Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Kefir on the verge (with Rose Tremain)

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Jane is still trying to get Fi into The Archers and she's having none of it! They also reflect on the magic of time zones, neighbourhood Whatsapp groups and KissCams. Plus, Dame Rose Tremain joins them to discuss her new novel 'Absolutely & Forever'. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Eve Salusbury Times Radio Producer: Kate Lee Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You fall over, you throw water all over your face. I'm worried about your motor skills, Jane. Everybody should be. Everybody really should be. Hello there, and welcome to Off Air. It's a podcast. I'm Jane Garvey. I'm Fee Glover. And we do this four days a week. It drops at around about six o'clock, but who knows what time it is where you are. Do you believe in the concept of time? Not really. No.

I think it's very confusing. And you know some of those funny countries that have a time zone plus 45 minutes or plus half an hour and stuff. Well, that just makes you think, gosh, what a very strange concept it is. I think Nepal is five hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT. Play that past me again. I think Nepal is five hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT. Right. And to my fury, when I went on holiday to Portugal this year, there was no time difference. Oh, why would that make you furious?

Because I like the whole alter your watch thing. Do you like to feel exotic on the plane? Really exotic. And you can't feel exotic when the pilot comes on and tells you that it's the same time in your landing place. So the jingle jangle of the archers would be at the same time, wouldn't it? Oh no, listen, how many podcasts behind am I in the archers?

They've finally got lesbians in the archers. Have they? A lot, which I can honestly say does feel like it's been a long time coming because they've had quite a well-established gay male couple in the archers. And they've had hot tubs. They've had hot tubs. How can you put hot tubs there?

They're lesbians. They've had heterosexual raunch in the Archers for quite some time. Remember that sex scene in the shower with Sid and... Oh, no, because I don't listen. Oh, yes, you do. Don't. I get my Archers knowledge dripped through you like a coffee filter. There are still some quite boring plot lines.

But anyway, no, I will not be parted from life in Ambridge. I simply won't. Thank you to Anonymous, who says they've got a dull story, which they think might be duller than the one I told yesterday. Nothing could be. I don't think actually it can be. But here it is anyway. This message was received last week on our street email group.

Oh, I love this one. Of 30 residents in Surrey. Here is the message. We've just had a shop delivery, which included a short-dated 200 gram Sainsbury's Moroccan couscous. If you'd like it, just send us an email and let us know when you'd like to collect it. Well, you see, when I read that, I thought, oh,

because our street WhatsApp is full of people offloading stuff that's just about to go off. And I was very, very tempted by Sophie's 200 millilitres of double cream that only had 24 hours to go. And I seriously thought, could I change my menu tonight to incorporate that? Some double cream. I didn't realise. I'm quite jealous now,

because we don't have a street WhatsApp group. We had to have one a couple of years ago. Do you remember when we had that? When you had the scandal, the difficulty. We had a bit of difficulty in our street. Which, in fairness, was difficulty that has slightly passed. Well, it's passed, we think. And it was one of those occasions where the local MP was actually very

helpful. Well that's good to know. As was our councillor. What flavour of MP do you have? Happens to be labour but you know it might have been something else. I think politicians get a very very bad rap and listen I'd be amongst the first to slag them off but sometimes you have to appreciate the dogged work in the constituency done by a lot of politicians. Hugely. Yeah, because it's not always the most glamorous stuff that they have to sort out. And I think they also have

a lot of meetings with some quite vulnerable folk. So hats off to them in that respect. Not always the easiest job on earth. But can I recommend setting up a street WhatsApp group for all kinds of things? For the big things and the small things, it's just, it is really lovely.

And some of the things are really, really funny, but also some of them are so profound. But the sincerity of people wanting to help and be kind is just lovely, actually, Jane. Really, really lovely. And I think sometimes you can think, especially in a city, that that's the bit that you lose, is that sense of community. But I think WhatsApp groups have brought it all back, if you want to.

Yes, absolutely. I don't think Sophie found a home for her cream. Well, I was just about to say, double cream. I wouldn't be able to take that off her hands, I'm afraid. Presumably it's not available anymore. No. Well, I don't know. There wasn't a rush for it. It will have gone off. But quite often, I mean, if there's kefir

that's on the verge, somebody will nab it. Kefir, surely to God, that goes on well past its eat-by-date. By its very nature. Yeah, you're probably right. The more it rots, the better it is for you. I did cook a lovely nigella last night. Did you? Well, very, very simple. Just very simple? Very, very simple.

Very, very simple. Basically slicing up a load of raw mushrooms with a bit of lemon juice and thyme and just waved in amongst some penne. It was absolutely delicious. So did the mushrooms get a bit cooked by the lemon juice? Is it a bit ceviche? I suppose it probably did have that impact, yeah.

That's clever, isn't it, when that happens? I tell you what, Nigella is, she's quite good at this recipe, Lark. I don't know if anybody else has heard of her. No. I think, yeah, she's a gorgeous woman as well, isn't she? She's one of those women, when she talks about anything, actually,

I really listen. I think she's got a nice honesty about her, hasn't she? And I wish her well, too. I wish her well. She's had a terribly good time of it, hasn't she? One thing that we wanted to throw into the mix, and this is vaguely off the back, isn't it, of the extraordinary nanny story that emerged this week.

It all started with the dismissal of Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie's nanny, which is an ongoing saga. I mean, it's an active case, so we can't really comment on it, Jane. But it's launched a thousand stories about nannies, including this extraordinary one about a nanny who had been dismissed because she had sat down on the sofa in her outdoor clothes. This outdoor clothes thing, it's made me, because I'll be honest, I often do, if you travel on quite a crowded tube train home as i as i do um i definitely feel

a trifle grubby and i tell you what i've done really quite consistently since covid is every time i go back in the house i immediately wash my hands that's very good well done but i didn't used to and i'm actually horrified now when i think about how that sort of basic hygiene yeah because you would have gone straight for the fridge and just eaten cheese with your hands. But I did. I went straight in the fridge, got one of those pre-sliced wedges of very strong cheddar

and just celebrated my return home. As for outdoor clothes, I'm not even a believer in taking shoes off when I go in. Should I definitely do that? Well, since I invested in some completely impractical carpets, I mean, I might as well have walked into the shop and just said, could I have your most impractical carpet in your most light colour, please, with the least resistance to dog piss? Oh, look, that one over there. Yes, I'll have that all the way up my stairs. So I've tried to make people take their

shoes off. Of course, nobody does. But the outdoor clothing, just that idea, I think it's a rather old-fashioned idea of coming in from work and changing into something more comfortable. Changing for dinner. Yeah, because... But changing down into leisure wear for the evening. Because you and I, we don't really dress up for work, so I don't do that. But I believe, and many people have revealed this week,

that's exactly what they're doing. So I'd like your strangest outfit that you change into when you get home. Is anyone popping on a caftan? I was going to say... Wrapping up a sarong? Is the caftan still a thing? Yeah. And if so, I'd really like to see some pictures.

Penelope Keith in The Good Life. Yeah, that kind of thing. Just putting on a long, flowing garm and just wafting around the house, letting it all hang out. With a fag in a cigarette holder. Well, you could do that. It slightly takes away the image of cleanliness, but go for it, sister. I did walk behind a vaping schoolgirl this morning, I noticed.

You tut. Yes. Did you? I rang the school. Did you say she'll be identified by the flavour of popcorn accompanying her as she comes in? Oh, dear. But it is strange, isn't it? Because you do walk past people and there is,

like there'll be a strange waft of popcorn or peppermint. And it's a vape, isn't it? Yeah, vanilla or just something weird. Yeah, it is. Strange and wrong. This one comes in from somebody. Hello, Jane and Fi. Last Friday night, there was a large sporting event in Melbourne with a crowd of about 90,000. The sporting question is Australian rules football, which is a very

localised sport. And our correspondent goes on to say the game rolls around to halftime. And I can hardly believe what's happening when a kiss cam comes up on the main screen of the stadium. For those not familiar, this is when a camera in the stadium zooms in on a male and female sat together and in effect pressures the two people to kiss for the camera. I can't believe this is still happening in 2023 in an age when we're trying to teach children about consent, how to deal with pressure to go along with unwanted advances and mere weeks after the Women's World Cup final kiss. Have I gone PC crazy or is the kiss cam completely out of touch? Well, the...

Sorry, I thought actually they only focused on people they knew to be couples. Well, obviously not. They can't though, can they? No, how would you know? Yeah. So I'd never really thought about that because I don't really go to very much American or Australian sport and it's definitely not known for flying to Australia at the weekend to attend an Aussie

rule game I would intervene if you started doing that I think it may come to that chamber at the moment no so I don't I haven't really seen it in action I'd always thought that it was just a very consensual thing and everybody loved it but maybe our correspondent makes a very good point so any thoughts on that especially from our large contingent of Antipodean listeners we'd happily take that. Yeah I honestly hadn't given that any thought. Do you think the kiss cam will ever come in at Anfield? Do you think the kiss cam will ever come in at Anfield? I don't think so.

Can you imagine the camera zoning in on a couple of red-faced Scouse fellas who've been standing at the Anfield road end for the last 45 years? Or any match, really. West Ham. West Ham. Big boys. Or those lads in Newcastle who are perennially topless. They are, aren't they, though? Get their moves out. Because as we both know,

there are no gay people connected to male football at all. No. Don't be silly, Jane. Oh, dear. Right, let's bring in Liz, who's in Tennessee. I've just finished listening to your Monday interview with Fee's heartthrob, 83-year-old Jeffrey Archer. As you pointed out, like him or not,

you do have to admire his tenacity and work ethic. This last Sunday, Ringo and his all-star band were playing in Nashville. So my hubby and I got tickets as it was his birthday and we live in Tennessee. We watched in amazement as Ringo, also 83, I did not know that, leapt around the stage, vigorously played the drums and sang for two and a half hours. I did Google how he keeps so fit and healthy in the hope that I'll be leaping around in 25 years time and discovered his secret to staying young. Have you got this for you ready? Yeah.

He's a strict vegetarian. He's a teetotaler. He works out between three and six times a week. He meditates daily and he eats very little sugar. Quite a lot to focus on there. Liz goes on, by the way, I was born and raised on the Wirral, hence my love of Liverpool and the Beatles. I moved to Tennessee 30 years ago, but I do try to come back to England a couple of times a year. ago but I do try to come back to England a couple of times a year um it's interesting I would I have never seen a Beatle live and if it had to be Ringo I suppose I would well it would have to be either Ringo or Paul now let's be realistic um so I would you pay to see Ringo Starr because they always used to say didn't they that he wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles. But he's, I don't know, what do you think? I probably would.

I'm seriously considering trying to get to see Billy Joel before he stops. Are you? Yes. Well, we don't know that he's anywhere near stopping. Well, no, he is, though. So, yeah, he's stopping his Madison Square Garden concerts in February. And then I think he's got his last ever concert before he closes the piano lid for the public sometime in March.

And there is something strange, isn't there, when you know that you've only got a couple of years, probably, that you can see somebody. And also maybe Ringo's got better. Do you think the years have been kind, the practice has paid off, and now Ringo really knows his way around a drum kit. Well, I mean, let's be positive, James.

I love your positivity. The glass is always half full down Glover Way. It certainly is. So thank you for all of your really lovely suggestions for our book club. We've got to decide by tomorrow, Garv. Have we? We said we'd decide by tomorrow. Yeah.

Don't remember that. So we've got a suggestion, Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor. Do you think that's any connection to Robert? Well, can I just say, I've got that book. Have you? And I would not rule that out.

I think that's quite a good choice because it's a slightly challenging account of the early days of motherhood i think it is it's a searingly honest account and this is from jackie of the early years of motherhood funny moving thought-provoking but accessible it's also short wink and i loved it i'm happily childless so i think it would have broad appeal uh love your show've fallen asleep to it many times Jackie, lost it at the end So that does sound nice actually Not nice

That's the wrong word That sounds like a good choice That enters the top two And then there was another one that I just wanted to mention just in case this is really ding-donging anybody's bells My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Talent I'd never ever heard of that.

This is from Deborah. It's gut-wrenching, beautifully and brilliantly written and hugely compelling, but what I love most is that it's inspirational. Even if this isn't suitable for the book club, I do hope you ladies will give it a go. I think you'd love it, and I'd hate you to miss out on such a fantastic read.

So I always like it when somebody is super enthusiastic about a book, you know, the kind of pressing it into the hands of a stranger type enthusiasm. So I might look that one up a little bit later and see whether or not that's got any legs. And I wanted to mention this email from a listener who says, sorry for my

English, it's not my mother tongue. Never, ever, ever, you certainly don't have to apologise to either of us if English isn't your first language and you've emailed us. I cannot speak more than a couple of words in another language. We will never laugh. Imagine if you tried to send an email to an Italian podcast. It would be astonishing. Short. Very, very short. So this listener says, can I suggest a book for your book club? It's a book called Grief Works by Julia Samuel. It doesn't fit your criteria, but I do feel it could be apt. As recently Fee mentioned that we don't do grief very well. And we can't talk very easily about

death. I also recall when you read a letter from one of your listeners who's a psychotherapist, but used to be a stripper in the States in her youth, I sensed a little hesitation in further discussing the death of her child that she bravely shared in that email. I think you're probably right that Grief Works by Julia Samuel isn't something we do in our book club because it's non-fiction for a start. Although we didn't say we'd never do

non-fiction did we no maybe a little bit further down the line yeah and we'll definitely keep that email and you're probably right we probably it was an email from Stella wasn't it she was telling us a little bit more about her life and you're probably right Jane and I didn't pause to then have a conversation about her losing her child and And I think, you know, it absolutely proves your point. We like to rush past it, don't we, because it's so uncomfortable and harrowing. Yeah, it is. And I guess those of us who have been fortunate enough

to avoid it as an experience, I'm talking here particularly about the death of a child, are probably not desperately enthusiastic to discuss it, although clearly we should. Anyway, thank you for your very thoughtful email. You go on to say your podcast resonates with me. I'm non-British and I live in a small coastal town in Scotland. Well, you're very welcome. Yeah, if you would like to get any other suggestions in, you've got to do that by tomorrow. Jane and Fi at times.radio.

Or equally, don't feel that you have to because we'll collate all of the suggestions and make our decision. So just if something is really burning away on your bedside table, although if it is, put it out. Right, shall we get to... That's the soundest bit of advice you've given in some time?

Thank you very much. Shall we get to our big interview? Yes. Who is it? It's with Rose Tremaine. You like her books, too, don't you? I do like her books. I find them, if I'm really honest, they are in a category of book that I would. How can I put this? She's a very, very good writer. And you need to have your wits about you to fully appreciate her and can I be really honest and say

that the great thing about this lovely new novel is that it isn't the longest book it's a novella it's a novella and I don't mean to be fractious at all but it really is lovely sometimes I think she says in the conversation to pick up a short book.

It is, yeah. So I think her writing packs punches. She tells stories always about life's big journey, always with a depth of emotion and truth. And one of the characters in this latest book, a girl called Pet, who's the kind of stronger, bigger best friend of the heroine Marianne. She says at one point, men don't love like you've loved.

They love in relays, one and then another and then another, on the baton goes. And the ones they held so long ago, they just lie on the track for some other runner to trip over. I love that. Absolutely and Forever is the name of the novella and In It Rose tells the story of Marianne and her love for Simon and we meet these two when they're teenagers.

Marianne is just 15 and she really does fall head over heels in love with Simon who is 18 and she finds herself trapped in what she calls the love asylum and the novel is really about trying to get out. So we started in that place with Rose who told us a little bit more. Well it's the place where we all long to be and then find ourselves and that it's very hard to get out of it. But I was just very interested in the idea of the love that happens very very early in your life. The thing from which you can't quite escape. I mean, we've all probably had

early love affairs and managed to get over them and go on to something more serene and sensible. But I was very interested in the idea of what shape does your life take if you can't quite get over the devastating thing, what Simone de Beauvoir calls the love of abdication. If you can't get over that for the rest of your life, and it happens to you very young, what sort of shape does your life have? And the novel, it's a short book, as you said, but it has a go at sort of exploring this phenomenon.

I think it does it very well. How much harder is it to write as a slightly older woman, we're all about the same age, I'm not being rude there at all, when you are casting your mind back to the mind and the passions and the emotions of youth? I don't think it's hard at all. I mean, you know my work, so I haven't very often delved into my own autobiography, apart from to write a little memoir of my own childhood. But actually resurrecting the time, particularly, well, the late 50s in Berkshire, which is where I grew up, and then London in the 60s.

That is, I mean, the minute I put my mind to remembering that, I don't remember events in their entirety. I remember them as kind of little sort of cave paintings of things, little images, like, for instance, as I describe in the book, the guys on the King's Road. I lived in the King's Road in the early 60s, and so I was witness to these guys who I've described as gazelles sort of pawing their way along in the sunshine with their long manes

and with this kind of insouciance that we just don't have in our lives anymore. So the six is very, very vivid to me. I only got to think about it to remember, well, as I say, not all of it, but little moments, little spots of time. I know that your parents were, would it be fair to say, perhaps quite chilly people, and the parents in this book are quite chilly people. They aren't finding it easy to create that kind of family love.

I think it was, I mean, when I think charitably about it, what you say is exactly right. When I think charitably about it, I think that my parents' generation had been through really difficult times. They'd been through the war, they'd lost people they loved. And they, I think that one character in the book says, actually, they don't love us because they're jealous of us. this this is rather a new thought for Marianne she doesn't imagine that her mother in particular could be jealous of but I think in a funny kind of way they were and this sort of withholding of of maternal and paternal affection is is to do with the feeling that they're like they had somehow been cheated of

the lives that we were going to have, our generation were going to have. They saw a lot of things coming our way, which they had not been able to have because of the war. So I think that explains, it doesn't explain everything. Of course, one or two of my friends had very kindly understanding parents who didn't put their children down. I mean, my earliest memories of my childhood was being told that I was useless at everything. And I've given this to Marianne, that every time she tries something,

they say, oh, don't be silly, or you can't do it. And she has to try to overcome that. And her parents' expectation of her abilities in the adult world are just so damning, aren't they? So she doesn't do particularly well at school. So she goes to secretarial college, has to bash out all these incredibly boring sentences in kind of dear sir letters and stuff. Is that very much your story too, that you just didn't have the expectation on you and a kind of kindness accompanying that completely um the only difference is i mean marianne is so besotted um you know head is so much somewhere else um and in fact she spends her days um when she's at school imagining what

simon is doing you know from waking to sleeping um So she's not living her own day, really. She's living his day. So it rather passes her by that she should be studying civil war, working at French. That was not my case. I worked very hard at school. But then, and I had a very good English teacher who said, let's put you on an Oxford pathway.

Oxford simply because she had been at Oxford. And my mother said, oh, no, no. I don't remember. She said, I don't want a blue stocking for a daughter. So she dragged me away from this really quite sort of interesting school and teacher onto this other pathway where, yes, indeed, I was sent to secretarial college and had a series of rather unhappy jobs, and then kind of did a U-turn and got some more A-levels. And then

a year or two later than I would have done, went to university. But I had to do that all myself. So what does that very low expectation in your childhood and young adult life due to your incredible success now does it make it easier to embrace harder to embrace is there no real connection now? I think there is a connection I don't know whether it's um it's really a kind of um what one says sort of emotional connection like that I think it's more that what I discovered quite early on was that writing stories, particularly stories which are not about me, emphatically not about ways in which I was unhappy or lonely or lost or, you know, all the things that Marianne goes through, but stories

that were completely about people unlike me, that this could console me as a child of sort of 11, 12. When I was first sent to this school, I was very unhappy. My father had left home and I felt like a sort of castaway, really. And it was an amazing discovery that actually putting down imagining stories in other people's lives could take me completely out of my own self-pity. Completely. And I thought, hang on, there's something here

that's got to feed into the rest of my life. And so I was sort of from that moment clung onto the idea that if I could become a storyteller, life would be whatever it threw at me. would i would be able to sort of manage it it would be bearable yeah through the telling of stories if you've been on the receiving end of of chili parenting how do you break that cycle of chili parenting and not become through no fault of your own a chili parent yourself oh i i just don't think that's hard i really don't think that's hard um it's this is a huge subject obviously because um we know you know man hands

on mystery to man i mean is is that are we in that in that um i don't know in that straitjacket i didn't i mean i've only got one child daughter um but but I didn't find it at all difficult. I didn't have to sort of summon up maternal love for her. It was there the minute she was born. And I suppose a kind of remembrance of the way in which I and my sister were never kind of held or touched by the parents. It was very strong in me. And I thought, I want to be a kind of embracing, warm, loving parent. And I haven't found that difficult.

And I truly think that if Eleanor were here, she'd say, no, you didn't find it difficult. It was fine. There are some lovely details of, as you've already mentioned, just about the kind of scene setting in the novel. So I think at one stage, Marianne and her husband, she goes on to marry, they're having a little lovemaking episode on a habitat killing rug. I did like that. There's also the mention twice, I think, in the book of cold collations. Now, I've never heard of that before. What is a cold

collation? That's your age. If you're my age you know what a cold collation is it's just sort of cold meats and cold slaw stuff put out for, I mean we used to go to these parties in Berkshire which the parents called hops because we used to hop

around I suppose to you know Tommy Steele records. A cold collation is just a, what do we call it? A cold, you know, in America it's called a cold plates, don't they? Cold plates. Charcuterie. That's it. I can never pronounce that. Them. It's that, with a bit of coleslaw.

Coleslaw. And there are some just magnificent appearances by large mahogany furniture and stuff like that. So is that kind of detail, is it rather wonderful to be able to pop those things in along the way in a book? Yes, yes, it is. But it has to feel, it has to feel truthful. I think that when it comes to sort of furnishing a novel, I like to sort of have a long pause about, I don't know,

a quarter of the way into the book and do a sort of a truthfulness assessment of what I've done so far and kick out anything that doesn't feel absolutely authentic and true. Whether I'm the best judge of what is authentic and true at that moment is debatable, you might say. Perhaps it should be somebody else doing that. But I think for small details, even about furniture,

is that wardrobe in the right place, you know, metaphorically? Yeah. Important to do to verify that it's truthful. And is it a klaxon sounding and a warning sign when a man refers to his penis as a todger i thought it was rather endearing actually well we'll put that out there do you know different jane i i thought it was a lovely detail this is the character that is a homely word isn't it it's a very homely one uh it's the character that marianne marries though not the love of her life um poor man called hugo uh and um that is the term he he chooses to employ which i don't know it's certainly one for debate

i think it's so much better than actually uh giving it a proper name you know with the capital letter that's terrible no that's truly terrible. We shouldn't give away too much more of the story. That's always a danger when we talk to authors. Can I just ask you a rather prosaic question about the word count in a book? Because yesterday we had Ken Follett in, who we reckon probably his latest book,

400,000 words, Rose. Oh, my goodness. It was 735 pages long which is very long and of course both of you had read it all all of it of course we don't sleep yeah test us later but at what stage in your career can you call the shots on your word count i mean is this very specifically you've you said it's a novella is that a kind of thing where you're allowed to publish a novella and it has to be thing where you're allowed to publish a novella and it has to be a certain number of words or a novel why does ken follett get to do 734 pages

i have no idea i have no idea i don't think i could go on that long i couldn't i couldn't sustain my interest in something over 735 pages so i mean all credit to him really to do it i i think the the story detects its own length, doesn't it? And sometimes there is a surprise in how short or how long a book is. I've written quite long books, and Music and Silence, somebody bought this at an event I was doing last night, and I was appalled to see how large it was. I think it's only 365 as opposed to 765,

but it's quite a long, dense, sort of multi-voiced book. And when I began this, I almost thought that it was a short story. And then I realised that there was a kind of richness in the way this life progresses, which I think the reader can't, a lot of it you can't see coming. And I thought, actually, I want to extend it out to novel length, but it can be one of those, I think, rather kind of useful books that you can devour in an afternoon.

I think several people have said to me, it doesn't matter. People have very busy lives. The short book is OK. Oh, yes. No, I think it's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Rose Tremayne is our guest this afternoon. Dame Rose Tremaine. Is that a thing that you saw coming, that you welcomed? Do you like the attention of the damehood? I think people forget about it, actually. I mean, I think the men always like to, if they're sir, they like to use it. I think dame is a little... The word is a little bit problematic, isn't it? It's kind of a bit pantomime.

Yeah. But I was at the very last investiture that Queen Elizabeth did. So it was just before everything closed down and then she died. So I have a fond memory of that, of the actual day. I managed to take my grandchildren along and they were particularly amazed by the size of the guns held by the police outside the palace. That was the thing they really remember.

And so you go into the palace. Are you allowed to talk about this? You don't sign some kind of state secret or whatever? No, no, I don't think so. So you go into the palace. Do you have a kind of green room where you're waiting with all of the other potential dames and sirs? Well, you do, but do you know one thing I noticed?

Because I had a CB a few years ago and I remember that what you call a green room, it's absolutely enormous. It's one of these amazing state rooms. There's a great lot of furniture in it. But I remember that when I went for the CB, there was champagne in the green room. Now, this time when I went for the damehood, there was no champagne, there was just in the green room. Now, this time when I went for the Damehood,

there was no champagne, it was just water. Cutbacks. Tough times. It's happening to this proud nation of ours. It's very telling detail there, Rose. Can we talk about one of your other books, The Road Home, which is an absolutely wonderful book. And I was saying to Jane earlier, it would be in my, absolutely on my shelf of favourite novels of all time. I'm not saying that to suck up to you, but I kind of am. The character of Lev has stayed with me and I think a lot of other readers. He was such a beautiful man and his journey was such a honest and beautiful thing. Do you often think of him too? Or once you've written a book, does the character stay within the book? I've written so many books that if I could think of

them all, I suppose my head would be very crowded. I wouldn't be able to invent anybody new. But yes, I have an affection. I have an affection for Lev. Yes. I suppose he makes a really radical journey, which is away from Eastern Europe to come and make a new life in England, but really in order to go back there. And I think the artifice of the journey is absolutely capital for a novel, because the novel itself is a sort of journey structure. So once I'd determined that Lev was on this journey and it could have all kinds of stages and setbacks

and, you know, it's a journey of discovery of himself. He's a grieving man, his wife's died, so he starts at a very, very low point and how is he going to get himself out of it and into some kind of life that he can bear? I still have sympathy with anybody who's on that kind of a journey. And creating a man is always an interesting thing to do. I mean, in the culture that we're in at the moment, we're all writers being so encouraged to sort of stay in our own gender,

in our own experience and so on. And there were a lot of things that happened to Lev which are quite outside my experience. But I think, again, we're back to what I said earlier about truth. How true is it? If a thing is true, then as far as I'm concerned, it's okay. I thought it was just such a perceptive book about being a stranger in a foreign land

and trying to love and trying to work out who you are again and that need to go home. It was 2007, wasn't it? Do you have any thoughts about how different that journey and that experience would be in 2023 for a migrant well the prime difference and before we get on to to um you know considering it from his point of view the prime difference is that i i wouldn't have been able to write it although the and if i'd gone to the publishers presenting this as an idea, OK, so I am the Eastern European male immigrant,

they would have said, no, you know, go away, I think. So it just wouldn't be possible to do it now. But how different would it be? I imagine it would be harder somehow. There are many more people on this kind of journey encountering a lot of prejudice, a lot of angst and anguish against them, which Lev does encounter from time to time.

But on the whole, and this is something that was remarked about this book, on the whole, the people that he meets over here are kind to him um and i'm not sure that would pertain or pertain less if it was set now yeah it's 15 years ago we do a podcast together called offer do dip him whenever you fancy two rows uh this is an open promotion but also just an interesting question to ask you we have a book club and we are trying to ask our listeners to suggest the books that we read rather than jane and i you know flicking through the latest kind of review of books and choosing something what would you recommend from your reading experience that might be something a little bit different just

something that you as a reader have completely loved okay um well a new discovery of mine which i have to mention um is not it's not a contemporary um natalia ginsberg who is um an italian writer i think she died in 1991 uh so she's not a contemporary um but there's a new translation and her books have all been reissued by I think by Daunt Books a small independent publisher and I think she writes very short books

she is a beautiful writer and the translations are fantastic. I'm ashamed to say I can't remember for you the name of the translator but only to say they're really good. So she was a great new discovery. I'm very faithful to certain American authors.

I think Cormac McCarthy was a wonderful writer. And there's a lot of still wonderful stuff coming out of South Africa. I think the last Damon Gallagut book, The Promise, was absolutely splendid. And one of those books where there's an idea which sort of appears on page one and is sustained all the way through. Again, not a very long book, but it's marvelously sustained and walked around and seen in all its complexity and all the all the things that a promise can mean and a promise not kept or what those things can mean so so there are a couple of suggestions for you lovely suggestions thank you very much indeed for that it's been a real pleasure to meet you rose tremaine thank you

very much indeed for coming into times towers today so rose's latest book is called absolutely and forever and it is out now. It's got a lovely cover. It has got a great cover. A lovely cover. I know I do sometimes think cover art is underappreciated, but this is a particularly lovely-looking book. It's very stylish, isn't it?

Yes, incredibly stylish. It takes me to the King's Road in the 60s. Well, it's the 60s, isn't it? All the colouration of the 60s. Yeah, unfortunately I was a playgroup in the 1960s. Well, you were to make that very clear. I just made it into the 60s. Yeah, unfortunately I was a playgroup in the 1960s. Well, you were to me, yes. I only just made it into the 1960s. All right. Absolutely and Forever is out now.

Out now. And it was genuinely lovely to spend a bit of time with Dame Rose Tremaine because she was a beautiful contrast to Follett and Archer, and I mean that nicely. She's an incredibly successful and highly acclaimed lady writer and she just conducted herself in a rather different way, didn't she? She was very unflappable, incredibly... Just her presence was calming, wasn't it?

Yes, it was. Really calming. And she's very thoughtful, which is not to say that young Ken wasn't calm and thoughtful. But he was also, he gave more of the kind of, I don't want to be rude about Ken Follett at all, because he's a lovely man, but he was definitely more of the jazz hands interviewer, wasn't he?

He was capable of very much giving a performance, which we really enjoyed. And I think lots of people enjoyed too. But no no Rose is is different uh and can I just apologize actually because I was trying to make Rose feel at ease with a question about aging but I didn't mean to say that we were all the same age because I was younger considerably younger so you genuinely this is the difference you genuinely, this is the difference, you genuinely don't remember the 60s? No, because I was born in 1969.

So I don't. Very little swinging for you. No, not really, no. I emerged into the incredible mullet of the 1970s. That's where I'm from, really. Isn't it your birthday quite soon? No, it's not. It's in February.

And you do like to say that you forget, but only this morning I popped a single rose into the very nice vase that you gave me in February for my birthday. Yes, it is very nice. I'm a Pisces. Why is it I thought your birthday was coming up? Right, OK. Thank you very much indeed for entertaining this. Kate Humble is our guest tomorrow.

She's always very good. Plus, I like her hair. Oh, fair enough. Yeah, no, that's marvellous. Okay, all good. Bye then. You did it. Elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings.

Otherwise known as the hugely successful podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. We missed the modesty class. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler, the podcast executive producer. It's a man, it's Henry Tribe. Yeah, he was an executive. Now, if you want even more, and let's face it, who wouldn't,

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