Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S7 Ep5: Bookshelfie: Suzannah Lipscomb

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Historian, author and broadcaster Suzannah Lipscomb shines the spotlight on women throughout history who are too often missed from books.  A distinguished historian, Suzannah is Professor Emerita at the University of Roehampton, Senior Member at St Cross College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries.  She has written and edited seven books, most recently, What is History, Now? with Helen Carr, and The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc. She has presents history programmes on the BBC, ITV, More4 and Channel 5, and she hosts the popular Not Just the Tudors podcast from History Hit.  A close friend of the Women’s Prize Trust, Suzannah is the chair of judges for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Suzannah’s book choices are: ** Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild ** The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom ** The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri ** The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis ** Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers 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.

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.com. when I went to secondary school it was a walk from our house and I would walk home

and there was a W.H. Smith in the village and I remember one day walking in there and finding a book on the shop and standing there and just reading the entire thing in the shop and then putting it down and walking home. Well, I pay for a book. It didn't occur to me. I must have been 11 or 12.

I probably didn't have the money. Walking to him from school. But walking around a lot, reading was also something I did, yeah. With thanks to Bailey's, 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. about the books you'll be adding to your 2024 reading this.

Today I am joined by Professor Susanna Lipscomb, a distinguished historian, author and broadcaster. Susanna is Professor Emerita at the University of Roehampton, senior member at St Cross College Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries. She has written and edited seven books. Most recently, What is History Now with Helen Carr and the voices of NIM, Women, Sex, and marriage in Reformation Long Dock. She has presented history series on BBC, ITV, Moore 4 and Channel 5, and she hosts the popular Not Just the Cheetahs podcast from History Hit.

A close friend of the Women's Prize Trust, Susanna, is the chair of judges for the inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction, and by the time this goes out, we will know which six books have made the first ever short list. Welcome to the podcast, Susie. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. I love that you have brought your books. sitting in front of us and you came out of it. It's a horrible day today. It's chucking it down.

It's a bit gross. But it's quite a nice effect that that has on books. Yeah, I mean, one of these books actually already looks like it's been dropped in the bath. If you look at the crumpled pages at the back. But I wanted them physically because books are beautiful objects and I remember where things are on pages as well as being ideas in the head. Well, that's it. I love to flick through it. And after it's been raining, I sort of don't mind because the pages go quite crispy and I quite like it. Yeah, there's textuality. of the whole thing. Yes, and I particularly wanted to bring some of these books because, I mean, this one I've had, well, I can't remember how long, but at least 30 years, and probably this one too. And they're just these small, lovely little books that you used to get much more, the sort of puffin penguin books are absolutely pocket-sized. And they're just wonderful. I remember them being lined up on the shelf and all of the little puffins being in a row at my grandma's house. And there was something about that. I mean, I had no idea about publishing houses or anything like that. I didn't care.

but there was something about that that meant, okay, that's my section that I'd get to dip into. Absolutely. Yes. I've got to ask you, how has it been being involved in the inaugural Women's Prize for nonfiction as the chair of judges? Because that is a lot of reading. It is a lot of reading. It's been really wonderful. So it was something that I had wanted to see happen.

And I had sort of been harping on about the need for a women's prize. And clearly, people at the Women's Prize trust have been thinking the same things. thing. So it's a kind of great moment of zeitgeist where this thing has come about. So I think it's really necessary. And the experience of doing it has been fantastic because it's such a wonderful excuse to just spend a lot of time reading. And I've read so many things I wouldn't otherwise have read. I'm a writer. And so I've learned from the experience of reading them. I thought, oh, okay, this is why this thing works. Oh, they've done it that way. Okay, well, she's done that way.

in the end, I think we've arrived at a long list and a short list that are just completely splendid. And also, I must say, the judges I've been working with are superb. So it's been such a privilege to work with them. And I think I also want to make sure that we mention all of the women who run the Women's Prize Trust, who've done such a superb job. And the reason this prize is so exciting is in being assisted to the Women's Prize for Fiction, both prizes, I think, will really shift things. I mean, the Women's Prize for Fiction has changed the literary landscape.

And it's because of the way that prize is run. There are lots and lots of prizes. And not all of them do what the Women's Prize does, which is shifting the dial on sales, changing those women's lives forever, but also bringing emerging writers forward. And it's just the whole program of events and support around the actual winner is what makes the real difference, I think. It uplifts women's voices. And we've been saying here our team on the podcast that it makes perfect sense because all of my guests, they bring a mixture of fiction and nonfiction.

We've never said that this was just a fiction podcast by any means because the books that have shaped us will often fall into both of those camps. And so it's been a really great way of just sort of completing the circle of the way in which we uplift those voices. Absolutely. And the other thing I should say about it is that there's something wonderful about the way this prize is judged, not only in kind of the practical, structural nature of it, but also in the spirit of the thing, which is, Kate Moss told me early on it's about positive judging, which is to say how a book speaks to you, that kind of positive passion as opposed to sitting and critiquing it in negative way. So we don't have much time for sitting and being rude about people's books. That doesn't happen in this judging process.

There's no point. We're trying to find the books that will make it onto the long list and then onto the short list. And so there's something very pleasant about that. And if I might be so bold, I'm sure there are lots of men who would arrive at this conclusion as well. But there's something that feels quite female about it. There's a sort of spirit of compassion and a sense. of not just trying to judge from a kind of Mount Olympus perspective, but actually to speak kindly about these books.

And as someone who writes nonfiction, I think that sort of changes it as well because you can put yourself in the shoes of any of these writers. I am interested, though. Do you tend to gravitate towards nonfiction when you're reading in your own time? Or is there not really a boundary between work and pleasure? Because, you know, it all, like you said,

it all influences the way that you write. So there certainly isn't a very profound, strong barrier between work and pleasure, but I read a lot of nonfiction for work, as it were. So a podcast, I read a lot of books that my guests have written. I read a lot for my own research, for my writing. So the sort of nonfiction I read for pleasure tends to not be that which falls into that category of research work, except that I read a lot of, books for work in inverted commas in the evenings as well. But I do read a lot of fiction and it's been really interesting actually because for the last eight months I just read nonfiction and then in coming back to reread these for today I was back

into fiction and it was rather wonderful. I mean some of my books are nonfiction but it was wonderful to be plunged back into that because it tends to be novels that I read before I sleep. Right. That's when you wind down. That's when you want to escape to those worlds. That's when you have time. Yes, that's when I have time. And it is also about absolutely that sense of escaping and going somewhere different. I mean, I spend a lot of my time in the 16th century, which is a very interesting place to be. But these books take me all over the world and to all different times. Sometimes you need a change of seeing in the 15th century. Occasionally I need electricity. Let's talk about the books that you brought today,

in front of me, nicely getting crinkled from the rain. Your first book, Shelfy Book, is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streetfield. And interestingly, actually, for the first episode of this series, we had Jacqueline Wilson sitting exactly where you are with that book in hand as well. Pauline, Petrova and Posey Fossil are sisters with a difference. All three were adopted as babies and now live with their distant relative Sylvia. And when Sylvia starts to run out of money, they hit on an inspired idea. They will attend Madam Fidolia's Children's Academy of Dance and Stage Training

and take to the stage. But it's not long before the fossils learn that being a star isn't quite as easy as they thought. Tell us about this book. You said at the very beginning you picked up and said that that's one of the ones that was on your shelf from childhood. When did you read it and why does it make your list? Yes, this copy of this book is only two years older than I am. So I think I must have read this when I was eight or nine. Or possibly it was read to me by my mother.

My mother read to me and my brother each for an hour each night, which is extraordinary now that I have a child. I think about it. So she read a lot to me. So it may have been that she read it to me first. Anyway, it was at the age when I was quite into acting and doing it at school a lot and had done quite a lot of ballet and indeed went back and did ballet again when I was older.

though it was quite amusing when I went back and did it when I was older I was 14 and I was because I'd had a gap I was in with 10 year old and I was always quite tall and you had to scrape your hair back into a little bun and I have this sort of enormous hair and a very long neck and so it always reminded me of when Alice is told it in Alice in Wonderland could all people more than a mile high please leave the courtroom because I would be this head and shoulders above them

and not nearly as good as they were but anyway what I loved about this story is the sense that the children matter. I mean, there are lots of money worries in this, and the children go out and work as soon as they're 12 to make money for the house. And I was also very touched by the fact that these three girls who are all adopted by gum, great Uncle Matthew, who has basically picked them up from corners of the world and brought them back as fossils, as he collects fossils. So that's why they're selling his fossil.

they make a vow together that they will try to make their name famous because they haven't got it from their grandfathers and that they will try to put it in the history books. Although interestingly, at the very end, Pauline, who goes off to become a film star, and Posey goes off to become a dancer, and they decide that Petrova will have to put their names in the history books because film stars and dancers are nice things to be,

but they're not important. And I think that it was the sense that you could do something to change the world, that there's a kind of hopefulness, but also that there's definitely a moral lesson here, which is about not getting too big for your boots. And Pauline at one point goes off and starts saying she won't wear this wrap that she has to wear

when she goes in the wings. She doesn't get told off, she gets told that she will not play the next day and the understudy will. And it brings her down to size. And I remember the first time I was feeling, a TV series and helping with the kit. A director said to me, oh, you won't be doing that in a year's time, because you'll get

too grand. And it reminded me of Pauline, and I thought I always will. I will always be carrying the kit. Tell me about being a child actor. How did you get into that? So I acted at school, and then my parents got me an agent, and I did various bits and pieces for TV, but sort of fell out of it when I got into my teenage years, because I was taught. as I've already said, and I looked a lot older than my years.

So at the age when I was 14, I looked 16 and they actually want someone who is 16 and looks 14 for the sake of not providing their education. But I carried on doing it at school. It was only when I went to university that I realised that everybody else was so much better than I was. And I just thought, well, okay, I think this is the moment where I step aside and don't do this anymore. It's sort of a bit of a dream. I feel like a lot of little girls would have loved, bad boys would have loved to have been in that position. Do you remember enjoying it? Do you remember how it felt?

Yes, because it's that amazing thing of being another person and inhabiting another person's shoes. And actually, I think there was more of a connection to that and being a historian than may first appear to be the case, which is that I spend all my time imagining what it is to be another person and to live in a different circumstance. So the kind of putting on of another person's costume is part of my daily pursuit. Which is something that books allow us to do as well. We manage to walk a day in all of these other characters' shoes and see the world from their perspectives and develop empathy. And the fact that your mum read to you and your brother from a young age,

it instills that and instills that passion, that curiosity. I love that she did that. Do you think that her reading to you every night impacted your relationship? with reading and also with her. Oh, yes. I mean, certainly in the latter, is that we're close have always been close. And it was my mother reading to me

and my father always reading. I mean, in fact, he's always listening to audiobooks now. But until recently, never saw him without a book in his hands, really. He was constantly reading. The walls of our house were covered with books. And, yeah, so I was an absolute bookworm. I remember one time when I went to secondary school

it was a walk from our house and I would walk home and there was a W.H. Smith in the village it's called a village but it's a sort of a town it's a suburb and I remember one day walking in there and finding a book it must have been a relatively short book

finding a book on the shelf and standing there and just reading the entire thing in the shop and then putting it down and walking home why pay for a book didn't occur to me I must have been 11 or 12

I probably didn't have them money, you know, walking to him from school. But walking around a lot, reading was also something I did, yes. So you've been immersed in these worlds right from the beginning. So let's find out about another of the books that impacted you that shaped you. Your second book, shelfy book, is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. With Europe and the Clutches of Nazism, a quiet watchmaker's family in Holland risked everything for the sake of others and their faith. In this autobiographical book written by Corrie Ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sheryl, despite the danger and threat of discovery, the Ten Boom family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews

during the Nazi occupation of Holland. But then a trap brought about the family's arrest. Could God's love shine through even in Ravens book? Now, I've got here that you read this book when you were 11 or 12, which it feels quite young for such a heavy subject matter. I say that, but then I think back to some of the books we read at school at that age, and they were quite often about war. What drew you to pick this up? I have no idea. I can't remember that at all,

but I did read books that were too old for me. I remember reading Jane Eyre when I was nine. It took me three months, and much easier a few years later. But I think I did sort of go for things that were a little bit of a stretch. This isn't particularly in terms of as a read. But the subject matter is, I think, And it is an amazingly inspiring book.

It takes you into a completely different situation, which is this is Harlem in the 1930s. And then, actually, rereading it was interesting because I'd forgotten quite how much of the book is in their ordinary life. She's the daughter of a watchmaker, the Ten Boom family on this street in Harlem, how they don't have much money,

but there's huge amounts of hospitality. And Ravensbrook is really only the last few chapters, but that had been the bit that had really impressed itself upon me. And what they do is that they hide Jews in their house. And Corrie becomes the sort of centre of an underground, really, where everybody's known as Mr Schmidt and they don't know, but nobody knows each other's details, but they house those who are being hunted in the occupied Netherlands by the Nazis.

And they have a room built into their house. the hiding place, into which these people can go if they have a raid. And in the end, they do. They are raided. Somebody has given them away. And she writes of the sort of despair of having to leave the bag that she had packed in case they were ever arrested. She has a bag of emergency things like a toothbrush and other necessaries. And she has to leave it because she has flung it down next to the door to the hiding place, the hidden door and she doesn't want to draw attention to it. It is brutal. You know, they go into Ravensburg, but it's never sensationalist. It's never sort of gratuitous

violence. And what is amazing about it, what stands out from it, is the way that she and her sister Betsy particularly have a hope and have a faith and forgive. Betsy, when she sees people in the camp being mistreated says, oh, I feel so terribly for them. And Corrie says, yes, of course, about the people who are being mistreated. And then she realizes that Betsy is also talking about the guards. And she is talking about the way that they must be in such a dark place to get to the point of treating people like that. And that compassion that she has and vision that Betsy has, Betsy dies in the camp. But she has a vision for what will happen afterwards, which is what Corrie he does, which is open a house for those who've been in concentration camps for healing.

This hope and this vision and this faith and this feeling that even though you're a child, you could change the world, you could make things better. Is this something that you could relate to or that resonated with you that you felt at that age of reading at age 11, 12? Absolutely. And that the sense of the power of God, the power of good, the power of love and the sense that there is a way to overcome even the greatest of evils. People might be more familiar with this from Viktor Frankl's book perhaps, but it's very much here in Cori Temboom's work that whilst you cannot change what happens to you externally, you always have a freedom to choose how you respond.

and so much of the time we're captives to our own minds. And once you've read about someone being resourceful and hopeful and compassionate in Ravensbrook, then you really does put things in perspective. And, you know, Betsy, for example, at one point when they first turn up and they've come from another concentration camp, but they first turn up at Ravensbrook and they're in this barracks that has sort of, fleas and she says to Corey Cori we must thank God for everything and we must thank him for the fleas

and Corey's like what are you talking about I'm not going to thank him for the fleas you're not you know and as time goes on and Betsy doesn't quite say I told you so but as time goes on they discover that the guards never come into that barracks and it's ultimately because of the fleas so they have a kind of place of freedom

and solidarity and community there and they meet and they worship and they uplift each other. Anyway, so it is just the most amazing read because it is one of those books that breaks you out of your solipsistic little world and makes you think about what other people have endured and how they've managed to find the resources to do that with grace.

It's a history book. In so many ways it's a historical story and so much of history is telling lost stories, recreating lost lives, which is what's happening here. What is it that draws you to history? Well, it's exactly what you've just said. It's this sense often that we have told those lives inaccurately. We've misrepresented those people.

There's a sense when you're a historian that you're the barrister for the deceased. You're kind of putting their case. as well as, of course, the detective and who's done the investigation in the first place. But when I was writing Voices of Niem, for example, which is about ordinary women in 16th century France, I had a sense that I wanted to make their stories sing. I wanted to make them known to history. I wanted to put them in the history books like the fossils, because I felt that these are women who are just completely written out of history.

Most women who've ever lived do not appear in history. You know, women throughout the ages have been illiterate. We haven't got their diaries. We haven't got their letters. They didn't own enough to have wills. They were unable to testify under much of law for many centuries when they were married. And so we don't know about their lives. And so to find evidence that tells us that felt very important to me. But it's true even of more famous women. So now I'm working on Henry the 8th's queens. And when writing about them I find that they've been misrepresented awfully. I mean, were terrible misogynistic bias over centuries and trying to overturn that

and have a sense of who they actually were and do them justice is important to me. Oh, the realisation that history books, those who've decided to write the history, those who've decided to teach the history that there's an agenda there because there's power there was such an illuminating thing

when I was a child. I remember and the only reason it became clear was because we learned in French at the word for history and story. East Douache were the same. Same in Spanish. History. And I was like, oh, hello. It's just a story. It depends who decides to write it. And knowing that and then seeing work like your own and those stories being told that have been hidden for so long, it's so important. And we're in a really important age for the writing of history because people are starting to do this and starting to use techniques and finding resources, finding texts and documents and from the past that are useful to it. But it's about asking the right questions and it's about the right people doing it as well. So each person who comes to right history

has a unique perspective. And I always say to younger scholars who are sort of worrying that there's not space for them or what are they going to bring. You have a perspective that no one else has and You can ask questions of this material that no one else would think to ask. And that's what we need. We need that diversity of voices or diversity of questioners in order to have history that represents all the people who ever lived. And it can be rewritten again and again and again. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize of fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people.

Bailey's is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favourite book. Check out baillies.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. It's time to talk about your third bookshelfy book now, Susie, which is The Namesake by Jumper Lahiri. Brought up Indian in suburban America, Gogol Ganguly soon finds himself itching to cast off his name, which he feels as awkward, just as he longs to leave behind the inherited values of his Bengali parents. And so he sets off on his own path through life, a path strewn with conflicting loyalties, love and loss. Spanning three decades and crossing continents,

Jumper Lahiri's debut novel is a triumph of humane storytelling. Why did this book make your list? Well, it's a very beautiful novel. She was already known for the interpretive maladies when she published this with her first novel, as you said. I suppose it came into time when I was reading a lot around India and the Indian diaspora. I had gone to India in my late teens

and spent quite a bit of time there and had decided that that was where I was going to make my life and have my career. And I went back, started at university and learned Indian languages, and that was the plan. And it didn't work out. This is about the immigrant experience.

I never became an immigrant and I'm not trying to appropriate that experience. but there was a sort of a sense in which the themes of cultural collision in this novel spoke to me that you may want to be one thing but you are another or you're trying to be two things at once. And that I think was what was happening to me in my early 20s when I was trying to resolve this question of what I was going to do and what I was going to be because going to India at 1819 was completely transformative to me. it sort of changed the way I saw the world entirely. Why do you think that is?

Well, it was the level of need, I suppose. I remember coming back and having kind of reverse cultural shock. I remember, after my first trip, buying a round for friends, which I vividly remember, this detail I wouldn't otherwise remember. It cost four pounds. Imagine a round for four pounds. What was this? It was a very long time ago.

I'm very old. I think it was only three drinks, maybe two, let's say, let's say three. And knowing that that was four days' income for the people I'd just been with the previous week. And that sort of blew my mind, that reverse cultural shock of thinking about how much I had and how much they didn't. And feeling that that had to be a kind of a yardstick, I suppose, from then onwards, that that had to be born in mind at all times. And also just, it's cliche. There are so many truisms about going to India and being at that sort of impressionable age. But all the things they say about their sort of assault on the senses and the smells and the colours and all that stuff.

I mean, it's all true. And the fact that actually things were quite difficult, it actually was quite difficult to get along. And he had to focus quite a lot of attention on the business of existing and getting food and getting from one place to another. I suppose, thinking about it now, it was quite mindful. I couldn't be in my head too much. The sort of thrill of making it safely down. a mountain and a bus and then finding some food and a street call. All this is stuff you're just so focused on the daily affairs that it was quite enlivening.

Navigating every day in a way that is necessarily mindful, it can leave you feeling really invigorated and I guess as well that ability to root yourself in another culture, especially in your late teens, early 20s, you relish it. There's something really, really special about that. What did you love so much culturally about your experience? It's hard because I want to say everything. I mean, I became very attached to wearing some sort of English approximation of Cháu Kameas. And it's so funny.

I'm so impressionable because I walked around Oxford for years wearing a skirt over my trousers. Then I went to live in France later in my 20s and became much more sort of low-cut tops. But it was also very much about culture. It was about things like, again, fairly obvious but such as rye and the sort of, filmmaking and I learned Hindi and Urdu and I became, you know, had many Indian friends and it sort of became a sense of a completely different set of literary sources, a completely different set of filmic sources that enriched my cultural experience. And although you didn't end up going back to live there, do you feel that stayed with you

and who you've become? Yes, I certainly went back many, many times, have been back many, many times and it has stayed with me. The other thing that I should say is this book is about names and about Gogol's. He has his pet name, which is the sort of house name, Duknam, which becomes used generally for him instead of his good name, Nikar. And that idea of who one is, I suppose, is very important. It also speaks to my friend that I knew by her house name Mito, who when And I was, who I met studying Urdu and who was a dear friend and who died when we were 27. And so I had had a lot of time in India with her.

And she was a, you know, she was a great dear friend. And I don't know. There's something about the sense of loss in this novel that reminds me of her. I'm so sorry for your loss. Do you feel like perhaps this book or having that solace in a novel that takes you back to the time that can almost help with the grieving? it almost gives you somewhere to go. I think that's so important, but I also think that grief is the other side of the coin to love

and that we should want to feel that, really. We should want to be able to go to a place where we remember and experience them in the pages of a novel because what we want really is for our love to be expanded. We don't want to try and squash it. it down or suppress it or rationalise it in any way or make it any smaller, we

wanted to fill out into the universe and so going and having these moments of encounter with someone who is dead is a very special thing. I think that whilst people who love someone survive, that person isn't completely dead.

And sometimes when we're searching for the words, if we can see them on the page of a book because they're not coming. It can really help and it can give us the tools with which to, and it comes in waves to ride that wave wherever it might take us. Susie, your fourth book today is the return of Martin Gere by Natalie Zeman Davis. Martin Gere, a 16th century French peasant, goes off to war,

abandoning his wife Bertrand de Rose. Twelve years later, he returns, remembering everything from before, for his departure, but now apparently much more loving and good. But three years and a child later, Martin is exposed as an imposter, a man called Arnold Adil, who only looked like Martin and who could brilliantly act the part. The return of Martin Gare celebrates the creation of literary legends and the remarkable psychological grey line where self-fashioneding stops and lying begins. Why did this resonate with you?

Well, most historians, I think, might pick this or something like, it, Natalie Zima Davis, who has recently died, was an astonishing scholar for changing the way we do history, particularly around the 16th century, 16th century France. And this is an amazing story of this imposter who she had been asked to research it for a film and then decided to try and get into those things that you can't have in a film, this sort of imaginative of possibilities that you can only put on a page and found the historian of Mautanguer and his wife who almost certainly must have been on it. A woman knows her husband, although what's really interesting about it is that she plays it out

and then there's a point at which she decides to say, possibly with Arnold's blessing, that she had made a mistake all along and she didn't know it was him and she's so repentant. and she's saving herself. She's saving their children. So what I love about it is that it delves into the lives of 16th century peasants. And she chose this woman particularly. I mean, Arnold Detila is an incredible actor, of course, as well and has somehow managed to convince the whole village that he is,

well, not the whole village, by the end, someone doubting, but originally he convinces them that he is Martangir. And she acts with extraordinary imagination. and extraordinary gumption. And it made me think, well, that obvious thing that women in the past had exactly all those qualities that we have. We just don't know about it. And so it was the inspiration for me to go and do my work actually on women in 16th century France.

So Natalie Ziamondav has kind of created this ground in which I thought, wow, I've got to work on that. I mean, reading this in your early mid-20s, it sort of shapes the women that, you were becoming and that dedication to wanting to tell those stories. You've said previously history neglected is as troubling as history erased. And you know, you enjoy the stories of normal people as well as the kings and the queens. How has all of this played into your own work? Well, it's been absolutely fundamental to it. So it's been that sense of considering that all of these lives matter. And

I was the other day, I'm on a board of trustees and they were talking about high net worth individuals. And I said, I really don't like that phrase because I think we're all high net worth individuals. Anyway, the sounds very pious. But I feel that we're trying to get at people in the past and we're trying not to condescend to them. You know, E.P. Thompson called the enormous condescension of posterity. We're trying not to condescent to them. We're trying to get at who they really were. And we can only do that imperfectly.

And we've got often fragmentary evidence, and that's more the case for women, and it's more the case for people of colour. And yet we've got to try and write histories that aren't just about the people and power in the past, because otherwise we just perpetuate that idea of who should be powerful. And there's such a reduction of really everyday things that are really big,

case in point being pregnancy. Now, I love something that you said about writing about women throughout history, birthing so many children, married women were, on average, pregnant every other year of their wedded lives, which is extraordinary when you think about it. Why is that not spoken about more? Sarah Not wrote this great book called Mother, which talks about the way that Mother is a verb as much as anything else. And in that she explains that it has always taken two hands. to hold a baby. You don't have another one to write down the minutia of your daily experience. You're

rocking the cradle or occasionally when letters are written, you know, narrative breaks off because the baby cries and is interrupted. And I really found this when I became a mother that there's a whole secret history that happens between you and your child that they never know because it has formed who they are. I really, when people say, well, it doesn't matter, they won't remember. I'm like, no, it's much more fundamental than that. It's about creating who they're going to be in the future rather than their conscious memory. But it's only known by the mother or the father and because father's mother too, if you do what I mean. I think that so much of that experience is lost to us.

I mean, as you say, it's been the universal experience of married women. Occasionally people were unable to have children and that was its own grief and shame for them in the past. but vast majority of the time they couldn't control how many children they had imagine that imagine being pregnant every other year the toll of pregnancy on the body the toll of childbirth

the toll of having so many small children to look after there was nothing it means that women were so often unable to do anything else because all they're doing is looking after children and the way that the propagation of the species has been paid for

with women's bodies but also with their minds because that was all they involved in. And it's an amazing and awe-inspiring and wonderful thing to be a mother. But it was also entirely mundane and boring and irritating as well. And there's a balance. We are people of the mind as much as of the heart and we want both. And we're still working it out. We're still working out what that means for us,

even though we have now the luxury of birth control. We've arrived at your fifth. Shelfy book, Shelfy Book now, Susie Witch's Gordy Knight by Dorothy Elsayers. Harriet Vane has never dared to return to her old Oxford College. Now, despite her scandalous life, she has been summoned back. At first, she thinks her worst fears have been fulfilled, as she encounters obscene graffiti, poison pen letters, and a disgusting effigy when she arrives at Sedate Shrewsbury College for the gaudy celebrations.

But soon, Harriet realizes that she is not the only target of this murderous malice, and asks Lord Peter Wimsy to help. Now this is the 12th book in the series. Have you read them all? Just pick this one. There are one or two I haven't read that I am keeping for some future need. But I have read most of them

and I've read all the Harriet Vine ones and a lot of the early Lord Peter Wimsy mystery. So this is a detective novel, you know, in theory, at least. You said for like when you're going to need it, why would that be? Are they rainy day books? Are they holiday books? They are total solace.

Great. I know. I've got a book by Rehinton Mystery that I am keeping for one time when I need it as well. You know you have these books that you know are going to be amazing. You're going to have a wonderful experience with them. So that's what Sayers books are. But they're also so much more than that. I mean, they're deeply clever.

Her characters are so learned. And yet then you realize that she must be. But they're very, very clever. They're laugh out loud, funny. and this one is the best of the lot as far as I'm concerned. Why is this one your favourite? Well, because it's got so much Harriet Vane in it. So in earlier books, they're quite fun

and they're sort of detective novel with this aristocratic detective, Peter Wimsy. But here we're following Harriet for most of the book. And so we've met her in some earlier books, and he, a bit of a plot spoiler, but he saves her from being hanged in one previous novel. and then they've worked together on another case, but he's been asking her to marry him for years, and she has not said yes, and she has consistently refused, but she respects him, and I think it's

because she doesn't want to marry in part as well, but in this book, we're following things from her perspective, and we get her character, and I just, I love Harriet Vane's character, because she's quite prickly and sharp and perhaps a little unforgiving at times, but she's also thoughtful and intelligent and you sympathise with her as she tries to wrestle with this problem. So the problem she's trying to wrestle with in the end is coming to realise that she loves this chap,

but that what do you do as a woman if you want to make your mark in the world, especially in 1935, do you have to choose the heart over the head? Can you be a scholar as well as a wife? And this is again, before the pill, it's a big question. Well, we were just talking about motherhood and those decisions that you have to make. I even feel like that conflict between head and heart came up when we were talking about the hiding place as well

in our moral compasses and how we fare with this. choice. Is that something that you feel like you're struggling? We all do, let's face it. I think it is in the lot of being a human, actually. I mean, and certainly in the lot of being a woman, it's frankly a choice I'm making an almost daily basis. I have a child. So I come in when he comes back from school and say hello and he always says, Mommy come and play with me. and I have to say, I've got to go back to work. I'll be back in an hour or whatever. I mean, obviously now he's learned to play the heartstrings quite well,

but that sense that it's a daily thing one is choosing. Choosing between a career and having a family, which is not a choice that historically men have had to make. And we were talking just before about those steps in the right direction. Do you feel like it gets easier? I mean, it certainly is extraordinary, read a book that's written in the 1930s and it feel quite so relevant. And I don't think there is a simple answer here.

That's the problem. Children still have weeks off school where someone has to look after them. It's like, oh my goodness, the holidays are approaching. Now, I'm very lucky. I have a husband who has a career that allows him to be present a lot. But I have friends who have the husband's the main breadwinner. And so the childcare naturally falls on the woman. Or you have to make so much money that you've got nannies or constant care.

Or you've got to have grandparents nearby who are willing to take on the burden. But there always needs to be somebody holding the child, you know. So that makes it tricky. It absolutely does. And it's not just about the before I was a mother, I thought it was just a question of the practicalities of the thing. Although I don't think I'd quite realized the sort of 24-7 nature of it, And those heartstrings.

But it's the heartstrings. It's the heartstrings. It's actually that a lot of the time you actually would rather be with your child than at some event that came to further your career in some way. It's those bedtimes missed or whatever. Actually, it's, you know, the thing about having a child is sort of everybody who's had a child knows this is a fairly sort of old hat. But still, it's like being in love in those first months when you meet someone and fall in love. except you never come out of those first few months. So you feel that sense towards your child.

Your child probably feels completely different towards you and that's entirely they're right. But as a parent, you just, you're in love. So, you know, when you first met somebody and you're, you know, your partner or whatever and you wanted to be with them all the time, it's like that, but it's your child. So you've got that to wrestle with, but then you also love your work. You know, it's a tricky one. Oh, you want to be with them all the time, but quite a lot of the time they want to do very mundane things that you don't want to be doing.

You know, that's, no, I don't want to play Domino's. again. And Christianly throughout all of this, you still only have two hands. Yes, and only 24 hours in the day. And at some point you realize that really you ought to be giving a good number of those to sleep if you want to be any good at anything. Just to come back to the very first thing we talked about when we started chatting, your mother reading to you as a child, have you carried that on with your son? Oh yes, we read a lot. I'm currently in negotiations to reduce it from four books a night. you know, because they're getting bigger, you know. But we read a lot together and I love doing that with him. Well, Susie, I've absolutely loved the journey that you've taken me on through all of these novels and non-fiction books as well. If you had to, and you do, I'm saying if you do, have to choose one book as a favourite, which would it be and why?

Which is the one that you're going to read over and over? It would either be Gordy Knight or the whole. hiding place because they both take much re-reading. I think probably in the end it would be the hiding place because it is the one that boosts me the most, that makes me into a better person. I mean, I think that's a ringing endorsement. Well, thank you so much. I feel like for our listeners, there's some amazing recommendations here that they may or may not have thought to explore. So thank you for bringing all these books to us and for taking us through your history, through the prism of the books that you've loved. Thank you. 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.