Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S7 Ep21: Bookshelfie: Kate Humble

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Broadcaster Kate Humble explains the joy of living in the moment, the glory of nature and the importance of shunning the algorithms. Kate is a broadcaster specialising in wildlife and science programmes, including  Countryfile, Springwatch and Blue Planet Live. A champion of the environment, nature conservation and rural affairs, she is president of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and founded Humble by Nature, a rural skills centre on her farm in Wales. As well as starring in over 70 television programmes, Kate is the author of seven books, including A Year of Living Simply, Home Cooked, Where the Hearth Is and Thinking on My Feet, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Prize. Kate’s latest book, Home Made: Recipes from the Countryside is a collection of over 60 simple, sustainable recipes from her very own kitchen table, alongside inspiring stories from 20 individuals who play a role in bringing food to us. Kate’s book choices are: ** I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith ** Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley ** Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton ** Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ** Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season seven 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 seven? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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of people who are really passionate about books and who read, properly read, and who love talking about books and love recommending. 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 am your host for Season 7 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them.

Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your 2024 reading list. Today I'm joined by Kate Humble. Kate is a broadcaster specialising in wildlife and science programs. including Countryfile, Springwatch and Blue Planet Live, a champion of the environment, nature conservation and rural affairs. She's president of the Wild Fowl and Wetlands Trust, and founded Humble by Nature,

a rural skill centre on her farm in Wales. As well as starring in over 70 television programmes, Kate is the author of seven books, including A Year of Living Simply, Homecooked, where the half is, and Thinking on My Feet, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Prize. Kate's latest book, Homemade Recipes from the Countryside, is a collection of over 60 simple, sustainable recipes

from her very own kitchen table, alongside inspiring stories from 20 individuals who play a role in bringing food to us. Kate, welcome to the podcast. It's such a pleasure to get to sit down with you and discuss books. Before we started recording, we were talking about conspiracy theories and crime and murders,

but that's not the direction we're going in here. No. I hope not. Well, I mean, but that's the lovely thing about books is I think they are always the most wonderful trigger for conversation. And like a good book or like a beautifully told story, they allow conversation to meander into all sorts of unexpected areas. We could go anywhere. We could go anywhere today. You paint such an idyllic picture through your writing through your television of the world in which we live and appreciating the nature that's surrounding. So I would love to know where you do the majority of a reading. Do you have a beautiful spot that you like to read in? Not particularly, no. I mean, it would be lovely to think that I had the perfect kind of reader's nook.

But I don't. I mean, sometimes I read in bed and I suspect like a lot of people my age, you get into bed, you're so exhausted. You manage to read a paragraph and then you fall asleep. sleep with your nose in your book. Or with her grandparents. Yes. But also I do love reading on the sofa by the fire. And I love reading outside.

Although the problem with reading outside, I have a thing about sitting on the grass. I love, you know, to me, when I had a kind of hiatus of living in a city, of living in London. And I think, weirdly, the thing I missed most of all about my kind of country mouse existence, which was, you know, my upbringing, was having grass to sit. on. I know you could go to the park, but that's not the same different. No. And you don't know what's been there. To be honest. I've never been terribly fussy about that, but yes, I hear you. So for me, sitting on the grass and reading a book is like the ultimate luxury, except that there are so many distractions because, you know, a bird will do something interesting or, you know,

there'll be a butterfly that will go past, or there'll be some bug that I don't recognize that I then have to look up. So I find in a way, annoyingly, the most sort of satisfying places to read are often on a train or, you know, somewhere where you literally cannot or do not want to be distracted from anything else. And you just switch off your phone and just go, I am going to dive into this wonderful world that someone else has created. When you're on a train, the book is the escape. But when you're outside, and this happens so much, I completely relate. I'll be reading something that strikes a chord that touches me that I relate to, and then I look up to just ponder it.

I look at the sky or I look at the tree, and then I'm engulfed in the sky or the tree. And yes, I'm pondering that, but then I go in all directions because the escape is there, and it's there, and it's there, and it's there, and it's there. You're right. It's actually quite hard to focus on the book when the real world is so beautiful around you. Yeah, and so dynamic, you know, and ever-changing. And I hate to say this about authors who really do create amazing worlds and, you know, these incredible sort of three-dimensional characters

that can make you think, that can make you cry, that can make you laugh. But nature still has the edge. It trumps it. It trumps it. And, you know, I mean, there have been times where I have been reading outside and have been so totally absorbed in it. a book. But yes, it's a dichotomy, you know, that joy of being outside and the joy of reading, but often the two don't quite go together. And you're talking about creating these worlds and

these characters. So do you tend to lean towards fiction over nonfiction? Yes, I think so. I mean, I love nonfiction and obviously nonfiction is what I write, even though I would love to think, I love, you know, it's one of those, one of those gloriously that I think we all need to have a sort of a dream that we sort of think, I love having the dream and I don't actually, I'm not really worried if it doesn't come true. And so writing fiction for me is that sort of dream. I love stories and I love reading other people's stories. And I love to think that one day I might have a story that emerges and comes out through my fingertips. but I'm not too bothered if it doesn't. I just enjoy everybody else's stories. It's true.

They say that we all have a novel in us. It doesn't necessarily need to go beyond that. Absolutely. It's okay being inside. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I think, you know, I think it's probably the reason why I appreciate fiction so much because a story is an enormously personal thing.

And in the way of so many personal things, it can be quite difficult to vocalise it or whatever the written equivalent is of vocalising. I guess writing. Yeah, I guess. But it's that, it's more than that. It's not the physical. It is.

It is that putting it into words. It's transcribing it from the wonderful sort of collection of images and words and feelings and emotions that are going on in your head. Yeah, being able to transcribe that onto a page. Give it a structure. Give it a structure. Give it a life that is visible. That's the really hard thing.

So anybody who does that and anybody who dedicates their time to sharing that, as I say, that very personal story that has built up in their heads has my undying admiration. Well, the first author who we're going to celebrate who has done just that is Dodey Smith. Because your first book, Shelfy Book today is I Capture the Castle. Named one of the BBC's 100 novels that shaped our world, I Captured the Castle is a coming-of-age story of Cassandra Mortman, living with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the 1930s. Told through her journal, Cassandra records her life with her beautiful,

bored sister Rose, her fading, glamorous stepmother Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father James, who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. All their lives are turned up. down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. Tell me about this book and why you chose it. So this book was given to me when I was still at school. Probably I'm going to guess I was around 13 or 14 and it was given to be by one of my dearest school friends, Maima, who is still a very dear friend.

and I think there was just something about that opening line. You know you were saying about the perfect place to read. And to me, the perfect place to write is indeed on the kitchen sink, with your feet in the same. And I just love that opening image. You know, it's stuck with me at all times. And I also loved Cassandra is a very relatable character, even though very few of us grew up in crumbling castles.

But there's something, Doody Smith just sort of draws out her emotions, her response to the world so beautifully and so relatably. And there is an escapism in there. You know, I remember reading that book and thinking, I want to be her or I want to be, I want to be on that journey that she's on. And I probably was in my own way, you know, I was a similar age to that sort of, you know, the protagonist of this incredible story. And for whatever reason, it really emotionally captured me.

And, you know, we know Dode Smith is a wonderful storyteller who can make, you know, Dalmatians relatable and come to life. And she can do that even more so with human characters. and she, whether consciously or unconsciously, I think, absolutely tapped into, you know, the teenage minds of young girls growing up as I did. You know, I would have read it. It would have probably been, you know, early 80s when I first read it and just created a world that was full of possibility, but not a sugar-coated one. What do you think it was about Cassandra that you related to that 13-year-old Kate related to? so much. I know you said before that your childhood was something straight out of the famous five.

So paint a picture of what was going on around you at the time, your family, your home. So I grew up in the countryside and as I say, you know, I was born in 1968. So my sort of formative childhood years were in the 70s, which to so many people, it's like the dark ages now. You know, there was no computers. There was no social media. there was no telly, really. I mean, there was television, but a lot of the time there was a test card with the picture of a slightly strange girl in a headband

and a spooky clown, which I think is the reason why I've always had a phobia of clowns. So do I. Do you? Yeah, and I think it's the same because, I mean, I was in the 90s, but that was still quite a lot of the time on the screen. It was, yeah. So you didn't have, you know, you didn't have all those, I would say, distractions of life now.

And, you know, somebody said, I can't remember who it was, but somebody said that, you know, boredom is basically the root of creativity. It allows your imagination to just jump off and go wherever it likes. And the great joy, I think, of growing up both in that time, in a time where there weren't, you know, so many kind of technical distractions, but also growing up in the countryside where there were so many. distractions and being actively encouraged by my parents. And this is, this was what parenting was, you know, basically go outside, sort of whatever the weather is, and make your own amusement until it's time to come in and eat and go to bed. And so you had this life that a lot of it was sort of fantasy. It was building camps. It was climbing trees. It was, as you say, a bit famous five, not much ginger beer. But,

The life that Cassandra or that Smith gives Cassandra, as I say, was very relatable of that time, of things being quite simple but very connected to the real world. You know, you felt and experienced and smelt and heard and saw things in a very visceral connected way. And perhaps because of that, the emotions that she felt, the emotions that, I still remember feeling as a child and perhaps remember them because of this were very heightened. You know, they were very much the process of experiencing life and of growing up was this very experiential process, if that makes sense. And perhaps that's why I always felt a great connection with Cassandra because because, There were parallels, you know, just even if it, as I say, the parallels weren't the way that we lived,

or the circumstances in which we lived, but the kind of emotional journey of growing up and of dealing with changing circumstance. And I do sort of wonder, I have an obsession with notebooks. If I was to show you in my bag now, I have three on the go. Do they all serve different purposes? Yes. parts of your life. Yes, they do. And so one is a book that is, I'm researching a book at the moment.

So all my research notes go into that. But sometimes I have the other notebook where my research notes go into. So then I have to transcribe them into the research notes notebook. I'm sounding like a mad person. No, you're not mad. I also have three on the go. Okay, good. And then you have your lists, you know, your day-to-day lists book.

And then you have the book that's finished, but you still need. to keep it because there's stuff in there that you haven't finished or you need to refer back to. Okay. And so... It's fine, I relate. I've got the lists, I've got the workbook, and then I've also got my thoughts and feelings book. Because sometimes I need to write them down. And also, this is the other thing that I love about I capture the castle is the writing things down in long hand.

You know, that physical having a pen or a pencil and committing it to a page and creating the scroll that my husband says, I don't know how you read your notes. And sometimes he's right. I can't. But, you know, when I'm writing, I do a lot of writing in longhand. I don't write on a computer. That might be the last bit. But for me, and again, this is what Cassandra does. you know, she's trying to work out her response to falling in love or being infuriated by something or being excited by something.

And it is the writing process that allows her to kind of process and learn and enjoy or, you know, bemoan what's going on. And I still do that, you know, to this day, whatever it is, 40 years after I first read it, I use. a notebook in the same way. And I think the device of the changing notebooks through the book, you know, as her circumstances change and her notebooks get a little bit more elaborate as life gets a little bit more comfortable. It's just a wonderful, it's a wonderful device. And reading them back is something special to. Yes, it is. Well, on the subject of documenting the world and life around us, we move on quite neatly to your second book, Shelfy book. which is Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley.

Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived a typical life of a single Victorian woman, tending to sick relatives and keeping house for her brother. But after the death of her parents, she undertook an extraordinary decision. With no prior knowledge of the region, she set out alone to West Africa. Her subsequent book, Travels in West Africa, is a gripping travel narrative by a woman whose sense of adventure and fascination with Africa transformed her whole life. It challenged and in some ways reinforced contemporary Victorian prejudices about Africa and it also made valuable contributions to the fields of botany and anthropology.

Now, you've observed that so much travel writing is dominated by men. And obviously that's what we're here to challenge at the Women's Prize. Why is this book so important? Oh, it's a formative book for me Because again, partly I suspect because of the era that I grew up in We didn't do foreign holidays People just didn't that, you know, there wasn't the money to do that There wasn't the kind of cheap flights, the package holidays The world was a much more, in some ways, vaster place,

less discovered place in the 70s. I don't mean that kind of literally, but for kind of ordinary people, for ordinary families. You know, our horizons were much narrower then than they are now. And I was also terribly travel sick, which reduced our family holidays to, you know, as many hours in the car or as few hours in the car

as we could possibly get away with because, you know, I would basically be sick roughly every mile. So I wasn't a very well-traveled child. And yet, for reasons that I don't really understand, I had this overwhelming sense of wonderlust and fascination with the world. And of wanting to see it, of just wanting to get away. And I've kind of mild this over quite a lot. why was that? Why was I so, I was desperate to leave home, absolutely desperate to leave home. And yet I had this incredibly happy, you know, wonderful family, you know, loving, wonderful family. There was, you know, most people or you know, in stories, people want to leave home because they've had a

terrible time at home. I wonder whether I wanted to leave home so much because I had that great privilege of a really, it was like a sort of an immovable anchor, a kind of, you know, a safe haven. And I sort of knew I had that safe haven or assumed in that sort of childhood way that you do, that that was always going to be there. And therefore I could just go off and do whatever I wanted. I think it's, I think it is the greatest thing my parents gave me was that feeling of security and therefore this sense of possibility of being able to go anywhere. And the first bit of travelling that I did on my own was the Euro rail. You know, this amazing train ticket that you could go all over Europe on one ticket.

And I did my O levels, as they were then. And I'd saved and saved and saved. I'd done Saturday jobs and everything to save up for this train ticket. to go to Europe. And I was so ill-travelled at that stage that I had my passport. You could get a passport from the post office. And it was like this little brown cardboard passport. And but it, you couldn't go through what was then Eastern Europe. So if I wanted to go further afield than basically Italy, I couldn't. So that was, you know, that was how ill-traveled I was. And so my euro-rail was was fairly restricted. But nonetheless, it was an incredible month of, you know, sleeping in stations and on luggage racks in trains. And it gave me my first sense of adventure. And my first sense of, you know, of really of sort of other language, of other culture, of other food, of all those things. So this sort of sense of wonderlust was then heightened by that first journey.

and I had this idea that when I left school, the normal route of things was then you would go to university. And my parents, neither of them had had the opportunity to go to university and had worked incredibly hard to make sure that me and my brother had that opportunity, were given that opportunity. And because I was a revoltingly ungrateful, rebellious, night. teenager. I did my A levels and said, right, that's it. I'm off. And I didn't have any money to go and flounce off anywhere, particularly at that point. So I ended up going and doing all sorts of

different jobs to sort of scrape some savings together. And my best friend at school was having a gap year between school and university. And quite a lot of people at that stage were going to Australia. And she went off to Australia and I said, well, I'll come and join you, but I haven't got the money to do it now. So I'll save up and then I'll come out. And while she was there, she would write letters, lovely, crinkly blue, that lightweight blue airmail paper letters back, saying, it's amazing out here and telling me all about it. And one of the things that she said was, oh, and guess who I've bumped into? And some part of me just went, I don't want to go. I don't want to and bump into people I know.

And I thought, where, where is, where would people not go? Africa. They wouldn't go to, I'm going to go to Africa. And I did. And I went with no plan. I'd had £800 saving money. I flounced off. My dear parents said, I'm off to Africa.

And I don't know when I'm coming back. And I was 19. And I had an astonishing year in that continent. And it taught me so much. But I didn't get to West Africa. I was in southern and eastern Africa. And when I came back, I came back with, I mean, I wouldn't have come back. I ran out of money.

I came back with this obsession about the continent, about the people, about the landscapes, and of course about the wildlife. It was probably that journey that really... Oh, well, in southern and East Africa. Whereabouts were you? So, sort of all over. So South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania. I went to Zanzibar. By Dao.

And when I got there, I was staying in a funny little hostel place in Dara Salam. and I would go into the port every morning to see if a Tao was sailing. And they would only go when there was enough people and enough luggage, basically, enough cargo to sail. And on my fifth morning, they said, we're going to go. And it was just the most incredible experience. And I was the only foreigner. And there was all these incredible people laden with stuff. remember there being stuffed bales of, I don't know what, just, you know, huge amounts of luggage

and animals and people. And we all crowded into the bottom of this down. There was no, there was no sort of seats for anything out. But from what I remember, we just sort of sat in the bottom of the boat and we set sail for this, you know, mythical place. You know, for an island that doesn't sound like it really exists. It sounds like it's the, you know, the figment of some wonderful imagination. And, you know, and people talk about Zanzibar as this sort of Spice Island. And really, I am really not making this up. And I hope it's not my imagination just, you know, telling me this is what I experienced.

But as we near the shore, and I'm very seasick as well, by the way, I'm, you know, I'm sick on everything. So, but it was a, the crossing was fine. and as we neared the shore all I could smell was clothes this incredible smell and they were spread out all over the harbour wall it was amazing

and you know I got there and Stone Town was just this incredible kind of medieval hodgepotch of little streets and small sort of stall shops and again there were no foreigners and if you wanted to leave

you had to get a permit to go And it was an amazing experience. So there was so much about that first trip to Africa that just, as I say, I fell in love with it. And it was also because I was there on my own and because I was, you know, in other people's eyes, so young, you know, you're 19 and you're traveling around Africa on your own. Gosh, that's brave. You don't think you're brave. You think you're immortal. When you're 19, you just do not imagine that anything bad is going to happen to you.

And as I say, I was so beautifully looked after there by people I met, by, you know, women who would literally, I'd be sort of sitting at the side of the road hoping that a bus might come along. And someone would just say, come and, come and stay with our family. You know, come on. I mean, the generosity of people who have the least is always mind-blowing. So when I came back, I came back with this just obsessive desire to have a continued connection somehow. But I was also very aware of this sort of, I didn't think of myself, and I've never thought of myself as an explorer or as an adventurer. but the story of Africa was told by white men. You know, that was, if you've found books about Africa, about the history of Africa,

about the history of discovering Africa, and I'm saying that with heavy inverted commas, because obviously it was there. It was there. People were living in it. Very happily, thank you very much. But, you know, it was seen from this very anti-brave and clever perspective. and I wanted to find another one. And I started, you know, around about that time.

In fact, it was a second trip that I came back from. I went back to Africa in 94 for a year after the elections in South Africa. I felt very, you know, I'd done my anti-apartheid marching in Cape Town. it felt like properly at the cold face and it was an extraordinary time and so I felt very rightly or wrongly emotionally invested in Mandela's release I remember watching it

I was back in the UK when it happened I remember watching it just in floods of tears of just thinking I'm witnessing a cataclysmically important historical event and I've sort of been part of it. And so I went back in 94 when he was president and it was just really,

I just really, I felt the need to go back. And when I came back to the UK, this was when I wanted to start writing. I felt like I had a story to tell. But I didn't know where to start and I didn't know who to go to. And somebody put me in touch with the then travel editor at the Telegraph,

an extraordinary woman called Jill Charlton who took me under her wing in a way that I didn't expect and still to this day I'm incredibly grateful for and kind of amazed by you know how does she how does she have the time to you know take some sort of hopelessly naive idealistic early 20s well I've just been in Africa and say right what can you write for me and when we were talking about talking about writers and we were talking about travel writers and we were talking about this very you know male space and yet there she was a woman editor of a major broadsheet and she was the one who said go away and read mary kingsley and and i loved the thing that i loved was as you said in the introduction to the book you know this is a woman who lived a very straight-laced very traditional

existence of a young Victorian woman. And, you know, we have to bear in mind that there wasn't, you know, social media, there weren't podcasts, there wasn't TV, there wasn't, you know, where did you get your ideas, where did you get your inspiration, particularly as a woman, you know, you would have been so, your horizons would have been even more, spectacularly more restricted than my horizons were. when I was growing up. And yet she just, she just did it. And, you know, there's wonderful descriptions in the book of her, you know,

she couldn't go to some specialist travel store and buy lots of sort of cortex clothing and specialist walking boots. She went in her tweed skirt and her, you know, buttoned up the side, little healed Victorian boots. And she climbed Mount Cameroon in that outfit with her little hat on. And to me, she celebrates everything that can be amazing about being female. And that is, you know what? I'm just going to do it.

And I don't care what anyone else thinks. And it takes tremendous chutzpah. But she has that in spades. And I think her response to Africa, we have to, of course, take it in a context of the time. but it's very humane and she you know she wasn't walking around with fleets of porters and sort of you know

copper baths and boxes of claret she wasn't travelling in the way that so many male explorers travelled she was you know possibly one of the first female independent travellers doing it her way and she was very dependent almost entirely dependent on locals to show her things and to take care of things for her or on her own wits. And the book that, you know, the journey that she describes absolutely celebrates in a very

down-to-earth, unshow-offy way, somebody who went somewhere extraordinary and embraced it for what it was. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people Bayleys is the perfect adult treat whether shaken in a cocktail over ice cream

or paired with your favourite book check out baileys.com for our favourite bailey's recipes I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb join me on a journey through time with the Step Into the Past podcast. Brought to you by Family History website and sponsor of the Women's Prize for Nonfiction, Find My Past,

each episode sees us walk in the footsteps of our forebears, exploring stories from historic places and bridging the gap between the past and the present. If you love delving into true stories from years gone by, this is the podcast for you. Listen now to step into the past wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like we could do a whole podcast talking about this book, talking about your travels in Africa.

And you're so right about the importance of these different perspectives. Let's get that West African perspective. Let's go to Africa. Let's go to Nigeria. And my favorite author and someone who I feel speaks for me in so many ways to Amanda Gossi Adichie. And your third book, Chevy book, is Americana. Yeah. Just absolutely exquisite.

Ifamalu and Obinzea are young and in love when they depart, military ruled. In America, Ifamalu suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home, race. Meanwhile, Obinze plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London. 15 years later, when they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria and reignite their passion for each other and for their homeland, they face the hardest decision of their lives. I got given some notes that you'd given about this book and I really love the way that you put it. He said that Ngozi Adichia's characters are so beautifully observed and drawn. It's not a story of dramatic events but a story of life with its nuances and unexpected outcomes. It's day-to-dayness and the changes that can turn it on its head. I love the book's pragmatic

honesty and humanity that is entirely relatable. Why did you choose this over any of her other boots because every one is just amazing. They are. I think because it was the first one that I read. I didn't know about her. I think, you know, I mentioned in, you know, in the notes about the books that I'd love to highlight in this podcast that the book was recommended by a bookseller, by an independent bookseller. You know, we are so lucky in this country to have that culture. of independent booksellers, of people who are really passionate about books and who read,

properly read, and who love talking about books and love recommending them. Who can we thank for having recommended this to you? Now, this is the problem, is that I actually can remember being in the bookshop, but I can't remember exactly which bookshop it was. And I was trying to think, gosh, was it? And I don't want to credit the wrong person. So I just want to credit every wonderful independent bookseller out there because so many books that I've loved and enjoyed and wouldn't necessarily have found have come that route,

have come via that route. So as I say, I wasn't aware of her, I wasn't aware of her books. I have now since read everything. But Americana just struck me and forgive me if I'm saying something wrong here, but, you know, I'm a white middle class woman. And yet, and this is a book written by a Nigerian writer, as you say, it is about race. Her characters are Nigerian, you know, in the diaspora. And yet, for me, I didn't feel excluded as a white reader.

I didn't feel like this wasn't a book that wasn't written for me in some ways that you can. and that's what I meant about its pragmatism. She writes about a woman. And the race of that woman, the colour of that woman's skin, the birthplace of that woman is all absolutely intrinsic to her character, but it's not excluding. It doesn't cut you out if you're not that. And I think that's what's so brilliant about her writing

is that she makes it universal. She makes the experiences of that woman, even though I will never have those experiences, I will never experience life in the way that her life is portrayed. I still empathize, understand, feel it, appreciate it. And I don't know whether, as I say, I'm trying to vocalize this as honestly as I can.

It's almost like, you know, so often people look for differences and want to or somehow heighten differences. What I found about this writing was that it was very uniting, that it allowed me to understand differences that I wouldn't necessarily have thought about. even, you know, apparently insignificant things like getting your hair done or finding them right products, you know. I mean, I have curly hair and people go, gosh, where do you get your products? You know, but it's those little things that as a same gave me a greater understanding of this person, this incredibly well-drawn character that could embody so much. many people. Yeah. I felt. And it just, it was like a joining of hands reading the book. That's what

it felt like. Yeah. Her characters are so well drawn. They're so multifaceted, so complex. And yet, she makes them all philosophers without philosophizing. They take us down some very complex roots, but they sort of simplify these very difficult concepts for us in our head. It's all about character. And I know that you love people and their stories. in homemade, you tell the stories of 20 individuals who play a role in bringing food to our tables. Why did you decide to do this alongside recipes? Why were these people important to you? Because we live in an era where we're very disconnected from the root of food.

What I mean by that is that, you know, many of us, particularly in the Western world, world, buy our food online. Now, you know, if you don't live in the middle of Wales, you get your food delivered, ready cooked. You know, it's all there. So we're losing this very, to me, fundamental and enjoyable part of eating. We're missing out on the kind of evolution between ingredient and what we end up eating on the plate. And also we're losing the very human aspect of food, of what we eat. Because of course, you know, even if we're foraging, even if we're, you know, eating wild food, we have to pick it.

There's a, you know, there's a visceral connection with the blackberry that you've picked and put in your mouth. And it tastes extra special because you've done that. It's not in a plastic container over children from a supermarket or worse. You know, it's been delivered to your door ready, prepared into something else. And I've always, I am the least crafty person ever created, I think. I am, it is my greatest sadness and regret that I am just hopeless. Even when I was a little girl and somebody would give you, you know, a pot of glitter.

and some glue, it would end up literally everywhere other than on the place, you know, on the piece of paper that it was supposed to end up. I just don't have that ability to make things. So I have this unending admiration for people who can and do. And I do grow things, but quite badly. I should have properly green fingers. And everyone assumes that because I'm sort of, you know, the kind of country girl that, and I do mainly, I'm quite clean today, but often do have quite a lot of mud and possibly other things under my fingernails, that, you know, I should be able to grow things. It's a bit hit and miss, if I'm honest. So I wanted a food book that properly rooted food in its human story and where it comes from and not just where it comes from,

which are the growers and the producers that I met and whose stories I tell in the book. But also, you know, how we prepare it because that is, to me, that is the joy of food. And the joy of being connected with the thing that you finally have on your plate and you put in your mouth and you taste and it sustains you and it gives you joy. you know so I then started thinking about well what what is the process of of actually making food well you need you know you need something to collect your ingredients whether you're shopping in the supermarket or whether you're foraging or a bit of both whatever so you need a basket so I'm going to find a basket maker and then when you start cooking you might put an apron on so I need an apron maker and then you need a chopping board and you need a knife and you need a pan and suddenly you think there's all these people but are there

Are there still people out there who make these things that we know we can just buy online or go and get something mass produced and cheap from, you know, a store anywhere? And it was a great joy to me that, you know, it's one thing having an idea is starting your list in your notebook, but the other is to actually, you know, make that idea a reality. And it was a great joy to me to find that there are people out there. My rule was they needed to make a living. This needed to be their profession. I didn't want just a hobbyist, not just a hobbyist.

That's not meant in any way to be a derogatory thing. But I wanted to prove to myself as much as anything that there was a future in artisanship. And it was a great joy to find 20 people who make their living from making day-to-day utilitarian things like plates and spoons. and bowls and chopping knives and boards, or growing or producing wonderful things, artisan chocolate, you know, bread made with heritage grains, and they can make a living from it. And I dedicate the book to the brave of heart and the free of spirit

because that's what these people, I think, encapsulate. Kate, it's time to talk about your fourth book, Shelfy book now, which is three hours. by Rosamund Lupton. In rural Somerset, in the middle of a blizzard, a school is under siege. This visceral novel is told from the multiple perspectives, the wounded headmaster in the library, to the parents gathering desperate for news,

to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the students taking refuge in the school theatre or looking for their friends. They all experience the most intense three hours of their lives, where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption. What makes this book so compelling, so absorbing? I've got hairs on the back of my neck just listening to you read that beautiful

pracey of the book. This wouldn't have been necessarily a book that I would have chosen to read. Do I want to read about a school under siege, a school under siege, you know, a sort of, is it terrorism what is it you know if I'm honest and frank gosh we read about that enough in real life you know do we want our our escapism time into books to be that story is that what you want to fill your head with exactly do you want to live you know we all know that a great book kind of absorbs you completely you know you think about it you relive it you have what a friend of mine calls a book hangover from it.

This is a book hangover book. Just, you know, giving you a warning. Yeah. Well, it is, but, and as I say, I wouldn't have read it. But my husband was listening to a radio program that was, you know, talking about books. And he doesn't read much fiction. You know, he is, and, you know, I'm sure he will forgive me and other men will too. but it does tend to go the non-fiction route,

particularly when they get to a certain age. Yeah, a lot of history, a lot of politics. Absolutely the case. I think that, you know, there's stats and facts and figures that prove that is the case. So he doesn't read a lot of fiction and he doesn't read a lot of women writers either. And yet he was so persuaded by this radio program

that this was a book he should read. He read it and he said, you have to read this book. And I was captivated by it from the outset, I think because, again, it's about character. Every character in this book, and as you say, it's told from so many perspectives,

it's told in a way that is so humane. And even the, you know, the kind of the bad guys she doesn't write in a way that is, you know, there's good and bad. She manages to encapsulate the complexity of human nature and of why some good humans make bad choices. That in a way, even though those bad characters are doing something irrefutably evil, you understand why. And you still feel an element of sympathy for them.

And that's what I loved about it was, you know, we live in a world at the moment where a lot of things through social media. Nuance has gone. We've lost nuance and nuance is a wonderful thing. It gives a richness and a complexity and a thoughtfulness to a story, to a situation. and this is a book that is absolutely full of nuance and it pulls your emotions constantly from one way to the other but you never feel hate even though it's a hateful situation even though there is evil running through the book or evil intent perhaps is the best way of putting it of running through this book as a reader of the story you never feel hate

you feel empathy you feel sympathy you feel sorrow and you feel extraordinary joy and that's what's amazing about this the way that that story is told and that's what the best books do they allow us to walk in other people's shoes

and they bring us that empathy I feel like that that book hangover it makes me want to read more thrillers and that suspense is so gripping and thank you to Ludo your husband for the recommendation. I'm just going to say there's a final image

that she, you know, the final the kind of the payoff of this extraordinary story that image lives in my head and it's such a beautiful one. So thank you Rosamund Lutton for creating that image

that it's a little image if I'm feeling kind of bewildered by something that image comes into my mind. Well, from that image of a blizzard in Somerset in three hours, we move to a snowy night in Toronto for your fifth and final book that you brought today, which is Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. One snowy night in Toronto, famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening, a deadly virus touches down in North America. Now, the world

will never be the same again. 20 years later and Kristen, an actress in the travelling symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful worlds is threatened. If civilization was lost, what would you preserve and how far would you go to protect it? These are the questions asked by this book. And you read this before COVID. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, I did. It was. Again, it was a book that I probably would not have come to. I'm not, there's some dystopian fiction that I really enjoy, you know, Margaret Atwood. I mean, it was terrible trying to list these books because the Testaments would absolutely have been in there as well.

I mean, I just, I mean, the handmade's tale is great, but the Testament somehow was a whole other level. You know, I love Doris Lessing, Mara and Dan, Maggie G's ice people. but you know the sort of slightly i don't know the sort of catastrophic stories you know something like this the kind of the pandemic that's going to you know wipe out the world or change the world and there's a sort of level of fantasy in there that i'm not really interested in but again thank goodness for recommendations and this is the thing that i love about reading and writing and talking is that you know you get introduced to other worlds, other writers, other books.

And my agent who doesn't represent fiction writers but reads fiction and is somebody whose opinion I hold incredibly dear and very highly recommended this book. And I read it probably, I don't know, a couple of years before the pandemic. You know, so, you know, before any of us mere mortals were even thinking that anything like that could happen to us. And again, her writing is beautiful. Her ability

to tap into and translate the human condition and response to things, I think is amazing. There's one really memorable moment where a plane

lands at an airport and there are people waiting at this airport to get onto a plane. And the plane lands and no one gets off and they're all stuck in the airport. And there's this wonderful moment where people start to realize what they don't need anymore

and they create a museum of useless things. And I just thought it was such a lovely idea that, you know, suddenly under extraordinarily extreme and desperate circumstances is what do you leave behind? Were your phone, your high-heeled shoes.

You know, and they create this sort of museum, as I say, of things that are just not going to be any good to us anymore. And what is good for us. And I think that's what I love about this story is that when life is stripped back to survival, and it is a book about survival, but it's also a book about priority. and it's a book about, you know, if you lose everything

or you think you've lost everything, how do you find the things that give your life meaning and structure again? And what are those things? And, you know, there is all, you know, she describes beautifully this sort of chaos. It's like a, it's like throwing glitter into the air. that sort of glorious chaos or chaotic, panic-inducing chaos. But then there's a settling,

then there's a kind of a reordering, then things start to, you know, to come down a new pattern forms. And that's what this book is about. It's about how humanity might respond, does respond to chaos and to the uncontrollable. How do you? How do you? Do you bring back some semblance of order when all around you has been disrupted in a way that you have no blueprint for? And what's extraordinary about it is that it should be, or it could be, a very dark story with no light at the end of the tunnel. probably and it may be why it was a book that was then picked up during the pandemic has now been turned apparently I didn't know this but when I was looking it up again it's been turned into a TV series which I really don't want to watch because the book was so special but what I remember most acutely about it

was again that kind of final the final moment which is so incredibly hopeful in, you know, this moment of pure, bright, sharp hope in a very dark world. That hope for a lot of people during the pandemic and that new priority that I think we realised when we were all reaching around for a way to feel ourselves again. It was nature. We realised that we needed to reconnect with nature with our local environment during the lockdowns. You wrote a year of simply living just alone with your dog in a cabin in Wales, which is something that I just love. What do you, someone who's been a campaign for conservation and wildlife for so long, what do you feel we could all learn from a bit more time spent with nature?

I think we've forgotten how to, and this sounds very trite, even as I say the words, but we have forgotten how to live in the moment. We're so constantly distracted by, you know, sound and images, but all of them generated. And without wanting to sound like, you know, an old conspiracy theorist fossil, algorithms are not a good thing. They're not a good thing for creativity,

they're not a good thing. I heard somebody talking about algorithms who really knows what they're talking about said the algorithms are turning the world beige. And I really fear for that that, you know, kind of unknowingly and unconsciously we are being channeled into

you know, into liking the same stuff, wanting the same stuff, thinking in the same way, reading the same thing, whatever it is. We're doing, you know, We're heading down a highway of sameness. The glory of nature is the fact that it is never the same. You look out of your window at every minute it's different.

That view will be different. Something will be different. The temperature will be different. The smell will be different. Whatever flies past your window will be different. Nature is truly dynamic and extraordinary. and we are, even though we seem to have forgotten it, we are an intrinsic part of nature with just another mammal

that lives in part of an ecosystem that we've done terrible things to. But nonetheless, our planet is trying very, very, very hard to remind us that, you know, it's our home, it's the only one we've got, it's the only chance we've got. and if we just stop and put everything down and just look up or look down just for a moment every now and then,

I think we would be a lot happier and I think our future would be a lot more secure. Kate, on that note, I'm going to ask you one final question and it's the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, it's a question they all hate. If you had to choose one book from your list that you brought today, as a favourite to read in that nook or to read possibly on a train over outside so that we can focus on it or buy the fireplace like you described at the very beginning.

Yeah. Which would it be and why? I do hate that question. And as we all know, the joy of reading is words that seem right for the mood that you're in. Yeah, because like the nature around us, we keep changing. We keep changing. and our response to things keep changing. But I think in a funny way,

it would probably be Mary Kingsley. You know, a reminder of what women are capable of. A reminder of the joy for her of stepping away from everything she knew and everything that was comfortable into a world that was strange and often frightening and really dangerous. And yet for her just,

It opened her mind. It opened her mind not just to a whole new part of the world that she'd never seen, but it opened her mind to possibility. And that's always something that we need reminding of. A reminder that the world is so big and it is out there. We just need to go and look at it. And it's wonderful. And also, she has brilliant advice that if you are in a canoe and a crocodile tries to get into it,

you just wrap it sharply on the nose. Really good to know, to be honest. Absolutely. So thank you so much. That's fine. You'll need that when you walk down the strand. Kate Humbold, thank you so much. That's a pleasure.

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.