Backlisted - The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

Novelist Elizabeth Taylor is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Joining Andy and John to discuss The Soul of Kindness (1964) - and much more besides - are author and founder of Virago Press Carmen Callil and journalist and critic Rachel Cooke, plus occasional contributions from Carmen's Border Terrier, Effie. John has been reading Surfacing, a new collection of essays by Kathleen Jamie, while Andy has been enjoying Richard King's The Lark Ascending: The Music of the British Landscape.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)4'18 - Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie8'51 - The Lark Ascending: The Music of The British Landscape by Richard king, 14'53 - The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor* 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. Yes, let's go. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in the early 60s in a charming Thameside town

with streets of small houses where custom officers and sailors and lightermen live their retirements watching the river traffic from between parted lace curtains or behind asperdistras in front parlours. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the website where readers and writers come together to make great books. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Our guests today are both returning for a second time. First of all, rustling some paper, as only she knows how.

The legendary publisher and writer who is best known for founding the Virago Press in 1972, once described by The Guardian as part Lebanese, part Irish and wholly Australian, Carmen Khalil. Yeah, sorry about that. Carmen Khalil settled in London in 1964, advertising herself in The Times as Australian BA, once job in book publishing. Is that true?

Yes, that's true. After changing a generation's taste through her publishing at Virago, and in particular the Virago Modern Classics, which continues to bring back into print hundreds of neglected women writers, Karma went on to run Chatter and Windus and became a global editor-at-large for Random House. In 2006, she published Bad Faith, A History of Family and Fatherland, which Hilary Sperling called a work of phenomenally thorough, generous and humane scholarship. Appointed DBE in 2017, she was also awarded the Benson Medal in the same year,

awarded to mark meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles lettres. Good Lord, I forgot about that. She absolutely hates it when you remind her she's a day. We did it as subtly as we could. Very unsubtle. And Carmen, you were here last year for episode 80, one of our most popular episodes, it must be said,

to talk about Elizabeth Jenkins, The Tortoise and the episodes, it must be said, to talk about Elizabeth Jenkins, the tortoise and the hare. Yes, it was lovely to talk about her. And we're also joined today by returning guest Rachel Cook, who was here on episode 11. My word. Early days. For All Devils Are Here by David Seabrook.

Do you want to say a bit about what you and we helped bring about? Well, the book went back into print. Granter did a new edition. And I think it reprinted several times, am I right? It has become one of Granter's best-selling titles. That's amazing. So well done, everyone. Well done, Rachel.

And Rachel took part in a panel event at a bookshop in East London that I attended, which was, I think it was like you and bald men. Yeah, it was. On the panel and in the audience. I've never felt so feminine. Rachel has written for the Sunday Times, the New Statesman and the Observer, and she writes regularly for the New Statesman,

where she is the television critic, where she'll be covering this week. Well, I've just done Supermarket Sweep. That's a bit lowbrow for your listeners, but next week is the Cameron Ears. Oh, my goodness. Can't wait. Yes.

And her latest book is her brilliant career, Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties, published by Yes, Rago in 2013. John, which book are we talking about this week? We're talking about Elizabeth Taylor in general, let's be honest. Carmen has just reread all the novels. But the one we're going to focus on is The Soul of Kindness, which was first published in 1964 and was republished by Carmen in 1974, early days.

In 1982. And then as a Virago modern classic in 1983. Yes, that's it. And has been in print, I think, ever since. But before then, John, as is traditional, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading a book by Kathleen Jamey, just published by Sort Of Books, the editor of which, Nat Jantz, was our guest for the Moomintroller episode

that we did with Frank Potter Boys. Kathleen Jamey is a poet, but she's also developed a reputation as a kind of top-draw nature writer. Her book before this 2012 Sightlines won prizes and the book I'm talking about is Surfacing which is another collection of essays broadly themed around I guess you would call it the natural world but also archaeology history. There are two long essays in the book which set new standards in the writing about the past through archaeology one is called in quinnahawk

she visits a archaeological dig in greenland and the other is set on uh orkney and uh excavating a neolithic house on orkney and why i love kathleen jamie's work apart from you know the usual stuff she's got the poet's eye and she writes beautifully about nature is she reminds me most of uh the great north american nature writer barry lopez she's got this sense of a kind of global world in crisis she writes a lot about the north because she's scottish and she writes a lot about the change that's happening i mean she also does something in this book which i love she writes about being middle-aged and aging and and seeing herself and surfacing is the idea of bringing things up from the surface you know works as a metaphor both absolutely what she's talking about she's on an archaeological dig but

also oh I see what you mean surfacing as a yeah yeah so her her dad there's a beautiful essay about her dad dying but I thought I'd just give you a little bit of the piece. The Greenland chapter is amazing. It's a village in Greenland, the Yupik people in Greenland. They have discovered an amazing village under the village. It's 500 years. It's been buried under the ice in the tundra. Of course, the irony being, you know, you couldn't have done this excavation without climate change.

But they are beginning to discover things about their past. They've, you know, as an indigenous people, they've completely lost or mostly lost the crafts and the traditions. And what's happening, suddenly the whole community is focused around this thing and they're rediscovering through the archaeology kind of the culture of their people. Here's just a little bit of it. The scene is at the end of the chapter. They're all in the hall, and the archaeologists are going through

what they found, and there are all these extraordinary objects on a tray. So on the first tray were snare pins, root picks, a bucket handle, everyday objects. They turned the objects, felt and examined them, and began to speak. Explanations, lore, stories. Anne, the archaeologist, was there to understand, guide, clarify. The bucket handle was made of bentwood. The root picks, which women would have used to dig for edible roots, were made from the ribs of sea mammals. The language was soothing. The elders spoke softly, making sounds like wood gently knocked on wood. Through

the window, a green rib of tundra, a wall of mountains. The objects were turned, demonstrated. The last time they'd been touched by Yupik hands and named like this was 500 years ago. From time to time a phrase was translated into English for clarification, an antler scraper. To take the fat off the skin? Yes, like this. Now they were examining a stone pick, weighing it, testing its edge. They identified the source of that particular kind of stone, a particular valley in the mountains. Out of the window a flight of geese passed. The grasses rippled. It would soon rain. The eldest man had the stone pick on one hand as he reached for a chocolate cookie with the other.

I was listening to the language of this landscape, as expressed with the hands and eye. The sun had favoured a few clouds over the mountains. The broth simmered. This is from a woman's toolbox. Knives, needles, thimbles, they'd keep them close by. The objects are out of the earth, back in the hands of people who call them into memory and know them, weigh them and test them, name them. Truly, they have come home. There you go. Great. And you, Andy, what have you been reading? I've been reading a book called The Lark Ascending,

The Music of the British Landscape by Richard King. Richard King, who's a friend of the show, of course, because he came on, oh God, a while ago now, and we talked about Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch with Richard. Anyway, Richard's book came out a few months ago. And I thought I knew what the book was going to be about. I thought it was going to be a book about what the subtitle suggests is music and the landscape. And in fact, it's music of the landscape there's a

difference and the experience of reading this book was utterly fascinating and i'm saying this because it was one of those pleasing ultimately pleasing things where i started reading the lark ascending and for the first few chapters i was thinking oh this isn't what i oh i'm a bit disappointed this isn't sort of what i thought I was going to get. Oh, where's Hergist Ridge by Mike Oldfield? It's not here. Right. And then as it went on, I realised that that's because Richard had written a different book

from the one I thought he was going to. And that as the book goes on, he's laying out an elegant case for why you should care about the book he wanted to write. out an elegant case for why you should care about the book he wanted to write and by the end I was absolutely convinced because what this is actually a book about is who owns the landscape in Britain and when conflicts arise from ideas of ownership what music arises from those conflicts and that is an incredibly rich and selective way of approaching a subject which has perhaps been mined too hard at other points right so he talks about um obviously he talks about the lark ascending by Ray Vaughan Williams, but he also talks about Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony. He talks about Stan Tracy's Jazz Suite based around Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

He talks about John Cameron and Harold McNair's soundtrack to Kess. If you remember, that's an incredible jazz flute. He talks about the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Simon Jeff's Penguin Cafe Orchestra. jazz flute um he talks about the penguin cafe orchestra simon jess penguin cafe orchestra he talks about ultramarine the early malcolm yeah the early 90s uh um techno outfit uh he talks specifically at one point about a brilliant record called happy land with ro Wyatt singing, which is a fascinating early 90s techno attempt to sort of reboot a lyric which goes back to The Diggers or something like that, right?

Did you go and listen to the music as you were reading it? Yes. So he also, within that, he talks about political movements. He talks about, for instance, in the Rave era, the Battle of the Beamfield, he talks about travelling community he talks about the kinder scout movement in the 1930s and the factions within that but the point at which the book really lifts off for me is when he talks about green and common and the women of green and common and the first thing he says is he apologises. He says, I'm going to apologise. I don't want to speak on behalf of these women. I went and interviewed lots of them,

and they didn't want to be named. As far as they're concerned, they're happy to be interviewed as part of a collective still to this day. And I just want to read you a couple of paragraphs from this section of the book, which I found very stirring and moving. You're so used to being presented, certainly if you grew up in the 80s, with the narrative of Greenham Common as being told one way, that to see the way history is beginning to settle on an alternative, much more righteous account. I feel that process is happening right now.

Anyway, here's Richard talking about Greenham and music. Among the most powerful tools of disruption the women used at the camp was the human voice. Singing was a frequent communal action and I was told that many of the songs sung at Greenham were very beautiful, very, very rousing songs that soothed and restored the protesters. As well as providing solace and a sense of togetherness, the act of singing was a reminder to the authorities that the women were in occupation. Their voices could be heard by the military personnel on the other side of the perimeter. To armed guards trained in crowd control, the sound of the beauty of the human voice being carried over a fence strung with razor wire was more unsettling than animated and angry shouting, particularly when the songs being sung included innocent nursery rhymes. The majority of the songs sung at the camp were

written by its occupants and they included, we are gentle angry women, we are women, there's a hole in your fence, adapted from the nursery rhyme there's a hole in my bucket. Brazen hussies, under the full moonlight we dance. We work for the Russians and I am a witness to your war crimes. Others were works in the public domain adapted to suit the context of Greenham. Now, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. As I said, i thought i was getting

one thing at first i was disgruntled that he didn't give it to me but as the book went on i was more and more grateful for the thing that i was being given salutary lesson about when we read books we should go in and accept what we're being given and see how we feel about it i also just want to say there is going to be a concert at the Barbican in London on March the 24th next year at which the Lark Ascending will be performed, at which the Penguin Cafe Orchestra will be reforming, and at which the songs sung by the women of Greenham Common will be reproduced out of the folk archive, as it were,

out of the oral tradition for people's delight and pleasure. And I will certainly be going to that. Great. Brilliant. Let's pick this up again shortly. Well, now I suppose we should plough on and get into the main subject at hand, which is A Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor. And this is probably amongst our lovely listeners,

I would say, our most anticipated episode to date. They love, as we do, Elizabeth Taylor. And yet simultaneously, Elizabeth Taylor is arguably one of the most overlooked writers of her generation. You know, I just looked, I've got this book by Peter Parker. It's called The Oxford Companion to the 20th Century Novel. And she's not in it. She's not even in it.

She's not even in it. No, it is amazing. Because I just wanted to reassure myself that she's overlooked. That's extraordinary. Because it's so easy to say someone's overlooked. So I just picked it off the shelf at random, not even in it. She is the most, well, we'll come on to this, but she is probably the most

perennially overlooked rediscovered author we've covered on backlisted and the reason we we're covering her is partly because when we first started backlisted rachel back in the days when you came on you were one of three or four people, including Lloyd Shepard and Andrew Mayle and you, all said, oh, you're doing a podcast about old books which do Elizabeth Taylor. So she seems to have this strange double life as obscure and extremely well-known.

Yes. And yet it's only in the last two months that i've read any at all is that so yeah oh that's exciting yeah so um but you're so lucky now because you've got all these treats i'm now i've got to write what i call my muriel spark moment where i'm i'm having to slow down because i can't i don't want i don't want there not to be another book to read. So I've only read five of the novels so I've got plenty of fun to have. You have. And then there's the

collected to have next to your bed. Your desk bed. The collected short stories. I think this novel is a good one to do because it's a less well-known Elizabeth Taylor novel, even among the fans. It's not because it's a less well-known Elizabeth Taylor novel, even among the fans. But it's not just that it's less well-known. I think it's one of her very best because it encapsulates every single aspect

of what is wonderful about her and why I think, I mean, I'm in a good position so to think, that having just just read everything, that time will come when she will take her place next to Jane Austen because it's not that she's like Jane Austen. She's funnier than Jane Austen and she's cleverer than Jane Austen. But the world she talks about will become like balls and walks in the park and everything that we take for granted in a Jane Austen novel and just the writing and the wit and the genius of her, her understanding of human nature will win through.

I do think this will happen to her. And your name is? Sue Duffy. Your occupation? Retired librarian. And your name is? Sue Duffy. Your occupation? Retired librarian. And your chosen subject? It's the life and work of the novelist Elizabeth Taylor. Who was once described as one of the most overlooked writers of her generation.

Two minutes on her, starting now. Which of Elizabeth Taylor's 12 novels was shortlisted for the 71 Man Booker Prize? Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Yes, Taylor's first novel to be published appeared in 1945. What's it called? At Mrs Lippincott's. Yep. Who was Taylor's British literary agent at the A.M. Heath Agency from 1945 through to the end of her career in 1975?

Patience Ross. Yes. Which political party did Taylor join in 1936 and remain a member of for 12 years? Her membership of the party was one reason. She didn't visit America until 1970. The Communist Party. Yeah. In a game of hide and seek, when Harriet sees Charles,

the man she will marry for the first time, she thinks him so old as to be outside the range of her interest, an elderly man of about how many years? 35. Yes, 35 precisely. You've got that right and you've got everything else right as well. Sue, 14 points. How brilliant. That's fantastic.

Now, that is good, isn't it? If anyone listening to this knows Sue, first of all, we'd like to say congratulations, 14 out of 14 on her specialist subject. But also, she really enjoyed this podcast. So here's to the retired librarians well done brilliant elizabeth taylor carmen you republished or virago modern classics republished her entire backlist yes and her entire backlist remains in print one way or another

but as i'm not at virago anymore because i'm too old and too decrepit, I don't know. But I think Donna told me that they were all in print. Yeah, they're all in print. So when did you first, when can you remember first reading? I remember very well. I think I had a terrifying experience when I was at Virago in as much as I was invited to lunch by Nora Smallwood, a most, well, it's hard to describe.

You know they say there's no women in British publishing. Well, she was a woman in British publishing, but she was very like a man, if you know what I mean. She was very domineering. She summoned me to lunch and she said she wanted me to publish Elizabeth Taylor. So I said yes dutifully and then I read her and, of course, I thought how completely right she was.

So that happened because of this terrifying lunch I had with Nora Smallwood. And I subsequently took Nora Smallwood's job, which was very peculiar, at Chateau. So that was when I first met her, Nora. And when would that have been then? Early 70s? Oh, 70s, yes. 73, 74.izabeth stater was still still alive she died in 75 yes but i didn't get to meet her i met a great number of the old women whose novels are being published but i didn't get to meet elizabeth stater who died far too young she was only 63 or something wasn't she yeah rachel when did you first read one of these books?

Well, the first one I read was A View of the Harbour and I read it in Carmen's green-spined edition and I'm guessing that that was when I was probably in the sixth form. I was in Sheffield. I was very unhappy and behaving badly, drunk quite often, in nightclubs quite often. And there were these carousels of Virago books in those days. Yes. The spinners.

The spinners. And I have to be honest, I think I'm quite a shallow person. It was the look of the books that drew me to them much more than the sort of feminist thing at that age I thought they were lovely looking books and and so I sort of read Stevie Smith's novels in those editions and and then I read Elizabeth Taylor and I remember that novel so vividly just falling in love with it A View of the Harbour, because it was just so beautiful. And for me, at that point in my life, it was a sort of tranquil pond, really. Of course, now I don't think that at all. I think they're the opposite of tranquil ponds. My goodness.

Or at any rate, there's a tranquil pond, but going on under, you know, there's a lot of stuff going underneath. Storm and rain. But then, to me, that was... That's really interesting. Yeah. I wonder if I'd read these as a teenage boy, whether I would have been able to get on with them at all.

Probably not. Because I think unless you've got some mileage on the clock, I think these... They're so subtle, aren't they? That once you realise what's happening, you think, this woman can do anything. She can do anything. I think what you just said about miles on the clock is so true though because i mean one of her we'll talk about

all the great things about her but one of the greatest things about her is her intense sympathy for middle age and the the you know post bloom human human being yes and and i i think you're right you can only really get that when that when you look in the mirror yourself. I'm very grateful that I didn't read her until my 40s because I think if I'd read her in my 20s, I wasn't good enough at reading to understand perhaps where the magic lies within it. I don't know.

Maybe I would have done. Maybe I'm doing myself down. Do you think that's because you're a man? Partly, maybe. I read Jane Austen all the time when I was about 18. And for me, the pleasure of reading Elizabeth Taylor was greater than reading, but similar. And so I don't think age would have made any difference to me

with Elizabeth Taylor. You know, it's interesting, though, that thing about Jane, because I read Jane Austen when I was a teenager as well. Me too yeah. And I think then I would have thought they were very similar to Jane Austen. I mean she's beady about class and she understands you know the terrible engine of money and what it can do for you and what it can't do for you and the comedy of manners and all of that that I completely agree but now that I'm older I'm going to say something that might make you fed up but I think the writer that she has more as much in common with now to me is Philip Larkin she's very very good at quotidian loneliness

rooms oh coming into a room. Absolutely. When you left it some hours ago, the dressing gown on the back of the door, the unmade bed. I think that's what I was trying to say. The half teacup. You know, that kind of plungent Mr. Bleany world. And so to me, she's sort of like the bastard child of Jane Austen and Philip Larkin. And what could be better?

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, there's your writer. You can die with that writer. I think that's only seeing one side of her and i think that you're reading her with the sort of what's the word for the the the vague depression that comes with increasing age because the other thing that she's wonderful about is anxiety yes in every single novel, you'll notice there's a little line about how X, Y or Z copes with anxiety. But it's all completely overwhelmed by the humour and the wit and the sardonic perception of human nature that she has, which is so funny. And also, many of her books are about keeping up appearances. So it's internal.

It's not outward facing loneliness and misery and melancholy and all those things. It's very internal. It's people smiling through, but inside these terrible implosions are happening. Yes, well, you see, I thought that that also related to Brexit because she writes about a very peculiar class of human beings, which is the English human being.

And the English human being is very odd. It's true. The rest of the world at the moment agrees with me. I'm always sorted. That's the other reason I chose The Soul of Kindness, by the way. She describes, which is rare with her, contemporary world. She describes the bomb. Gerry Mulligan is playing the piano.

The ghastly flora is reading Henry Miller, which, of course, we playing the piano the ghastly Flora is reading Henry Miller which of course we all read in the 60s we got the Olympia press editions and he told you where to put portions of your organ into the other member of the other set, the nuns had never told me and I mean

the nuns had never told me so that was great and she is reading Henry Miller that's unheard of. I suppose I always thought there must be a name for that part. Flora is such a monstrous figure. Isn't she a monster? I mean, the first Elizabeth Taylor I read was Angel, which I now see as quite an odd one. Yes.

But the connections between Flora and Angel, I think. Oh, very much so. This kind of self-delusion yes which she's brilliant at writing about people absolutely mean well but do not well you know the damage and have a kind of willed blindness yeah let me um let me just read the blurb on the back of this virago modern classics edition of the soul of Kindness, which Carmen believes she may have written. Not may. It wasn't anybody around at the time. She printed the books herself.

On a jumbled printing press. I heard that rumour. The date of that means I wrote it. We didn't have any more stars. Do you want to read? All right, I'll read it. I've got my specs. The Soul of Kindness is what Flora believes herself to be.

Tall, blonde, and as beautiful as a Botticelli painting, she appears to have everything under control. Her comfortable St. John's Wood home, her baby, her husband Richard, her all-too-loyal friend Meg, Meg's brother Kit, who has always adored Flora, and Patrick, the novelist and domestic pet. Only the bohemian painter Liz refuses to become a worshipper at the shrine. Flora entrances them all, dangling visions of happiness and success before their spellbound eyes.

All are bewitched by this golden tyrant. All conspire to protect her from what she really is. tyrant, all conspire to protect her from what she really is. All that is except the clear-eyed Liz is left to her to show them that Flora's kindness is the sweetest poison of them all. I think I read that. I mean, I don't know. As you read it out, it sounded very much like you. They've got a domestic pet. Golden tyrant. I'm sorry, that is an outstanding blurb, because you just don't get people engaging. Modern blurbs are just... No, they're quite bland, aren't they?

They are sort of bland because of the fear of spoilers. But also, this is not a novel overburdened by plot, is it? No. And she's got a very strange biography that has been written about Elizabeth Taylor. There's an aching void for a proper one in which she says this is a very big disappointment and that it's a short story. It should have been a short story.

Does Nicola Bowman say that in her book? Yes. Gosh. She does. Well, that's not right. No, it isn't. What I love about this particular book is that it's formally perfect. It is, isn't it?

There is nothing left hanging. All the characters are sort of dealt with, but you never feel that they're being dealt with. You never feel that it's being kind of wrapped up and left with a bow. I mean, it's a sort of quadrille, isn't it? There are obviously more people. Yes. I mean, the plot plot in as much as

there is a plot is entirely to do with the characters interacting with each other and their effects on each other and that is what's so brilliant about it i think you can hardly notice the gears and something that philip hensher says in his new introduction which is brilliant is that the effect that characters who never meet yes have one another, which is this kind of... Absolutely. Liz doesn't... Has never met Flora. We've already said Flora's a bit of a monster and we're making her sound like she's this big figure in the book,

but actually she's in it very little. And she fades out of it. Yes, and that's a fascinating thing for a novelist to do, a daring thing, isn't it? Daring. You make this ordinary monster, but instead of putting her centre stage, you just have her slightly in the corner of the room and everyone else sort of

comes to her. I mean, it's fascinating. It's brilliant. I'd like to read a little bit because I think it would be nice to hear some of the prose. Although apparently Taylor hated anybody complimenting on her prose. Where did you read that? Well, should we draw a veil?

This is from Chapter 3, and this is a scene where the novelist, Patrick, is visiting the painter, Liz, with Meg in attendance. One of the things I love about Taylor's writing is that she has an equal opportunities gimlet eye for bullshit. Yes. And John and I, our ears were burning, I think, on this bit, so I'll read this. While Patrick was describing this afternoon,

explaining their sudden visit seeming perfectly at ease Liz turned to stare at him and then again at Meg as she listened twisting her coarse hair into spikes when Patrick stopped speaking she abruptly asked did you finish your novel as if this had been in her mind all the time, he had thought she was listening. No, no, I didn't. I haven't, he said in a different voice, and got up and began to walk about the room with his glass in his hand. Your name is becoming better known than your works, she said sternly. All this reviewing and broadcasting, but you never do any work you will soon just be a literary gent don't be quarrelsome dear said Patrick we all know what a hard worker you are why don't you let us

see what you've been up to without any hesitation and as if to imply that she at least had something to show for herself she put the cat down carefully, detaching its claws from her sweater and went over to a stack of canvases. The paintings she began to turn from the wall and set up about the room, propped on chairs or against table legs, astonished Meg. If, knowing nothing of Liz, she had seen them first,

she would straightaway, she thought, have formed the tenderest affection for the stranger who had painted them. The rubbish on the floor and about the room had been recreated, reassembled over and over again into delicate and intricate patterns exposed under a vibrating light. The same objects, the skeleton cow parsley, the chipped and cracked luster jug which Patrick had fetched water in for their drinks, the peacock's feathers, were in picture after picture, even the scattered debris of the river seen from her window, flotsam, smudged smoke and crane skeletons. There were also some pale girl children with staring eyes holding the biggest of the shells or the cat or the frayed straw hat

which was now hanging by a red ribbon from the door handle. She's the most creatively orderly person I know, Patrick said to Meg. Who would at first think it? Liz, you've the patience of a bird snatching up unlikely bits and pieces from all over the place to make a beautiful tidy nest. Liz, who had flopped back onto the bed, was picking a scab on her ankle. Liz, who had flopped back onto the bed, was picking a scab on her ankle. Writers always talk embarrassingly about painting, she said scornfully.

Patrick read from the back of a canvas. Shells with feathers. I love the names of pictures. They seem so much more evocative than titles in literature. How one's heart would sink at the thought of a painting called The Merchant of Venice. One's heart sinks anyway, said Liz. Good old Liz. Oh, dear. I mean, I thought that little extract, I know it was a full page,

but I thought you got a little bit of everything that Taylor is good at there. That extended description of, did you? Yeah. The lustre jug. The lustre jug, yeah. But also funny. Yes. You know, she holds a certain level of description. She keeps it quite high and then she comes down to segue back into the dialogue at the end, which is one brilliant line after another.

The other thing, she notices everything. I would hate to have had tea with her. There was a wonderful description of them having tea in Tawazi, if that's how you pronounce it, is it? I think so. And the man takes the plate away with a thumbprint of mustard on his hand because she's left a bit of mustard on the edge of the plate and he has a thumbprint of mustard on his hand, because she's left a bit of mustard on the edge of the plate, and he has a thumbprint of mustard.

She describes that as part of the thing. She describes every fish, every cat, every ship, every card, everything in all her novels. But in such a spare way. Spare way. You don't get long, fat paragraphs. But what I'm saying is that she's seen everything. Spare way. You don't get long, fat paragraphs. But what I'm saying is that she's seen everything.

What does that mean about her intelligence? She'd be sitting with you. She'd notice every spot on your spotty blouse, Rachel. I was thinking about your Brexit thing earlier. When Eleanor goes off for her day on her own and she goes to the seaside. It's just a little, this really tiny bit, but it is Brexit Britain in its full glory. The town seemed to her to be England at its worst, full of people trying to enjoy themselves and not managing it for various reasons,

perhaps chiefly those of the weather and the deeply rooted dullness it had caused. Girls in cowboy hats affected high spirits, walking arm in arm along the promenade, singing. They were strident, but not gay. Elderly people sat in the porches of private hotels above the spreading pink hydrangeas and clumps of golden privet. Passively, they were waiting for lunch, to file into those dining rooms Eleanor could see behind net curtains and sit down at the tables with the vases of plastic flowers. The Albemarle, the Waldorf, the Clarence were the grand names the little hotels had.

I mean, it's just perfect. It is perfect. It is. I mean, the other thing about this novel is that almost everyone in it is in love with the wrong person. Yes. It had a Smiles of the Summer Night kind of feel as well. That's a very good point.

You know, with the exception of Flora, who probably doesn't even know what being in love really is. She's giving a gift of herself. Yes, here I am. But everyone else is in love with the wrong person. And it's terribly painful. There's a scene where Patrick, the domestic pet novelist, who I think it's all right for me to reveal is gay, and he's unhappily involved with a kind of young guy

who's leading him from Mary Dance, Frankie. But Meg, who's this very old friend of the dreaded Flora, Meg is in love with Patrick and he's unavailable to her because he's gay. But I think what Elizabeth Taylor understands is that, you know, love is not voluntary always. It's not a decision that you take. It's, you know, you don't unlatch the gate the gate blows open the wind blows it open and you know you have to walk through it and it's so painful in spite of all the comedy there are these little moments you know there's a moment where Meg is absolutely desperate to kind of get out to the pub with Patrick because she doesn't want to give herself

away I mean he knows that she's in love with him and she knows that she's in love with him but it mustn't be spoken because then it will be ruined there'll be no hope then yeah and I find all of that stuff just properly I mean there are moments when I put that properly makes me cry when I'm reading that because I think there's such empathy on the part of Taylor, such deep understanding of the human heart, the fact that the heart has its reasons and that it cannot be argued with. But she doesn't ignore politics either. The whole business of the Labour Party and socialism is wonderfully sent up because poor Eleanor, who should be married to Richard,

in your wonderful description of everybody being married to the wrong person or in love with the wrong person, Eleanor's husband is a Labour MP and she is forced to accompany him to a Labour Party conference. Which is brilliant. And as we're about to have or not have uh labor party conferences which would probably this year would probably be even more tediously boring than the one she described i mean that's another thing i loved about this novel for now because and i

wonder if it wasn't for that reason that it's always been ignored by aficionados because it really connects so much with today and the sense that people who are doing the domestics, somebody wrote that she was one of the last people to have servants, to write about servants. Yes, she was. And the end of the book is, as you say, Mrs Lodge being completely ignored in her kind of deep desire to go back to the countryside and to reconnect with the birds.

But there's a great, brilliant sentence when she's gone out and she's been chatted up by the man in the pub and she comes home. And as she opened her front door, she hoped that Geoffrey had missed her, even if only because he had been hungry. But he had not. He had made himself a beef sandwich and was eating it contentedly, as he wrote. He raised it in his hand in greeting and went on writing and munching.

It's just devastating. I know, it is devastating. I've been that man. I've been that man, sort of saluting with the sandwich, thinking, what's right? Oh, you pig. I think it's the thing of when marriages go wrong. There's no communication.

Yeah, yeah. Well, she said that's, I mean, that's, the book is sort of about that, people's inability to make, not only to deal with their feelings, but even to express their feelings. I mean, so many of the conversations, people are completely sort of bypassing each other. They're almost talking about different things. But it's self-obsession, isn't it?

Each of those characters, it thinks about themselves all the time. And Kit constantly is obsessed with his love for Flora. Yes. And that absorbs him. He never gives any attention to Meg, who probably looks after him. I think one of the things that she is absolutely brilliant or is a hallmark of her style is the way she manages to land very, as you said, Rachel, these aren't long paragraphs. They tend to feature condensed lines of dialogue of the sort that we just heard from the bit I read.

But then there's masses of space around each line of dialogue. So you, the reader, get to feel it sink in to your reading. But also you're then shown how other characters respond to that one thing that's been said. And she's so wonderful at jumping from perspective to perspective and consciousness to consciousness, while seeming like she's not doing anything difficult at all, right? Yes.

I'm slightly name-dropping, I apologise. John and I had dinner with Margaret Drabble, and she has edited a collection of Taylor's stories for New York Review. And she said, I don't... I know, Effie. She said, I don't think we did Taylor justice when Taylor was writing. And this is a theme that comes up again and again with Taylor.

She is, because she operates in a woman's realm, in stories that might have appeared in woman's realm. So Margaret Drabble was saying, it's only as time has gone on that I find it easier to see the level of the artistry at work. When you were reading them in the 1970s, they must have seemed like something from, because of the changes in society that had happened through the 60s,

they must have seemed like something from another era completely. Or didn't they? Well, they didn't to me because I always like people who revolt in some way. And when I got to publish her, the first thing Nora Smallwood told me about was she sold the Daily Worker outside High Wycombe Tube Station. And I just thought, well, I mean, obviously she's just the greatest person

that ever existed, you know. She could do no wrong in my eyes for having done that. Now, look, Effie, where are you? Shut up. I think, I mean, I don't know that thing about them, you know, feeling like they come from a different era. I mean, I sort of know what you mean, but in another way, I mean, so I was born in 1969, so after this novel was published,

but when I think about my grandparents' world, it was recognisably this world. And, you know, the bit you read about the seaside, that's just like now, nothing has changed. I mean, everything changes and nothing changes. that's what's kind of fascinating about it those brilliant little um that marvelous bit where percy's conducting oh god i love that bit and my my grandfather used to do that he'd love and then yell at the television set and and yes i've been yelling at the television but it's the brilliant detail of the sweat still on his...

And Bar notices it when she comes in. Yes. It's... Yeah, again. And then, of course, that's the marriage that shouldn't have happened. That's the marriage that... Yes. Yes, because sometimes you should just have a lover.

Yeah, exactly. Flora. He's got nowhere to go in the evenings. Yes, because once your mistress is your wife, you're all stuck, aren't you? She's so wise. Bar knows everything, doesn't she? The other thing that I think that is interesting is the way that she presents, you know, what for other writers might be kind of the refuge of creativity, of writing or of painting.

She's much more gimlet-eyeded about that about the self the selfishness of the creative impulse so that Patrick is selfish but also in her in her own way if if even if Liz isn't in some ways Liz is the sort of the vector of truth in the book she gets to she gets to sort of everybody gets to face the the music at the end through her kind of directness. But she's also incredibly selfish and quite mean to Kit in a way, perhaps unnecessarily, although they all need a good slapping. The other great sort of bit of the book is Flora's mother and her relationship with her live-in companion

so she lives with this woman who is her help around the house, does the cooking and the cleaning but also is there to keep an eye on her because she's old and every night this woman reads out her old love letters and you know she'll say

oh you'll like this one, I remember Clive and then she'll read out these terribly florid excruciating embarrassing love letters and and Flora's mother has to sort of sit there thinking oh my god when will it start when will it stop and that is just so richly funny but also intensely you know the pathos of it. Absolutely. You know, these two old women kind of living out, you know, basically living in the past because Flora's mother is just, all she wants is Flora to be back with her.

Absolutely. But also her mother is a masterpiece of Elizabeth Taylor on class. There's a line she says, Richard, Flora's husband, had gone to a public school. Mrs. Secretan, Flora's mother, would have preferred a better class than anyone would have done. And, of course, she's the mother is the reason why Flora is the way she is.

She's Dr. Frankenstein, isn't she? She made she's dr frankenstein isn't she she made the monster frankenstein and i better start to a novel i don't think i can the feeding of the doves it's just that small i know you're thinking what would you be kind enough to read us the beginning of the book so this is how it opens towards the end of the bridegroom's speech, the bride turned aside and began to throw crumbs of wedding cake through an opening in the marquee to the doves outside. She did so with gentle absorption and more doves came down from their wooden house above the stables. Although she'd caused a little rustle of amusement among the guests, she didn't know it. Her husband was embarrassed by her behaviour and thought it early in their married life to be so,

but she didn't know that either. I love that line. I popped into the British Library on the way here and I looked up, because this is backlisted, Anita Bruckner's essay, which hasn't been collected anywhere in the spectator it's a long essay about her lovely elizabeth taylor and this is the paragraph or just a little bit that leapt out brookness says i suppose that all her writings could be described as coming into the category of

comedy comedy is the best vehicle for truths that are too fierce to be born. She is cruelly funny and her ear is impeccable. She could never, however, be described as possessing a sense of humour, for she is far too casual in the way she deals out the blows. Now, I think that, of course, I tend to favour Anita Brooker in many things that's wrong but actually you think that's wrong no sense of humour let me I just I made a selection over the summer of things that made me scream with laughter now let me see which one this one's from and also it's a big problem as to whether I can read them because of Kindle's very small print and my inability to deal with machines. This is from A Game

of Hide and Seek. Her white hair was patchily gilded as if it had been brushed over with the yolk of an egg. Now, Anita. That's good. Naughty Anita. If Anita was around.

Harriet's virginity they marvelled over a great deal. It seemed a privilege to have it under the same roof. They were always kindly enquiring after it. As if it were a sick relative. It must not be bestowed lightly, they advised. It must not be bestowed at all, Miss Primpton said. So good. So good.

She's just so funny. Also, she had 34 stories published in the New Yorker. William Maxwell edited it at a door. Yeah, he doored her. She also had a story adapted for a very popular television series of the late 1970s. The late Elizabeth Taylor was an English writer who lived not more than six miles from me, and a fine short story writer she was too.

This one of hers that you're going to see in a moment is so neat and nice and spooky I only wish I'd thought of it myself. A plot like this, though it looks so simple, is very hard to come by and harder still to set down in precisely the right manner, giving nothing away until the very end. Watch it carefully. Give your hand, something to give. Don't answer. He's not here either. Like me.

I used to do that when I was a child. Make myself invisible. Goodbye, nasty world. I believe I've seen you before, haven't I? Wending your way, either to or from a music lesson, I imagine? So that is Tales of the Unexpected. That was Roald Dahl. And that is an adaptation of the flypaper from the Devastating Boys.

Now, you heard there, there's a quiz question, you heard there the voice of the actor Alfred Burke. What is Alfred Burke's literary claim to fame? And it is real fame. He was the model for who? Which famous character in children's literature is the actor Alfred Burke burke the model for i know nothing about children

tell us the answer if he's right he is the model literally the model for daddy in judith kerr's paintings for The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Gosh. Because Alfred Burke was a friend of Judith Kerr and her husband Nigel Neill, the television writer Nigel Neill. And so she said, please will you come round, Alfie, and sit? Daddy needs his beer. Daddy needs his beer. So when you read The Tiger Who Came to Tea, that's Alfred Burke.

Have you ever done a backlisted quiz night? You should do one. I'm always trying to shoehorn quizzes into to Tea, that's Alfred Burke. Have you ever done a backlisted quiz night? You should do one. I'm always trying to shoehorn quizzes into the format, as you can tell. You should just do one and you could sell tickets for it. It's a good idea. It would be a charity thing. Or Andy's a genius at that, aren't you? It would just be such fun, wouldn't it? This seems a good moment to say we're having a Christmas celebration,

stroke AGM, at the London Library on Wednesday, December the 11th. We're recording an episode and tickets are on sale now via the London Library's website. And if you'd like to read the book that we're discussing that evening, it's A La Recherche du Temps Pervieux by Marcel Proust. Oh, you're really getting posh now, aren't you? The London Library will be serving both mince pies and Madeleine, depending on whichever you prefer.

We know which we'll have. Oh, no, you'd probably like mince pies. No, I prefer Madeleine. But Taylor has a short story, Rice. Can I ask you both? There seems to have been a sense at the time, and there might still be a sense now, that she excelled at the short story

and perhaps did not excel at the novel as a form? Well, I think she excels at short stories and novels equally. The interesting thing is I'm not a great reader of short stories. I just prefer to read novels. But I have to say that I think Taylor's best short stories are fantastic because they do that thing which is, you know, the length of the story and the effect it has on you have to be completely disproportionate from each other. And, you know, there are some of them that feel like novels when you finish reading them. They are way beyond sketches or thoughts or what

you know which is very often for me the case with short stories you feel that you know everything about the characters there's one that I particularly love in The Devastating Boys which is called Flesh and it's about a couple who go on a package holiday. They don't know each other. He is a widower from Hove. You like it already. And she is the wife of a publican, and she's just had a hysterectomy, and he's sent her off to get some sun. And they go away on this package holiday, and basically they want to have sex with each other.

I won't spoil the ending, but it never quite happens. And it's, I mean, it's brilliant about human bodies, middle-aged bodies. Could you just read the opening paragraph? It's a brilliant story. It's a brilliant story. Scene setting in one short paragraph. Phil was always one of the first to come into the hotel bar

in the evenings for what she called her aperitif, and which in reality amounted to two hours steady drinking. After that, she had a little appetite for dinner, a meal to which she was not used. I mean, it's just so... A dinner to which she was not used, right? It's a concession. But, you know, it starts off being a comedy

and, you know, the woman gets terrible sunburn and she puts yoghurt on it so she smells all cheesy and he's constantly going off in a car because he doesn't like sunbathing and, you know, they try to have it off in the car. He was still allowed to say have it off. Anyway, they tried to... That's what they would be doing.

Yeah, they tried to have it off in the car but, know they're both too fat he wants to have it off in the sort of long grass but she's worried about the insects getting in her bum and and and but then you and you think gosh this is quite cruel comedy but the ending is so tender so incredibly tender and so sad that that this little world that they've built for two weeks coming to an end and it captures so much about middle age but it also reminds you of holiday romances you maybe had when you're a student you know the the sadness of what might have been I mean it's just fantastic knowledge of middle-aged bodies, the way she describes them, but not specifically, but just in nuances.

I know. My other favourite was the food one, the foodie one. What's the title of that one? In and Out of Houses. In and Out of Houses. If you could do a whole column for The Observer based on this, it's just brilliant. It's about food and class.

Food and class. But this is the bit I loved from Flesh, which I think is the best story in the book too. They strolled in the lust of the sun by the glittering sea, looked at the painted boats, watched a man beating an octopus on a rock. I mean, the thought is absolutely repellent. Stanley bought her some lace-edged handkerchiefs

and even gave the lace maker an extra five shillings. I mean, I won't go on. It's the octopus dying across the rock that just got me. Oh, it's just so good. You're saying about food and class, the title story of a dedicated man. This is about a waiter at a hotel who persuades a woman called Edith to pretend to be his wife so that they can get a new appointment away from the seaside. Both were ambitious. Both had been bent on leaving the hotel where they first met. A glorified boarding house, Silcox called it.

Both, being snobbish, were galled at having to wait on noisy sunburnt people who wore freakish and indecent holiday clothes and could not pronounce crepe de volaille, let alone understand what it meant. By the time Silcox heard of the vacancy at the Royal George, he had become desperate beyond measure. Irritated at every turn by the vulgarities of seaside life, the Royal George was mercifully as inland as anywhere in England can be.

The thought of the home counties soothed him. Now, that home counties thing, you know, Taylor in her youth ran with quite a bohemian set. We said she was a communist. She was part of the circle around Eric Gill. She possibly posed nude for Eric Gill. She has a long affair during the early years of her marriage. And then there's a sense that she chooses to become this...

Home County's wife. But in order to write. Stability, space, those things. But I think she loves it too. That's what I think was wrong with the only biographies that's written of her. I don't think she was miserable at all being married to that man. I think it shows a certain lack of imagination

among British critics and possibly says quite a lot about them, that they don't seem to understand that it's possible to be a great writer and also to care about the clumping of the cushions. And baked beans. Absolutely right. Absolutely. That was the awful Saul Bellow Booker comment about the tinkling

of teacups. That's what our fiction is full of, without the tinkling of teacups. No, I mean Saul Bellow Booker comment about the tinkling of teacups. That's what our fiction is full of, without the tinkling of teacups. No, I mean Saul Bellow. And I think, you know, this continues. This isn't over. This is still going on in our literary discourse, and it's why certain writers will never be on the Booker Long list because of this sort of domestic stigma.

And I just can't, I mean, I genuinely, I feel baffled by it. Well, I think the generations that follow you will have to deal with that more. I mean, I think it's changed since my day. I mean, men write these novels too, as we all know. But they, I mean, when you think of some of them, they struggled as well. I'm trying to think of that lovely man who wrote

the Harpole Report. J.L. Carr. J.L. Carr. Just going back, I do think that, dare I say it, that Anita was that sort of slightly vinegary, is actually the truth is that she couldn't do comedy. Actually, Elizabeth Taylor can do comedy. I don't think...

I think there may have been a bit of envy in that. Listeners, I'm pulling a face saying I disagree with John entirely, but let's not get... I mean, I think she's funny, but I think it feels to me that that's rightly envy rather than sort of... No, I think Anita wasn't like that. She didn't suffer from envy. She wouldn't have seen it because you've got to think

of the entirely different cultures of Anita and Elizabeth. Yeah. So she didn't see it. It wouldn't be vicious in Anita's part at all. She didn't see the humour because, and actually when you had suffered with Anita, which I did all the time, she never cracked a joke. She didn't crack a joke in the English way. No.

Why should she? She wasn't English. No. Yeah. Going back to what you were saying about it's still happening today with Writers' Day, I mean, we've featured writers on Backlisted who I can see that process happening to. If I look at a writer like Jane Gardham, who we have covered on Backlisted,

or Sheena Mackay, who we haven't yet covered on Backlisted, I feel exactly the same way that you're just saying. I think those writers are sort of slightly pushed to one side. I think, for instance, Tessa Hadley writes novels that are very Elizabeth Taylor-like, and I know she's a fan of Elizabeth Taylor's. I would be very surprised if Tessa ever finds herself on the book along this, because there's just this sense

that for a novel really to count it has to have either something sort of whizzy and modern or that it has to have some enormous theme you know immigration or war or you know and and you know that's fine those novels have their place but the fact is that most of life is getting up, can you face breakfast, what will you have for your tea? And I feel that that's where drama really lies, actually. But that's why it's important that we talk about them on things like backlisted, because seeing fiction through the eyes of, say, the Booker Prize

or any prize of any kind whatsoever, it's just rubbish. Wonderful towards the end of the book. Richard says, you must come round and see Flora more often, he had said. Kind, neighbourly words, all he had to offer. We all talk like it most of the time, to make the wheels go round. Making the wheels go round. And that's what her her

fiction makes you feel that sense of the effort that people put in to just get through and to make do and they know that their lives are sort of slipping away from them and they know they're married to the wrong person and they're not sure how to change it but they kind neighborly words yes yes well it's what it is is it's the sort of morality of manners. Yeah. Manners are in her world so much connected to morals, both good ones and bad ones, you know, and that is something she has in common with Jane Austen,

you know, that politeness can be... She had more politicalness than Jane Austen. Yeah, but, you know, politeness can be... She had more political-ness than Jane Austen. Yeah, but, you know, politeness can be a punch, but it can also be a kind of embrace. A thorn. Yeah. Carmen, why... Let's talk a bit about Angel, because...

Yes. Well, I'm just interested about why that... I really like that novel, and I'm happy to rate it as a novel by Elizabeth Taylor, but lots of people don't feel that way. I don't like it at all. Why does it divide people? Because it has a lot of humour in it.

But if you look at Elizabeth Taylor's life, all of those novels, Angel, Soul of Kindness, Inner Summer Season, which have got sort of a villainy in it, connect to things that happened in her actual life, you know she was very friendly with that man who was killed by Ruth Ellis those are the dark novels of that time but the darkest

of all is Angel and that is for some future biographer to find out why her sense of sardonic humour escaped her in Angel I thought It's a nastier book but I I don't have a problem with that. I felt that there's something, I want to say, unfettered about it. It feels a bit relentless, I think.

It can feel a bit relentless. Yes, I thought so. It hasn't got the nuances of The Soul of Kindness. It hasn't got the visual thing either. You know The Soul of of kindness when they go to Towersby you can almost smell ducks and gulls and stuff

she of course has a visual eye, she has a painter's eye she writes about painting a lot but also the passages we've read out you can see her itemising things in her sightline. Every tiny little thing. And she's very

attentive to weather, sort of barometric changes. People will so often look out into the garden and the dripping shrubbery. England is a very dripping place. And it reminds you of those Sunday afternoons when you were a kid

and you thought, Jesus. Or heat as well, when Angel's in bed and she's sort of naked and her servants are getting embarrassed and she's writing that ridiculous novel to save Esme from financial ruin again. I think people should read after this one, In A Summer Season, because that's actually, before now, that had been my favourite book. That's her sexy book. Yes. And it's a wonderful novel in the summer season.

Where did you start, Andy? What was your first? Well, Angel. Right. All men start with Angel. Well, no, this is... No, you're right. No, but that's...

How interesting. It was recommended to me. Yes, I know. And I read it and I loved it. And when I said to somebody i loved it they said read a few more and you said you did say that you did say this to me as well you gave me a very good one for the best of british something or other you know like butter not butter but books um and that's the one they chose and i I bet they knew nothing about Elizabeth Taylor when they chose it.

That would be my view. For me, The Soul of Kindness is the best. I would find it really hard to choose one, but it's the best balanced between the, what you were saying, Carmen, the kind of slightly broader classicism of the later novels and the tinkling teacups of the early novels. It could be transitional, and I think it has been written about as being transitional.

But for me, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like a kind of high-water mark. I think of all of her novels, it's the one most set in the country that we live in now because it's constant one most set in the country that we live in now. Because it's constant references to everything. Brexit, it was replaced by the bomb then. Do you remember when we all thought we were going to be killed by the bomb?

I must say I never did myself. But everyone around me did. Well, if the bomb had dropped, you would have still been there with your Viragos. I suspect you would probably survive. No, I think it's her most relevant novel to read to start with today. Well, you would probably survive. No, I think it's her most relevant

novel to read to start with today. Well, you know, and there are just things that I mean, Richard commutes and she's so good at describing his journey on the tube and his desperate desire in the beginning not to meet Eleanor's eye because he doesn't want to talk to

her on the way from the tube station to his house. You know, I mean that, which of us hasn't done that yeah I've actually been known to put a paper bag over my head in order to avoid talking or going to the loo yes one and you know all of that and so it just it there's something amazingly timeless about it. And somehow it's not depressing. I don't know how. No. I don't know how she does that. That's a mystery to me.

Yeah, well, it's just the... Maybe Mrs. Secretan going to the Holy Land for Christmas is some sort of weird, through the agency of Richard. The epiphany of rightness, I think, that you think she said it for me. And that makes you feel happy. That is so good. The epiphany of rightness.

I think we've peaked. On that marvellous, precise note, I'm afraid we're going to have to stop this, although we could easily fill another hour. There's so many amazing stories as well that we didn't get to talk about and the other novels. If anyone listening to this podcast, and frankly it seems unlikely,

hasn't read Elizabeth Taylor, what a treat you have in store. If you stop listening to this podcast, and frankly it seems unlikely, hasn't read Elizabeth Taylor, what a treat you have in store. If you stop listening to this now and buy The Soul of Kindness or go to the library or find a copy in a charity shop, whatever, we guarantee satisfaction. So we must draw our net curtains closed and say a huge thank you to Rachel and to carmen as ever to nikki birch who turns these sounds into into things that you want to listen to thank you also to unbound for being a noble and true sponsor throughout you can download all 101 previous

episodes of that listed plus follow links clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website batlisted.fm and we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter, Facebook and Boundless. Thank you. That's it.

See you in a fortnight. Thank you. 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.