Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A handbag full of vomit

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

After a long day of arts and crafts in the newsroom, Jane and Fi discuss the pros and cons of a 'pimped up M&S hot cross bun'. They're joined by Alice Winn author of 'In Memoriam'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: Kate Lee Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

don't you prepare to leave kate your day is not over look at her let's make lots of cock up so she has to stay really late she only did that cutting out and copying um right um good evening and good evening uh i'm gonna sit right in front of the microphone because we've had another complaint. Well, I think the problem is when you turn to look at me, don't look at me. Don't look at me. Just don't look at me. Oh, it's so difficult. Okay, I need to look in a professional way at the microphone.

I should get there in the end. To be fair to me, I've only been doing this since 1987. she'll get there in the end to be fair to me i've only been doing this since 1987 and sometimes it just takes a little bit of getting used to doesn't it now what a beautiful day it's been i hope it's been a beautiful day wherever you are right now because in london the sun has just shone all day and although it's not the warmest it does put a proper spring in your step and where we are, right by London Bridge, there's always something to look at, isn't there, out the window? Do you know what I mean?

You're turning your head again. The skyline is just magnifico, wherever you turn. We could, Kate, you're so right, we could just let Jane move the microphone and that would be easier. Hang on a sec. If you do this yeah and then you turn

your chair around what then you can i'm just chasing it chasing it all over the place because then can you see my look my chair's facing you yes and my microphone is facing me oh this will never catch on will it and then god's sake and then but at least uh we we're not adrian durham who tried to join us on the programme today from Stamford Bridge just as they were testing the tannoy. Which actually bends your ears. It's so loud. It is so loud.

So loud. But they have to test the tannoy, I guess. Anyway, Chelsea are playing Liverpool tonight. I don't know, I'm a bit worried. Liverpool's season has just been all over the place. Sometimes it's difficult to support a team. I think it'd be easier if I just changed and supported Arsenal instead. Oh, what a good idea, because that's so easy to do and nobody minds.

Everyone's got a really good sense of humour about it. Something I was going to mention, I didn't get the chance because we had a very busy programme today, is the death of, I noticed his obituary in the Telegraph today, the guy who wrote the lyrics to A Whiter Shade of Pale. Oh, I skipped the light fandango. Yes, it's such a weird song. It was a man, I didn't know his name until today.

It's Keith Reed and the lyric is just so peculiar and apparently utterly meaningless. But he got the inspiration, we're told, when he overheard a nightclub DJ telling a woman, you've just turned a whiter shade of pale. Oh, well, we know what that precedes, don't we? What, a chuck-up? Yes.

Can I just say, somebody was sick at Pudding Mill Lane DLR station after the ABBA show. And I'm going to say it wasn't the classiest way to round off the night, lady. So if that was you, I hope you feel all right now. But not pleasant for the rest of us. No, but better to be on the station platform than in the train. Well, thank goodness she wasn be on the station platform than in the train well thank goodness she wasn't on the dance floor it was it was hard enough for me to move around because i had my

work bag with me and i've recently changed it it's quite big my new bag she could have vomited into that she could she'd been next to me because it was you know sometimes you go but it was real prodigious vomit oh no no just you. There was a lot of drinking. Anyway, so he heard that sentence. You've just turned a whiter shade of pale. But he always denied Keith Reed being high on drugs or drunk himself when he settled down to write the rest of it. But the rest of the lyric goes on. We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels across the floor.

There are also weird references to Chaucer's The Miller's Tale. Sixteen vestal virgins who were leaving for the coast. I mean, none of it makes a scrap of sense. But it was a massive, massive hit for Procol Harum. And they never, ever had another big hit again apparently and the reason I'm so concerned about this is that it was for some reason one of about four records that we had in our sixth form common room at school and we were always playing a white a shade of pale well funnily enough yes we won the inter house music competition uh with an acapella version of White A Shade Of Pale at my school in 1985.

Really? Yes, it's got a place in my heart. Well that's interesting isn't it? Yes. Do you want to give us a little... No, not really, but isn't it funny how it just didn't bother us that the lyrics made no sense at all? I think we were even beyond laughing at Vestal Virgins.

This is odd. It is odd. I don't even beyond laughing at Vestal Virgins. This is odd. It is odd. I don't actually know what a Vestal Virgin is. No, and why they were heading for the coast. Well, these days, if you're going to Dover, pack a meal. That'd be a while. It really would. Yeah, what's a Vestal Virgin?

Somebody will know. Jane and Fia, Times.Radio. And, yeah, Keith, he looks exactly as you expect him to look. Have you seen that picture? Oh, good Lord. Big head of hair, spaced out glasses, and he certainly skipped the light fandango and R.I.P. Slightly less satisfactorily,

he co-wrote one of the most irritating songs of the 1980s. Oh, Agadou. No, not quite that irritating. Agadou. the 1980s oh uh agadu no not quite that he wrote you're the voice for john farnham you're the voice try and understand yeah i mean so he went from you know the beautiful extraordinary poetry of a white shade of pale to yeah otherwise yeah anyway there you go he's no longer with us well yeah but also how unfortunate for him to die on the same day as somebody more famous than him, which is a hazard, isn't it? Because Nigel Lawson passed away.

Well, hang on. He didn't, you see. He died, Keith died on March the 23rd. Oh, OK. So it's a late obit. It's a late obit in the Telegraph. But anyway, interesting that we both had special memories of A Whiter Shade of Pale. And there are some songs with these fantastical words that, you're right, mean not anything at all.

But, I mean, Teardrop Explodes, my favourite band of my youth, none of their songs made a scrap of sense. But it didn't matter to me one iota. I loved them anyway. Favourite Teardrop Explodes? Treason. Treason? Yeah.

C'est juste une histoire. It's just a story. They did a French version Treason. Treason? Yeah. C'est juste une histoire. It's just a story. They did a French version as well. Treason. Yeah. Oh, so intellectual. Oh, oui, oui. Oh, my, my.

This comes... That was very interesting. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Well, you were pleasantly surprised by that, weren't you? Yeah, no, I'm interested. That's called production and content. Don't point your finger at me with your production and content, lady. Helen Murray has sent the following, saying,

Hello, ladies. Elizabeth Day was lovely yesterday, very wise and open, and really made me think about the ending of one of my friendships, which I know caused pain. A decade or so ago, I went through a period of confusion in my life when I was feeling unsure about a lot of things. My long-term relationship broke up and I was questioning a lot of the values I'd held since childhood.

At this point, what I craved was to be looked after and given guidance. So I spent a lot of time with a few friends who had very older, sisterly vibes and would boss me around a bit, making me feel secure. However, as I got myself sorted out, I began to find their company grating and belittling rather than comforting i took a large step back from one friendship in particular and have always felt bad that the woman in question was upset and offended i know i should

have been more honest with her but i just couldn't find the gumption to tell her that spending time with her was simply making me feel bad about myself. She's a lovely person and didn't deserve to feel so rejected. It's a brave email to write, brave story to tell us. But also, that's just, that's so telling, isn't it? It's almost impossible to dump your friends in a nice way, even though sometimes it's the best thing to do. Sometimes if you feel a friendship isn't working for either of you. Yeah, you should just go. Yeah, just let it happen. But by go, we were talking yesterday, weren't we,

about how you can't now escape your past. If you wanted to, back in the day, you could leave your hometown and never, ever have anything to do with anybody you grew up with again, if that's what you chose. But days that is pretty much impossible because you can be tracked down by anybody even those people you very much wanted to leave behind and yes and and also you can track them and i think sometimes human curiosity means that you end up checking in with the lives of people uh who you don't like are irrelevant to you now, you've fallen out with, you know, whatever. But you do, you click on them and a little thing bubbles up

again, doesn't it? I want to thank the person who emailed us and we actually read out their email on the programme rather than on the podcast. This was a young person who's in their 20s, now studying Oxford, who said they really felt our pain yesterday when we were bellyaching about the smartphone and its influence on our life. And as they told us in their email, they've never known life without it, without all that connectivity and looking at other people's lives and being strangely irritated by them. But they're still nostalgic, if that's possible to be, for something they've never known, a world without all this.

And I think sometimes we just need to take a moment to realise that we didn't used to live this way. Yep. And you don't have to live like this now. Almost impossible not to. But, yeah, you see, I say that, and then I realise how completely addicted I am to it. I thought the internet would have a spurt and then stop for a while.

Hasn't happened so far, has it? And then a very clever person said that the world will never go as slowly as it's going today every day makes it go faster and faster and faster and i could weep at that concept because i thought there might be another plateau coming up but but ai is going to change all of that too. I know. Deep sighs. Deep sighs. I want to go back to the sixth form common room

and procol harums, white a shade of pale. Yep. It's a shame. I just want to sing a cappella myself. Okay, can you read the email, please, written by Julia, who was so fuming that she didn't, basically, you could tell she typed this out in an absolute fury, but is really grateful that she's now got it off her chest.

It's entitled, Isn't He Marvellous? OK, so I'm going to try and do this justice because Jane's right. It's just... Here we go. I felt I must write, as you've been talking about births, men, labour, etc. My daughter recently had her second baby, with a capital letter, who she, with capital letters, delivered alone while the midwife was out of the room.

A week after the birth, my daughter, her partner, the two-year-old, a newborn, decided to go for a pub lunch, mainly to get out of the house. My daughter sat on a hard bench, vagina full of stitches, nursing the newborn, feeding the two-year-old, grabbing an occasional mouthful of food at the end of a hectic lunch. No punctuation. My daughter's partner wiped the table with a wet wipe. A table of women opposite were amazed and commented on how marvellous he was.

All coming up in capital letters. Wet wipe to table. What a man. Gave birth, no pain relief. Delivered her own baby. Actually got out of the house. Yes, he's marvellous. Full stop.

No space. Will things ever change? No! No. So, Julia, I feel your pain. I really, really, really feel your daughter's pain as well. And Jane and I just completely agree. You can't clap for someone wiping a table.

I mean, it's nice. It is nice. It's a nice thing to do. Better than not. I mean, as we know, wet wipes in Britain containing plastic are about to be banned. This is something the government's announced this week, but it turns out it announced it five years ago as well. So sometimes you've just got to own these things.

And let me just acknowledge that this particular government, and I dare say governments of all political hues. Well done. Thank you. Do have a habit of announcing and then re-announcing for goldfish people. Goldfish people? You know what I mean? Well, they're just very lucky that that original wet wipe announcement

wasn't biodegradable and simply disintegrated before they could raise it again. Here's one from Pearl, listening in southern Arizona. Life before cell phones, says Pearl., oh I've just finished writing a book set in 1980 when I travelled solo across the USA before any kind of technology was used by the general public I met an American man en route

and the book ends with my return to the UK but he and I kept in touch via letters and postcards unimaginable now. Phone calls were prohibitively expensive. We married in 1981 and stayed together, here's the kicker, for almost 30 years. But he always resented the fact that writing was at the centre of my life. Now I'm happily divorced and harvesting all the writing I struggled to accomplish when I was married. My book is called Go. I still don't have a cell phone. I don't really seem to need one. And I have to admit,

I smirk a bit when I see how attached my friends are to theirs. I'm looking forward to the coronation with a Canadian friend on a very large television screen. We don't know which of her Canadian friends is going to be crowned on a large television screen, but Pearl, let us know. No, I know what you mean. And I hope you and your Canadian friend hugely enjoy The Revelry on May the 6th. It is May the 6th, isn't it?

Yeah. Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, because it's the week before Eurovision. It is. I mustn't stop talking about, I mustn't start talking about two of them in the same breath as though one is more important than the other.

Because that of course isn't true. Yeah. We've been, we were talking yesterday about the, was it the portraits of the king? Oh yes, we've done some crafting. We have done some crafting today. I mean, we are fully grown women. Well, kind of after a fashion, but today

we decided just after I ill-advisedly had eaten a hot cross bun, which is one of those ones that... Well, you're a fool to yourself. Well, I know that Marks and Spencers have pimped hot cross buns, and I couldn't resist banoffee ones. They're not very... I'm sorry to say I love Marks and Sparks normally, but I was promised caramel chunks.

Well, there weren't any. And doesn't banoffee pie, doesn't that have bananas in it too? Well, I think it faintly whiffed of banana, but I couldn't taste any banana in it, no. Anyway, you got through that, and then you'd spotted a newspaper article about the new King Charles stamps. And we'd been talking on the programme yesterday,

and I think we mentioned it on the podcast, didn't we, that the government has made available an awful lot of pictures of the new monarch and any public building or office, actually, that wants a picture of the monarch. And just send off. Send off, presumably with a large stamped addressed envelope. That's a thing of the past, isn't it? Oh, yeah.

Stamped addressed envelopes and yeah you can then get one to hang up and we were saying why don't you just do it yourself so what have we done well we got a picture of a of a stamp because they've just been released or they're going to be released very soon is it tomorrow i think so anyway there were some images of the stamps and we've made big one of the images and we're going to put it in a frame so we didn't talk up quite a large part of our working day today um but we didn't do it ourselves we got to give credit to kate who's here in the studio she did the enlarging and the photocopying and printed it out and trimmed around the edges and i think one of us is going to bring a frame in and then we're going to put

it in the frame and bob's your uncle this is like being a blue pizza presenter, isn't it? A little bit, yes. So, kids, if you're thinking about going into the media, go for it. Because this is what you can do when you're heading for your seventh decade. Right. OK. We're so pleased with ourselves. It's pathetic.

So we are going to put it up on the socials. Oh, dear. It'll be absolutely fine. But just harking back to our earlier conversation, that is one thing that I genuinely miss is doing very bad crafting and making things at home because now I do just flick through pictures of handbags that I've got no intention of buying.

And I can't remember the last time that I just did something genuinely pleasing. I've always been shit at craft. But there's something very pleasing about spending a bit of time actually just engaging your hands with your head and making something. And I don't do that anymore because the phone's shinier. It's got shinier things in it.

And, you know, it's my bad not to do that. But it's a shame, actually. But I can no longer make myself because I've lost the ability to enjoy it. Why don't you set yourself a little task over the weekend to create something? Oh no, that's no, that's not going to happen. I'll bring it in and you'll just laugh at it. You've been charged with

finding a frame for our portrait of the king. Okay, so you do some crafting. Well, I'm away next week so unfortunately I'll be too busy to craft. This, I know you want to talk about the East of Scotland and house prices. Pippa has just emailed to say, I thought I've had brewing for a while,

given your regular discussions on books being avid readers. Hearing Jane say that she never re-reads books, I'm very keen to sing the praises of local libraries. As with all public services, funding has been continually slashed, making it all the more important that they're used so there are no further closures. I grew up going to the library every Saturday with my dad and brothers on reflection the one hour free my mum got every week.

And so they hold a special place in my heart. Case in point, after you recommended At The Table last week, I reserved it at my library. It cost 60p. I reserved it that day. It was available by the weekend. I finished it in two days. Great recommendation. Well, that's brilliant, Pippa. I'm really glad that you were able to read it for 60p. That's not bad, is it? It's very good.

That's great. And I'm glad you've enjoyed it. Because sometimes I do, I don't know whether my book recommendations are always well, I mean, if I've enjoyed something, it doesn't mean that everybody else will, does it? Or does it? It's going to pause for effect. I think you'll find everyone else is wrong, Jane,

if they don't enjoy your recommendations. That can surely be the only answer. Right, a quick one about the east coast of Scotland and then we should delve into, well, it is one of your book recommendations, isn't it? That's why we had Alice Wynne on the programme. This is a delightful email from Jen, who is sitting on a plane from Edinburgh to London.

Well, she was when she wrote this. I hope you're not still there. Sounds a little bit like a coach coming out of Dover. I travelled over from my home in Bermuda to visit my elderly folks in Fife in the east of Scotland. The sun shone for three of my six days, so we'll call that a win. We managed a few day trips to the east nuke of Fife in the east of Scotland. The sun shone for three of my six days, so we'll call that a win. We managed a few day trips to the east nook of Fife, which has some of the prettiest little

fishing villages. Is it really called the east nook? Yeah, well, I was looking at it and I thought, actually, is that where Nook comes from? As in cranny? Yes. We could call it the east cranny of Fife. It's funny that we say nook and cranny as though they're different. But they're the same sort of thing. They're just a space, aren't they? Well, do you know what? I think I know what a nook is, but I don't think I know what a cranny is. Do you?

No. And I don't understand why we use that expression because I thought, as I said, I thought they meant the same thing. Where is Susie Dent when you need her? Doing her own podcast about words. That's where she is. Anyway, some of the prettiest little fishing villages along the coast as well as the beautiful St Andrews. Not much wrong with the east coast of Scotland as far as I'm concerned,

although strangely I do think us Scots seem to stick very much to our own side of the land and as a consequence I don't know the west coast very much at all. Too wet, too many midges, as my dad would always say. And that's so true, actually. I think it's just one of those really weird things, like the kind of rivalry that you were talking about between Liverpool and Manchester.

Daft. Apart from seeing family, the highlight of coming home is seeing my friends, four lovely ladies I grew up with. We all lost touch as young adults and then reconnected when one of our dearest mutual friends died at the age of 38. We vowed then that we would honour her memory by staying in touch and call ourselves the Dead Friends Club. Very dark, I know, but she would have thought it hilarious

and be thrilled that 17 years later we still get together. There is something so special about friends you've known since childhood, an ease and comfort and a sense of complete acceptance even though our lives are very different I treasure them all. And then Jen adds that she's about to land in London and she's going to see her daughter for a couple of days. She, by the way, pays a ridiculous

rent in Hackney for a tiny flat. Well, she would. She would. We're off to see Sylvia tonight, so excited. Please add Bermuda to your world tour. We're happy for you to do that. It's a musical about Sylvia Pankhurst, isn't it? Yes. I think Beverly Nights in it.

Oh, lovely Beverly Nights. Yeah, no, I'd like to see that, actually. The bit that I left out was just Jen talking about the fact that they live in Bermuda. Yes. You just mentioned it. OK. And here's another Bermuda correspondent, Heidi,

who arrived in London from Bermuda last week to run the London Landmarks Half Marathon raising money for Tommy's, the baby's charity. I really hope that went well for you, and well done on being able to do it. The half marathon was epic, says Heidi, and the wonderful crowd spurred me along the route. During the course of the race,

we passed several branches of the shop you've been talking about, Boots, and I scrutinised them closely and can concur that despite the name, it is clearly not the place to pick up a pair of galoshes. I'm heading home, filled to the brim with culture and happy memories. She saw Elton John at the O2 while she was

here and Sheridan Smith in Shirley Valentine. That's not bad, is it? That's very good. People are really out and about, aren't they, Jane? They embrace the cultural life of London, as indeed I am doing this evening by going to the theatre again for someone

who doesn't claim to espouse theatre. Theatre, you're there all the time. I'm constantly spouting. I've got Blue Lights to finish off. Oh yes, I haven't even started that yet. Oh, you've got a treat ahead of you there. I'm so busy with housework. I can't sit down as early as you, I don't think.

Now, our guest this... Our guest this afternoon was the novelist Alice Wynne. Drunk. No, but I hope to be... I sometimes find it easier to enter a theatre with a drink, I've got to be honest. Alice Wynne is the author of In Memoriam. It's her first novel and it is already a Sunday Times

top ten bestseller in the hardback list, so it's very fresh out, this book. Alice is only 30. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It's a love story set in the First World War. I have read other books about the First World War. I'm sure lots of you have as well. But for some reason, this one really, really got to me. Alice has moved to America. She did go to school in the UK. But she told us from her home in Brooklyn, how long she's been living in New York.

I just moved in September after the pandemic. We yeah, we also lived in Vegas right before we moved here. So that was a weird transition. Right. And of the two, which one do you prefer? Do you know, I loved Vegas. Vegas was absolutely great. Great pool parties. Right. OK, well, hopefully that will be some inspiration for your second book. But we're here to talk about In Memoriam, so let's get stuck in. Thank you for all those lovely things you said. Well, no, I've really loved it. And Fi, my co-presenter, will be able to back me up here.

I have really gone on and on about it. So I was really delighted that you were able to talk to us. Alice, she has. Thank you for having me. Yes, I can back that up. So tell us, first of all, because this, I think you got the inspiration for this from your school magazine at Marlborough College. Can you just tell us a little bit about

that? Yes. So I was trying not to write a novel because I had unsuccessfully written three and they hadn't gone anywhere. So I was trying to set that aside and focus on screenwriting and I was procrastinating on some edits. And I also was reading Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. And he talks a lot about Siegfried Sassoon and Siegfried Sassoon went to Marlborough College, my old school. And I just got it into my head. I was like, oh, I wonder if he ever wrote any poems in the school paper while he was there. And luckily, they had uploaded all of their papers from the early part of the last century. And so I just, you know, and this is classic procrastination, I just fell into this hole, I read, you know, and this is classic procrastination, I just fell into this hole, I read, you know,

all the papers from 1913 to 1919. And what started as this, you know, avoidant tactic to not do any work turned into a real obsession. And tell us about the tone of the magazine, because 1913, it was all sort of rather hearty, and what we call now jolly hockey sticks sort of stuff, wasn't it? It was all sort of rather hearty and what we call now jolly hockey sticks sort of stuff, wasn't it? Absolutely. So the newspapers begin, or when I started reading them, they begin, it's 1913. And these boys are just, you know, smug and irreverent and funny and charming and entitled, right? I mean, they have every reason to believe they're going to inherit the world. And when the war breaks out, they are so excited because they can't wait to go fight. And they write all these terrible poems about how they're going to go and beat up the Germans in no man's land. And then they all start enlisting. And then they go to the front and they write these letters back to the school, which I

find rather poignant because it shows how young they are, you know, they have two places to write to, you know, home and school. And that's it. That's all the experiences they've had so far. And the letters they're writing back to the school are again, so you know, Jolly Hockey Stick is a good, a good descriptor. You know, it's a lot of talking about how they don't have to bathe and no one, you know, no one's making them wash. And then they start dying. And when they when they start dying it's their younger brothers and younger friends still at the school who have to write the obituaries the in memoriams and these also change tenor throughout the war at the beginning of the war they are incredibly um sort of almost starry-eyed it's a lot of you know we envy him his gallant death

and then as the war goes on and it becomes apparent, it's not going to be over by Christmas. And there's so many people dying, you know, that they become much, much more just viscerally sad. is that so much war literature is written by people who went through a trauma and then processed it for 10 years. And now they are trying to express what they went through to people who weren't there in this sort of clean and thought out way. But the newspapers were just by these teenage boys for each other, right? For people who are currently going through a trauma, for other people who are also there. And it almost feels voyeuristic to read them. It feels too intimate because it's so unprocessed, this grief. So it was it was really just an incredibly upsetting read, to be honest. And I, you know, I was going to I was living in L.A. at the time and I was going to parties and telling people about them.

And they were very much like, oh, God, this is such a downer. Can you change the subject? parties and telling people about them. And they were very much like, oh, God, this is such a downer. Can you change the subject? And I just couldn't, I couldn't get across what I was feeling just by talking. And so I had to write a book. Well, it really, it really comes across your passion for the subject is so clear on the page in the book. And of course, I knew that many, many people who fought in the First World War were young. But until I read this book, I'm not sure I'd been as aware as I ought to have been. And it's the fact that so many appeared to be able to enlist well before they were 18. How did that happen? Well, I think that that happened.

It's sort of hard to get a firm idea of how often that happened, just because obviously it wouldn't have been publicly written about very much because it was sort of against the rules. I think especially at the beginning of the war, there was so much excitement that I think a lot of these boys would have just, you know, pulled strings to try and to try and get officers commissions, despite the fact that they were underage. And then as the war goes on, then, of course, there aren't, you know, they have to put in conscription that they start really needing more soldiers. So you know, you do hear these stories of boys going to the enlistment office and being asked how well they are, and saying, you know, being like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm 17. And then the person saying, well, come back when you're, go for a walk around the block and then come back when you're 19. So you hear stories like that. I think that you hear these stories like Kipling, right?

Whose son, Rudyard Kipling, his son was 18 and he had really bad eyesight. And so he hadn't passed his medical. But Kipling was very well connected and so he was able to pull strings to get his son Jack to the front. And Jack actually died when he was 18 at the Battle of Loos. He was last seen just walking blindly through the mud and they didn't find his body until the 90s. Wow. Actually, I mean, the way you put it, he pulled strings to make sure his son did get to the front.

That really makes you think about it. There are some truly heartbreaking stories in your book, which I think you've based on what you found out about what really happened at Marlborough. The three brothers, all of whom had been had been head boy, all of whom were killed. Yeah, the Woodruff brothers. So, yeah, I stumbled upon them when I was reading, you know, in fact, I kind of, I would grow attached to a boy because he was funny in his writing or because someone had written a funny story about him in a recap of a cricket match. And then I would, you know, you'd get a letter back from him and then you would you would really become quite attached just reading these newspapers. And the Woodruff brothers were incredibly popular, successful members of this school community. Each of them in turn had boy. Sydney Woodruff even won the Victoria Cross. So everyone was very proud of that. And each of them in turn was killed. And I think when the second brother was killed, they did this really, you know,

in the paper, they put pictures of all three of them. And they said, you know, the third brother is injured, but he's recovering. And, you know, we wish him a long and happy life, because it would be too hard on his parents otherwise. And of course, he died as well, about a year later. So it was really, really heartbreaking. And, you know, you read things like that. And it's very fertile ground as a novelist, for sure. Well, you really brilliantly bring to life what you believe life in the trenches was like. I mean, of course, you don't know any more than I do just how grim it truly was. But I was really astonished to hear that there was so much alcohol drunk. I mean, perhaps just out of necessity.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see that a lot in the literature. I think that happens a lot, for instance, in Journey's End. You see that they're all just constantly downing whiskey. But also there was a sense, I mean, it made people calmer and braver before they had to go over the top. So before a big battle, they would often, you know, they would sort of dose everyone up.

There's a line in Journey's End where, you know, the characters are about to go on this very dangerous mission. And they give, what is it? They give the men that are going on this mission, they give them some spirits and then they give them 15 minutes to let the alcohol kind of soak in

before they go on the mission. So I think it was, you know, it was seen as a tool. I mean, when I think about how little sleep they were getting, that's something I was thinking about. I think they didn't understand how to treat soldiers effectively. I mean, because they were just kind of running through them. And I feel like by World War Two, they had a better understanding of like, okay, you can push a man this far before he breaks. So we must make sure that people get breaks before that point. Whereas in World War One, you know, they were sleeping in two hour

chunks for six days at a time, and then they'd be pulled back and get a little rest for four days in a village. And then they'd go back and they'd have to sleep in two hours. You know, I just had a baby. And I can tell you, sleeping in two hour chunks makes you insane. And when we think about what's happening in Ukraine right now, I guess you're bound to make some comparisons, aren't you? Well, I wrote the book before the situation in Ukraine had developed to this extent. It was, you know, there was tension, but it wasn't a war. I think it really changes the way the book is perceived, because when I was writing it, it was true to say that there, you know, there wasn't a great land conflict in Europe. And now there is. And I think that

means that it feels much more resonant, because these images we're seeing from Ukraine, they kind of remind me a little bit of some of the images you see of, you know, the Germans in Belgium at the beginning of the war, for instance, this cruel invasion. So, I mean, it's just awful to think about. Alice, can I just ask you about the speed with which you wrote the book, which is absolutely fascinating. I mean, it's been described as a fever dream coming out of you. Do you usually work at that kind of speed? And did you really write the synopsis for the book, the draft of the book in just two weeks? stuck at a bit I sort of knew a lot of stuff about the war just offhand and I was able to write the first you know 70,000 words quite easily and then I got to sections where I just need more research but yeah no I wrote it really really fast and then I promise I did edit it for a long

time it took a year and a half to edit it so it wasn't just slapdash I don't know it's not usually how I write the current thing I'm working know. It's not usually how I write. The current thing I'm working on is it's been two and a half years of misery. So I think that's, as one author said, karma. So what was it about the story that meant it could just come out of you quite so quickly? I don't know. I think possibly the the relationship between Gaunt and Elwood, who are the two protagonists, who are very close friends, even though they are very different from each other. Gaunt is one of these boys who's incredibly excited about the war. He's sort of naive and entitled in the way that I described, whereas Gaunt is, he's a little bit more hesitant. He's half German.

He is generally out of step with his own time and they are also both in love with each other but neither can express that to the other and they both they both think it's unrequited and of course it's you know it's 1914 so you really can't act on it or so they think they can't but um that relationship between them felt very vivid and clear right away and I think their friendship was really easy to write. They just like each other a lot. And that just kind of flew by, I think. We're talking this afternoon to the author of In Memoriam, Alice Wynne. A quick message, actually, Alice, from a listener in Sussex called Ken. He says, my father enlisted at the age of 15

in World War One. He was tall for his age and for the time. There were no age checks and he used an assumed name. He was wounded on the first day of the Somme and ended the war as a fighter pilot. And he still had so much shrapnel in his body that he would set off security equipment at airports near the end of his life. But he almost never talked about the war. And I guess Ken's father's experience would be rather run-of-the-mill in some respects, certainly in the sense that he didn't talk about it. I mean, what on earth were we expecting the men who did survive to do with the rest of their lives?

These days, they'd be offered any amount of therapy, wouldn't they? Absolutely. What an incredible story, Ken. Did he say he was a pilot? Yes, he ended the war as a fighter pilot, yeah. Wow. I mean, you know, I would not want to be a fighter pilot in World War I because those planes were incredible. It's not even, you know, when I was doing research about prisoner of war camps and there was this incredible story

of this amazing escape from Holtzsminton prison camp and 10 officers from this camp actually got all the way back to the uk and there was you know this this group of three men who escaped by pretending one of them was a lunatic and the other two who could speak german were kind of escorting him through the countryside and they just walked out of germany and the the person who was pretending to be a lunatic was this young man, maybe 22. And he went straight back to go continue with his training to be a pilot. And he had to be trained on the new planes because he had been away for a while and they had developed new planes. And, you know, it just crashed in a training. You know, he got back and he was training and the plane crashed and he died. And you hear stories about that all the time, training accidents.

So, you know, it was, I think they had the highest rate of death, I think, or one of the highest rates, the pilots. So that's a really dangerous thing that Ken's, was it grandfather was doing? It was Ken's father. So, Ken, you should tell us your dad's name so we can at least mention it. You referenced the love affair between the two leading characters, Gaunt and Elwood. Presumably you had to do quite a lot of research into the degree to which gay relationships at the time would be in any way tolerated or managed. What did you find out?

Well, it was obviously a bit tricky because people weren't talking terribly openly about this. One thing I did was I read books by men who had gone to these schools to figure out what the sort of rules strange no it was it's um even war's older brother he basically told this sort of gay tell-all memoir about his experiences at sherburne and um even so even though this was like a scandalous novel that is the reason evelyn wall wasn't allowed to go to the school because they were like well your older brother came here and published a gay tell-all memoir about us so no you can't come which wasn't very upsetting for even more but even so um it's so uh you have to really read between the lines but what i was able to kind of pick up from robert graves from ian forster from alec war was that there are these sort of unspoken rules in the boarding schools at this time period which is that you know as long as you are popular as long as you are good at sport as long as you are popular, as long as you are good at sport, as long as you are secretive, as long as it is only temporary, and you will stop all this

nonsense when you finish university and go and marry a woman, then, yeah, you can do what you want. But if you break any of those rules, then you'll be expelled and shamed. But that's the thing. The stakes are you'll be expelled and shamed rather than court-martialed, shot, arrested, hard labor, ashamed for your whole family forever, which is what the stakes are once they get to the front. And I think one of the sources of conflict and tension in the novel is that these are teenage boys. Gaunt and Elwood are very young and naive. And Elwood in particular has lived this sort of enchanted life where nothing has ever really gone wrong. And it's very, very hard for him to understand that the stakes have changed and that he can't just get away with doing whatever he wants

because he's on the first 11 cricket team. And is Marlborough College very proud of all of the things that you have talked about within the novel? I mean, obviously it's fictional, but it's based on these terrible losses within its own community. I don't know, actually. I hope they don't mind. Has nobody been in touch, Alice, from the college?

Oh, yeah, I have. An old teacher, yes, reached out to me, and he said everyone was pleased. But I was very grateful I had help from the college archivist, and, yeah, Grania Lenehan, I believe. And she helped me kind of get a little bit of a handle on Siegfried Sassoon's time at the college. And also, I think she's responsible for doing such marvellous work,

putting all the newspapers up. But someone told me recently, and I don't know if this is true, but they told me that Marlborough, out of all the public schools, was the one that lost per capita the highest number of students and alumni, which I can sort of believe because I think the school has maybe 800 students. I think maybe today I'm making some of this up, but that's about right. And they lost 749 students and alumni, which is essentially the entire student body over four and a half years it's it's pretty incredible it is an astonishing number of people isn't it yeah yeah and i've looked into harrow and eden i know it was it was um less for them and by the way i you know i'm talking about all these public school boys i don't want to imply that no they were people so you know

the it really especially when you look at the conditions of the working class men, the privates, their conditions of life were much, much worse. And also, if they started to develop severe shell shock, you know, they were just left there until they died. Whereas the officers had a bit more leeway, were more likely to be kind of lifted out and rescued. So I don't want to imply that this is a tragedy that completely only affected the upper class. Alice Wynne, who is a writer who I'm sure will go on to have much more success in the future. Her book is called In Memoriam and I think it is going to be made into a film. It's a very cinematic premise, I have to say. And I imagine a couple of really dazzling young actors will be cast in the lead roles of the two schoolboys who go on to fight alongside each other in the First World War.

It's really sad, the book, in ways that I'm not going to give any more away. But I do advise that people have a look at it. Reserve it at your library for 60p if you possibly can. You won't regret it. Will you read a comedy next? if you possibly can. You won't regret it. Will you read a comedy next?

Well, At the Table, which I'm still reading because I really am reading a chapter a night, it does have its black comedy moments. Okay. Yeah. I'll tell you what I would love to find. Can we just chuck this out to the listeners? I think writing funny books is really nigh on impossible. Yeah, you're right.

And I can't remember, and that's why I love Susie Steiner so much, actually, but I can't remember the last book I read, fiction, that was genuinely funny, but also contained, not kind of silly funny, you know, just had funny dialogue or funny characters

or some decent black humour. So if anybody can recommend a couple of books that would genuinely make you laugh out loud, to use the cliche, but aren't written to be deliberately comedy comedy, I'll be ever so grateful. Yeah, you're right. I am racking my brains.

I'm not saying it's easy to write books about sad events, because it clearly isn't. Otherwise we'd all have done it. But it might be easier. Anyway. Yeah, I think it definitely is. And then in nonfiction, I don't want to read another, you know, boring tome written by a guru.

I like reading stuff that is people being funny about their lives. Actually, a funny memoir can lift me up no end. But in fiction, I find it very hard to read. Didn't we write something once? Anyway. Actually, a funny memoir can lift me up no end. Didn't we write something once? Anyway, what I would say actually is, to go back to Alice's book, I was at the postal sorting office this morning picking up a parcel.

What else would I be doing? I'm not just lurking around hoping to see the postman. Or am I? I was there collecting something. Like a lot of sorting offices, our local one has really weird opening times. You never know. Six till two on a Monday,

seven till five on a Tuesday, closed on a Wednesday, half day opening on a Thursday, bunker off on a Friday. We only speak Portuguese every other Tuesday morning. It's utterly, it's absurd. Anyway, managed to catch them open this morning and saw their First World War memorial on the side in the office.

And 10 postmen died in the First World War from that local branch in West London. And it just... Because I was thinking about Alice's book as well, it does make you think, doesn't it? These memorials are all around us, but how often do we actually look at them and think they were probably 18-year-old boys?

I mean, it's just heartbreaking. It is. No one needs to be told that about the First World War. I think it's widely acknowledged. Right, OK. Thank you. Can I just say, sorting office in the morning, stamps of the king in the afternoon. You're going to come in in combat shorts tomorrow, aren't you? I'll come in with my...

We've still got the giant postman pad. Oh no, I threw it out. That's right, I did throw it out. It went into a skip. Oh dear. I can't believe I've done that. Maybe you'll just send one of those cards tomorrow saying Jane Garvey is out. I tried to deliver her. Right. You can contact us. Why you'd want to, I do not know. Jane and Fee at times.radio. No, seriously. We are very grateful for all the emails. Keep them coming. And we got through the whole podcast without talking about that funny orange man who's always in the news. Oh, let's keep it that way.

Absolutely. Let's keep it that way. Have a good evening. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank bank. I know. Lady listener. Sorry.