The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 95: The Last Hero Pt. 1 (Speaking of Unhinged Rants)

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “The Last Hero”. Pictures! Dragons! Explosives! Horse…?Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:LIVE: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce? - YouTubecontinentalbreakfast - TikTokThe Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - The Last Hero Pratchat Podcast (@PratchatPodcast) - Twitter 100th birthday party?! - r/TTSMYF Poems (Chesterton, 1915)/The Last Hero - WikisourceDinotopia - Wikipedia Interview: Paul Kidby - PressReader   Paul Kidby Interview - Artist Insight Paul Kidby - paulkidby.com The Discworld Imaginarium Bronze Bust of Sir Terry Pratchett Revealed - YouTube Marmaduke Constable - Wikipedia Ray Bradbury telling us to explode - TTSMYFSongs & Tales: The riddles of Bilbo and Gollum - The Grey HavensDeath with Kitten - paulkidby.com Out To Lunch with Jay Rayner: Miriam Margolyes on Apple Podcasts Wordcount for Lovecraft’s Favorite Words - The Arkham Archivist 1066 and All Saxon - The Anglish Moot You’re Dead To Me: The Bayeux Tapestry - BBC SoundsMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I'm not going to knit a fucking octagon. Very well. Do you want bell shammer off? That's how you get bell shammer off. Was it a good night? It was really good. Kate, he doesn't really get to like go out and be able to have a drink. And go to a drag show, understanding drag show.

There weren't many numbers, but all the numbers were really good and really funny. And I had a very nice time like dancing with my sister. So that was all very cool. And he did. If it had been really long, you'd have worried about the train. Exactly. So we got our terrible sugary cocktails and made friends. I taught my sister how to make friends in a smoking area and met some Terry Pratchett fans.

So, you know, they might listen. They're fucking everywhere. Lift up a rock and they're like inside. Brackets complimentary. I like lifting up rocks to find interests in sex. Thank you, random reviewer, who I've forgotten. What's what's happened? The release date for Amazing Morris is coming out December 16th.

We're very excited. Exciting. We are exciting. Sorry, listeners, I was at a drag show last night. I can't do sentences now. It's all Lauren's chain needs fault. As everybody knows, drag shows do take away your ability to grammar for several days. Weird cherry coke cocktails.

There is something beautiful about an angry, tall, stunning Scottish drag queen screaming, that just kills your ability to use sentences. Well, I just realised we try not to say that word on the podcast. No, no, it's OK. But yeah, the oh, oh, yes. Good. Amazing Morris is coming out. Morris is coming out.

You can do a little cinema trip together. Oh, we could. What are the nerdy things we've been following? Your your your large TV commitment. Is that going well? Oh, yes. So Rings of Power finale, that was incredible. And I was right about a thing.

OK, good. I won't say more for spoilers because you haven't seen it. The She-Hulk finale was really fun. Lots of people didn't like it. I thought it was very good because She-Hulk's done a whole silly fourth wall breaking thing throughout it. So when everything started coming to a head to a finale, she stops and like jumps out of the show and goes and has a go at Marvel and jumps back into it.

And that's just how we like meta. It's completely in the spirit of what a like ridiculous, fun, little show it is. So I greatly enjoyed that. House of Dragon continues ridiculous. And I love it deeply. Good. You can tell there's been a good episode when it even makes it across my timeline.

Yeah. Yeah. No, the last episode was incredible. Amy for Patty Constain. He deserves it. He did a lot of work there. I had to turn my Twitter timeline back to chronological. My brief adventure with letting the algorithm decide what I was going to look at. Well, I first saw the shark uberie.

Yeah, which I linked to. But then after that, it went downhill. You can't see anything from the people you follow on that setting. It's always just seeing you like this thing. You like this. I scroll down and down and down and literally ten in a row, not from someone I follow. And I follow like a thousand people.

So I write, fuck you, chronological. I tend to do I've gone back to doing chronological, but I do chronological and then I'll switch to the algorithm one. Well, you don't miss any of the big ones. By this time next week, I believe there will be a new Taylor Swift album. I think you can say Prime Minister, but you tell Swift album. Probably be a new Prime Minister as well. Have you seen the Daily Star

doing a live feed of a lettuce decomposing? Yeah, is it going to outlast Liz Truss? They put googly eyes on it now. Oh, good. Oh, good. I was concerned that they weren't going to put googly eyes on the Prime Minister outlasting lettuce. I was just thinking the other day, I haven't put googly eyes on anything in a while.

No, me neither. I need to get some googly eyes. We've lost some of our childhood. Glee. Glee, yeah. Glee, idiocy. It's a fine line. I very much felt that TikTok video that was like, thank God Glee didn't exist in the time of God. What was it?

That's Sam Smith's song. That sounds unholy. Yeah, yeah. And then somebody had said in the comments, yeah, never mind that, Montero, can you imagine? Oh, no. I mean, I can't. I don't want to. I can't so clearly. I am very much with... I can't remember the name of that particular TikTok.

She's that really funny Scottish one, not Eleanor Morton, the other really funny Scottish one. But her overwhelming loathing of Matt Morrison from Glee is so relatable. I'll try and remember to link it. TikTok, yeah, I'll know what I mean. That's fine. That's enough. TikTok Scottish, not Eleanor Morton.

That was Scottish, yeah. There we go. This listeners, little... little forceful breaking, like we don't constantly. It's the reason sometimes the show notes might be slightly patchy. If I don't remember to do it as I'm editing, I have to then rely on my notes, which are sometimes just nothing useful at all. Yeah, no, we don't really have a fourth wall.

We don't really have a third, second or first wall. Yeah, no wonder we're chilly, huh? Honestly, the housing crisis is ridiculous. I haven't even got walls. Just a ceiling, don't ask. Fucking laws of physics. Can't afford them. In this economy. In my day.

We bloke. Should we? We're making a podcast. Yeah, ideally, I think we've got the setup. We've got the plan. We could do something else. I mean, we're here now. A load-up steam of playing a bit of Age of Empires instead, I don't know. I mean, kind of, now I've said that, right? No, okay, podcast, podcast.

Yeah, podcast. What the fuck is our podcast called? God knows. The Magnus Archives, I'm still fucking feral about the fact that they talked about something. I have just got to such a good point in it that it's really difficult not to just be binging it constantly. But you listen to stuff as you're doing other things.

Yes, but I've discovered that if I listen to anything while I'm writing the Friends book, I very much take on the tone of whatever podcast I'm listening to, which if I'm listening to TV, Recap podcast, great Cosmic Horror, not a great tone for a book about sitcoms. Completely disagree, but fine. Ross crawled from the sea, tentacles flailing. Did we ever talk on the podcast about like the top list of things that HD Lovecraft used? No.

I'm sure there was a mandible or two. Yeah. I feel like H.P. Lovecraft liked a mandible. It's not squamous. That's the headline of this article. Hideous, faint, nameless, antique, or antiquarian, singular, singularly, madness, abnormal, blasphemy, blasphemous, accursed, and looting, slash lootsome. Oh, yes, the eight genders.

Yes. All right, I'll link to that as well. OK, right, podcast. Oh, yeah, sorry, right. The Magnus Archives. Episode 95, The Last Hero. You introduce us usually, yeah. I know, well, I got distracted by the Magnus Archives, and now I can't remember our fucking intro.

Statement begins. Hello and welcome to The Two Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Precious's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And we are here today to talk about The Last Hero, the 27th Discworld novel. Notice on spoilers before we crack on.

We are a spoiler-like podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book The Last Hero. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Pulled in an aircraft by many, many swamp dragons under dubious physical laws. Perfect. Have we got anything to follow up on?

Yeah, probably. Cool. Do you know what it is? No. All right. We should probably say at the top of the episode, not follow up, but follow on. We're soon going to do a crossover episode with one of our fellow Pratchett podcast. Pratchett? Hashtag, make you chat.

And we'll be covering Where's My Cow? The supplemental book to the Discworld book, Thud. So warning for listeners who are reading along for the first time that this will be jumping ahead in the canon and might contain spoilers. But if you don't mind that, yes, tweet any of your questions to Pratchett with the hashtag make you chat or send them to us. And we will hopefully answer them on the public. We're also coming up to our 100th episode.

We are. Very exciting. Joanna has had the spectacularly risky idea of having some kind of live cast. Yes, we're talking about we haven't decided on the platform or even if we're definitely doing this or when. But we get enough feedback on it really because what we don't want to do is do it and then there's no one there. Yeah, that would be awkward.

But yes, we are aiming for some kind of live cast. That'd be Francine and I. There'll be a chat thing so you can ask us questions and chat to us. Hopefully we'll be able to get a couple of people up on screen with us. If they want to, we might do some silly quizzes. I quite like the idea of putting together some truth shall make you threat specific trivia. Oh, God, I mean, feel free.

Or just a wrong answers only Discworld quiz. Also, thank you to all of the listeners on Twitter who were not tweeted the announcement that Amazing Morris is coming out on the 16th of December with guess what our Christmas episode is going to be about. Refused to answer. No, excellent responses. Another episode on Hogfather, She-Hulk finale, Reservoir Dogs. We've noted all these suggestions down,

but we'll probably still be doing the Amazing Morris. No, I want to do Reservoir Dogs with puppets. See, I thought festive quantum sounded fun. Yeah, but puppets. All right, quantum was puppets. Yay. Cool. OK, that was not follow up. Francine, do you want to introduce us?

OK, well, so the last hero, as Joanna said, and we then quickly Google to confirm is the 27th Discworld novel. That is canon, even though it is a novella. They didn't go .5s on it. The title is probably, I'm guessing, taken from the last hero by G.K. Chesterton, which the poem I'll link to. You've got a copy that still has the blurb on it. I haven't sanded mine off.

I just took the dust jacket off. The blur. He's been a legend in his own lifetime. He can remember the great days of high adventure. He can remember when a hero didn't have to worry about fences and lawyers and civilisation. He can remember when people didn't tell you off for killing dragons. But he can't always remember these days, where he put his teeth. He's really not happy about that bit.

So now with his ancient sword and his new walking stick and his old friends and their very old friends, Co and the Barbarian is going on one final quest. He's going to climb the highest mountain in the Discworld and meet his gods. He doesn't like the way they let men grow old and die. The last hero in the world is going to return what the first hero stole with a vengeance. That'll mean the end of the world if no one stops him in time.

So it is a slightly different take on a Discworld novel. As Pratchett said in a 2002 interview with SFFF World, that's Sierra Foxtrot Foxtrot. Rincewin makes a useful appearance in The Last Hero, which will be a book mightily illustrated by Paul Kidby. I mean, seriously illustrated. The art taking as much or more room as the text. I've written the story and the artwork I've already seen is very, very good.

We're talking about the size of dynotopia. He said, like dynotopia, the story will be told in the pictures as well. Unlike dynotopia, it'll actually have a good storyline and better artwork. I've never read dynotopia and I did have to Google that. But I agree, Paul Kidby does better artwork. I've also never read dynotopia, so I won't venture an opinion. But I'm assuming Paul Kidby's better. Pratchett phrased it quite nicely, I think.

He was starting an experiment by this point and he said, we're heading for 30 Discworld books now and to keep it fresh, I'm franchising it, only I'm franchising it to myself. And Paul Kidby indeed is the co-creator of this book. It is a Pratchett and Kidby creation. And so we'll introduce him briefly because we know a lot about Pratchett and his life already. According to Paul Kidby's website and a couple of interviews I read,

he was kind of self-taught, kind of taught by an old anatomical artist. He'd become an art teacher and he knocked on her door one day. I was like, teach me art. Oh, that's likely. Yeah, he left school at 17 and after a stint making false teeth, worked as a commercial artist, doing things like spray painting designs onto roller blinds, before becoming a freelance illustrator, creating magazine covers for like sci-fi magazines and game magazines

and then creating video game packaging, including iconic pieces such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, Batman and Earthworm, Jim. Amazing. There's quite a lot said about his kind of art process in various places. I've got very stupidly, because it was very cheap, a digital copy of The Imaginarium. I'm going to get a proper version at some point, but I just got this for the for the text fits.

And it's just interesting reading about his art process, especially because like Rob Wilkins mentioned Josh Kirby's art process in his book. Yes, which was very haphazard and mad artist. That's like a subgenre of mad professor, isn't it? Yeah, mad artist, mad genius. Or as Paul Kidby seems to be more of the kind of industrious practice type of creator. So I can see why they work together so prolifically,

like pretty much as soon as they started working together, because they work together on things like Science of Discworld before Josh Kirby sadly passed away. Yeah. Paul Kidby has like created a bronze bust of practice, which is really cool. And I'll link to a video of that process, Rob Wilkins cameos. And yeah, yeah, there's lots of cool stuff. And he he he works like with acrylics and with oils

and with watercolours, I said, and he's a very cool artist. And I'm getting very into reading about him, but I won't go on about it too long because we've got a book together. Yes, this book in particular had quite a fun like making process, didn't it? Yeah. So it's more context for him working with Terry Pratchett. He literally met him at a book signing and kind of handed an envelope of drawings to Terry in the hope that he'd get a call. The first thing he did for Discworld was the Pratchett portfolio,

which was an illustrated compendium that came out in 1996. Oh, you need to find one of those two, do we? Yes, at some point. But yes, so Terry Pratchett asked Paul to work on this illustrated novella. And it just they didn't want to buy specialist software for it. But Pratchett had been gifted a copy of Photoshop 6. So this was Rob Wilkins first year working in the chapel, but they had to get Paul's paintings, which were all acrylic on board,

onto the computer that they were using. And they found a specialist in Dunstable, 100 miles away, who had the right software with the right hardware to do that, scan the images at a resolution needed. Yeah. So every day they were like, or a few times a week, Rob Wilkins was having to drive to Dunstable, get these pictures uploaded, load them on to go back to Salisbury, load them onto his laptop. And then they'd go through it all in Photoshop to put the book together.

Yeah. The bit about the lag that Photoshop used to have on high res images as well was painful to read, like spending an afternoon waiting for a blur effect to go ahead. Oh, God. And nowadays, like if I'm doing something on Photoshop, and it takes more than five seconds, I'm like, this is bullshit. So how quickly we get spoiled. Yeah. So a lot of work went into this book. But yeah, Terry Pratchett loved it so much.

It was never recreated without the pictures. Quite right, too. Yeah, absolutely. So in this first half, we're doing two episodes on this because it is a novella. And this ends on page 77 in the paperback, 73 in the hardback with the dragon merely smiled in this section. We open on the turtle and musing on inevitable death. In the beginning, fire was stolen from the gods.

Now we wheel towards the ending with a pointless albatross soaring over the skies of Ankmoorpork. At the unseen university, veterinary peers through an omniscope. Word around the ambassadorial collapses is that the apocalypse is imminent. Cohen has abandoned the Agathean Empire to return fire to the gods and it's up to Ankmoorpork to stop him. The fire in question will be delivered via the medium of Agathean

thunderclay and the insuring explosion will collapse the disk's magical field. On the slopes of Coruselasty itself, the silver horde comforts their kidnapped minstrel. Veterinary chapter Leonard of Querm about a flying machine to chase down Cohen, who's currently requesting a saga from the miserable minstrel. Subcommittees form and Rincewind doesn't wish to volunteer as a flotilla sets out to send a ship over the edge of the world. A bag of rubies changes hands and Cohen plans to die,

but not this soon as the evil Harry ambushes the horde. The flotilla travels on and Querm continues to build while Hewnan Ridcully gets ecumenical. Death detests Schrodinger and he's checking the big hourglass while the horde approaches the caves and Harry warns the gods. The ragtag bunch of barbarian misfits make it through the caves and come across some bodies while Carrot sows badges and dragons are tested. Very nice. Carrot is a little sewing. How lovely.

Helicopter and loincloth watch. Yes. The bit is justified. OK. In this specific book, other stuff we keep track of. We do open on the turtle. We do. And I want to mention that specifically. We very much get to see it because a few pages later where they're talking about the fact that this the magical field collapsing will kill the disk, we get this incredible image of the dead disk and the dead turtle.

Yeah, I had like two double page spreads. The highlight is my absolute favourite in the first one, and that was one of the ones I couldn't choose between. It is so fantastic. It's a beautiful piece of artwork. It is. So for helicopter, I'm going with the Pointless Albatross because we also love an albatross. Not not the what we've still got another half of the book to go. Prancing. All right.

I feel like we need to give everything its time. OK. So many loincloths, so many. There are many loincloths mentioned by name. Many loincloths mentioned by name more than once, I believe. But I'm going to pick the Cohen illustration as my favourite for this for this first section. Super, because he is the originator of the helicopter and loincloth watch.

Yes, is he? Yes, that would make sense, wouldn't it? As you know, I don't think he is. I think from the barbarian is technically the originator of the loincloth. But all right. Yeah, should we put the parrot in this? Oh, yeah, the parrot in on page 12 of the hardback. But there's an illustration of Leonard feeding some birds.

And one of the birds is parrot with dog written on the side. And Joanna, can you tell me where a parrot with dog written on the side might have appeared before? The truth. The truth I've heard. I've heard shall make you fret. Well, I wouldn't put too much stock in whatever radius keeps saying that. Yep.

At least one listener just excitedly thought the name of the thing in the thing. And I'm very, very happy at the effect I've had on humanity. So quotes, quotes. What's your favorite quote, Francine? My favorite quote, my favorite quote. And I got this is such a big book to try and log like around the desk. That's why I've got the paper back. Yeah, that would have been smarter.

Oh, gosh, there we go. He asked why we want to return fire to the gods, Hamish. Hey, someone's got to do it. Cackle, Hamish. Because it's a big world. We ain't seen it all, said Boy Willie, because the buggers are immortal, said Caleb. Because of the way my back aches on chilly nights, said Cackle.

The minstrel looked at Cohen, who was staring at the ground. Because, said Cohen, because they've led us grow old. Oh, it's a good moment. It is. We've got the driving motivation behind the quest. Quest, yes, behind the quest. Thank you. Yes, the thing, quite right. And yeah, we'll talk more about the kind of motivations

and fable-ness behind it in the next section. So we'd better get the important quote in. Get the important quote in. Mine is much less important. Oh, good. The valley was full of cool green light reflected off the towering ice of the central mountain. It shifted and flowed like water into it, grumbling and asking one another to speak up, walked the silver horde.

Oh, and we all know I like a pretty description and then something silly. We do. And that was like immediately mirroring the previous bit, wasn't it? Oh, yes, the sea was full of cool green light. Captain Carrot sat near the prowl to the astonishment of Rincewind. He'd got out for a gloomy evening walk. He was sewing. Shall we talk character?

Yeah, that's what we got first. I mean, I know a lot of the characters here are people we've spent time with before. I started with Ridicully in Ponder because I think it was something. Interesting, I noticed quite early on. I think because this is novella, I think, for some people, it feels like almost a. A bit of a reintroduction to the disc world, especially because we were just talking about how a lot of the last book

seemed to be like big character celebrations. And obviously, Thief of Time was going back to previous books so much here. It's almost like, oh, here's a here's a fresh version of the characters. So Ponder Stibbins gets introduced as new head of inadvisably applied magic, but they sort of work almost as if they were shiny new characters in this. And it explains things like Archchancellor Ridicully, who is technically the head of all known wizardry. Archchancellor Ridicully's little quiff I particularly enjoyed was,

I'm forced to agree, my lord. I did enjoy that moment. I do also want to point out on the Ponder thing that it's been pointed out many times that the Ponder in this looks a bit like Harry Potter, except these drawings of Ponder came before Harry Potter. Yeah, it was the 1990s. Yeah, because it was the 1996 compendium that Paul Kidby first drew for, where he did the Ponder Stibbins character design.

The first Harry Potter book didn't come out until 1997. Well, there you go. Also, like, obviously, Terry Pratchett wouldn't base a character on Harry Potter. So there's one thing that Terry Pratchett was lacking in, of course, it was imagination. Yes, famously unimaginative Terry Pratchett. And the veterinarians about having fun with him as well. My nearly quite was. So as a man full of get up and go must do, Lord Veterinary got up and went.

Oh, yeah, I love that. There's so many great little jokes in this. But I know he has, like, concentrated them. Yes, like, there's the same number of jokes in a normal Discworld book, but in half the amount of pages. But another one of my favorite illustrations is this page where you've got Veterinary on one side, taking up half a page and then Rince Wind on the other side, taking up half a page.

They're kind of facing off at each other across the table with the conversation down the middle. Yes, like it's such a thoughtful composition. It is. And there's like, they're obviously in the same place, but he's done slightly different lighting on them. Yeah. I like with Rince Wind as well. You can still see quite a few of the sketch lines around and stuff, which I feel gives it kind of a trembling feeling.

Yeah, whereas Veterinary, like all the line work is really, really sharp and defined. Oh, so like how massively villainous Veterinary looks. Beautifully downturned mouth on base as well. But like, it's all in the eyes, isn't it? Yeah, this is sort of not malevolent, but very calculating. Yeah, Veterinary and then this sort of sad pleading face on Rince Wind. It's nice to see Rince Wind again. It is nice to see Rince Wind again.

This is probably my favorite Rince Wind book, I think. It's interesting to have him and Kara in the same place, because they're both like, often are straight man of the operation. And although we don't really get anything from Kara's perspective, as we've talked about, it's interesting to have two normals. It's kind of interestingly handled. So I'm going to jump forward to Kara. We'll come back to Leonard in a moment.

But where him and Vymes are both introduced again, it sort of introduces them as if we don't know these characters particularly well already. Yeah. And it feels a bit like the whole defamiliarization thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, what if we didn't perfectly know Kara, Captain Karatayan Foundersen, who was standing to attention radiating keenness and a hint of soap?

Yes. And he manages to get that in and then quite soon afterwards, the moment where he shows himself to be maybe not as simple as we saw when he kind of makes it was that snark at Rince Wind about the life flashing in front of his eyes. So it's like, well, maybe this time we'll see something more interesting. I love it when Kara gets a picture moment. And Rince Wind's like... I do wish we had more.

I wish we had more Rince Wind in Kara, actually. It's a dynamic I really like. One Rince Wind thing, actually, I have to mention, he's saying when he got like a badge with a number five on it for a sixth birthday, I said that had been the rottenest day of his life. Oh, think about that statement. Yeah. Considering what else has happened to Rince Wind. I'm going to be so sad.

I do want to give him a hug. I like that Vimes is kind of hanging around making lighting a cigar in the background, and he's described as the head of the watch first and is later on the page. I think that he gets actually called Vimes. I like that Vimes is in this case gone. We can make this legal, legal. Yeah. Conspiracy to making a fray.

Absolutely. Which is fair. Yeah. I mean, I'm afraid that's what they're doing. I'm sorry. So Leonard. So Leonard. Leonard's having a lovely time. Leonard's doing a lovely painting. Isn't he, though?

Is it Mona Lisa, but with a big grin type painting? Mona Og. Oh, yeah. Mona Og. Yeah. Again, off with the fairies, but we're at the fact that Vettanor is not going to come and see him unless there's something. Something's the matter. I also kind of I like the impression because, you know, he starts talking about doing this flying machine type thing.

Immediately, Investonari points out, like, oh, you figured that out already. That was quick. And you see, the idea is Leonard is so intelligent and he's had this idea of a flying machine already. Yeah. But I feel like also it's a bit like, I mean, there's probably like a million logical and safe things I could do,

but this could just be my chance to do the thing. Yeah. Oh, fine. I can do it. Leonard, at one point, was described as a man who could invent seven new seven new things before breakfast, which is a nice through the looking loss reference of yes, I think why I can think of six impossible things for breakfast. And I also liked his demonstration of intelligence

or genius being just casually drawing a perfect circle. Yeah. As the possibly apocryphal tale goes, that's how. Leonardo, not Leonard Da Vinci, Leonardo Da Vinci proved his genius to the Pope at the time. I do also like when Leonard's asking for like the people he needs to build the kite and he says he wants apprentices and Vettanara is saying, but I can get the finest craftsman. He said, no, I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

Yes. In other words, don't get me people who will tell me this will explode. Yeah. Get me people who are willing to see whether or not it explodes. Now, that's quite Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is very well known for just going, no, don't tell me that's impossible. Just fucking do it. Yeah. And quite often it would work. I think there's probably some shared DNA there. We've also got Hugh Nonrig-Cully.

We do have Hugh Nonrig-Cully. It's very nice to see him. He brings me joy trying to get all of the religions to try and work together. But they've got to decide on the shape of the table first. Yes. And we have like a slightly more fleshed out idea of the religious society. Don't want to focus. Well, I like I had to relook up the word ecumenical for this because it said the gods don't like when we get ecumenical. And I thought ecumenical just like meant referring to the church in general.

I was sort of ecumenical involves different forms of churches working together. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was going entirely off what I'd gleaned from Father Ted. That would be an ecumenical matter. But it's another really beautiful illustration. And if you start looking at the detail on it, like the little kind of crossings and extra lines on his knuckles, he's got these very like thin bony thing, like aged hands.

It was just an incredible little detail I noticed. And obviously his full kind of more porky and bishop look. Yeah. As the chief priest of Blind Eye. Oh, actually, if we're talking pictures before I forget, my other favorite in contention with that disk is Leonard in Boat with dragons. Oh, no, that is lovely, which is just gorgeous. I can't I can't stop looking at that. You've got like the sail that's the reflected shape of the moon almost.

And you've got the silver light and the gold light and the just the lovely dragons. And yeah, it's an illustration. It's a beautiful picture that also somehow reminded me a tiny bit of wacky races. Sure. Yeah. If if wacky races was serene. Yes. It's been a long time since I watched anything like that, obviously, because I'm 31. I've got a nephew. It's not been that long. The Silver Horde, speaking of being old, speaking of older.

Yes, heroes, the lot of them, if slightly retired now. So we've got Boy Willy, Truck or the Uncivil, Caleb, the Ripper, Mad Hamish. Eventually we get Veena, the Raven Head. Yes, which I don't think and I'm ashamed I wouldn't I didn't pick up on this, but annotate a project point out probably a reference to Zeena, the warrior princess. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Speaking of the Horde, the guy of which one was it? Vincent, was it?

Yes, quite possibly. Vincent died by choking on a cucumber. Oh, yes. That was one of my favorite jokes in the entire book. Yes. I learned quite recently that, in fact, it might have been the latest episode, no exception in which case it was yesterday. Marmy Duke Constable, who fought in the Battle of Bosworth when he was in his 70s,

died a couple of years later by choking on a frog that was in his water. Marvelous. So I feel like there's a nice parallel there caused by ignoble choking incident. You carry on. Obviously, we love the Silver Horde. We've seen what met them before in interesting times. I prefer this is a book about them.

But the poor minstrel. He's had a time of it, isn't he? I don't think he really wants to be there. No, you have the illustration of the minstrel kind of looking very puffy shouldered and poor sod. And then you also get the introduction of Evil Harry Dredd. And his henchman. That's me. Slime. Garg.

Lost your tongue. Have you? Haven't suggested it. Don't worry. Just a good blood curdling screen. That's all you need. And I love how much they all respect each other, despite the fact Harry Dredd is kind of, you know, opposite side for them. I was very much like, we all know the same code. Yeah, yeah, the hero's code. Yeah, which is basically just a narrative. Convenience.

It's your place within the narrative. You are the trope, and we know it. They wouldn't put it like that. But yeah. And you've got Butcher, who's one of the stupid henchmen. And this is great. The believes anything, anything, anything anyone tells him can't see through the most ridiculous disguise would let a transvestite washerwoman woman go free.

Even if she had a beard, you could camp in. Falls asleep really easily on a chair near the bars and carries his keys on a big hook on his belt so they can be easily lifted off. Superb. And a lot of respect for Harry for making sure he's got that as a henchman. Oh, oh, sorry.

Along with slime, knock, knock. Just just beautiful. Shame they didn't last long, really. Well, yes, but all the all the effort that went into those illustrations to be killed off of you a few minutes later. But now they'll live on forever in our hearts and pages and podcast. Of course, locations, locations. Yes. So I'm going to bring back the All Roads lead to Wankmore Park section because we stop keeping track

of whether or not all the books have been there for a while, but it's interesting me again. Of course, we do go because we found out, didn't we? Yeah. Of course, we do go to Wankmore Park here. Yes. But we also get an incredible like another two page spread illustration of the city. Yes. Which is one of those great studies in like using almost just one colour.

It's not quite. Yeah. But it's very desaturated, muted, limited pallets. But yeah, no, it's beautiful anyway. But it's great. Like just the longer you look at this illustration, the more little details you spot like there's the disk. You can see the way the Tower of Art is kind of twisted on itself as it goes up. Like someone sort of rung it out like a sponge.

You've got the Albatross wheeling over, which is this one like really beautiful kind of hit of white over quite like you said, desaturated page. Got the Opera House, which is just a box with bits stuck on the front. So, yeah, it's an absolute delight. It brings me much, much joy. Look at the rubber as it goes on. It's not like the port.

Yeah, yeah, possibly. Maybe there's a flotilla forming. You've got to keep an eye out for the formation of flotillas in your ports. Oh, I'll waste you. And then, of course, we get the explanation of why they've been asked to solve this problem. The Agathean government believes us to be capable of anything, said Lord Fetanari.

We have Zip, Zing, Vim and a go-getting, can-do attitude. Oh, yes, that sounds very Ray Brabri. That does it. Zip, Vim, Vigga. Zest and... Oh, fuck, what's the last one? Gusto. That's it. Zest and Gusto. I can't say all of those words.

Get out of bed and explode. That's his right of advice. Thank you, Ray Brabri. Instructions unclear. I have now scattered myself over quite a wide area. Much like a swamp dragon. We also get a beautiful illustration of Dunn Manifestin. Oh, yes, it is.

This incredible kind of citadel of the gods rising up out of the mountain peak. Very tacky. Love it. Which, if you look really closely, you can just see off to one side on a sort of jutting little outpost. This tiny little hut with a little tree. And then finally, mostly just because I like the name in the again, playing with the tropes. We have the impossible caves of dread.

Yes, yes, we do. Which the hoarder heading into. They're doing the... Well, we know the answer to the riddle. It's teeth. It's always teeth. And teeth, of course, is one of the riddle answers from the Hobbit. 30 White Horses on a Red Hill. The time one was the one I memorized,

and I'm not sure I can even do it anymore, but I used to. Something about this thing. All things devours, birds, beasts, trees, flowers, gnaws iron, bites steel and grinds hard bones for meal, except I missed some out. There's something about where's mountains down. Yes, Slays King ruins town and beats high mountains down. There we go. Right, not the Hobbit.

Not the Hobbit. We're talking about The Last Hero. The... Yes, OK, no, it's all right. We reached the end of the list. Excellent. Good. Well done, us. All right, we can talk about the Hobbit now for a while. Or get a coffee. I think coffee might be a better idea. Right, little bits we liked.

And we're starting with Practical Philosophy, Francine. We are... I just like the way that physics is portrayed in this book. In a... All of the concepts are there, just with slightly fun language. I don't know if physics was ever called Practical Philosophy, actually, but I would fully believe it was at some point. And yeah, just the way Learner's like, yeah, no, if we...

Sure, yeah, if we push something fast enough off the end of the world, it'll probably come back. Why not? Sun does it? Yeah, absolutely. I believe that sufficient down eventually becomes up, my lord. Is this philosophy? Practical philosophy, my lord. And yeah, no, just the very, very spits throughout where Learner gets to be

a weird little scientist. Very enjoyable. Excellent, I love that. Oh, yeah, and the burial mound. Yes, I suppose this is a bit more on the main theme, isn't it, again? But so Cohen, at one point, is sitting on an ancient burial mound a little far away from the camp, just thinking, remembering. And it's obviously kind of a parallel

to the Tomb of the Forgotten Hero, the memorial of the unknown soldier. Sorry, the unknown soldier, yeah, the unknown soldier. And yeah, just the idea that this to Cohen represents, I think, all fallen heroes, all forgotten heroes and, you know, himself in some way. And although I'm sure he's he's doing some thinking. It also kind of beautifully hearkens back to that line from Reaper Man. No, it's not from Reaper Man. It's from a book we haven't got to yet.

OK. Tell me later. So a hearkens forward to a line from a book we haven't got to yet. Sorry, I'm very nearly bugging us up there. Turn off the Omniscope. Come on. Crap, now there's only one future. Oh, no. All right.

But yeah, sorry. I'm not sure I can read this with a speech empowerment. So I'm not going to do that. I can still remember him as the line there. And it's only slightly tempered by the fact he's not wearing his false teeth. I think only slightly, but then that's part of the joy of it. There's a great moment that I love. I think it's only a couple of pages after that,

although we've got slightly differing page numbers. But it's when veterinarians kind of explaining this plan to the wizards who are a bit distrustful of Leonard, specifically the dean. And we haven't really had fun with the wizards and the dean for a while. So I'm very glad he said. And he's sort of doing this. What do we know of this man? What about bloody super Johnson's? And he says, we all know about artists, don't we?

Flippity gibbits to a man. True that. There's just so many things I love about the one sentence. It's the dean delivering it and only the dean could deliver flippity gibbits to a man. And the same thing as Leonard, it's very much disapproving of the dean as well. And it's like, and then we can rain fire on people who deserve it, of course. And that was like, no. No, raining. No, not.

No, one would do that. The wrong with everybody. But also to just get in a little swipe at Arsys in this beautifully illustrated novella. Flippity gibbits to the man. Was that is that a bit? Yes, Paul. Yeah, hurry up. I'm sorry. At this point, I should point out a detail from Rob's book, which is that Paul Kidby's coat of arms is two snails rampant.

Perfect. It's very important. We all know that. Flippity gibbit. Danger, Brunsey. Danger. Danger. Advantage. When we touch. Yeah, so. I think it is well illustrated and then blatantly pointed out in this book

that it is a lot easier to focus on small scale immediate danger than it is to pretty much almost immediate, but much larger scale danger. So at this point, oh, it is a flotilla, Joanna. My back was flotilla. It was a small flotilla that set sail from Angmar for the next day. It wasn't the prospect of the end of the world was concentrating minds unduly because that is a general and universal danger that people find it hard to imagine. But the patrician was being rather sharp with people and that is a specific

and highly personal danger and people had no problem relating to it at all. It's almost, let's actually hark back unless I'm remembering our conversation in the future to the little apocalypses we were talking about with the five horsemen. Oh, yes. Yeah. Little mini apocalypse sets. But yeah, I think he does. He does a good job of.

Yeah, a good book like this does need to have the personal danger on top of the large danger as we saw with with his earlier rinse, wind ones. You've always got rinse, wind and peril on top of the world in peril. Yes. And also kind of in the same vein, but the the kind of wizards being neutered by the fact this was all going on right at the hub was quite a clever thing to do. Yes, because we've already seen that the wizards can fetch people back from different continents and can do this and that.

It's like, not he can't beat that my world. Yes, go fuck yourself. Amazing. And Sagas Sagas. Oh, yeah. So the minstrel has agreed to write the saga of the Silver Horde. So now they're teaching him how to write a proper saga because he's more of a love song minstrel. Yeah. And I like this kind of almost rip apart of the genre. So you have like, well, you've got to open by describing

how you feel about seeing this saga, how makes your blood race. And you're going to tell them what a what a great saga is going to be. It's just like a massive piss take a bear wolf. Yes. And then you've got to start describing what the weather was like and all your sentences are going to be the wrong way round. Of course. So Bright was the day, which there's one of the watchbooks involves. I think it's cheery and detritus, but it might be earlier. It might have been Cudi going together to get a statement at the Alchemist Guild

and you get these two very different descriptions. And the one from the Dwarf is Bright was the day and high were our hearts when we set off to the. Yes. Good. Good remembering. I think you're right. That was Cudi. Yeah. Yeah. And it would be the dwarfs that do the saga style police reports. Very nice. And then it keeps going on and no one talks.

They spake. They did spake up spake wolf the sea rover. And people have always got to be something. So Cohen, the barbarian or Cohen, the bold hearted or Cohen, the slayer of any or any of that class of a thing. Which the particular any of that class of a thing made me realise that Cohen has a lot of similar speech patterns to gas boat. Yeah. Who I think also sort of says any class of a thing. Yeah. Nice.

And if you think about it, there's actually quite a lot of similarities between Cohen and gas boat. So I'm I think they're spiritual cousins. Well, I think one of them is very keen to be in mortal peril at all times. And one really prefer not. OK. Well, if you think about the ending where gas boat gets like a nice comfortable bed and a collar and he runs away from it and rolls in dirt almost immediately.

That's true. All right. And then you compare it to Cohen becoming the emperor of the Agathean Empire and then wandering off to go and return fire to the gods. Rolling in dirt. Yeah. Metaphorically. All right. All right. Gas boats across between rinse when and going then. Yes. But Cohen in the heart. Cohen in the heart. No, that's a flea ring in the first.

OK, that was fine. Well, I was not about to make a dick joke for. No, it's just that the usual thing is something on the street, something in the sheet, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so. Oh, yeah. And then we get God's playing games again, which is really nice in this rinse when and Cohen story to kind of take us back to

the colour of magic and the light fantastic. And this ominous line at the end of the section where gods are playing games of they forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board. Yeah, the. The God's playing game scenes before were very much. And here's what God's involved this time. Yeah, as the star of the show.

This time is the is the poor one, I think. Absolutely. But yeah, there's a lot of tropes and stuff gone to the biggest stuff that kind of call back to colour of magic and things, aren't there? Yeah, there's some. A lot, a lot of the tropes of which, practically was very self aware of, obviously, and the colour of magic and the life is fantastic.

That was the point. It was a parody of those things. But I think a more face on acknowledged in this. So the big passages about Harry being sticking to the tropes, you know, doing the right thing. He's got a he's got a temple, but he always makes sure that there's a there's a back way out. There's a yeah, it's like, yeah, I know how things are meant to be. And he'll never explain why.

But there's just some real heavy meta areas. So there's that bit, obviously. You've got Rincewind's bit again of just like, yeah, no, I know. This is how this is how it goes. I know how the story is about to play out this time. Yeah. You've got the kind of apocalypse scenario again. And again, it's the the entire disc at risk in.

Check you watch. Oh, gosh. Yeah, a couple of couple of hours, couple of days tops. So we've got to go on a grand adventure and we've got a couple of parallel adventures this time. And I think that's cool. That shakes it off a bit more. Yeah. And practice said himself, actually, that a few books into this world was when he kind of discovered this thing called plot.

Start working with that a bit more. It was quite interesting, really. And it is nice to see him explore the typical the hero's journey. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The 26 books behind him of experience. And I'm not sure he could have done this. You know, he spread the first out over two books, which I'm not saying was a bad thing to do, because I enjoyed them.

But he managed to put, I would say, almost the same amount of value into this novel. Yeah, absolutely. The same amount of kind of character development. Obviously, it's a two flower, which is always upsetting. And I'm upset with every book that doesn't have two flowers. I do like to headcanon that because Cohen's decided he can't be bothered to be emperor anymore.

He's left two flower in charge in the empire. Oh, that would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. So that's just a nice thought. Yeah, it's a good deep exploration of the hero's journey done over much fewer words than a discworld book would normally be. Yeah. And I think he's kind of learned his lesson with the not learn his lesson, but I think it improves the way he does scenes like the tunnels of terror, whatever they're called.

The impossible case of dread, sorry. Because instead of doing a blow by blow account of what happens to our heroes through the impossible case of dread and seeing the death of all the men and seeing the horrible unspeakable beasties instead, we see them come out the other side and we know what happens because that's the point. We it's parodying a very known story and and quite apart from that, we've seen Pratchett write it before.

So we know what happens. Everyone gets beaten up by the old men and there was a giant fish and the minstrel got briefly eaten. Yeah, it's fine. And there's there's some perfect as you know, bobbing in there. Yeah. Whatever, whatever, it's the exposition. Sorry. Yes.

As you know, Bob's when it's done clunkly, isn't it? Or I think Mark described it once as, as you know, my father, the king. Yes. Hi, sis. Hi, sis. Isn't it weird that our father died three years ago and we haven't seen each other for six months? How are you? Well, as you know, my terrible drag addiction. And yeah, one more little bit.

I'd say is that, although, as you quite rightly point out, as in seen of the Raven hair warrior, whatever she's called, it's got to be seen as warrior princesses also. I'd say there's not quite a parallel, but it's a nice evolution. We have Henna, the henna haired, Herod of the henna haired, Herodon. Herod of the henna haired, Herodon. Thank you.

I think the point I made when we were covering that book was, is it parody if you're just doing the thing? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And she was, you know, she was clearly trying to break some tropes as well in it. And yeah, it wasn't perfectly done. And here, I think we have another ex-haired name. Yeah, female hero who is allowed to be one of the elderly badasses.

Yes, absolutely. She's trope breaking in a different way. Yeah. And I mean, not the pressure wasn't capable of it at that point because by equal rights, obviously, we had a couple of elderly women badasses. But in this particular set of tropes with the heroes and the whatever, we don't have Bethan and Herodon. We have Scariel. Fina, the raven head. Yes.

Fina, thank you. Oh, gosh, sorry, my throat's hurting now. I've got that sympathetic yelling at a drag show's intro. Yeah, Fina's interesting, actually. I hadn't thought about comparing her to Herodon, but she's got a trope I enjoy a lot more, which is putting her knitting down and beating up a lot of people. Exactly. Strong Og vibes.

There's definitely a distant relation in there. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Maybe they've got Mona Og as a common cousin. She does. And the thing is, it is still very trophy because she's wearing the stupid boob armour on that. But it's allowed to be funny. Annotated Pratchett made the point of you could assume

that her armour is based on Sinawariya Princess's armour, but it could also just be generic woman in fantasy thing armour. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, no, it's great. And the illustration's great as well. Oh, yeah, she looks amazing. And it's really fun to. Because obviously I ranted, I think, a bit about the way

Josh Kirby illustrated stuff. And this isn't an anti Josh Kirby episode of the podcast. It's just a very, very sensitive. Wearing the timeline wrap. Yeah. But I like that he is not drawn a breasting boobily as such. No. All right.

It'll be interesting to see how he draws the characters that are a bit breasty booby. I mean, she's still fairly breasting boobily. It's just not as. She does certainly have the assets. Yeah. But I'm trying to recall what Angwer looks like to poor Kibby and it's definitely not like Josh Kirby's version.

Different vibes, different vibes. But again, like Josh Kirby's was meant to be the parody version. A different artist could have probably thought about drawing this. So she basically looks like a like a normal woman, maybe slightly curvy, but with gray hair. And he hasn't.

He's kind of drawn the age really beautifully in the way, like almost slightly cuts in. So you get a little bit of a chub roll around it, which I just I love it. I think it's a really good illustration. I think it's goals. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like I would like to look like that.

I'll get working on it. I can't make my sword. Yes, I can't make myself a breastplate. I can. So I can't do metal work yet. You told me I wasn't allowed to forge. I said not in your current apartment. All right, you're right.

Good. So the same reason I'd let you get a parrot. Also fair. What if I write exactly the same reason? I don't think the parrot would necessarily set fire to the place. You say that. Oh, for God's sake, don't get a forge and a parrot. That's just asking for slapstick hilarity,

which is never in reality good for your insurance. Yes. All right. Very good point. So speaking of unhinged rants, you've labelled your talking point thus. Sherbet, lemons and swamp dragons. This is basically just I really like this book talking point. Oh, good.

Tell me about this book, Joanna. But specifically this illustrative medium. And we already talked about the fact that like so much amazing little extra stuff ends in it. Mark explains the idea of sherbet lemons. Yeah, I had to go back and check that. He kept himself interested by dropping what he called sherbet lemons into the text, new jokes, footnotes and even whole scenes.

The name sherbet lemons was inspired by a sweet shop he remembered from his childhood, his proprietor would always add a few extra sweets to each bag once the official amount had been measured. And there's so many, like all of his books have this, but I think this is just so crammed full of them. This is what I'm saying about this being like the normal disquieted number of jokes were crammed into half the amount of pages. Yeah. Like right from the beginning,

you get the little joke about Republican bees. There's all of these amazing, like, Leonard designs kind of scattered throughout the text. The handwriting. Yes. The handwriting. No matter how long it took to organise that font. Yes, absolutely. I wonder what's so further used for that?

Because back in the day, it wasn't as easy. Well, they were using vector software, I guess. Oh, yeah. But I don't know if that... Do you know what? This is not the time for software speculation. You get a beautiful bit of illustrated map, which does actually match up with the then much later produced

disc world map clutches and in quite the same place, but like the shape of the lamb mass and everything all matches up. Although for those who have the map, which I've currently got hanging behind me, it works, but you have to turn the page upside down. Ah, good. I'll demonstrate properly at the end for our video watches. I'm not going to get up and do it now on this audio medium.

Yeah. Oh, it's also beautiful. Oh, it is. You've got the iconic death illustration, which I forgot was from this book. Yeah. But that image of death sitting there with the kiss in, that's a very, very famous one that's turned up.

That gets used a lot. I think almost every time we've done one of those headcanon threads on Twitter, someone has like done a death one and sent it to us with that specific picture. Yeah. Well, it's almost... It's very practical, isn't it? Because it's the serious somber grim reaper with his full drawn up looming overview in perspective

and the black and the blue and the thunk. But also in the image of just death at the table with the kiss in. So not the one with the giant hourglass in the background, but the one a couple pages before. It's like page 68 and mine, I think. Death's got this very sort of happy, sad expression. It's almost like this, I hope you like me expression. Yeah.

It's really beautiful. Yeah, the little library, I was good enough of it. The big one and my kind of case study for this point about why I love this book so much is page 62 in my paperback version. I think it's slightly earlier in the hardback. It's the varieties of the Swamp Dragon page. This is amazing. So there is only over this two page spread,

there is less than half a page of actual story text. An entire page is taken up with this like numbered illustration of these Swamp Dragons and then this list of all the different varieties. And it's so good. It's just joke after joke. You have the smooth corsa, no elongation of the themes. You've the nothing, fjord, blue tendency towards homesickness. That one's a Monty Python reference.

I've forgotten where I'd seen a Monty Python reference when we talked about John Cleese earlier. I was like, oh, fuck, I forgot to note that there it is. But it's just joke after joke after joke. Whivel spiker, excitable, walks into windows. Yeah, golden deceivers don't like them and their children. Gutleys leaper. Spike News Regal, one of the most beautiful of the classic dragons,

hate shoes, like this page alone, this could act as like a comedy monologue with the right performer. Like it made me think, you know, that sketch I've talked about on the podcast before, I think the Rowan Atkinson one where he's just taking the register. And it's just Rowan Atkinson reading a list of names that get progressively sillier. Like, could you imagine Rowan Atkinson just reading out this list? Yes. Oh, yes.

Somebody should hire him immediately. That's before you start taking into account the actual visual of all of these dragons who all managed to look so ridiculous and sad. Apart from the happy one, who is Ramkins Optimist. Yes, Seldmix loads. You never tagged yourself. Jessington's blunt, rare and very stupid. Tendency to slip.

No, I think if I'm going to tag myself, I'm going to go with Lion-headed Calpa, a large breed, easy to keep, but often afflicted with skipplets. Oh, I'm sorry. Later on, the last page we have in this section, actually, is Leonard's annotated dragon illustration. Yeah, that was another one. I know this. And one of the labels is beard and thrips,

unkemptiles, like thrips, thrips. That's a fun word and I googled it and it is. My new slender insects was fringe wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. So I don't know if that was deliberate, but I wouldn't be surprised because Pratchett's garden. My favourite is egg, badly constructed on that one. Body shape, lumpy. But yeah, just next to that variety is a swamp dragon page.

Like the following page has like almost just a single paragraph of story text. And then this in like intense diagram of a dragon's wing and like a little mini essay from Leonard to Quorum. So it's like it's not so much that, oh, this is a particularly good illustration, but it's just the amount of extra amusement that you get across this two-page spread just because you have the illustration there to give it more detail. Yeah. And the eyes on the wing that he's drawn on there.

Yeah, absolutely. And you get the like little sketches of dragon in flight and dragon exploding. And like you said, the absolutely you've got the beautiful handwriting and you've got this note at the bottom. I cannot find my treaties of the structure of wings. Oh, Miss Triplet, who dust my workshop by you, all things are consumed. I should also point out the varieties of swamp dragon page is attributed at the bottom to the show judges guide to dragons by Lady Sybil Rampkin, of course.

Available from the Cavern Club press and more pork at twenty dollars, which is either incredibly expensive or inflation has gone rampant since we heard about salaries last quite possibly quite like how dollar doesn't seem to have any fixed amount at all through these books. Absolutely not. Someone should make an effort to make the money work anyway. Absolutely. They do it. And then you also get just like really great, funny little conversations

that don't necessarily have anything to do with the illustrations. But again, it's just like, oh, how many extra jokes can I cram into a page? Yeah, the choking on a cucumber thing we talked about earlier, just up the page from that. And they're talking about the evil Queen Pamda. Who ended up getting married to Mad Hamish. And it was like, oh, that was some time ago. I don't think it lasted.

But she was a devil woman. We all get old, Harry. She wants a shop now. Pam's pantry makes marmalade. She used to queen it on a throne on top of a pile of skulls. Well, I didn't say it was very good marmalade. I want to know what ended up happening to what city walked off with Kring. Yes.

Barbarian, the first. Frunn. Frunn. Frunn the Barbarian. Frunn, I imagine he died. Yeah, probably. He didn't look like someone who was going to survive that long, were they? He probably got eaten in an impossible cave of dread, to be honest.

Hmm. All these impossible. It is. It is, I have heard. And yeah, like literally a couple of lines after that, it wasn't very good marmalade. You get the Vincent the Ripper choking to death on a concubine. I think you mean cucumber. Very important difference in a salad situation. So you get all of those extra details and moments and jokes,

like on the pratchett side of it. And then you get all this extra detail and beautiful moments on the like art side of it. Like when you get to that patch that carrot is sewn. Like it's a beautiful illustration of the turtle. You've got the ship going in the oval around it and it's meant to look like reminiscent of the NASA logo. You've got the silly Latin slogan around the edge of we are about to die.

Don't want to. You've got the anchor in the mawpok. You have got the anchor in the mawpok. And then you look at it closer and you realise because obviously this is an image depicting a stitch patch. You can see the stitching. Yeah. This guy in acrylics and like you're more of a visual artist

than me. I mean, I'm sure you've got much more of an appreciation for how fucking difficult things are. You can look at it. It's making me wonder how big the original was. It must have been quite big because I was reading one of his interviews saying like for a normal book cover, he'd draw it. He'd paint the original in like a four or a three or sometimes even bigger to indulge himself, I think he said.

Yeah. So I wonder how big some of these were. I think they must some of them must have been massive like the death of discs. They're all in private collections. I think now the least most of them are the original. So it is a I would kill my hands on the original lot of money. I saw like one that recently installed an auction and it was a tiny little original was like £1,200. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. But yeah, I'm just completely in awe of the visible stitches

on that illustration of the patch. Yeah. But yeah, that's why this is such a fantastic book and such a fantastic medium for it. Like not all of Pratchett's work, I think lends itself brilliantly to illustration slash illustration. As much as we try and force it into our headcanon movies. Yeah. But the work really does speak speak for itself. But in this, you've just got this these incredible two mediums

working together and it only works because it was done together. Yeah, because it was decided from the start, this is what it was going to be. Which, you know, again, is kind of why Eric was kind of a weird standalone book. Yeah. But this would be even weird, I think, as well. I do think is also kind of noticeable that the two biggest kind of illustrated ones have both been Rincewind stories, although this isn't as Rincewind centric, but he's very present. He's very much part of it. Yeah. And just other silly little details that you get to

fairly early on, you've got this kind of pile of barbarian stuff and it's like a couple of walking sticks propping up a sword. And then there's like a chainmail covered hot water bottle next to a roll of toilet paper. Yeah. The the page that has the Velcro frying pan on also has like a sunflower playing the ukulele and. Oh, do you remember? Sorry, the dancing things. Yeah, I used to have one of those, but also has

to the left, a picture of an eagle holding a fish. Yes, which is a little bit of illustrative foreshadowing. Yes, that's fantastic. And is that the same one that's got the pen for writing upside down? Yes, yes, like the apocryphal NASA wasting its time and money on it. And Russians brought a pencil. Whereas in fact, it was really quite necessary to have the pen and stuff.

I still like veterinary's responsive, because you not simply turn the paper up the other way. Yes, no, but now he hasn't quite got a grasp of what's going to happen yet. It's quite nice to see veterinary, not fallible, but he doesn't need to know how it's all going to work. Yes, because he is taking his his skill is in having someone who does know how all of this works. But getting a chance to see veterinary

not understanding something is is a joy. You know, not understanding something technical, as opposed to not understanding why nobby knobs is employed by the watch. Yes. Ah, yes. But yes, it's beautiful. Oh, and the sorry, I will stop banging on at the moment, but the kind of illustrated letters starting section

after section breaks as well, like the little illuminated letter at the beginning. Oh, I love me an illuminated letter. I do. It's just another joy. Anyway, so I think this book is an absolute delight. And I think it's such a great medium to be able to cram in all of this extra stuff. It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice that they both got the room to really experiment with it all. Yes, even if Rob had to do a lot of hundred mile trips to Dunstable.

Well, that's what he's there for. Yeah, I'm very sure. Lucky they did not give him to dig a trench there. Right. Have you got an obscure reference for any of your filming friends in? I have. Amazing. So speaking, actually, this follows him quite nicely of Leonard's little random notes. When he's talking about

the page forty four on mine, so God knows on yours, he's describing an orbit, basically. And he calls it the fold it never ends or a ring path. Now, it's like ring path. That's a lovely term for it. It's did a little Google ring path orbit search terms. And I found the word within this paragraph. If England had gone the way of between sea, there is every likelihood

that our lot would have fallen forever in the middle sea, ring path, living Germany, leaving Germany to the full oneness of the outsider with unforeseeable seeds of strige for after coming years. So I was like, what? Yeah, cool. That's my reaction. So I scrolled up on that page and I turned out to be on a fandom wiki for something called Anglish. And this was coined in 19th June, 1966, edition of Punch Magazine.

It was written for the nine hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. I'm sure you knew immediately. But Paul Jennings coined the term with three articles entitled Ten Sixty Six and All Saxon. And the point of those, he was rewriting history in the language we should have had if Normans had been defeated at Hastings. Also, he and somebody drawn information from William Barnes, the Dorset poet who wanted us to say folk wane instead of omnibus, both believe. And now it's a whole thing.

Amazing. Yeah. So there's this fandom wiki called the Anglish moot, which has all kinds of shit on it. I can't go too far into where I'm going to link it. But the aim of English is, according to this website, English with many fewer words borrowed from other tongues, because of the fundamental changes to our language to say that English people today speak modern English is like saying that the French speak Latin. The fact is that now we speak an international language.

The English project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people. And that sounds a bit UKP, but it's really not. I've looked through the whole thing. It's all linguistics nerds. OK, cool. I was going to say that does sound very UKP. Yeah, no, it's really, really not. It's jokey, but also serious in that they're like looking into the etymology of various things and like, OK, so if this word evolves like this,

then how would this old English word have evolved? We didn't use this loan word. Yeah, so it's all stuff. It's very, very cool. Oh, and I didn't say the actual important bit. Ring ring path was in the glossary of that same page as orbit. Oh, cool. I don't know whether practice just came up with the same word because it's fairly obvious, I guess, or whether he had read it and subconsciously remembered it or whether he just remembered it

because it's a really cool set of articles. So ring path, awesome orbit. That delights me. That was a really fun accidental tangent this morning. Oh, and I'd like to go further into it. I'm trying to argue myself out of doing a rabbit hole because it's so tenuously linked to Descartes, but. You also did remind me on the Battle of Hastings thing that the title page,

the kind of illustrations at the top and bottom are supposed to sort of evoke the Bayer tapestry. Very good, very good. Oh, and also the dedication is to old Vincent, which I'm now remembered. Yes. Choked on a conch you went. Which, yeah, listeners, if you're more interested in the Bayer tapestry, you're dead to me.

Has a very good episode on it. I thought you said if you're more interested in the Bayer tapestry, you're dead to me. We do not stand the Bayer tapestry on this podcast. Thumbs down. I did actually get to go and see the Bayer tapestry, but I slept through the whole thing. What? I was two.

Oh, I was like in a push chair. So I have been wheeled past the Bayer tapestry while unconscious. I probably absorbed some of the knowledge. Horstic. But fun fact about the Bayer tapestry is it seems to be the more important the person on the horse, the larger the horses dig, which is what I said. Yeah. Horstic.

Fun fact, we can't finish with that. Say something else. I think that's everything we can say on the horse sticks of the Bayer tapestry and of the Discworld novella, the last hero, a Discworld fable on the first half of it. We'll be back next week with the next half of it, the final half, because there's only two because they're halves. God, we're getting really good at this math, aren't we?

God, take me off this podcast now. Can't we try and do the outro? I'll do it. Just confiscate the podcast from me, which begins on page 80 after the beautiful double spread of the Silver Horde led by Caleb Cohen. I'd rather die than sign my name, said Boy Willie, and we will be going right through to the end of the book. Until next week, dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram

at the True Show Mickey Frat on Twitter at Mickey Frat Pod on Facebook at the True Show Mickey Frat. Join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf, email us your thoughts, queries, castle snacks and pointless albatrosses the True Show Mickey Frat Pod at gmail.com. And if you would like to support this podcast financially, you can go to patreon.com forward slash the True Show Mickey Frat and exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense.

I finally went on about the flower clock recently. Yay, and there'll be a proper rabbit hole this month because I've recovered. Oh, yeah, Joanna got the COVID between. Yeah, I'm not sure if you mentioned that. And until next time, dear listener, don't let us detain you. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce.

They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce.

They put a wig on the lettuce. They put a wig on the lettuce.