Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

For this first episode of 2024 we are joined by the chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings to discuss a novel by her fellow Canadian, Margaret Laurence. First published in 1964, The Stone Angel is a landmark in modern Canadian fiction. The narrator is the unforgettable Hagar Shipley, a spiky, sharp-tongued, proud and profane ninety-year-old who is trying to resist her family’s attempts to transfer her into a nursing home. This battle is interwoven with memories of her long and difficult life, much of it spent in the Manitoban prairie town of Manawaka, a place closely based on Laurence’s own home town of Neepawa and which would provide the setting for three more novels and a collection of stories. We discuss the book’s place in the Canadian pantheon and speculate on why it hasn’t become and established classic outside Canada (it is no longer in print with Virago). We also discover some unexpected coincidences among Margaret Laurence’s neighbours during the years she lived in England in the late sixties and early seventies. This is a book that deserves to find many more new readers. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Tammi 20241h 5min

For this year’s Backlisted Christmas Special we are joined by the poet and novelist Clare Pollard and our producer Nicky Birch to discuss not just a book, but adaptations of a book – and there are hundreds to choose from – and all have contributed to making it perhaps the most famous Christmas story of them all: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Written in six weeks in 1843, it was a massive and immediate success, selling out its first run of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. It has been in print ever since and has come to define the festive period for millions of readers, listeners and viewers. We explore why and how this fable – terrifying in parts, warm and reassuring in others – has exerted such a hold on our collective imagination. We each pick a favourite version (you’ll have to listen to find out which) but also range over others from Richard Williams’ celebrated 1971 animation to those featuring Mister Magoo and Ebeneezer Blackadder. Plus Andy has compiled a special festive playlist for you to listen to over the mulled wine and marzipan fruits. There never was such an episode!  And finally, on this most special of days, we’d like thank you all for your support during the year and to wish you: A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!   * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 Joulu 20231h 13min

Today’s episode focusses on a single long poem – Briggflatts by the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting. It was recorded live in St Mary’s Church, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, as part of the Woodstock Poetry Festival. Andy and John are joined by Neil Astley, the founder of Bloodaxe Books, who knew and published Bunting, and Kirsten Norrie, a poet and composer who writes and performs under her Highland name, MacGillivray. The episode begins and ends with recordings made in 1977 of Bunting reading from the poem, which was first published in 1966. Until that time, Bunting, who in the 1930s had been a friend to W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, was living in semi-obscurity in rural Northumbria. It was his live readings of the poem, subtitled ‘An Autobiography’ at the medieval Mordern Tower in Newcastle that transformed his reputation. We discuss his remarkable and sometimes controversial life – before his exile he was at various times a music critic, a sailor, a balloon operator, a wing commander, a military interpreter, a foreign correspondent, and a spy – and its relationship to his work, and particularly Briggflatts, now regarded as one of the greatest English poems of the 20th century. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, join in the books conversation, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

12 Joulu 20231h 7min

For our 200th episode, we are joined by Richard Osman: television presenter, longtime Backlisted listener, and one of the bestselling authors in the world today. We discuss Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), the final novel by Nevil Shute Norway, whose other books include A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957), widely read in his lifetime but now somewhat forgotten or ignored. How did Shute's long and distinguished stint as an aeronautical engineer fit with his parallel career as a prominent and much-loved author? And what do his tales of ordinary people doing extraordinary things have to offer us in the 21st century? Richard also shares with John and Andy what he's been reading this week; and if you've been with us from the start, you will appreciate his choices all the more. Thank you all so much for your continued support over the last 200 episodes. Andy, John and producer Nicky *If you'd like to sign up to our forthcoming monthly newsletter which will feature book recommendations from our guests and hosts, please click this link here. *For those in the South / West of the UK, Backlisted will be appearing live at the Woodstock Poetry festival near Oxford on Sat Dec 2nd with an episode on Briggflatts by Basil Bunting. Tickets are available to buy here. *To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 Marras 20231h 13min

In this episode, we feature the life and work of Samuel Beckett, one of the most important and influential voices of 20th century literature. We discuss Beckett’s writing across five decades, including his essays, short stories, novels and plays: ‘Dante… Bruno. Vico… Joyce’; ‘More Pricks Than Kicks’; ‘The Unnamable’; Krapp’s Last Tape’; and the late masterpiece ‘Company’. And we also ruminate on the fact that Backlisted has now been going on (it must go on, it can’t go on, it’ll go on) for eight years, notching up nearly 200 episodes. We hope you enjoy this memorable and moving recording AKA Spool #199. John, Andy and Nicky * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

14 Marras 20231h 17min

Pour yourself a glass of sherry and light a candle, as we dedicate this year's Halloween special to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), the first collection by M.R. James, probably the most celebrated and influential exponent of the weird tale. With the help of undead guests Andrew Male and Laura Varnam we illuminate the life and work of a strange and singular author, one whose writings, like the engraving in 'The Mezzotint', have truly taken on a life of their own. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

31 Loka 20231h 13min

This is a new books special episode to fill the gap before we release the Hallowe’en episode next weekend and as part of our episode 200 celebrations. In it, we each select a book we’ve particularly enjoyed over the past year. Andy says The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan (Tyrant Books) is the best novel he's read since Gwendoline Riley's My Phantoms and also his favourite; Backlisted Editor, Nicky talks about Wifedom by Anna Funder (Granta), an genre-busting account of the life Eileen Maud Blair, the first wife of George Orwell, linking it back to the themes of The True History of the First Mrs Meredith  episode; and John praises Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury), a rich and formally audacious novel based on the life and legends of St Cuthbert, the patron saint of North East England. The discussion leads us in all kinds of unexpected directions in classic Backlisted fashion. Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 00:00 Intro 04:22 The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan 19:32 Wifedom by Anna Funder 38:26 Cuddy by Benjamin Myers The traditional Backlisted 'what have you been reading this week?' slot which used to appear at the start of each episode, has now been moved to our Patreon only show (for those subscribers on the Locklisted level). Subscribers can hear fortnightly programmes with John, Andy and Nicky talking about books they have been reading as well as films, music and TV they've enjoyed. *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

23 Loka 202356min

Episode #197 is dedicated to our late friend Carmen Callil, the founder of Virago, an author in her own right and, on a couple of memorable occasions, a former guest on Backlisted. Joining us are the writer Rachel Cooke and critic and editor Lucy Scholes. Under discussion: The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson, first published in 1972 and reissued in 2020 by New York Review Books. Is this imaginative, funny, heartfelt, headstrong book a novel, a biography, an alternative history, a feminist polemic, a work of literary criticism or something else entirely? To which the answer is a far-from-straightforward: Yes. We hope you enjoy this conversation - and a unique book - as much as we did. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at patreon.com/backlisted Here is a synopsis by the publisher of The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson "Many people have described the Famous Writer presiding at his dinner table, in a clean neckcloth. He is famous; everybody remembers his remarks. He remembers his own remarks, being a writer, and notes them in his diary. We forget that there were other family members at the table -- a quiet person, now muffled by time, shadowy, whose heart pounded with love, perhaps, or rage." So begins The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives, an uncommon biography devoted to the other people at the table, the lesser lives of the Famous Writer's dependents, lives that are treated as episodes, if treated at all, in the life of the Famous Writer. But as Diane Johnson points out, "A lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one." Such sympathy, and curiosity, compelled Johnson to research Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith (1821-1861), the daughter of the artist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) and first wife of the poet George Meredith (1828-1909). The life of the first Mrs. Meredith, treated perfunctorily and prudishly in biographies of Peacock or Meredith because it involved adultery and recrimination, is here exquisitely and unhurriedly given its due. What emerges is the portrait of a brilliant, well-educated woman, raised unconventionally by her father only to feel more forcefully the constraints of the Victorian era, and the contradiction between her capabilities and her circumstances. First published in 1972, Lesser Lives has been a key text for feminists and biographers alike, a book that reimagined what biography might be, both in terms of subject and style. Biographies of other "lesser" lives have since followed in its footsteps, but few have the wit, elegance, and empathy of Diane Johnson's seminal work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9 Loka 20231h 12min