. The athletic horse bounding and having exercise in the open air

is a contrast with what they can expect for the next few years. Well, except you've got poor Ginger dying, though. That's true, that's true. That would be very sad for the poor patients. Oh, this is perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves with the quiz that's coming up. Anyway, so one of the things about Betty MacDonald is The Egg and I sold a million copies

just after the Second World War. It was a huge, phenomenal bestseller. It made her very rich very quickly. And there was a film starring some of the people you're going to hear about here. And this is an extract from the trailer of the film of The Egg and I. And there were some amazing things spinning across the screen in the first half of the trailer.

And then you're going to hear from somebody very important. So what I've done is I've you can hear me just reading out some of the text that's appearing on the screen. And then we get into the the main business of the trailer. Here it is. The book that shook the world with laughter. For two years and still a top bestseller. Open brackets, 1,300,000 copies. Close brackets.

A book of the month smash. Open brackets, 506,208 copies, close brackets. A sensation to the 20 million readers of Atlantic Monthly, Liberty, Reader's Digest. Now, each riotous scene, each wonderful character comes vividly alive on the screen. Hello, I'm Betty MacDonald. And I think I'm very lucky that some people in Hollywood thought The Egg and I would make a good movie I've just seen the picture and it's perfectly wonderful it has simplicity tenderness and is very very funny best of all it has a cast I'm so proud to introduce there's Claudette Colbert. I'm Betty. Fred McMurray. I'm Bob.

Wonderful Marjorie Maine. I'm Walt Kettle. Percy Kilbride. I'm Paul Kettle. Howdy. Louise Allbritton. Hello. I'm Harriet.

Billy House. I'm Billy Reed the Peddler. Richard Long. I'm Tom Kettle. Indians. And that nasty, uncooperative stinker stove. You and I, my friend, are not going to get along at all. Glorious. Brilliant.

Glorious. Well, there you go. That was the voice of Betty MacDonald. So I just wanted to say, there's one thing i'd like to say before we we we get to the quiz which is that um our listener the writer uh claire deidre lives in a very close to where um betty mcdonald lives in the pacific northwest and claire has written a brilliant piece that um we're going to put a link to on our website about the effect on the Betty McDonald and Natasha and Lisa were talking about how Betty McDonald influenced her and Claire has written this

really great essay about how Betty McDonald influenced her writing I'm just going to read you the beginning of it from the time I was nine or ten I carried a spiral bound mead notebook with me at all times I wanted to be a writer felt I probably already was a writer and I feared I would never be a writer I was constantly looking for clues that would tell me that someone like me someone from Seattle someone who was a girl someone who was a no no one, might be able to write a book, a book that got published. And Clare goes on to say in this essay that the thing she gets from Betty MacDonald, apart from local pride, is that Betty MacDonald showed her how you could take the smallest thing and by using your skill and judgment as a writer spin it into gold you know and that for me as i'm speaking for myself as a writer and lissa i think

as well you must feel this when you read betty mcdonald you're seeing someone who just has that ability to take anything and make it funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I read you out a bit? Yeah, please. That would be marvellous. Her father was a mining engineer and they lived all over the States. And she writes, from Mexico, we moved to Placerville, Idaho, a mining camp in the mountains near Boise, where the snow was 15 feet deep on the level in winter and mother bought a year's supply of food at a time. Our closest neighbor was a kind woman who had been a very successful prostitute in Alaska and wore a chain of gold nuggets that reached below her knees. In Placerville, Mrs. Worcester had become a

respectable married woman, but evidently this pulled, for Mother said she talked constantly of the good old days. And I can feel for her because although I have never been an Alaskan prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very bored with washing and ironing and dish washing and cooking day after relentless day. Of course, Mrs Worcester hadn't had an extra hurdle in the path of boredom, that of the same old husband jumping into bed every night. I mean, that's amazing. Oh husband jumping into bed every night. Brilliant.

That's amazing. Oh, so good, right. The same old husband jumping into bed every night. Even as you say it, I want listeners to hear the music of it, of the phrase. Though I have never been Laskin prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress. I mean, what a marvellous thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolute gold. Yeah. It is. It's solid gold. But all the books that I've read, they just come, it's a conveyor belt of banging one-liners. You know, she's a brilliant comic writer, really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, would you like to take part in our quiz? Yes. No, Andy, we wouldn't. Well, unfortunately, we have to anyway. So what we've got, I've got a little quiz for listeners. It's just for fun. It's contagious disease in literature.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to give each of our panellists and our producer, Nicky Birch, the name of a character, the novel in which they appear, and I want them to be Quincy M.D., and I would like them to write the cause of death the contagious disease so we've got one for each of you and then we've got a couple of fastest fingers first rounds so I'm gonna start with you Natasha are you ready I am character is Helen Burns in the novel Jane Eyre what does she die from TB is the right answer she dies from consumption I'll take that yes that's fine but let's see how how confident you are now as we turn to what is what would you write on the death certificate of Beth

March in Little Women well they say she dies of typhoid don't they is that right oh god I've got this wrong I've got Natasha coming in Natasha uh is it typhoid no it's scarlet fever fever I should have known that you see I sneered and it's my fault it is scarlet fever. I should have known that. You see, I sneered and it's my fault. It is scarlet fever. I'm so sorry, Lissa. I'm so sorry. I'm not sorry. John Mitchinson, especially for you.

What is the cause of death of the character Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice? And I will not accept ennui. Merda. Weltschmerz. I will not accept weltschmerz. What contagious disease kills Aschenbach in Death in Venice? It's not TB.

It's not TB. Have we had syphilis? We have not had syphilis, but perhaps we will. That seems wrong. God, I can't remember. I can't remember. You can see Dirk Bogard expiring in a deck chair, can't you? I can see the hair dye trickling down his face.

Natasha McEnroe from the Science Museum. Is it cholera? It is cholera! The great 19th century. Brilliant. And now we come to, we go to our producer, Nicky Birch. Nicky, if you were

filling out the death certificate for nearly the entire world population in Stephen King's novel The Stand, which pandemic has killed them all? Oh, that's a good question. I haven't read it. But I did say, is it syphilis?

But I don't think that is. What a book that would be. That would be quite exciting. Is it the Spanish flu? Oh, Natasha McEnroe, we're throwing it over to you. Is it the Spanish flu? I would have said Spanish flu as well. It is a super flu.

Like a SARS. Souped up by the US government, also known as Captain Trips. Do I get half a point for being the flu? Yes, you get half a point. It's a form of flu. It's a new variant flu. Okay, and now this is open to everybody. Syphilis.

Fastest fingers first. In the story, And the Moon Be Still as Bright from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, what disease wipes out the entire population of Mars caught from human settlers? Smallpox. Oh, so close but wrong.

Chickenpox. Yes, Nicky, it's chickenpox. You gave that to me, John. Sorry. Here's another one. The inhabitants of the planet Golgothrinchen in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams are killed off by a virulent disease contracted from what? Rabbits. Not rabbits. Anyone? Golgothrinchen. rabbits not rabbits anyone Golda Frincham contracted from a

dirty telephone dirty telephone because the residents of Golda Frincham have sent all the telephone sanitization engineers off to

earth to die in a spaceship crash and are rewarded by that and there's I've got one last question for you all, but specifically for John Mitchinson.

If you were filling out the death certificate of one of the most famous deaths in literature, Little Nell in Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, what would you say kills her? Ooh. I'd always thought it was cholera. It is not cholera. Pneumonia.

Pneumonia. It is not pneumonia. Typhoid. Natasha. It is not typhoid. It is fatigue after a long journey. We all get that. It's terrible. Ter a long journey we all get that it's terrible terrible long journey which is not really communicable i'll give you that but it's exhaustion and malnutrition and the combined

effects from a long journey healthy and heartfelt thanks to natasha and lissa for inviting us to sit at betty mcdonald's bedside to nikki Birch for constructing the podcast version of a pneumothorax machine, combining the expelled air from our four plural cavities into a single harmonious exhalation. And to Unbound for all those beautiful thoughts. You can download all 137 previous episodes of Backlisted, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website,

backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We aim to survive without paid for advertising and your generosity helps us do that. All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early and for less than half the cost of a day's bed rest at the Pines Clinic, they get two extra lock-listed a month. Our own version of a sanatorium for the heart and soul where we share the films, TV shows, music and books that we've used to keep ourselves calm and our breathing steady.

While we cough up. That's sputum. up. Sputum. That's sputum. Yeah, lock listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. So thank you very much to this week's batch. You are Kirsten Anderson, Leonor Taito, Anne Cohen, Nick Hunter, Mena V. Van Praag and piers ricketts an extra special thanks to george pendle who joins the illustrious roll call of master storytellers the highest circle

in the backlisted firmament who as well as earning our eternal thanks will be treated to all kinds of exciting exclusive benefits. So let's wrap up. Let's say, Natasha, thank you so much. Thank you very much indeed for asking me. Lissa Evans, thank you so much. The original guest for coming back. Thank you very much, Lissa. Thank you, Lissa.

It was my pleasure. I'm just only sorry that you didn't let me just spend the entire hour reading bits of Betty MacDonald out. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted 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 we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.