Dan Snow's History Hit - Charles Dickens

Episode Date: December 6, 2020

In today's episode, I was joined by John Mullan, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has published extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, and is a wealth of knowledge on all things Dickens. We discuss the man himself and his writings, and the unique Victorian context in which inspired the great novelist. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. As we get ready for Christmas this year, our minds inevitably turn to Charles Dickens, the author that we associate with Christmas, its cheer, its hospitality, its warmth, and its hot fruit punch. You'll have seen me in previous years nursing a gigantic hangover from the History Hit Christmas party, which was the night before, cooking with the wonderful Penn Vogler, cooking Dickensian recipes. He was a hugely enthusiastic host and he was very particular about what he served his guests. And so you can go and check that out on History Hit TV to laugh at the pain I'm in, but also revel in the Christmassy fare that Dickens would have produced.

But this is a podcast about less about Christmas and more just about the man himself and his writing. I was really lucky to spend time with John Mullen. He's a professor of modern English literature at University College London. He just seems to know everything about 18th and 19th century literature and there's a lot of it so goodness knows what's inside that big brain of his. He was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. He helped to launch the wonderful Hilary Mantel on her road to stardom. And it was just a great opportunity to sit down and talk about one of the greatest writers who's ever lived. Just a huge privilege. If you do want to go and check out the Dickensian Christmas film on History Hit TV, it's the new history channel

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You can buy amusing knitted knight's hats or crocheted knight's hats. I'm remaining above the fray on that one. And you can buy one of our best-selling history hoodies as well. Nelson, Richard III, it's all there. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy John Mullen. John, hello. How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. I've had my crunchy nut cornflakes, I'm okay. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Crunchy nut cornflakes?

Yeah, that gives me an artificial high for about 20 minutes. You're darned right. I did that thing where I didn't let my kids know that they existed, and the other day I fed them to the nine-year-old, and she looked at me just going, you know, where has this been all my life? And I'm like, I know, dude. That's irreversible, I'm afraid.

I know. And I have this list of things that I give her, or that she comes to me, Oreos. And I'm like, they're on the list. I know, you know, and little does she know what's coming up on that list. My God, the treats they're in store.

Anyway, thank you very much. Is Dickens the greatest novelist in the English language? I think he's the greatest sentence writer in the English language I don't think that's quite the same as the greatest novelist he's one of the handful of greatest novelists the thing about Dickens is that his virtues are also his vices so he's not he's not like Jane Austen a kind of faultless novelist he's a novelist who's full of excesses and sometimes things which irk even the most devoted Dickensian like myself, but he's also endlessly sort of ebullient and inventive. So, you know, you never know what the next sentence is going to be like. And in that sense of kind of reading for excitement, he's the most exciting English novelist, I think.

Yeah, I think that's interesting you say that. The thing about the Irkings, I mean, I find some of the coincidences a bit tiresome. You know, it emerges that, in fact, they're all related at the end of... Yeah, well, there's a chapter in my book which is a sort of defence, not more than a defence, a sort of advocacy, actually, of these coincidences. Because actually, most good novelists use coincidences, but usually, they kind of smuggle them in. So, you know, Jane Eyre is full of coincidences, and Middlemarch turns on coincidences. Yeah, George Eliot's full of coincidences. I mean, there's so much

coincidence there. But what Dickens does is he starts off, I think, early in his career, sort of falling back on coincidences in novels like Oliver Twist. But then later on, he takes this kind of weakness of novels and makes it a sort of virtue. So there's a bit, I don't know, for instance, there's a bit near the end of David Copper, where David gets to visit as an adult a model prison. And the model prison is run by his former headmaster, Mr. Creakle. And you think, oh, that's a bit of a coincidence, but maybe a satisfying one. It's the kind of thing he would do. And Mr. Creakle says at the end of the tour of this ghastly institution, oh, you must see our two model prisoners. And they open the first door and there is Littimer, Steerforth's butler, sort of oozing respectability in this sinister way.

And then he says, well, this is our second most model prisoner, but the next door, now this guy really is our model prisoner. And the door begins to open. You think, I know who it's going to be. And it's Uriah Heep, of course, whose habits of humility have recommended him to the prison authorities as being the top prisoner. And he comes out saying, I'm so grateful for being a prisoner. And it's the most absurd coincidence and the most brilliant coincidence, because of course, that's where those two people psychologically deserve to end up. Yes, I give you that. That's for sure. But you've got Mr. Brownlow

that turns out to be Oliver Twist's grandfather in Oliver. And then obviously the gigantic coincidence in Tale of Two Cities as well. But you're right. You forgive him more than you do, say, George Eliot, because what he doesn't do as much is... I always think with George Eliot, there's almost no problem in George Eliot

that couldn't be solved with a mobile phone and some contraception. You know, there's less, oh, if only we'd been at the bridge an hour earlier, we'd have avoided this whole great tragedy that subsequently unfolded. Well, I'm not sure that's fair to George Eliot, really. I think George Eliot, the tragedies always happen

because people don't understand each other. That's why they happen. OK. But I mean, the point is they're very different kinds of writers, aren't they? And that Dickens, I think that you talked about Mr. Brando and Oliver Twist. I think at that stage, you know, it's his second novel. He is still, I mean, it's like a fable, isn't it? It's like a fairy tale.

And he's using coincidences because he has to, to get it to work. But I think coincidence is one of those things that Dickens takes, which is usually a sort of an error or a failure of taste of a kind of more polite writer and makes it a virtue. And I think that's one of the great things about him that he takes from cliches to repetition to coincidences, he takes all these things which writers aren't supposed to do and does them. I agree. But can I ask a kind of big, for the historians of this podcast, we're all fascinated by Dickens as a 19th century observer and chronicler, as as a writer of fiction and I picked up hard times

the other day partly because it's the shortest Dickens novel but also it just is one that is just unbelievably powerful talking about this new economy and the way it just absorbs and obliterates the lives of the characters in this mill town, Coke town I think it was called. in this mill town, Coke town, I think it was called. Where are we on Dickens's politics, on the importance of time and place for Dickens as a writer? Well, I think that the time and placeness for historians gets sort of less specific through his career in a way. So in Oliver Twist, he's writing about reforms to the poor law of a specific kind, which have just gone through Parliament. In Nicholas Nickleby, he's writing about these terrible Yorkshire schools, which actually existed at the time. And I always think, you know, his last

completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, begins with a sentence which sort of, I think, represents where he got to, where he says, in these times of hours, though concerning the exact year, there's no need to be precise, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And so he becomes a writer of these times of hours, but not of a specific year or specific kind of political arguments that are going on. And even in hard times, it seems to me as a kind of brilliant, bleak satire on what always got his goat most, which was the sort of brilliant rational schemes of managers and politicians and reformers. And actually, often, I think, I don't think Dickens, he was more radical when he was younger, but by his middle age, he wasn't really politically radical, because he

often thought that the worst things happened when people had brilliant ideas for reforms to make things better. And they sat around in committees, and they'd all read Jeremy Bentham and or Mugg's Guide to Jeremy Bentham and they had a great idea of how to solve things and that actually Dickens often thought was the most dangerous thing of all. Yeah and you see that with we're sort of painfully undoing and learning so many of the lessons of the 19th century also also in decisions made, whether it's filling up our atmosphere with carbon or draining the fens or whatever it might be. I think that Dickens feels quite modern in that way. And also his Tale of Two Cities feels fairly patriotic

in a sort of small-c conservative Anglophile way, doesn't it? Yeah, it is. is it is i mean it but it's a question everybody big question sorry no no it's i mean it is but also you know it is in some ways a bleakly conservative novel because it's an account of what happens when a combination of the cruelty of traditional hierarchy and the kind of Leninist schemes of a few radicals combine. I don't think Dickens thought of it as a sort of, that that was a French ailment alone. I mean, I think he thought it was a human ailment. Yeah, I find those scenes in Soho curiously comforting, though, when he builds this, you get a sense, there's a whiff of this sceptred isle, sort of exceptionism of the happy way that

jolly England has gone in those little chapters. It feels so safe and comfortable. England has gone in those little chapters. It feels so safe and comfortable. Yeah, I mean, it is an historical novel, isn't it? And yeah, I think he thinks that in a sort of Dr. Johnson-like way that British sort of truculence and irreverence are kind of national virtues which might preserve us from the horrors of revolution. Yeah, and again, he pressures the 20th century. You read about whether it's the Russian Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, you're just left with a profound sense that you wish that everyone could have lost. And that, of course, he gives us, he brilliantly articulates that with the evil aristocracy in France. Of course, I mean, he gets it, you know, he gets a lot of it from Thomas Carlyle,

whom he loves and admires. And I think that Dickens thought that A Tale of Two Cities was, to some extent, a novelisation of what Carlyle had taught everybody. And one of the kind of weird, interesting things is, of course, Carlyle's French Revolution, which I don't think is read much anymore, because it's so vast. But it's difficult to sort of overemphasise how admired it was in his own day. And one of the weird things about it is like a Hilary Mantel

novel, it's written in the present tense. And extraordinarily, no historical narrative had been like this before, as if you're living it out day to day. And Dickens nicked that too. So one of the things that he introduced to his novels, most famously in Bleak House, I guess, was sort of interleaving narrative in the past tense, where you're standing above it all, you understand what has happened because you're looking back, and narrative chapters in the present tense, where it's all just unfolding without a pattern, accidentally, randomly, and he got that from Carlyle. That's fascinating. Again, talking about the place that he occupied within history, you mentioned he became less radical as he got older. Are we to believe David Copperfield is the most biographical novel? Is that just a cliche? No, I think that's absolutely true because Dickens admitted it was. And, you know, when he wrote his other semi,

well, there's bits of his life, of course, in other things like The Debtor's Prison in Little Dorrit, but Great Expectations, his other wholly first person novel, when he sat down to write it, before he wrote it, he re-read David Copperfield to try and save himself from replicating these kind of autobiographical elements, which he knew he'd put in David Copperfield. So, you know, after all, it's the story of somebody who becomes a novelist. Exactly. But also the story of someone who, now you mention it becomes a little bit more i think a little bit more establishment he loses because his childhood is so unbelievably crap and he see you know he works in the bottle fight he absolutely works in those grinding conditions and he's shafted by the kind of intellectual the education

establishment he's sent to very traditional and yet And yet Copperfield doesn't seem to carry that radicalism or that trauma through to the last few chapters, which he feels very content. And I wonder if that also reflects Dickens's journey. I don't know, because I was comparing it to Great Expectations. And the striking thing about that novel, which I think is a wonderful, wonderful book is, but it's the opposite of what you've just said. It's a novel whose protagonist, you know, crawls up, climbs up, is obsessed with social mobility, gets a kind of bequest from out of nowhere, which he misinterprets, which is going to make him a gentleman. But the whole novel is looking back with kind of, you know, really sort of sometimes

crippling self-condemnation about the illusions of social mobility. It's a novel about apparent social mobility. And that's clearly as true a novel for Dickens as David Copperfield was. So I think it is the case, you know, Dickens is the most self-made great novelist in the English, in Britain anyway, writing in Britain ever. And that is really important to the way he writes and really crucial. He was proud of that, you know, he was proud of that. So you might say David Copperfield reflects that, the capacity to sort of win through by dint of your own energy and talent. And Dickens had the attitudes to sort of money and possessions and things of somebody who came from that background. Never has earning money been more important to a great writer. But it was all because, and yet he satirises, of course, throughout his fiction,

the obsession with wealth and money. But that's a natural paradox because he felt that he got it all for himself. And then his descriptions of, have become famous obviously of Christmases, but also of hospitality, of food, of drink, of companionship. They feel so important in Dickens's novels. And is that a product of someone who grew up without those material comforts? Yes, I think it is. And I think it's the product of somebody for whom those comforts were really a big deal throughout his life you know sometimes my students say to me what did he spend his money on and apart from spending it on his various feckless relatives whom he had to sustain he spent a lot of it on

hospitality it might be worth saying at a time when Dickens the the person, stands rather low in public repute, I think, that if you knew him, you were the beneficiary of the greatest parties, evenings, dinners that anybody could enjoy. And that was a really big thing for him. He was always having parties, really, in the grand style. parties really in the grand style and of course for his children and so on but actually for a huge kind of community of of friends and acquaintances and then he would end the party at two in the morning and walk to Rochester from London you know. Speaking of those parties I've often thought you know when people ask you your ideal historical dinner party you're supposed to say you know Julius Caesar and Karl Marx. Socrates. Yeah, Socrates.

Surely the answer is actually a real dinner party that did take place in 19th century England, where Dickens and a few of his mates all got round. I mean, there must have been some real dinner parties that actually are the best ever. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And usually ending, I mean, if that's your predilection, usually ending with either games or amateur dramatics or conjuring. You know, Dickens, I just didn't know when I started writing my book, but Dickens was a very accomplished amateur conjurer. And his favourite, no, really, he was really, really good because, you know, as an historian, you might know that it became, It was a big fashion from about the 1830s or 40s in London was live magicians on the stage. And a whole new generation of sort of nascent Paul Daniels's appeared. They were often from Europe and they were a big attraction. And Dickens went to see Conjurers in London and he was intoxicated.

And he learned some of the tricks himself and his big party piece was putting all the ingredients for a Christmas pudding into a big top hat and pulling out a steaming pudding and Carlisle's wife Jane Carlisle saw him doing this at some house party on the Isle of Wight and said, he's better than these guys on the stage. He's better than the pros. He's very, very good at that. So you might get that, you know. So it wasn't a question of sitting around having elevated conversation. It was entertainment all the way. You're listening to History Hit. John Mullen's back talking about Dickens after this. John Mullen's back talking about Dickens after this. stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or

fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week speaking of entertainment how how should we think about dickens's but i mean we we're famously told they were serialized they were sort of cliffhangers, this was soap opera for the Victorian... I mean, who was reading, buying? I mean, how educated were these people? Were they the elite?

Were they genuinely everybody? Or were they this new artisanal class with a few pennies to spare? Like, who's his audience? I think you've got it right. A new artisanal class with pennies to spare is probably quite a good way of getting it. I mean, he did, as you say, pioneered these forms of serialisation weekly or monthly.

And that meant that things sold much more cheaply over a much longer period. And he, slightly to the disdain of some of his contemporaries, he sold as nobody had ever sold before. And that was really important to him. But it's still the case that the majority of his readers were what we might now call middle class, albeit quite a lot of them would be lower middle class. You know, they were clerks rather than lawyers who were buying these things. And of course, reading them aloud because they were written to be read aloud. So lots of people became familiar with his stories. I think particularly when they were in the weekly versions,

you know, Great Expectations published weekly, a penny a copy of all the year round. Quite a lot of people could afford that and maybe read it aloud in the pub or something. You know, and actually Great Expectations features a scene where a character is reading aloud from the paper in the pub. And so it did reach down a long way. You know, these things rather like nowadays,

people think they often know Dickens' stories without having read them. They were also put on stage, adapted in cheap forms. So the knowledge of something like Oliver Twist percolated a long way down. But yeah, I mean, most of the readers were still people who had at least some money to spare to buy entertainment. And so that's really interesting. They're meant to be read aloud. Have you then presumably listened to them all aloud? What do you get that's different when you read them

to when you listen to them? There are things which you sort of, if you're a good reader, notice without reading aloud, but which are really much clearer when you do. So little things. Okay, one of the things Dickens became a great, I think, artist of was people's voices, characters' voices, what linguists call idiolexa. Everybody has their own voice. And we know that when he wrote, he sort of practiced these.

You know, he practiced the looks in front of the mirror, but he also practiced the voices. is the voices. And you can sort of see that on the page, sort of, but once you have to perform it, you can hear it really, really clearly. When you do Mr. Dorrit, William Dorrit, with his endless sort of fake ethical sort of little hesitations and qualifications and his hums and haws. Dickens is, I think there aren't many 19th century novelists who include the way people talk, the little noises they make, which aren't even words, hums and haws and coughs. And he's writing as if it's a musical score for you, for him to perform, but for anybody to perform perform so i mean that's that's one example i think quite a lot of other ones he he writes rhythms of sort of repetition which which when you look at them seem to be kind of rather kind of crude but then when you perform them make perfect

sense yeah and obviously you mentioned uriah Heep or Mr. McCorber, there's so many wonderful examples. Yes, yes. What is your favourite Dickens novel? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories,

listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Well, I guess it's not a very original answer. My favourite one's Great Expectations. Just why? Because that is the one, that is the perfect one. It's a novel also where it seems to me to perfectly combine

the two things that Dickens was really good at combining, which was, I don't know, scariness and laughter in a way. So one of his talents was not just making you laugh. I think he's the funniest great novelist that I know of. But making you laugh when you shouldn't laugh, you know, making you laugh when somebody's dying. And Great Expectations is brilliant at combining the terrors of childhood with the absurdities of childhood, you know. And that's just incredible.

But with also some, I mean, three or four of the greatest characters in English literature. Absolutely. You know, H havisham obviously estella i was obsessed with estella when i was a kid she was were you she was so scared i felt very like pip you know he she was both extraordinarily glamorous and unattainable but also just like a bully and horrible and scary and just perfectly sums up the experience of unconfident young boys

you know yes and and And then obviously Joe, the scene where Joe comes to visit him in London, he rejects Joe, is one of the great scenes of literature. I can't stand it. I know, I know. It's painful, isn't it? It's brilliant.

And Joe keeps moving between calling him sir and calling him... Oh, yes, it's painful. And he keeps trying to place his hat down, he doesn't know where to put it. Yes, it is absolutely painful. But that is, you're right, I mean, that is something that seems incredibly familiar.

It doesn't seem a Victorian novel, does it? And it seems a novel about the pains and self-delusions of growing up. And as you say, the absolute sort of self-punishing fantasies about women that he has you know and I find brilliant the one with him and Biddy that is so but when it's really really obvious that Biddy loves him but the best bit of all that the best bit is when having finally realized he's not going to get Estella he goes oh god what am I going to do and he does that thing god what am I going to do and

he does that thing which men do I'm afraid which you know look at the last name on your on your address list and he goes oh Biddy yeah Biddy actually I quite like Biddy yeah and she was pretty keen on me oh I'll go and get I'm going to marry her and he goes back home to Kent and he meets her and he's just about to say something and she says oh Pip I'm so glad you've come you've timed it really well because this is my wedding day isn't that wonderful it's it's uh it's it's what he deserves but and also as you say the ridiculousness of material wealth of social status uh and and the whole irony of it being based on a convict's ill-gotten gain. Yes.

Although actually, they're not ill-gotten. What's so fascinating about it is that actually the convict worked his nuts off in Australia. Yes, yes, he did. Unlike these ridiculous families around him, and no doubt all their wealth comes from sort of general renting and rent-seeking and slave-owning, Magwitch makes an honest man of himself and makes lots of money.

He does. He does. He does. And, of course, Pip's horror and disgust at the source of his wealth, you know, is really bad. I mean, he's the hero who most dislikes himself in 19th-century fiction. He really... So much so that I think sometimes the reader goes, hey, you know, you're being too hard on yourself here. But, yeah, he's disgusted by the taint of crime, isn't he? I mean, it's a brilliantly plotted novel. That's the other reason I think it's my favourite. It's the most beautifully plotted novel of all of his. I mean,

I must say, though, I have a coming of age story, which is Tale of Two Cities. I was on a family holiday when I was a kid, five weeks with my mum and dad camping on some hellishness and i was a teenager i didn't want to be there and i was forced to read tell two cities and i didn't i didn't really understand huge chunks of it but i thought i should read it because i you know i wanted to and i wanted to be thought of as clever and everything and then but the bit i understood enough of it and then my mom found me crying at the end of the book you know came around the corner of the campsite and i was lying on the ground in tears and she was so happy because this kind of really unresponsive teenage lump of 14 year old boy she'd been worried that that I was a sort of lost case and then she just found me weeping at uh at the end of Taylor City Cities which is just unbelievably beautiful

god that ending it's extraordinary well Dickens would have been really delighted to have seen you in in a pool of tears. OK. Because that's why, in a way, apart from the fact that he made lots of money by it, that he went in for these live readings in the last sort of decade or so of his life, because he wanted to see the kind of visceral impact or hear it. You know, he wanted to hear everybody roaring with laughter. He wanted to see people appalled at Sykes beating Nancy to death. And he wanted to see people crying as well.

The young Dan Snow, reduced to blubbering, would have been a sure index of his powers as a novelist. Yeah, well, he would be disappointed that I pursued 18th century history rather than 18th century literature but um although you're making me want to go back and do an adult learning course in in this you don't have to do a course just pick up the novels that's a brilliant thing that's right it's such a huge joyful thing can i let the last i've got actually i know because i want to ask you about hillary mantel who you brilliantly spotted her talent so early on but just to ask us because you're such an expert on Austen as well, who I'm obsessed with. What do Austen and Dickens, okay, coming as a historian,

what do Austen and Dickens tell us about Englishness, about Britishness? And are they sort of tangibly different to what is going on elsewhere on the continent? God. Sorry. You see, I've got you. I need to ask you these questions I always think about

Okay Sorry about this I don't know This is perhaps You might find this not a good answer Not a proper answer to your question But I think about What do they have in common

Because they're so different as writers You know they're almost opposites But one thing they have in common Is They show They're almost opposites. But one thing they have in common is they show the incredible sort of accessibility of the English language to those, at least within novels, who want to do something really, really new. I mean, we're talking about Dickens's education or lack of it earlier. What Dickens and Austen have in common is they're both in different ways, real sort of outsiders. Why should these two become two of the greatest writers in British history? They've had sort of three and a half years education between them, actually. And what they have in common is that sort of extraordinary capacity to think that they can do things within fiction that nobody's done before. And they don't have to go to do a course,

they don't have to have expert writers tell them how to do it. And they can sort of epitomise and satirise the vices and follies of their own day and make them the vices and follies of every day. And that incredible sort of creative self-confidence that they shared. I don't know if that is itself a peculiarly English thing or not, but I think it might have something to do with the powers and resources of the English language a bit. But I would find that, you know, it's a difficult case to argue. But I sort of feel it's there to be argued. I mean, I must, if you allow me, I'd love to do a podcast on Jane Austen one day.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. She's a goddess. Yes. You must. Absolutely remarkable. So, and lastly, speaking of goddesses, you were on the Man Booker Prize the year that Hilary Mantel won it for the first time. I was. I'm imagining that was not hard. You didn't spend much time deliberating. I mean, it was... Au contraire. Oh, really? Oh, goodness. Oh, it was, I mean, I don't think I break any confidences when I say it was a split jury.

I think as it very often is, because one of the panel, I think, well, one of the panel did write a newspaper article about it afterwards in which she spilt some of the beans. So it was no, it was a majority vote, as I think it frequently is. And it was down to Wolf Hall versus one other novel in the end. But, you know, we were in there. They shut you in a room with sort of, you know, mineral water and fruit. It was a kind of incentive to get it done. Dickens would have hated that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've done this.

You've done the booker, yes? No, never. No, God. No, no. You will. Okay. Well, I warn you, you get wined and dined until the last day, and then you get mineral water and fruit.

And, no, it was a hard argued thing. And it was a vote in the end. So if I had thought differently, it would have been a different decision. God, you were the swing justice. That's very exciting. I was Michigan. No, I was Pennsylvania. Yeah, I was Pennsylvania. But I have to say, there wasn't any doubt for me personally. I didn't think, I didn't go into the last, you know, when we got the shortlist, I didn't go into that last meeting, knowing that Wolf Hall was going to win. I knew that, you know, if push came to shove, I would vote for it as the best one. But I didn't know what the other judges would do. I think the trilogy is one of unspeakable brilliance. And I love her French Revolution book as well. Yes. I feel so excited to be alive at the same time as her. Where do you think we will see Mantel in the great pantheon of British writers? Well, that's very hard to say. pantheon of British writers? Well, that's very hard to say. But I think that, you know, in 50 years time, Dr. Johnson, you say you have to wait 100 years, but maybe 50 nowadays, I think people

will still be reading and talking about her books, but maybe sort of overall, because the thing about I mean, I'm not, you know, it's my job to read novels, a very happy fate that I have. And when Wolf Hall came out, you know, I'd already read all her other novels, and they were all different from each other. There was, you know, Place of Greater Safety, the historical one, there's one called The Giant O'Brien, which is historical in a very strange way. But her other novels weren't historical novels. And they're all so dissimilar. And she's a very, she's a wonderful and strange and very various writer. And I think that will sustain her actually, because there'll come a time when people will go, oh, they'll say wrongly that the

Thomas Cromwell trilogy, oh, that was a phase of the day. But she's got lots of other strings to her bow. And I think that will mean that people will, I hope, kind of continue to read all her novels, not just these ones which are the flavour of our decade. It's the way that she put references in to extremely, extremely niche historical, you know, the way that Cromwell would think back on the Wars of the Roses and make very obscure references like the Battle of St Albans. You're thinking, how many people reading this? I mean, as it happens, this is right in my wheelhouse, but like it's wonderful. It's so extraordinary and they're really exciting and that everyone can access it. And yet it's just extraordinary and they're really exciting um and that and that everyone

can access it and yet it's just got so many other layers underneath it for those who really wish to get to that level yeah i mean i think it's incredible how she does that thing that she takes sort of the best known story in all british history as my younger daughter said, we're doing the tutors again. The best known story, and when you're reading it, you sort of almost feel you don't know what's going to happen next. To put the sort of the danger and the provisionality

and the chanciness back into those events. Only a novelist could sort of do that. I think that's extraordinary. Well, there's historians out there, there's historians out there gritting their teeth at the moment. I fear you're right. I fear you're right. Who should we be reading at the moment, since your job is to read novels? Bear in mind, we've got history fans listening to this, but so who should we all go and read at the moment? Oh, gosh. You mean somebody who's publishing books right now, new novels?

Yeah. I'm not sure I have an answer to that, because in lockdown or near lockdown, I'm afraid, Dan, what I've done is I've gone back to things. And I absolutely, please, no novels about pandemics. Thank you very much. Although what's so fascinating, I'm sure what you've found, is that you start to reread novels or things from the past,

and you realise that the pandemics were always lurking there in plain sight. In fact, Hilary Mantel, they spent the whole time trying to avoid the sweating sickness and I was reading that at the right at the beginning of the lot. It's fascinating. Yeah, I suppose of living novelists, the one whose next novel I will really look forward to reading, which will be out, I imagine, quite soon, is Kazuyoshi Guru. So I know that's a safe choice. He's won the Nobel Prize. But I find his novels really haunting and sort of endlessly re-readable. You know, he takes sort of six or seven years over each one. And he's got one on the way, which will publish quite soon, I think. And that's what I'll really relish. They're worth the wait.

Thank you very much. Speaking of books that we should read, tell us what your book is called. My book is called The Artful Dickens. Rather good title, thought of by somebody in a meeting at the publishers. Brilliant. Well, The Artful Dickens. Go and get everybody. John Mullins, thank you so much pleasure

hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it I'd be very very grateful thank you you