Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S5 Ep18: Bookshelfie: Lucy Worsley

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Historian Lucy Worsley sits down with Vick to talk about forgotten women, fan fiction from the 1930s and the misunderstandings around beloved crime writer Agatha Christie. Lucy Worsley OBE is a British historian, author, television presenter and chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces. Lucy has written numerous history books including: Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow; Jane Austen at Home: A Biography; and The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court. She has presented and contributed - often in exquisite costumes - to various TV programmes and in 2019 Suffragettes With Lucy Worsley won a BAFTA. In her new podcast Lady Killers, Lucy investigates the crimes of Victorian women from a contemporary, feminist perspective. Her latest book, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman is out now. Lucy’s book choices are:  ** The Far-Distant Oxus by Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitelock **  The Young Elizabeth by Jean Plaidy ** Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson ** Mrs Woolf at the Servants - Alison Light ** An Autobiography - Agatha Christie Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season five of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of Season Five? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve. Today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com. The more time has gone on, the more I've been drawn to the stories of women, women who've achieved something remarkable. And to my eyes, have something of the outsider about them.

I've written about Queen Victoria, which sounds like a bad thing to say. I could really see her struggling with this idea that in the 19th century you were supposed to be subordinate to your husband, obviously. But how on earth do you do that if you're the queen? With thanks to Bayleys, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope and I'm your host for Season 5 of the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. The podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. We have a phenomenal lineup of guests for 2020. and I guarantee you'll be taken away plenty of reading recommendations.

Lucy Worsley OVE is a British historian, author, television presenter and chief curator of historic royal palaces. Lucy has written numerous history books including Queen Victoria, daughter, wife, mother, widow, Jane Austen at home, a biography and the courtiers, splendour and intrigue in the Georgian court. She has presented and contributed, often in exquisite costumes, to various TV programmes, And in 2019, her program Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley won a BAFTA. In her new podcast, Lady Killers, Lucy investigates the crimes of Victorian women from a contemporary feminist perspective. Her latest book, Agatha Christie, an elusive woman, is out now.

Lucy, it is an absolute joy to have you here. Oh, thank you. And you are the first podcast guest to have brought all of your books with you. That must mean I'm the swatiest podcast guest you've ever had. I love it because they look so thumbed and so gorgeous. Well, gorgeous is not the right word for that one that's totally falling apart. Look, it's in various pieces and I'll show you something funny. You see that name there. Don't read it out.

Okay. Because we'll protect her privacy. But she lived next door to me when I was little and she gave me this book. And look, she's stolen it from the library. It's got a library card in the back of it. I've not seen a library book for so long. I'd forgotten about the little wallet. Little cards and the wallets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. We're looking at stolen goods here. We are handling stolen goods. We're red-handed right now. I'm excited to chat to you about the books that you've chosen for your bookshelfy picks. But how much do you read? I imagine it's a lot.

Well, I read a lot for my work. And are these all novels? I've chosen free novels. And that's my treat, you see. And having just published a book as I have, I've got to that. that stage in the cycle, though I'm wallowing in fiction just at the moment while I'm on my commute and travelling and in bed at night and that sort of thing. And when you're writing a book, do you have a particular routine? Can you read the work of others and write at the same time? Does it interfere?

Yeah, I go through books that are relevant to my subject and then when I find something that interests me, I have turned down the corner of the page or underline it. And then I go through later and put all my notes together from a particular book and then it sort of enters into my into my filing system that makes it sound more organized than it is. I'm a big turner downer of pages as well and some people think it's sacrilege and they can't believe it but to me that's that's because I've loved. I've loved that book. I've loved that page. I've loved that quotes. I'm with you. I'm with you. A damaged book is often a loved book, isn't it? Yes. Well, on that note, let's get into your loved books. Your first book, Shelfy book, is The Far Distant Oxus by Catherine Hull and Pamela Whitelock,

who's bringing it to the front there, written in 1937, this British children's novel was written by the authors while they were still children themselves. The story follows the model of the books of Arthur Ransom, describing the school holiday adventures of children of active, adventurous families, centred on outdoor activity and vivid landscape soaked in imagination. When did you read this book, Lizzie? I can't really remember, but I had it before I was nine when I think we moved house. I remember reading it in the first place where I lived. And what I liked about it was not so much the story, although I do like the swallows and Amazon's and all their goings on very much. But I like the fact that this is basically fan fiction.

And it was written in the 1930s by two little girls who also enjoyed the Swallows and Abison's books. and it's their own version of the same sort of thing. And I don't think many people in the world know that this book exists, although I think it does have a devoted band of loyal followers, because I think it has been reissued in recent years in a small little press that I think's based in some island off Scotland. So this is a very niche, but deeply loved book this is. When you were a child, when you were reading it,

Were you a huge fan of books and getting lost in those worlds? Were you a reader? Yes. But what really inspired me is the introduction to the book, which is by Arthur Ransom himself. And he explains how these two girls just sent him this manuscript. And they had one of them was 15, one of them was 16, and explains here how they were at school together, but they didn't know each other very well. And one day it rained, and they were waiting for a bus, and they were in the bus shelter together. and they just decided to write a whole book together.

And it says at first they wrote alternate words, and then they realized that wasn't practical. So then they wrote alternate chapters. And then it says here, when they'd finished it, we celebrated it by breaking lots of rules and spending the night together, although usually we sleep in different houses. They were at some girls boarding school. And he was so impressed that he walked into his own publisher,

and he said, I've got this year's best children's book under my arm. And the publisher said, well, well done, Mr. Ransom. And he said, oh, no, it's not mine. It's not me. It's not me. It's these girls that I don't even know. I remember being probably seven or eight. And the idea of writing a book was so exciting. In the same way that me and my friends actually, we used to make little radio shows. We used to record, we had a microphone.

We used to record ourselves imitating what we heard on the radio. Oh, yeah. Were you like that at all as a child? He used to make lots of fake tiny books like the Bontes did. Have you ever seen their tiny books that they made in their child? They were sort of two inches by two inches, and they'd write really small in them. And I've got quite a lot of my own fake Bronte books. And if you look closely, they haven't got actual words in them.

They've just got squiggles. It's just an imitation of the physical book. Yeah, yeah. What were your interests as a child? Were you interested in history? Yes, very much so. I enjoyed reading, come on to it. Yeah, we're going to come on to it, but you can say.

I really enjoyed reading. historical fiction. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that I'm a historian today. And this author in particular, Gene Plady, she was a lot of people in the world who I meet say, oh yes, Jean Plady. She has devoted fans. And she was a bit like Philippa Gregory is today.

And she was in the 60s and the 70s. And she was this hugely prolific writer of historical novels, which, as an adult, and when I come back to them, I realize how cleverly she worked in different historical documents. I mean, she actually did research and sort of built on it. And she did a whole series that were called The Young This, the Young That. I had the Young Florence Nightingale and the Young Mary Queen of Scots. And this particular one, this one that's been loved to pieces, is called The Young Elizabeth.

And you can see, Vic, it's got a picture of Hampton Court Palace on the front. And that's actually where I work now. That's my office. So I look at that book and think, destiny, destiny. Well, let's move on to your second book, Shelby book, which is The Young Elizabeth by Gene Blady. Accepted by three stepmothers, a thorn in the conscience of her father, King Henry VIII. From the age of eight, the mercurial young Elizabeth found royal courts were dangerous places if one wanted to keep your head. As she grew up, the dangers surrounding her increased. Elizabeth knew that one false step could lead to traitor's gate and the block.

Tell us a little bit more about this book. Well, it's just the addictive world of the Tudor Court, the big personalities, the danger, the treason, the locking up in prison. And in Elizabeth's case, it's about her journey to the throne when she was just a little kid, which appeals to other little kids. When I look at it again today, I think, my goodness, there's a lot of anti-Cophilicism here. So her sister, Mary the first, is always described as bloody Mary,

and she's the baddie. So there's definitely a sort of Protestant triumphalist message going on here. But all of these incidents, they're just, she gets into all sorts of trouble, including with her stepmother's dodgy lover who cuts up her black velvet gal. And if you know about Tudor history, then you'll recognize all of these incidents, which sound utterly mad, don't they when I'm talking to you about trying to explain it as fiction. It's amazing because when we first learned about the Tudors, we learn about them at school. so it didn't sound mad because we didn't have any sort of social conditioning to know that yet. So I just thought that, well, that's how the world is. That's what happens.

Stepfathers cut up your gal. That's what they do. Obviously not. But also it starts off with her going to the christening of her little brother, which happened at Hounton Court Palace. So there's this evocation of the palace and the event took place at night and there was a procession through the courtyards. And as an adult, I was actually involved in a BBC documentary once where we recreated that. event. We got about 50 of our colleagues to dress up as tutors and to walk through the palace with flaming torches. And we had the little boy who's now six. The baby, the baby prince

Edward has, well, the actor, the baby actor who played him has now grown up. So there's lots of layers of significance when I look back at that little book, which has shaped my life really. Well, you're holding it out and you pointed out on the front cover, Hampton Court Palace. Tell us about the first time you visited the place and what it's like to now work there. Well, even when I visited it as a small child, I think I knew there's something that's often said about Hampton Court Palace, which is really cool. There only time and not place separates you from the past. So you know that where your feet are standing, Anne Boleyn walked, Henry the 8th walked, Elizabeth the first walked, and that's, it's all in the mind

that the mind is a very powerful thing and I feel, I know a lot of our visitors feel a sort of sizzle of history by standing where they stood. Can you remember when you first felt that sizzle of history and realize that it could be a job for you? You could become a historian. Well, it took me a long time to realize that it could be a job. How did you translate the sizzle into an occupation?

Well, I'm going to have to tell us. I apologize to my father. I'm sorry, Dad. I know he doesn't like the story. Okay, so my father was a scientist, and he wanted me to be a scientist too, and fair dues to him, the world needs scientists. And so to please him, I started off doing science hay levels.

I seen biology and chemistry and maths, and after a term of doing that, my mother, to give her the credit, said, you're not enjoying this. You should change to what you love, which is history. So I did change and I told my school and then I had to tell my dad. And he said some words that have become famous in our family. He said, if you do a history degree, my girl, you'll be cleaning toilets for a living.

And he was wrong to say that because, you know, we need people who are going to clean toilets for living. There's nothing wrong with that. But he's also been proved curiously right because I do spend quite a lot of my time telling people how people in the past went to the loo. Literally I handle historic chamber pots at Haxon Court Palace. We have them in our collection. Which characters throughout history have resonated with you the most or are you most fascinated by? Well, I've been guilty of doing that thing of going straight to the queens, right, the ones that we sort of all know about. They're the entry-level figures of history.

They are, in my defence, the best documented figures in history. That's quite good. And they do come with an organism, the sort of massive, um, organisms of the royal household that takes you down through the levels, through society. But, you know, today when we think about what should we know more about at Hampton Court Palace? The answer isn't the queens, it's not the wise of Henry V, it's characters like. So you'll often hear it said that the palace was a very masculine place. There were perhaps 600 courtiers in residence, and they were nearly all of the men,

apart from the Queen and the 50 members of her household within the 600 of the court. But what's become clear in recent years, my colleagues at Hanton Court have researched this, is that there was the male community in the palace, but there was this whole other shadow community outside the palace. So on the banks of the river, there were the lawn dresses, they were living in tents, they were washing the clothes of the men in the palace. There were the ladies who ran the equivalent of the hot dog stand in another tent near the entrance.

there was the official masculine community whose names got written down in the record so we know about them. But then they were mirrored by this whole shadowy female community. Which happens today. If you go to an army camp, that's often a masculine sort of environment.

But outside it, you get all the people who service the soldiers who are not official and they're not captured, but their stories are the ones that today we're more interested in ferreting out. Bailey's is proudly supporting

the Women's Prize for Sixth by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Looking for a treat to pair with your favourite book, Bailey's is the perfect accompaniment to enjoy either over ice or over coffee. Well, we're going to ferret out a very different story now as we move on to your third book, Shelfy book, which is Moomin Valley in November by Tuva Jansen. Moon Valley in November is Suva Jansen's ninth and final book about the Moomans,

a little family of round, snouted trolls, who lived in a remote valley. It was first published in her native Swedish in 1970 and then in English in 1971, and is a tale of grief, friendship, human difference and the art of waiting. What was it about this book that caught your imagination? This is a really dark book. And the Moomin's today are hugely popular. And, you know, they have their own merchandising. And you can go to the shop and you can get your Moomin Firmus Flask or whatever.

And me and my brother were just obsessed with the story and the illustrations. And we used to spend a lot of time copying them out. But this particular book, Moominv Valley in November, is actually about depression. And it's about how in the wintertime the Muman's themselves, who are the sort of the lifeblood of the valley, they're hibernating. So all of their friends have to get through the winter without them. And they all go, they're all distressed, they're all anxious,

something's wrong for all of them. They have to get through these long, dark, rainy Scandinavian nights. And it's the most extraordinary book. I can't quite believe that anybody noticed what she was up to at the time. She was presenting a really deep look inside. the recesses of an adult mind. When did you read it? How old were you?

Oh, I guess I would have been some time between five and 15, I guess, when my Rumen craze was at its peak. I don't really remember. And do you think that you picked up on those allusions to anxiety and depression and mental health? Yeah, it's a great way to learn about mental health, actually, through the means of your friends who are Snuffkin and the Mimble and the Hemulin and all of these funny characters that Tavia Janssen invented. I have read as an adult that she was inspired by the sense of dislocation

and all the refugees after World War too. So she, I think, had experienced herself. A lot of people who were rootless who were looking for somewhere to settle. And in her world, Mooman Valley becomes this place where everybody's welcome and they can have a happy time, except in winter when they hibernate. Yeah. It's hard as we know. because we're going into the winter months now.

Yeah. You mentioned there that Jansen took this unexpected route with this final story, not necessarily giving the readers what they expected, what they wanted maybe because they wanted a glimpse of the movements. And it's an extraordinary result. How do you stay creative and unexpected in your own work? Oh, through routine, yes. I'm very focused.

I have my own little way of doing things. things and that keeps the darkness at bay. I'm particularly drawn to the character of Snuffkin, who, when things get tough, he goes off into the woods by himself and he walks through the rain and he whistles. I can relate to that. Yes. I can relate. Nothing feels better.

In his green pointed hat that he had, I've always got the same hat as that. I love that it's illustrated as well. I mean, do you go, having read it when you were five to 15 somewhere in that window, do you ever go back now and have a look through and read it with the eyes of someone who has known a bit more life. Yes, I suppose so. And it does surprise me just how dark and difficult the experiences of the characters were.

And I just know those pictures so well because we used to copy them out endlessly. I'm looking at Snuffkin and another of the weird characters standing on a jetty in the mist. She's such a brilliant illustrator as well. Look how she's left out parts of the drawing where the mist is flowing through the forest.

And she lived on an island as well in the... in the Gulf of Finland. What a life. I wonder why she decided to do this. I don't know. I don't know. I would like to know more about her life. I have got a biography of her, which I've never read,

because I sort of don't want to destroy the illusion. I don't want to feel that a real human being did this. It seems too miraculous to be tainted by things like when she was born and where she went to school. Yeah. Yeah. But also, as an author, I guess, whose books are so loved, it might be hard to take any other directions when you know what your audience want. And she's allowed to stay creative and stray stimulated. And that's what she wanted to do. That's what she wanted to do. Yeah, I get the sense she was a very private person and I feel I should respect her privacy. you. Well, you yourself, you juggle so many different roles, author, TV, presenter, curator. How do you stay

stimulated and creative in all of your roles? Sometimes people ask me which, which do you prefer? Do you prefer working at Hampton Court Palace or making a television program? And the answer genuinely is I don't see them as being radically different things because they all involve talking to people about history. And I'm so lucky that I get to do that for a living. it's a cliche to say it, but every day's a school day. You never get to the end of history. There's always new stuff to learn. And then, if you ever run out of new stuff,

you have to go back to the beginning and start again because things will have moved on and you need to take a fresh look. In the time that I've been working at Hampton Court, just the way perceptions of Henry VIII have changed is incredible. Do you know the new musical that's called Six? Yes. Yes, with all of his wives as pop stars.

Yes, yes, yes. As a girl group. It used to be Henry the 8th and the six wives. And then that sort of shifted to Henry the 8th and the six queens to give them a bit more dignity and agency. And now it's just six. That's what 11-year-old girls are interested in. And if you don't know the story of six, which is the most amazing, miraculous piece of work, the six queens are in a talent contest.

They will have to sing a song to show who's the best. And about halfway through, they realized that the task. Talent contest itself is a construction of the patriarchy. So they abandon it and they form a girl group that's just called six instead. And my brother, who does not like musicals, has been to see it several times. Oh, that's so cool. He loves it so much. He talks about it all the time.

He's promised to get me tickets to my birthday. And I'm going to say this on record on the podcast. It hasn't yet. But, yeah, I can't recommend it personally, but I've heard from a lot of people who can. Your fourth book, shelfy book, now Lucy, is Mrs. Wolf at the servants by Alison Light. Through Virginia Woolf's extensive diaries and letters and brilliant detective work, Alison Light chronicles the lives of those forgotten women who work behind the scenes in Bloomsbury and their fraught relations with one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

Tell me why you've picked this for your list. Well, we've moved on into my adult life and this book was published in 2007. which is the year that I published my first nonfiction book and this came out at the same time. So I thought, we better take a look, even though it was a very different period. And I thought, oh dear, this is the way to do it. Alison Light is a genius.

And she had showed this really interesting sort of left field approach to biography. She'd taken this sort of seminal figure of Virginia Woolf and given such a fresh look at her life. and she did that by reconstructing the lives of all of these people who allowed Virginia Woolf to be Virginia Woolf. They're cooks, they are domestic staff, and it was a wonderful work of reconstructing lost lives that actually threw new light onto the world above stairs, if you like, Virginia Woolf and her own family. Look here we've got a picture of flossy and Mabel. Selwood who I can't remember exactly what their roles were in the household

but these are not people who traditionally have been part of the story of Bloomsbury. They don't get written about it, do they? But now they've taken their places. Has it changed the way that you carry out research in your own work? Have you read this? Yes, it was, yes, because what I'd like to do is

to approach a subject slightly from the left field if I can. Say when I wrote about Jane Austen, for example, inspired by this, I use Jane Austen's homes as a structure. And I saw her life as a series of chapters shaped by the different home environments in which she lived. And that was significant because, although you think the world of Austin is kind of stable and gentrified and cozy, Jane Austen herself didn't really have homes because she was at this level of society where she wasn't quite as rich as she ought to have been. And as a spinster in late George in England, you sort of had to live on the mercy of other people.

So she would go on long stays in the houses of richer relatives. And she did all this despite the fact that she could have got married to a rich guy and lived a life of leisure. But instead she chose precarity and a life of writing. How do you choose the subject for your biographies? You mentioned Jane Austen there, that these historical stories, figures that you're drawn to and want to tell the stories. I want to diffuse the stories further off. Well, I choose something that I think it would be fun for me to research to keep me motivated. That helps. And I, I, I, I, the more time has gone on, the more I've been drawn to

the stories of women, women who, who've achieved something remarkable. And women who, to my eyes, have something of the outsider about them. So, I've written about, Queen Victoria, which sounds, it sounds like a bad thing to say. But if you look at her life as a woman in the age in which she lived, that to me was a fruitful approach. And I could really see her struggling with this idea that in the 19th century you were supposed to be subordinate to your husband, obviously. But how on earth do you do that if you're the queen? And you can see, well, I think that I found evidence of some of the compromises and the difficulties she had in overcoming that challenge. I love the way that you shine a light on some of the forgotten or misunderstood aspects of womanhood for the figures, the women throughout history that you write about or present programs about. As well in your new BBC podcast, Lady Killers, you explore the sensationalism and reducing of notorious women killers in history. It feels like a feminist agenda in some ways insofar as uplifting the voices of women. who haven't been heard, but did you grow up in a feminist household? Do you consider yourself a feminist?

Oh, absolutely. Yes, I was brought up by, I guess you call her a second wave feminist, and that was definitely, it just seemed part of life to me. I'm amazed that it seems amazing to me that anybody can find that radical or shocking, but I am aware that they do because they often write and tell me so. But, yes, you're right to detect an agenda that sort of runs throughout my world. And what draws you to the ordinary, often forgotten women throughout history, just like those who are written about in this book? Partly because they deserve to have their experience recognised.

And I think also the work I've done in writing books has been shaped by my experience of being a curator, where you are faced with the detritus of life, what has survived the bits and bobs. and it's not what's in the collection at Hampton Court is not just Van Dyke. And well, we've only got one Van Dyke in our collection. But it's not just the grand luxurious artworks. It's stuff like the chamber pot, the less grand furniture, the clothes, the clothes fantasticly useful things when people are coming to the past. And I think, gosh, I really ought to ask about the politics of the reform. but what they really want to know is what were people's socks like.

And I'm going to take that. I'm going to take that interest the way something as silly as socks or pants or washing up liquid can open a little window that allows people to see into the very different mental worlds of the past. What were their socks like in Elisa Beathin Times, for example? We've got in our collection at Hanton Court a vest and socks of... William, as in William and Mary, in the 17th century. And these items are sometimes known as the elf suit because his vest is green, bright green, and his socks are bright red.

Amazing. Amazing. And they're knitted out of silk. And you can see what a tiny guy he was from these quite small items that would have sort of been snugly worn against his skin in the way that thermals are today. and you can see how, you know, this very modern concept of heat the person, not the room, that we're all talking about in this age of rising heating bills, it applied to people in the past.

They heated the person and not the room and they wore all these layers and furs on top. And that's how life in a drafty palace becomes tolerable. I'm going to come down and have a look, have a look at the vest and socks. In that case, I'm doing my job correctly. Your fifth and final book today, Lucy, is autobiography. Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie died on the 12th of January, 1976, having become the best-selling novelist in history. Her autobiography, published in 1977, a year after a death, tells of a fascinating private life, from early childhood through two marriages and two world wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Maloen. Why did you choose this book? Yes. This is a book I've spent a lot of time with recently

having just written a biography of Agatha Christie. So I spent four years struggling with this book. Now, you can see how fat it is. You think, why would there be any point in writing a biography of a person who has told her own story in this number of words? But she's an unreliable narrator, funnily enough, for a mystery writer. and when this book was published after she died, a lot of people were really disappointed about it

because it didn't seem to have any personal information in it at all. Well, I say that. There's lots of stuff there about social customs, clothes, people she met, but it all seems to take place at a surface level. And it's a brilliant work of evasion because by the time she died in 1976. By that point in her life, she did not want to let anybody into her world. And that is because, I think, because she'd suffered from that.

She was born in 1890. She became a working professional writer in a 20th century that wasn't ready for her, which kind of shamed her, really, for her achievements. And so she became this woman of great privacy and became very reclusive and elusive. Elusive is the word that I've finally chosen for my own biography of her. So unpicking her secrets has been a wonderful journey. What's been the most surprising thing that you've discovered about her? Well, if you read this book, her own words, her autobiography, published after she died in the 1970s,

you will read that she had no ambition. That's what she wanted us to think. Her success was all an accident. She says quite early on in the book that if she ever had to fill in a form saying what her occupation was, she would put down housewife. Yeah. Those were her values. That's what we thought.

But if you look back in the 1920s, before she got famous and she sort of got too famous and she got taken down by the press again, before this happened to her, you see these fantastic statements of her ambition and confidence and what she wants to achieve in her career and her professionalism. And I'm afraid the 20th century kind of, well, it was the making of Agavar Christie. she became a global phenomenon, but it was also the breaking of her as an individual living as herself in the public gaze. Well, Agatha Christie has sold two billion copies of books in print, second only to the Bible and the collective works of Shakespeare.

So what do you think is her appeal? Why is that? You know, every time I hear that, she's second only to the Bible and Shakespeare. Every time I hear that, it always gets me, I think, but hang on, unlike Shakespeare and, well, I speak, God. She's a woman. Yeah. And people just don't realize how extraordinary that achievement was in a world that was then made by men. And that's partly because she downplayed her achievements and presented herself kind of like Miss Marple as a little old lady in tweeds.

And her success is that she is just fantastically skilled in the craft of writing. And any thriller writer would tell you, you know, you've got to read her, you've got to learn from the mistress. but also she was very good at capturing what you might describe as the views of Middle England and playing them against people. So her work, this is both her strength and her weakness. She uses stereotypes a lot. So she thinks, right, people think this about the world and she takes you down that road. And then at the last minute she undercuts you and makes you realize that the person that you've assumed is useless

because he has a foreign accent, a funny moustache, and he hasn't been to public school, is in fact, Urquil Piro, the guy with the biggest brain in the room. But there's a downside to that as well. Some of these stereotypes that people believed throughout the 20th century are what we would call problematic today. And sometimes young people say to me, why should I read? Why should I read this work? I find it makes me uncomfortable. Well, I think that you should be made uncomfortable.

You should know what people thought about the world throughout the history of the 20th. 20th century, it explains where we've got to today. In the book, you tell stories about Agatha Christie's mental health. That's something that you explore. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes. The thing that she's best known for after her writing is the fact that in 1926, notoriously, she disappeared for 11 days.

And there was a national manhunt or woman hunt for her. And then eventually she was found living under a false name in a hotel in Harrogate, 200 miles away from her home. And the story that sprang up then, in the absence of any more believable or plausible story, was that she had disappeared on purpose, either to get publicity for her books or to frame her cheating husband for her murder. And I can see why people were drawn to those two stories. But what astonish is me is that although people talk about this incident as a mystery as something unexplained, it really wasn't. Because after it happened, Agatha Christie gave an interview to the Daily Mail, right, to millions of readers, in which she says, I disappeared because I was ill. I was experiencing suicidal thoughts. I wanted to take my life.

And although she said that, people didn't want to listen. And that's why she has been tarred, I feel, with this image of being somebody tricksy, someone deceptive, somebody who was a bit off, a bit unnatural. Whereas from today's perspective, it's really clear. She said she wasn't well. But we didn't listen. People then didn't listen. I'm listening.

I'm listening now. We're listening now. That's why your work is so important. Is there anyone else who you feel has been misunderstood who you would like to write about, to make stories about, to make programs about? Many, many. But what I need to do is to take it slow and take a break. Are you going to get a break, Lucy?

I am. Well, it's coming up to the sort of Christmas period, isn't it? And I'm looking forward to a little bit of time off. Much deserved. My final question to you today is if you had to choose one of those boozey, that's in your lap right now. Thank you so much for bringing them all. As your favourite, which one would it be and why?

Well, I think I might have to say the Young Elizabeth, because that is the one that set me upon my path in life, which is to be a historian of and for women. Yeah. I called it gorgeous at the beginning. He said it's not so much because it is very thumbed and it's a little bit yellowing, but I love it. I love that it looks like that.

Lucy, thank you so, so much for joining me and for talking about your life through the book. books that you've loved. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.