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What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love about Shakespeare? Was she pro-hanging? Why so much more Poirot than Marple? Why was she so productive during the war? We also talked Wagner, modern art, the other Golden Age writers, nursery rhymes, TV adaptations, poshness, nostalgia, Mary Westmacott, and plenty more. TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to the very splendid Laura Thompson. All of you will know Laura's Substack. She has also written books about the Mitfords, heiresses, Lord Lucan, many other subjects, and most importantly today, Agatha Christie, who died 50 years ago. And there's a new book coming from Laura about Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance.Laura, welcome.LAURA THOMPSON: So lovely to be here, Henry. I'm such a fan of your Substack, as you know.OLIVER: Well, same. Same. This is a mutual admiration call.THOMPSON: Well, thank you. Well, that's what we like.Christie's Favorite WritersOLIVER: Now tell me, what did Agatha Christie like to read?THOMPSON: Oh, a lot the same as us. I discovered she was a huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, as we are. And Nancy Mitford, Muriel Spark. But her big love really was Dickens. She absolutely adored Dickens. I mean, she grew up in a house full of books, you know, and she wrote a screenplay of Bleak House for which she was handsomely paid. And it was never—I know, don't you long to know what that was like? Can you imagine—OLIVER: We've lost it? We don't have the typescript?THOMPSON: I've never seen it. I mean, maybe—I don't know whether it exists somewhere. But I just wonder how she tackled it, what she did. But yes, so that happened. And of course, Shakespeare, as we know from her books, which are full of subliminal and—I mean, you kind of notice them, but you don't have to.OLIVER: Yes. There's Shakespeare in every book?THOMPSON: No, but it's there, particularly Macbeth, which I suppose figures.OLIVER: Yeah.THOMPSON: Like The Pale Horse is completely Macbeth themed. And when I was a kid reading them, I think she really—Tennyson she uses a lot—she affected my reading in a good way.OLIVER: She sent you back to Shakespeare and the poets?THOMPSON: Well, sent me to them as a kid, probably. And also, there's a lot of Bible in her books, as I'm sure you've noticed.OLIVER: Yes. Yes.THOMPSON: Very easy facility with quoting the Bible.Christie and ShakespeareOLIVER: Now, what did she learn from Shakespeare? Because she clearly knows the plays in detail. She sees them a lot. She reads them. She and he are, I think, quite good plotters.THOMPSON: Is she even better than he is?OLIVER: Well, let's not get into that. But there is a sort of, in a funny way, a kind of affinity between them as writers.THOMPSON: That's so interesting.OLIVER: What do you think she learned from him?THOMPSON: Tell me how you—how you see that.OLIVER: Well, do you know that Margaret Rutherford adaptation, which probably you don't like and I do—THOMPSON: Go on.OLIVER: It's called Murder Most Foul, isn't it?THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And there's something about the way that they can both walk the line between the sort of dark and deadly and the histrionic. Margaret Rutherford can't walk that line, but Agatha Christie can, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting.OLIVER: And Miss Marple could come onstage in a couple of the plays. She's not so far off from being a Queen Margaret or some—in her angry moments maybe, do you think?THOMPSON: More rational, maybe.OLIVER: Much more rational.THOMPSON: Not so mad. Well, she's not mad, Margaret, is she? But she's upset.OLIVER: She starts off as a much sort of nastier character—Murder at the Vicarage, right?THOMPSON: Yes, she does. She was more acidic and then gradually—OLIVER: Waspish.THOMPSON: Waspish, and sort of mellowed. I see what you mean. And almost in the way that she calls herself—although that's obviously not Shakespeare—calls herself Nemesis.OLIVER: And the sense of atmosphere.THOMPSON: Yes, and the way they're structured. That's not necessarily just true of Shakespeare, but there is this sort of act three entanglement and this beautiful act five resolution that goes on with a soliloquy, I suppose.OLIVER: And some people think they both get confused in act four, but that's obviously not true, that this is the real mess of the plot. I think she might have learned quite a lot from Shakespeare, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting. But, you know, the way she writes about Shakespeare in her letters to her second husband, Max, because when she was living in London during the war and almost at her most productive—I mean, her productivity levels are insane. And hitting every ball for six, really, you know: Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs, a couple of Westmacotts, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But she spent a lot of time going on her own to see Shakespeare.She's very—I hope I'm right in saying this—she's very sort of Ernest Jones [CB1] in her approach. She doesn't regard them so much as the products of words on a page; she regards them as rounded characters. Why were Goneril and Regan the way they were? What's wrong with Ophelia? You feel like saying, “Well, whatever Shakespeare wanted it to be,” but she sees them in that way. And Iago particularly—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —is the one that gets her. Yes. In one of her, I better not say which, but a major, major novel.And the book that she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree, which I think might well be her best book of all. I think—well, I'll just say she wrote these six books under a pseudonym, Mary Westmacott. People call them romantic novels; that's sort of the last thing they are. And they're very, very interesting mid-20th-century human condition novels, and they're full of lots of stuff that she had to distill for the detective fiction. And she talks a lot about Iago in The Rose and the Yew Tree really interestingly, I think.Christie on Shakespeare?OLIVER: Now, Max said she should just write a book about Shakespeare, all this Shakespeare all the time. But she didn't. Why?THOMPSON: No. I don't think she ever liked being told what to do.OLIVER: [laughs]THOMPSON: His letters to her are quite annoying, aren't they?OLIVER: Yes, yes. I've only read what's in your book, but yes, I didn't warm to him.THOMPSON: I'm glad because people do. He gets a really good press even though he was unfaithful. But it worked, the marriage, because they both got what they wanted from it. But he said that, yes, and she says, “Oh no, they're just thoughts for you.” I don't think she would've felt the need, somehow. I think she liked saying things in her own more oblique way.OLIVER: Save it for the novels.THOMPSON: Yes, she's a great mistress of the indirect, I think, really. The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good. I think she would've preferred to do that and use it to her ends.And of course, she has an incredibly powerful sense of evil, which I suppose is also in Shakespeare. Hers is a Christian sensibility, I mean, no question. People never talk about that, but it really is.OLIVER: Was she pro hanging?THOMPSON: Well, I think she took a kind of utilitarian approach that the innocent must be protected. And she took a view that if you've killed once, it becomes very easy to kill again because something in you has shifted, so you become a danger to the community. So I suppose in that sense she was.I mean, Miss Marple was. She's quite—“I really feel quite glad to think of him being hanged.”OLIVER: It's one of her most striking lines.THOMPSON: It is, isn't it?OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: So I suppose she was. I mean, I suppose she was. You know, she's very modern, she's very subtle in her thinking, but at the same time, she is a late Victorian product of her society. Yes.Dickens and Christie's FamilyOLIVER: Now, you mentioned this Bleak House script. She loved Bleak House. Do we know what she loved about it? It's obviously the first detective novel. Are there other factors?THOMPSON: You are going to know—this is when I'm going to start coming across as an idiot. Is it written before The Moonstone? Yes, of course it is.OLIVER: I think so. Yes. Yes. It's the first time there's a police detective in a major English novel.THOMPSON: Okay. I think she—do you know, this is a really good question. I don't actually know why she loved Dickens so much. She grew up—she had that rather intriguing upbringing whereby she had two much older siblings, a sister who was 11 years older, a brother who was 10 years older. Father died when she was 11.So she grew up incredibly close with a really rather intriguing mother, Clara. This is in the house at Torquay. And her mother encouraged her in a way that, it seems to me, quite unusual for the time and for the class to which she belonged. Because it was never deemed that it would interfere with her marrying and leading a more conventional life. But she always wanted to express herself creatively. And I think her mother possibly was a frustrated creative. I don't know. She had a lot of go in her.And whether it was just something she read with—I think anything she did at an early age with her mother would've made a huge impression on her. I think what you read when you're that age, you never quite—I never read Dickens at that age, so I've never quite got the habit.OLIVER: But if she's born in 1890, presumably her mother is just about old enough to have been alive when Dickens was alive. And so she's got a somewhat direct—THOMPSON: Yes, she was.OLIVER: You know, it's sort of back to the original culture of it, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes. Isn't that extraordinary?OLIVER: Yes. Yes. It's crazy to think. So she must have taken it in maybe in a more original way, somehow?THOMPSON: Possibly. Certainly Tennyson, I get that feeling, because her mother wrote this rather leaden sub-Tennysonian poetry. [laughter] It's like Tennyson on the worst day he ever had, but worse than that.OLIVER: But worse, yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And she wrote poetry like that, the mother, which is really rather sweet and touching to read. And obviously she would've been alive at the same time as Tennyson. So, yes, I'd never, ever thought of that before. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, they went to see Henry Irving.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And yet she feels—it just amazes me, this—so I'm leaping slightly here, but this 21st-century halo of cool that she has around her, Agatha Christie. [laughter] I know, it's awful in a way, but the way she can be reinterpreted—that is a bit Shakespearean, in a way.I don't mean to make extravagant claims, but there's a sort of translucent quality to what she writes that means that people can impose and pull it and twang it and know that she won't let them down, as we are seeing constantly at the moment.Art and MusicOLIVER: Yes. No, I agree. Other arts—we know about all this, she loves reading. What music did she enjoy, for example? Did she like paintings?THOMPSON: Yes, she loved paintings. She liked modern art. She was painted by Kokoschka. It's very good. And she writes about modern art. In Five Little Pigs, the painter in that is a modern artist.And then music was her grand passion. I mean, music was her original career choice, as you know, of course. She must have had a good voice. She thought she could make a career of it. And she could play the piano. Beautiful piano at Greenway, it's still there.And they used to do this thing—I think it's a lovely idea—as a family. They would fill in what they called the book of confessions, and it would be questions like, “What is your state of mind? If not yourself, who would you be?” And at the age of 63, which is the last time she filled it in, she wrote, “An opera singer.” So that was still what she would've dreamed of doing. She loved Wagner very, very deeply.OLIVER: Okay. Interesting.THOMPSON: And there's a Wagner theme in a very late book, Passenger to Frankfurt, the one that everybody hates except me. And music, I mean, as a girl when—so her voice wasn't strong enough for opera. I think her ultimate—same as I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, I think her ultimate would've been to sing Isolde at Covent Garden.And in some of her short stories and in her first Mary Westmacott, which is called Giant's Bread, which is about a musician—and she really inhabits this character, Vernon, and it's all about modern music. And somebody who knew about this stuff, which I don't, told me, “No, she knew. She knew what was going on. She knew about the trends.” This is in the late twenties.And she always went to Beirut, and that was her real, real, real passion. She was one of those restlessly creative people. And her mother, God bless her, encouraged it.Christie's UniquenessOLIVER: What is it that distinguishes her from the other detective fiction writers? Because she doesn't, to me, feel—she's obviously part of this whole generation, this whole golden age, whatever you want to call it, but she doesn't feel the same as them somehow.THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: What is that?THOMPSON: Do you think it's her simplicity, that distilled simplicity that she has? She doesn't write linear; she writes geometric, I always think.OLIVER: Tell me what you mean.THOMPSON: Well, if you think of a book, the one I admire the most, as I constantly go on about, which is Five Little Pigs—you think about the amount of stuff that's in that book. It's a meditation on art versus life. The solution is unbelievably intriguing, I think. There's a whole family psychodrama in there. And every move of the plot, she's also moving on a—every move of the plot is impelled by a revelation of character. So plot and character are utterly intertwined, distilled together.I don't think any of the others can do that. I think Dorothy Sayers would take twice as many pages. And she'd dot every i and cross every t, and she couldn't bear loose ends or anything, could she? And she liked to reveal her knowledge of other things, almost to—I think the others like you to know that they're a bit better than the genre, maybe. Their detectives are superhuman, almost; wish-fulfillment man, almost.She doesn't do that with Poirot. He's just pure omniscience, really, plus a few tics and traits and, you know, mustache. I think it's that distillation and simplicity and the way she inhabits the genre in a way that the others don't quite do. And at the same time, she's redefining it from within.OLIVER: There's something as well, I think, about—she gets past the kind of Sherlock Holmes model in a different way. They still all have a bit of an overreliance on that, maybe.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: Whereas Poirot in, what is it? In something like, is it Murder in the Mews? Very sort of Sherlock and Watson—THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: —kind of dynamic. But within, I don't know, two or three novels, that's gone, and he's Poirot as we know him, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes, yes.OLIVER: And she kind of, as you say, makes it her own thing and goes off in new directions.Christie and the TheaterTHOMPSON: Yes. She's sort of conceptual and the others aren't quite, I think. She doesn't do—she does something completely different with the whole concept of what a solution is, it seems to me. She doesn't—it's not Cluedo, is it? It's not, there's six of them, and eventually it has to be one of them; however many tergiversations or however you say that word, you sort of know that. Whereas with her, it's: it's nobody, or it's everybody, or it's the policeman, or it's a child, or there's something bigger and bolder going on.And she writes—I think she writes very theatrically. I think she writes scenically. I think she's incredibly good at character and action. That scene where you know the girl's a thief because Poirot leaves out 23 pairs of silk stockings, and he goes back in the room and there's 19 or something like that, tells you everything. It's all in there.OLIVER: The solution to 4.50 from Paddington, which we shan't reveal, but—THOMPSON: That's Cards on the Table. But what I mean is, she's given us a little scene that tells us all we need to know about that person, really: a sort of timid thief who can't resist—OLIVER: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. At the end of 4.50, the solution is staged.THOMPSON: Oh, sorry. Yes.OLIVER: It is literally a little re-creation of the drama, if you see what I mean.THOMPSON: Yes, I do. Sorry, Henry. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: No, no. We're crossed wires.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, yes.OLIVER: But she is very theatrical, yes.THOMPSON: No, you are absolutely right. That's a reenactment.OLIVER: Of something that was seen almost like in a—you know, the whole thing is very—THOMPSON: Yes, yes. Well, she was a great—I mean, obviously Shakespeare, but she was a great lover of the theater as a medium. And of course, she wrote plays, as we know, which I think are far weaker than her books, myself.OLIVER: Even The Mousetrap?THOMPSON: Especially. [laughter] When did you last see it? Or have you not—OLIVER: I've seen it once. I've seen it—you know, I don't know, before I had children, a long time ago. And I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. The ending of act one, when someone opens a door and they say, “Oh, it's you.” It's very dramatic moments. You don't like it?THOMPSON: No, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it done really, really well. There's something strong at the heart of it, that theme that haunts a lot of her books about what happens to children who are unwanted.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Which is in loads of her—no, not loads. It's in Ordeal by Innocence. It's in Mrs. McGinty. That's, I think, because that happened to her mother. Her mother was given away as a child. Her own mother was a poor widow and gave up her daughter to be raised by her rich sister, which is not—it's not abandonment, but I think—OLIVER: Well, yes.THOMPSON: — it's not great. And I think all these things were absorbed by Agatha as a child. She grew up in what we would today call a house of—I hate this—strong women. I hate that “strong woman” thing, but they were strong women. Her mother was very, you know, as we've said, a sort of driving little person. And the rich grandmother, the poor sister, the dynamic there, they both fed into Miss Marple.And then her older sister, Madge, who was a big personality and actually had a play on in the West End before Agatha did, which I've always thought was extraordinary, just to write a play and have it on in the West End in 1924.And the men were—the father was feckless and charming and a rather grand New Yorker, he grew up as, and then settled in Torquay. And the brother was the Branwell Brontë. [laughter] He ended up a drug addict, which is also a type that feeds into her fiction: the man who could have made something of his life and goes wrong.The TV AdaptationsOLIVER: So all this theatricality in the books is obviously why she adapts so well to TV, and again, a lot of the others don't.THOMPSON: Yes, that's true.OLIVER: How famous would she be now without the TV adaptations?THOMPSON: Well, by 1990, so the centenary, she was a hell of a lot less—and that's really when the Poirots got going, which she never wanted. She never wanted—she didn't really want Murder on the Orient Express. It was only because it came via Lord Mountbatten. I don't know. I don't know because I think they're mostly not very good. I don't know what you think about the adaptations. But maybe that's deliberate, that they're less—if they drove you back to the books, you'd probably get quite a pleasant surprise.OLIVER: It's hard for me to say because I saw them all more or less after I'd finished reading her.THOMPSON: What did you think?OLIVER: I love Joan Aiken—not Joan Aiken, what's she called?THOMPSON: Yes, Joan Hickson is marvelous. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Hickson. I think she's just perfect because as you say, the simplicity, the not overstating. The “Pocketful of Rye” episode where she turns up and quotes the Bible, and the vicious older sister is there, and they have that moment. It's all so cleanly done.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree.OLIVER: David Suchet, I quite like him. I think he has those wonderful moments. “I cannot eat these eggs. They are not the same.” I think that's very good. It's very funny, you know, he gets it.THOMPSON: You prefer him in spats and art deco mode to when he became—he became like a de facto member of the House of Atreus by the end, hadn't he? It had gone very, very—OLIVER: I mean, I certainly didn't watch them all, no, no.THOMPSON: No. Well, I sort of had to.OLIVER: Yes, you did.THOMPSON: But I could never get through those short story ones. I don't think I've ever got—OLIVER: The moral sort of doom of it all, yes.THOMPSON: Well, the early ones, when they always had—you could see they'd hired a car for the day. [laughter] And I don't think I've ever got to the end of one of those.But I think—sorry, going back to your question, I think they probably did make a massive difference. You know, they're really, really popular. And whether she would have—what you think her—she might be read as much as somebody like Sayers if it weren't for all those adaptations. But then the fact of all those adaptations tells its own story in a way, because that wouldn't happen to one of the others, as you rightly said.Resurgence and PopularityOLIVER: No, they don't have that quality. And also, she was bigger than them. That's why they picked her, because she was bigger than them anyway.THOMPSON: And simpler. Because when I used to read them at university between the pages of Beowulf or whatever, like porn, [laughter] it was a bit mal vu. You read her for entertainment. But you certainly—I don't think—she's always been admired by a certain kind of French intellectual, hasn't she, for that subtextual quality that she has, that sort of fathomless quality that she has.But when I researched that biography, which I started in 2003, I can remember going on the radio. And names will not be named, but I was like a figure of fun with a couple of other detective writers, quite well known, who just sort of openly mocked me for taking her seriously and more or less said, “Oh yeah, we love her, but she's terrible” kind of thing. “Why are you taking her seriously?” I mean, it was regarded as a bit of a joke to take her seriously.I'm not saying I changed the game or anything like that, but I think there must have been a movement around that time in the early twenty-naughties—whatever the damn thing, decade's called—to start seeing that she is an interplay of text and subtext, facade and undercurrents, and these powerful foundations that underpin her books. Murder on the Orient Express is, you know, “Does human justice have the right to exert itself when legal justice has let it down?”There are these very strong—I think this is part of why she's survived the way she has. We intuit powerful truths underneath the Christie construct, if you like. I always say she's not real, she's true. I think she's incredibly wise about human nature, possibly more than any of them.You take a book like Evil Under the Sun, and there's a femme fatale who's murdered. “Oh, the femme fatale. No man can resist her.” Turns out she can't resist men. She's prey; she's not a predator. And of course, women who are so dependent on their looks and so on, that is what they are. They are prey. They're not predators. They're very, very vulnerable. Just a really small thing like that. And I just think, oh, you're very—there's so much easy wisdom in there somehow.And she deploys it perhaps differently—I mean, Ruth Rendell is wise, but it's very, “I am wise and you're going to pay attention to me.” You know what I mean? It's all very, “I'm very dark and very wise and very,” you know. I love her, but everything's so easy with Agatha. It's so, to coin a phrase, two tier. You can read them and have fun with them. You can read them and there's so much stuff going on underneath, and yet she presents this smooth face. I don't think any of the others are quite that resolved, if you like.Self-AdaptationsOLIVER: Now, you wrote that her own stage adaptations of The Hollow and Five Little Pigs lack the subtlety of the original books, quote, “almost as if Agatha herself did not realize what made them such good books.” How much of her talent do you think was unconscious in that way?THOMPSON: Yes. That's such a good question. I do think that, about those plays, it could have been that she just thought, “That's not what my audiences are going to want from me. They're just going to want to be entertained by”—we know she can do the other thing because of her Mary Westmacott books, where everything is laid out. They're not distilled at all; they're quite the opposite.I think they must have been such a pleasure for her to write because she didn't have to constantly—they're unresolved; they ask questions that don't have to be answered. She could have done that with those plays, I'm sure, but I think she would've thought people aren't coming to see them for that. I think she had a very good opinion of herself, in the best possible way.OLIVER: Hmm.THOMPSON: Like I said to you earlier, she didn't take a lot of notice of anything anybody said to her. Because it is like writing this other little book, the one I've just done about 1926. She was very acclaimed right from the start. I didn't emphasize that enough in the biography. And she was really recognized as very special right from the start.And I think it's extraordinary to me how—it's so difficult for us today, isn't it? We're so at the mercy of “That won't sell, don't do that, blah, blah, blah.” She really did not just plow her own furrow, but create that furrow in a way that you can only compare with, like, Lennon and McCartney. Or whether the time was absolutely right that they let her run, they trusted her to do what she wanted, and because she had the gift of pleasing readers . . .You do really feel, although those books are very tight and taut, you do feel an instinctive ease in what she's doing, an instinctive sort of—there's a kind of liberated—which sounds perverse because they are so controlled, the books. But I always feel she's doing exactly what she wants to do because she knows what it is and she knows how to do it. Because I think, would she be amazed that you and I are having this conversation now? I don't know that she would be, really. What do you think?OLIVER: No, I agree with you. I think she had what Johnson said, the felicity of rating herself properly. I think she knew she was really good.THOMPSON: You might know he'd say it right.OLIVER: Yes. [laughs] But there's a—I think there must have been something about—I think it's in Poirot's Christmas, one of those, where someone gets killed in the night in their bedroom, and they go up. And one of the women says, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”And the quotation just sort of occurs to—I think there's quite a lot of that in Christie, right? Things are coming up and it fits. And she's good enough to run on instinct at times.THOMPSON: That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's absolutely right. Like the way she quotes from the—yes, I love the bit when she quotes from the Book of Saul in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is really quite a profound novel about whether—I mean, it's terribly timely—whether it's better to be run by a corrupt capitalist or to let in the radicals. And as I said in the biography, the corrupt capitalist wins on points. But then another element enters, which is what power does to people. And that's when she quotes from the Book of Saul.And it's just like you said, this—an instinctive that she—I do always feel her as an instinctive writer, even though—her notebooks are intriguing because obviously some plots she really has to work away at. And yet they feel felicitous. A coup like The ABC Murders, and she's really—that went through lots and lots of iterations. But what she'll often do is scribble down a line of dialogue, a line of “There they are.” It's the whole—it's not bullet points, which is a loathsome concept. It reminds me of a bee going from flower to flower and knowing exactly which—and she's got this gift of knowing what flowers we're going to need.I sometimes fear I overdo it. I don't want be like one of those people who's writing a PhD on, what was the thing I said on Substack, gynocracy in St. Mary Mead or whatever. It's not—I do think that's a bit overdone these days, the rummaging in the subtext, because she's an interplay. And that's why I write that chapter in the book called “English Murder,” which is about the facade, you know, “smile and smile and be a villain.” And there's nothing more interesting. There's nothing more interesting than murder among classes who are trying to cover things up.And she does that—that's at the heart of golden age murder, I suppose. And I just think she does that better than anybody because she's so all the things we've been talking about. She's so distilled, she's so simple, she's so smooth, she's so instinctive. And she's doing it the way she wanted to do it because of your wonderful Dr. Johnson quote. She knew not to take notice of other people, including her—Quick Opinions on ChristieOLIVER: Should we have—THOMPSON: Yes. Go on.OLIVER: Sorry, sorry. Should we have a quick-fire round?THOMPSON: Please.OLIVER: I will say the name first of a few of her books—THOMPSON: Oh, god.OLIVER: —and then a few other detective writers, and you will just give us your unfiltered opinion: good, bad, ugly, indifferent.THOMPSON: Okay. What fun.OLIVER: You can “nothing” them if you want to.THOMPSON: Okay. [laughter]OLIVER: Hallowe'en Party.THOMPSON: Underrated. Very interesting on sixties counterculture and the effects of societal breakdown, et cetera. What do you think?OLIVER: I think it's a real page turner. I remember reading that for the first time. I loved it. Yes. Nemesis.THOMPSON: I can't keep saying the same thing. Underrated. [laughter] Very interesting philosophy of love in that book, I think. I think it harks back to her first marriage. However badly it turns out, it's better to have experienced it. It's quite a mournful novel.OLIVER: The Mr. Quin—THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Oh, sorry.THOMPSON: No, no. Sorry. You carry on. Marvelous. So inventive, don't you think? Such a clever character.OLIVER: Why didn't she do more of him?THOMPSON: Yes, that would've been good. And she was always interested in the commedia dell'arte. She wrote poems about it as a girl. And the concept of Mr. Quin, yes, as this sort of evanescent figure who's also a moral force, isn't he really? Or—yes, I wish she'd done more. They're marvelous.OLIVER: Towards Zero.THOMPSON: Oh, top notch, don't you think?OLIVER: One of the best.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree. Frightening motive. Very Ruth Rendell.OLIVER: It's very distinct in her. I haven't read all of her novels, but it's very distinct.THOMPSON: But the plot is, again, typical of her because it redefines the word contingent. [laughs] I mean, Dorothy Sayers would be having palpitations. She's very bold and grand like that. “Oh, there's a loose end. Oh, who cares?” You know, I mean, it's so—it just drives along that book, doesn't it? Yes. But I agree with you, one of her best.OLIVER: Death on the Nile.THOMPSON: Quite moving, I think. I think it's one of those ones from the thirties that, again, is talking about love in a way that—I think it just strikes a personal note to me because she was very in love with her first husband, Archie Christie. And he did fall in love with another woman, and it did cause her extreme pain that some people said to me she never quite got over.And I feel that a little bit in that book. There's a shadow of something quite powerful in that book, I think. Again, very, very loose and lovely plot, but powerful. Would you agree? Very good on the place as well, I think, Egypt.OLIVER: I love it. I think the solution is great.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And it makes a really good film.THOMPSON: It's a great film, yes. Wonderful film.Other Mystery WritersOLIVER: Yes. Okay. A few other detective writers: Michael Innes.THOMPSON: You've got me. I haven't read him. Should I?OLIVER: Oh, I think you will like him. Yes. Try Hamlet, Revenge!THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Oh, I like it already.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is exciting. Gladys Mitchell.THOMPSON: Can't get into her.OLIVER: No.THOMPSON: What do you think? Should I try a bit harder?OLIVER: I read two. I thought they were good. I was not intrigued.THOMPSON: No, somebody told—OLIVER: The ones I read—Spotted Hemlock is a wonderful, like, wow, that's great.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Somebody said to me, I know she really—no, I didn't—I read it in a book that she really hadn't liked Agatha Christie, but you know, who knows? All that Detection Club rivalry, you can imagine. But okay, Spotted Hemlock—if I'm going to read one, try that, yes?OLIVER: Yes, that's a great book. Margery Allingham.THOMPSON: Kind of love her, but I never understand her plots. I always feel I'm in a bit of a fog, but she's quite a good writer. Do you think? Or what do you think?OLIVER: She's good at the fog. She's good at that sort of whirligig sense that there's a lot going on—THOMPSON: Yes, whirligig.OLIVER: —and you've got to get to the end before they do, kind of thing.THOMPSON: Also, she had a pub in her sitting room. Now, I like a woman who has a pub in their sitting room.OLIVER: [laughs] E. C. Bentley.THOMPSON: You've got me again, Henry.OLIVER: Oh, The Blotting Book mystery. You'll like this.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay.OLIVER: The other one is not so good, but you'll like that a lot.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Edmund Crispin.THOMPSON: Didn't get on with him.OLIVER: Why not?THOMPSON: Don't know. Don't know. It sounds like I don't read the men, doesn't it? Which is not the truth at all.OLIVER: I think that's fair enough, isn't it?THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a really good reason why women have shone so brightly in this genre. I don't know. Why didn't I—I read that one, the toyshop one [The Moving Toyshop] or whatever. I don't know. I just didn't get on with it.OLIVER: Too glib?THOMPSON: Possibly.OLIVER: Bit flippant, bit sort of funny-funny?THOMPSON: Possibly. I just couldn't quite get hold of it in some way. I don't know.OLIVER: I quite like Edmund Crispin, but I do think he's got a bit of a “he's a very clever boy” about him.THOMPSON: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe that.OLIVER: Something, yes. G. K. Chesterton.THOMPSON: I haven't read Father Brown. Oh, this is awful, isn't it? I'm starting to sound like a radical feminist by accident.OLIVER: [laughs] Maybe that's what you are, Laura. Maybe you just need to admit it. [laughs]THOMPSON: No, it does. It sounds really bad because I do really love almost all the women. I just, I don't know why I haven't read him.Christie and NostalgiaOLIVER: Was Agatha a nostalgia writer?THOMPSON: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think anyone who was a nostalgia writer would've written At Bertram's Hotel, which is an entire spin on the riff of nostalgia. Really clever. I think that's such a clever book. The way she traps us in her golden age, you know, this phantasmagoria of the re-created golden age. And then she says, “Ha, really fooled you.”I've written about this. I think she moved with the 20th century far more than is realized. I love those Cold War novels she writes about her dislike of ideologies. I love her postwar books about the fragmentation of the hierarchical society. I think she's—well, she's an incidental social historian, as are, I think, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, but they're much more underlined about it. Again, I'm intrigued what you think. Do you think she is?OLIVER: I think there's definitely some quality, particularly to the Miss Marple stories—as you say, the social history sort of becomes a way of preserving something that's disappearing. One of them, written in the sixties—you can tell me which one—it opens with that description of all the new houses in the village and the mothers who give their children cereal for breakfast. And what sort of a thing is that to give a child? They should have bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs is a real—you know, and she does have a real something heartfelt and real sense that this part of England is going, and this new thing is coming in.THOMPSON: That's true. That's absolutely true. That's The Mirror Crack'd. And it's—OLIVER: The Mirror, yes, yes.THOMPSON: Yes, and that whole thing of Mrs. Bantry's house has now been bought by a film star and blah, blah, blah. Yes, no, you are absolutely right. I didn't think hard enough before I answered your question.OLIVER: But no, what you said is also true. I can't sort of work out to what extent she regrets it, to what extent it's just useful material for her, you know?THOMPSON: Both. I mean, some of her late books, including Endless Night, I think, which is an incredibly modern book—that whole “me, me, me” culture of “I want, therefore I will have now,” which is written when she was quite an old lady. And then a book like Passenger to Frankfurt, which is—it's a bit sub–Brave New World, but it's very honest and pessimistic about a future—well, the one we are living in, really—full of fear and uncertainty and almost dystopian.She was a realist. You know, she is Miss Marple in a lot of ways. She was a realist in a way that I think a lot of us would find it difficult to be. And her American publishers were often—would sort of say, can she tone this down? Can she not have a young person who's completely evil? Readers want to know, is she going get any therapy? [laughter] And it's so true. There's quite a lot of that going on.She's very clear-eyed. So if she—I'm a bit nostalgic for Blur, do you know what I mean? I mean, you can't help it, in a way, like that brilliant example you give at the start of The Mirror Crack'd. But I would say her image is quite at odds with the reality of her in that way. But the image—OLIVER: And the adaptations don't help with that.THOMPSON: No. No. But at the same time, that Christie image, you know, the gentlewoman, the tea or the eternal bridge party, blah, blah, blah, that has a huge power of its own. So just being too iconoclastic about her, I think, is also a lie. Because I think, again, it's that interplay. She used the image, and the image—I hate the word cozy. I loathe the word cozy, but there's no denying that any book of that kind does have that quality. So I suppose even that's nostalgic in a way.Christie's PoshnessOLIVER: In a way, yes. How posh was she?THOMPSON: Good question. I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite, I would say. Quite grand, with that confidence. Her father really was—as I said, he was a young blade in New York dancing with Jennie Jerome and blah, blah, blah. And then it so happened that he ended up in Torquay, which of course then was very posh. And the fact that when she disappears, she disappears to Harrogate, [laughs] which is like the Torquay of the north.I remember her grandson saying to me, “She dealt with her literary agent. To her, he was staff.” You know, that kind of thing. Her sister, there is a—well, her sister ended up very grand indeed with a huge house up in Cheshire.I think she just had that internal confidence, really. She wasn't—and that there wasn't much money. I mean, there was very little money when she was growing up, as of course you know, but that didn't matter. I mean, her voice is insane. Her voice is, [affecting a posh voice] “Oh, it's lucky it just happens.” [laughter] But yes, there's a part of her that is real late Victorian upper middle class that, again, underpins her books.It's amazing really how broad-minded and cosmopolitan she was. But possibly, I mean, possibly that does—she was—you know, when she disappeared, she was described in foreign newspapers as an Anglo-American, the embodiment of Englishness, and that's how she was described. And then of course she was genuinely cosmopolitan in her love of travel and her love of other cultures and all that obvious stuff. Yes.Inspirations for Miss MarpleOLIVER: How much of her grandmothers is in Miss Marple?THOMPSON: Quite a lot, I would say, particularly the—OLIVER: Drawn from life?THOMPSON: Well, in an essential way not, because Miss Marple has no real experience of life in that way. We're occasionally told about some chap who came calling who wasn't suitable or whatever, but she's almost defined by nonexperience of life in a sense, but observation of life. She's an observer. She's not an outsider in the way that Poirot is. She has a place within the social hierarchy and whatever, and that village has a reality to it. And the way it changes has a reality to it. But she is defined by being an observer, I would say.But Margaret Miller, who was the rich grandmother, who is the one who had the big house at Ealing and was—you know, she's the one who would go to the Army and Navy stores and all that stuff that's in At Bertram's Hotel. She was—there's a lot of her in Miss—I think, as I say in the book, she grew up with the sound of female wisdom in her ears. You know, her grandmother was the sort of—if she'd seen her up in Harrogate, she would've known exactly what was going on. You know, one of those kind of women who could spot an affair at a hundred paces, just a wise sort of woman, worldly, worldly woman.And Miss Marple is worldly in her thinking, but not in her experience, particularly in a book like A Caribbean Mystery, which I think is—she's a real sophisticate, Agatha. I mean, I'm reading The Hollow again at the moment. And it's really astounding to me how there's a love affair at the center of it with a young woman who's kind of a self-portrait and this married man. And not only, there's not—it's not only nonjudgmental; there's literally no concept of judgment being in the vicinity. It's really, really sophisticated, grown-up stuff, I think. And again, I think that's maybe not recognized about her that much.Nursery RhymesOLIVER: What are the importance of nursery rhymes to her?THOMPSON: Yes, that's interesting. They're part of that distilled quality she had, I suppose, that really simple ability to catch hold of something that is simple and familiar in itself and then subvert it. There's books where she—I don't think she needs it in Five Little Pigs. I think the book is almost too good for that.But is it not to do with that—like her titles, which are really, really simple with a faint frisson of the sinister about them. Is it not that ability she has to catch, to take something really, really simple and subvert it for her own ends? What do you think? Do you think that's right? Or do you think it's something more than that?OLIVER: No, I think the simplicity is the point, and I think it probably gives her a way of talking, of showing how fundamental the wickedness is. And as you say, the children can be evil, and it's part of the darkness in a way, but it gives the appearance of innocence and, oh, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe? You know, children do this. And so it leads you through and makes it worse somehow. [laughs]THOMPSON: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But I know I've—how many times have I said the word simple? But I really do feel that's the heart of her. And I also feel it's the heart of why she was misunderstood when I was growing up reading her because it was mistaken for simplistic.Wartime ProductivityOLIVER: Why was she so productive during the war? I mean, there were four books one year.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And as you say, they're some of the best. I mean, what is it about the war that gets her so busy?THOMPSON: Well, she was on her own, which she had never been, really. Well, obviously she divorced her first husband in 1928. So there's a couple of very bleak, dead years before she met her second husband and married him in 1930. But she wasn't completely on her own because she had her friend Charlotte Fisher, who was a sort of secretary-companion, but much more than that—really, really good friend.But in the war, Max Mallowan was abroad. Her daughter—she had one child—her daughter was married and living in Wales. And she was living in the Isokon building in North London, which I love because that's like, “You think I'm chintzy and old fashioned. And here I am socializing with the sort of left-wing intelligentsia at the Isokon building.” And there's something about being in that adorable little flat—they're so fabulous, those flats—and being alone but not feeling abandoned, as she had after her first marriage.And I suppose also, you know, war is, you either cower in despair or you think, “Right, well, better get on with it.” War is stimulating in that way. I think it was to quite a few writers, maybe, or quite a few creatives. The shadow of death. But there was something about that solitude but not abandonment, plus the stimulation of not knowing whether it was your last day on earth that did—it did. I mean, it's absolutely insane how productive she is.And then she wrote—she had a week off. She was also working as a dispenser at a London hospital, and she had a week off. And she wrote a Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, which is one of her best Westmacotts, I think. I mean, she's got a week off and she writes a book. I mean, Jesus, there's a challenge to us, Henry. [laughter]The Mary Westmacott NovelsOLIVER: What are those Mary Westmacotts like? Because I've never read them, but you seem very—THOMPSON: Oh, have you not?OLIVER: You're very up on them. You like them?THOMPSON: I am. I really am. Well, for a biographer, they were a treasure trove because they're very revealing. Unfinished Portrait is, I think, as close as you are ever going to come to a true autobiography, as opposed to the actual autobiography, which is charmingly disingenuous.OLIVER: And also dull. No? I mean, it's just so dull.THOMPSON: Do you think? It is a bit.OLIVER: I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it. No, it was so long and so leaden. I felt like she didn't really want to tell me the story of her life. Just couldn't.THOMPSON: Well, I think that's probably right. It was very heavily edited after her death. And her daughter was very, very protective of her. So, Max Mallowan as well. So maybe there was a much better book in there somewhere. Who knows?OLIVER: So we should read Mary Westmacott if we want the unfiltered Agatha?THOMPSON: I would say Unfinished Portrait. It really fascinates me because the worst time you've ever gone through in your life—so in 1926, she lost her mother and her husband in the space of four months. And I think an awful lot of people, even writers, would think, “I'm going to put that behind me and get on.” But she had to reopen the wound. She had to go through it all again eight years later. I find that really, in itself, incredibly revealing about her.Poirot vs. MarpleOLIVER: Why is there so much more Poirot than Marple?THOMPSON: Yes, I've wondered that because there is this little thing that she hated him, which I don't really think she did. It's just something people say, isn't it?OLIVER: Well, it's a common thing about artists. They're supposed to hate their most successful work, but—THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. All I could come up with was that he was easier to put in different places. He could conceivably be on the Nile or in Mesopotamia or—I mean, it would be a—she does manage to get Miss Marple to the West Indies, but it's certainly—OLIVER: There are only so many holidays your nephew can send you on.THOMPSON: He was really successful, that nephew, wasn't he? Who do you think he was like? Sort of Ian McEwan or—OLIVER: [laughs] I know. It was sort of crazy, isn't it?THOMPSON: And very kind to her.OLIVER: It might be to her credit that she doesn't do a Midsomer Murders thing and just sort of wave away and say, “Oh, we can just have as many of these murders as we want.” She says, “No, we can only fit—” Do you think maybe that's it?THOMPSON: I think there might be a bit of that. I mean, her notebooks sort of—some of the books were originally Marples, like Cat Among the Pigeons and Death on the Nile, in fact. And then they became Poirots. I just wonder whether he's a bit more malleable because she is a more rooted, fixed entity.And he is—I don't mean to denigrate David Suchet because he's a fantastic actor, but he does root him more than I think the written version. I think he is a sketch on the page. And one of her great skills, I think, is how she can sketch, and they've got that quality of aliveness on the page, which you just can't analyze, really. I don't—well, I can't. And that's how I see Poirot. So he was more movable in that sense.And she's incredibly good at certain—like Sleeping Murder, there's no way you could have him in that. And Miss Marple is—her qualities are so perfect for a book like that, which has suddenly reminded me of how she got me into John Webster. I never read John Webster until—OLIVER: [laughs] That's great.THOMPSON: The way she uses The Duchess of Malfi is so clever. Do you think that's right about Poirot? Do you think there's something more . . .Reader Preferences and SalesOLIVER: I can see that. I wondered if there was some reader's prejudice involved.THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Poirot is the sort of exotic—Sherlock Holmes, one thing that makes him popular is that he's a bit wacky, you know. And Poirot—he's always talking about, “You English are so xenophobic. Excuse me, I am Belgian.” And with the eggs and all the little—whereas Miss Marple's just the kind of old lady that we all wish there were more of. And how much of that will readers take? I don't know.THOMPSON: Yes. Although, as I say, she, she did—I mean, I think her publishers did like her to do Poirot, but I don't know that she would've been influenced by that necessarily. I mean, maybe she was—maybe I'm overdoing her—OLIVER: Well, she had these terrible money problems. Didn't she have to be a little bit focused on the dollar?THOMPSON: She did. She did, but she didn't—well, I mean, the money problems are insane because they were absolutely no fault of her own. They were to do with test cases, and it was just this sort of accumulation of horror that put her in tax problems during the war. And she really never could dig her way out of them and was advised to go bankrupt twice, which is unbelievable, just as a way of clearing it. I mean, it's terrible.But I don't know that she—I think her attitude was a bit more, “Well, why should I even bother if they're just going to take it away from me?” In 1948 she didn't write anything at all because I think she thought, “What's the point?” But then, that wasn't her way. But I don't know that she thought of writing as a way of digging out of it necessarily. But I could be—OLIVER: The Marples, did they make less money? Were they, did they sell less?THOMPSON: Not really. I think they all sold. Even poor old Passenger to Frankfurt sold hugely, absolutely hugely. I think people—I mean, my parents would—it was like people just wanted them, the Christie for Christmas.Rereading ChristieOLIVER: How many times have you read these books? Do you ever get bored?THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: Really?THOMPSON: Well, I have them on rotation, and I don't—as you know, I do interleave them with our beloved Elizabeth Bowen, who's my passion at the moment, and other people. But they are consolatory, I suppose. They are—there's bits of—there is this kind of—there's bits of them that I just know completely off by heart, like the gramophone record in And Then There Were None and all that.But there's something—and maybe I should have said this earlier, when I say—I've said it on Substack—that they're fairy tales for adults. There's something about that. There's an almost physical sensation of pleasure, really, when the resolution comes. It is a bit like act five of Shakespeare. I'm not going to say she's quite on that level. Not even I am going to say that.But there is—and it is like being a child again and reading the end toward the happy-ever-after, even though her happy-ever-afters are sometimes compromised. And there is something almost primal in that pleasure. And it almost sounds borderline mad, me saying it like that, but I do think there's something in it because the resolution is so—because it's character based, and at her best, she's character and plot as one, as in Five Little Pigs or The Hollow or Murder on the Orient Express or blah, blah, blah.Her resolutions do tell you something about human nature. You do think, “Oh, yes, that is what that would be. Yes, it would be all about money. Yes. Yes, doctors are untrustworthy,” or something on a more profound level than that. There's something that is a satisfaction, both childlike and I'm experiencing it as an adult. In my defense, P. G. Wodehouse said you can never read them too many times. [laughs] It doesn't matter if you know who did it. There's so much pleasure in them.Thompson's CareerOLIVER: Now, I want to ask a little bit about your career.THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.OLIVER: You were at a sort of stage school, then you studied at Merton, and then you worked at The Times.THOMPSON: Yes. Very briefly. Yes.OLIVER: How does one therefore go from all of this to being the biographer?THOMPSON: Well, I did always think I would have a career in—I wanted to direct plays. I directed Hamlet after university, which is probably the thing I'm still proudest of. But what it was, was that I wrote a couple of books. I won an award when I was quite young.And then I had an agent who—I said to him, “I want to write a biography of Nancy Mitford.” And he wasn't very keen on the idea, but I must have written an okay proposal. Again, because I thought Nancy Mitford was a little bit undervalued, that she's a lot more than just a posh girl. And at the time her reputation was quite low. And so somebody bought into that idea, and it sort of went from there, really.But it's a bit—I sometimes look back at the books I've written, including a memoir of my publican grandmother, and I think, gosh, this is all quite scatter-gun, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you should just write the books you really want to write. But it was a passion for Nancy Mitford that sort of started that particular ball rolling.And then I had the idea of—oh, no. I was down in Devon with a boyfriend, and he said, “You never stop talking about Agatha Christie. Why don't you try and write her biography?” And that was just a luck of timing because her daughter was still alive. So I met her, and she liked me because I knew the Mary Westmacotts so well, and that sort of happened. I mean, quite often these things are very fortuitous, don't you think? Did you not find that with your book?OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, I did. I did. I think some writers, as you say—I don't think of it as scatter-gun. I think of it, it's sort of an emergent thing, and you happen to have these different interests, and you just follow your nose, and that's fine.THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.OLIVER: Tell us about this production of Hamlet.THOMPSON: Oh. Do you know, I think it was not bad. I had a very good Hamlet. I think if you've—well, you're in trouble without—who is now quite a successful actor. And we were all really young, but he was—I saw him in something and said, “Do you want to play Hamlet for me?” And he said, “Okay then.” And it was a room above a pub in Chelsea, and it was very spare and very quick.And it was about—I can't bear when people overanalyze the character of Hamlet, and why does he delay? He delays because Shakespeare wants him to, so that he can write all those incredible speeches. That's a bit simplified, but it was—he was so, he so understood the translucent power of those soliloquies, this actor. So it just sort of worked because we didn't do too much to it. And it was, yes, it was good. I think it was good. But then I did Macbeth, and that was much less good.Secretly Reading ChristieOLIVER: And you've said here, and I think you said it in your book, that when you were at Merton, you were reading Agatha Christie between the covers of what you were supposed to be reading.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, I was.OLIVER: That can't be—is that a slight exaggeration, or did you really not get on with the syllabus?THOMPSON: Well, hang on. I was a bit stuck in the first term. Can you imagine coming from a performing arts school—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —and then being told, “Read that bloody, you know.OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, it's intense.THOMPSON: All I knew was French. How I got in is a minor mystery, but there it was. I've tried to do it honor ever since by writing as best books I possibly can. But I was okay once I got over that bit. Once I got into my beloved Tennyson and all the people we've been talking about, Hardy and blah, blah, blah. Larkin, about whom the best thing I've ever read—the best thing I've ever read about Larkin is your Substack about him, without a shadow of a doubt.OLIVER: Oh, thank you.THOMPSON: Just wonderful. So I sort of winged it a bit, but I had a very nice don. And the autodidact side of me, which is very like Agatha Christie, who barely went to school, and Nancy Mitford—I think it can be a good thing in a way, because you have such a respect for learning and truth. I always try to be truthful in my biographies, which as we know, not everybody is. [laughter]And I think you carry on wanting to learn and carry on wanting to fill all the gaps because I only had half an education, because in the morning you would do ballet and drama and all that kind of thing. So it is a bit odd, but in some ways I think it's been a good thing.OLIVER: Now, the new book is about the 1926 disappearance. When can we expect it to be published?THOMPSON: It's only a short book—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —because obviously I covered it a lot in the biography, and it doesn't—but I have found out a couple of new things. And that will be out in August here and in November in America. And I have come up with a slightly different slant on it, but mainly—and I treat it a little bit like a cold case. And it was—I had to write—I wrote it in five weeks, but it was incredibly good fun. Oh, and I reenacted her journey, which was very interesting, to Harrogate.But mainly it's such a pleasure because I, you know, on Substack, and I think, “Oh, you can't write about Agatha Christie again.” There always seems to be quite a lot to say. I'm intrigued by how you, who I think of as a true intellectual, how you have clear regard for her.Henry on Agatha ChristieOLIVER: I started reading her when I was about 12, and I just thought she was great, and I went through most of them. But I read them at intervals. So I was reading her into my twenties, thirties. And before this interview I tried to—I thought, “Laura's always saying Five Little Pigs is the best one. I'm going to read it.” And I just sort of found that I've lost the taste, in a way.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Which I was quite, I don't know, just maybe—I feel like this is my failing. Maybe I should take a week off and sit by the pool and read it properly. But I've always thought she's really, really great, and very few people can do that many very compelling stories without you sort of thinking, “Oh, I've read this one. I know. Yes. It's the same as the other one, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it was the”—as you say, it's not Cluedo. Even Dorothy L. Sayers, I don't think I could read much more by her, frankly. Great, she's great, but it's enough. [laughs]THOMPSON: Well, I quite like her. The whole—most girls who went to Oxford are quite keen on Gaudy Night, and the character of Harriet Vane is quite satisfying, I think.OLIVER: Indeed, indeed. And Strong Poison is great. And there—but I just mean if she'd written as many books as Agatha, you can't imagine it would've sustained the level of quality.THOMPSON: No, no. There is that lightness in Agatha and that terrible cliché of, “I wrote a long book because it was too—I didn't have enough time to write a short book,” and all that kind of thing. The brevity amazes me. When I said at the start, most writers would take twice as many pages to get all that in.She has style—I don't know if you can call it a style, but there is something blindingly effective about it that nobody can imitate. And it does—there's something so fathomless about her, and that's what continues to compel me. But I think it's very lovely of you to do this if you are no longer an admirer because you've let me sort of—OLIVER: Well, it's not that I'm not an admirer. It's just that I don't—I had this with P. G. Wodehouse. I read quite a lot of it, and now, I don't know, somehow I've reached a point where it's—I sort of get it, but it's just not that funny anymore. I don't know, just need some time away.THOMPSON: Well, maybe. Maybe, but you know, I'm a bit—she's part of my life now. It's like if somebody said, “You can't read her anymore,” it would be like, “You can't listen to the Rolling Stones anymore.” I mean, it'd be like a kind of death. She's part of my life the same way they're part of my life. She's now inseparable from just the way I go on, as is Shakespeare. And if I had to lose one of them, trust me, it would be her, you'll be reassured to know. [laughter]OLIVER: Very good. Laura, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.THOMPSON: Oh, I've really enjoyed it. I really have. And I was really looking forward to it, and it's been even nicer than I thought it would be. So thank you.OLIVER: Oh, it's been delightful.THOMPSON: Thank you so much, Henry.OLIVER: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

In which we take to the sea, learn more about 19-century whaling than we wanted to know and scream DIDO TWITE from the rooftops! The third book in Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles makes Dido the deserving protagonist as she frees other little girls from emotional and societal expectations. We wrestle with vague memories of Nantucket as we discuss the delightfully subtle fantasy elements and the appeal of a Very Pink Whale. Join us!Other Joan Aiken episodes:The Wolves of Willoughby ChaseBlack Hearts in Battersea

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Hoy nos adentraremos en un relato de misterio y secretos que acechan en la penumbra de una casa aparentemente deshabitada. Un joven, atraído por el abandono y el silencio de esta extraña vivienda, se encuentra con algo tan inesperado como aterrador. Los Cuentos de la Casa de la Bruja es un podcast semanal de audio-relatos de misterio, ciencia ficción y terror. Cada viernes, a las 10 de la noche, traemos un nuevo programa. Alternamos entre episodios gratuitos para todos nuestros oyentes y episodios exclusivos para nuestros fans. ¡Si te gusta nuestro contenido suscríbete! Y si te encanta considera hacerte fan desde el botón azul APOYAR y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo. Tu aporte es de mucha ayuda para el mantenimiento de este podcast. ¡Gracias por ello! Mi nombre es Juan Carlos. Dirijo este podcast y también soy locutor y narrador de audiolibros, con estudio propio. Si crees que mi voz encajaría con tu proyecto o negocio contacta conmigo y hablamos. :) Contacto profesional: info@locucioneshablandoclaro.com www.locucioneshablandoclaro.com También estoy en Twitter: @VengadorT Y en Instagram: juancarlos_locutor Música y FX, Epidemic Sound, con licencia. Temas musicales de este episodio: https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/jwMyNWoEMi/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/vXPOORFyRh/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/DIVar5aFJa/ https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ziSRd29euX/ Ilustración, Pixabay, con licencia: https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/obsesionado-casa-bosque-6568959/ Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Directors Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry on Kinsuke's Kingdom, their hand-drawn animated film which features a shipwrecked boy who learns about the natural world from a Japanese soldier who's been living secretly on an island since the end of World War II. How closely do we watch trailers when deciding which film to watch next? Film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Sam Cryer from Intermission Trailer House discuss the art of the movie trailer, whether they are now too long and reveal too many spoilers. Author Amanda Craig recommends her summer reads from the latest Young Adult fiction releases: All The Hidden Monsters by Amie Jordan published by Chicken House is out now; Songlight by Moira Buffini is published by Faber and Faber on 27th August; Almost Nothing Happened by Meg Rosoff is published by Bloomsbury on 15th August; The Felix Trilogy by Joan Aiken is available in different editions.And Christopher Hall reveals his journey from TikTok to stand-up comedian, as he starts a run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Paula McGrath

Once again, I'm continuing down the fairy tale rabbit hole. Today, I'm sharing about Snow White. It is a new-to-me version retold by the irreplaceable Joan Aiken, with lovely illustrations by Belinda Downes. And I credit it with changing my view of the story.

Sam Blake, a.k.a. Vanessa Fox O' Loughlin, is the creator of Inkwell publishing consultancy group, award-winning online writing magazine Writing.ie, founder of the International crime writing festival Murder One and is well known by most for writing crime novels under the pseudonym Sam Blake. She has taken some precious time out of her no-doubt hectic schedule to speak to Claire and Rebecca about her life in the world of writing. Books mentioned in this episode: "Someone in the Attic" by Andrea Mara"Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier"The Little White Horse" by Elizabeth Goudge "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" by Joan Aiken"Perfume" by Patrick Süskind- - -Thanks to Helen Becerra for the artwork and Mark Neville for the mixing.Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/make-it-work License code: PLGGIGEZMJI9NR3G and https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/funky-junkLicense code: BZFZTXSSQI4PW6NW ---Follow us on Instagram: @another.chapter.podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/another-chapter/message

This is the thirteenth episode of The Podgoblin's Hat, with Nina and Dave. You can find it on it's own feed wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to series 3! We're back with a banger: Moominland Midwinter. Nina has had this book hyped up by everyone who knows she's doing this podcast, and despite all the hype it doesn't disappoint. In this first half of the book, the unthinkable happens: Moomintroll awakes from his hibernation and finds himself alone in a world of winter. It is as if he has rolled out into outer space. This is such a beautiful meditation on loneliness, and change, and uncertainty. We've got a great new character in Too-Ticky, and of course the whole show is stolen by recurring character Little My. Our spirits of the Moomins this week are Nimona (the animated film) from Dave and two short stories from Nina: The Horse in the Snow by Jeanette Winterson and the Snow Horse by Joan Aiken.

In episode eight, Sophie Dahl joins me to talk about a mutual favourite, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken.Sophie has written books across ages and genres - novels for adults, non-fiction food writing and most recently children's fiction including her two Madame Badobedah picture books illustrated by Lauren O'Hara. Sophie's pick was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, set in an alternate version of 19th century England and written in 1962. We chatted about the book's massive heart, glorious food writing and truly excellent villains.You can find Sophie's books, Pages & Co, and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase at my Bookshop page: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/bookwandering-the-podcast-s2Next week features C Pam Zhang on A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.The podcast is produced by Adam Collier with artwork by Hester Kitchen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In episode seven, Nikita Gill joins me to talk about JM Barrie's beloved children's novel Peter Pan. Nikita is a poet and has published several books of poetry including These Are the Words, Great Goddesses and Fierce Fairytales. She's also one of the most popular poets on Instagram, with over 750k followers at @nikita_gill. We chat about some of the more tricky and Oedipal elements of Peter Pan, its sometimes unsettling tone but also its whimsy and wonder. You can find Nikita's books, Pages & Co, and Peter Pan at my Bookshop page: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/bookwandering-the-podcast-s2Next week features Sophie Dahl on The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken.The podcast is produced by Adam Collier with artwork by Hester Kitchen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're continuing on in Joan Aiken's alternate history, wolf-ridden England with Black Hearts in Battersea! If your spirits need a boost (and whose don't), irresistible Cockney urchin Dido Twite is here to entrance and delight. We absolutely adored this book and wish it had come into our lives sooner. Puzzle over Grace's mental picture of mince pies and join Madeleine's affable league of helpful art students - join us!Thanks to all the listeners who have requested the Wolves Chronicles, we're obsessed with this series!MUSIC - Pippin the Hunchback and Thatched Villagers by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) - Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Welcome to our first Backlisted special of 2023. Today we're joined by the award-winning novelist and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce, an official friend of Backlisted, who returns for the first time since his appearance on the Christmas 2021 episode on The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit, one of our most popular shows. These specials are designed to fill the gap until the show proper returns in April. They differ from the usual Backlisted format in that they feature just one guest choosing a number of books in an area they know and care about. The discussion covers examines what inspired Frank's love of reading when he was growing up, and includes favourite books by T.H. White, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joan Aiken, Tim Hunkin and Richmal Crompton. * 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 Image Credit: Archives New Zealand from New Zealand, CC BY-SA 2.0

Time for a book recommendation! Abby Rauscher is back with a book recommendation from Victoria Provost, a bookseller at Westsider Rare & Used Books in New York City: The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken. Welcome to Misshelved Recs, your weekly book fix from independent booksellers. Join our motley crew of hosts to find your next favorite read. SHOP WESTSIDER: westsiderbooks.com/bookstore.html FULL TRANSCRIPTIONS + SHOW NOTES: misshelved.nebrinkley.com LEARN MORE ABOUT BOOKS: tinyletter.com/misshelved MORE PLACES TO LISTEN: anchor.fm/misshelvedpod Edited by Nicole Brinkley. Logo by Jean Michel. Music by Mark Shwedow.

The episode no one has been waiting for! The girls once again come to the end of reading their favorite books with Emma's pick Black Hearts in Battersea. Can Hannah get over the "historical inaccuracies" of this alternate history? And can Christina even figure out the correct time period? This month the girls read Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken. Intro/Outro Music: 1922 by Ernesto Nazareth   If you want to get in touch with us, check out our contact information below.   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TreatUrShelfPod   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treatyourshelfpodcast/   Email: treatyourshelfpodcast@gmail.com   Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/TYSApplePod   Spotify: http://bit.ly/TYSPodcast  

“One of the great gifts that Freud has given to our culture is that our sexual fantasies are not to be censored in any way. They are beyond sin, they're beyond political correctness. We have to accept that our fantasy lives don't necessarily reflect the person we might want to appear.” - Amy Street Welcome to Heyer Today, the serial podcast in which we explore Georgette Heyer's legacy. This week Sara-Mae talks to Amy Street, the author who runs the @georgettedaily account on Twitter. She's also a huge fan of Austen – her debut novel ‘Becoming Mary' explores what happened to Mary Bennet after Pride & Prejudice. As someone who once wrote a series of short stories reclaiming forgotten characters in famous novels (for her university dissertation) Sara-Mae appreciates someone who wears their fandom on their ink-stained sleeve. You could say she's another mega fan. Her delightful selections of Georgette Heyer's quotes would brighten anyone's day, and in the somewhat harsh social media landscape, it's a wonderful, sunny oasis. We talk literature's sexiest and somewhat problematic heroes like Heathcliff, Rochester and more. Plus, Stephen Fry joins us to talk about the original bad boy - Beau Brummell - whom many of Heyer's heroes were based on. The music used in this episode is from Emma Gattril's wondrous album, Chapter I, as well as Jerome Alexander's luscious Message to Bears work. Original music was composed especially for the podcast, by Sara-Mae and Tom Chadd. Comment and take part in our discussions on social media, we're @fablegazers on Instagram and @fable_gazers on Twitter. Remember to rate, review and subscribe…I can't tell you how much it helps small indie companies like us to thrive. Heyer Today is a Fable Gazers production. Show notes: Regency portrait of Stephen Fry by artist Cathy Tuson. We discuss: Beau Brummell and Oscar Wilde, Cotillion, Devil's Cub, Frederica, Friday's Child, fan fiction, problematic heroes.   Links A New York Times article about Joan Aiken's Austen spinoffs. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/books/review/joan-aiken-jane-austen-spinoffs.html    

Joan Delano Aiken - eine der erfolgreichsten Kinderbuchautorinnen aus England.

Love letters reveal so much - especially when the writers are the people who dictate the fate of nations, but who somehow come off as a bit... thirsty? Find out why Napoleon detested being left on read, why Prince Albert used to give Queen Victoria certificates for being ‘most improved,' and why there are two sides to every story.This archive cut includes the extended version of the show, which contains ‘Shit I Wish I'd Known' from Dan's perspective as an author of dozens of books, and as an experienced editor. What do editors wish writers knew? And what drives someone to write so damned much?! Find out on the extended cut. https://www.patreon.com/join/nonficpod Daniel Smith has written over 30 non-fiction books including the hugely successful How to Think Like… series. His book The Peer and the Gangster was described by the Observer as “revelatory and hilarious” while The Ardlamont Mystery is an “enthralling real- life murder mystery,” according to the Daily Mail. His next book, the Love Letters of Kings and Queens came out in February. You can find Daniel at https://www.danielsmithbooks.co.uk/ and on Twitter You can order his extensive back catalogue from the fine people at allgoodbookshop.co.ukWorks MentionedJoan Aiken, Arabel and Mortimer StoriesJoanna Spyri, HeidiRosie Wilby, The Breakup Monologues (NonFicPod episode coming soon!)Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (NonFicPod episode coming soon!)Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks (NonFicPod series 1 episode 8!)Episode transcript available here (Google doc)Find Us Online- Patreon: www.patreon.com/nonficpod- Bookshop: www.uk.bookshop.org/shop/nonficpod- Twitter: www.twitter.com/nonficpod- Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/nonficpodCredits- Hosts: Emma Byrne and Georgie Codd- Producer Emma Byrne - Guest: Daniel Smith- Producer: Beatrice Bazell- Composer: Mike WyerAbout UsBrought to you by author and publishing rockstar Georgie Codd and author and broadcaster Emma Byrne, NonFicPod is your home for the latest nonfiction must-reads. Our premium podcast, Sh*t I Wish I'd Known teaches you the lessons that we (and our guests) have learned about writing - and life. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fleur Hitchcock talks about the book that made her realise not all heroines needed to be nice.   Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken is the third in a series that began with the Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the first to feature sparky street urchin Dido Twite as it's protagonist.   We also discuss the book's influence on her Clifftoppers series whose characters draw on Dido's pluck, invention and kindness. Explore Joan Aiken's books at bookshop.org Read the accompanying blog post at tygertale.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/tygertale)

Joan Aiken Joan Delano Aiken was the daughter of Conrad Aiken, whose story Mr Arcularis we read out on The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. Her elder sister Jane was a writer and her brother John was a chemist. Her father, being a poet presumably appreciated the para-rhyming of their names. Joan was born while her father was domiciled in England,  on Mermaid Street in Rye in East Sussex in 1924. She died in Petworth West Sussex in 2004. She went to a private school in Oxford but did not go to University. Instead she wrote stories. Her first story appeared on the BBC Children's Hour in 1941 when she was seventeen.  After the death of her first husband she went to work as an editor on magazines. She is most famous for her children's fiction, notably The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea. Her stories have almost a magical realism feel (a term which of course really belongs to South American literature) in that she uses what appear to be genuine historical settings subtly twisted to become fantasy.  Many of her novels have supernatural themes, such as the Shadow Guests and the Haunting of Lamb House. She won many awards for her fiction during her lifetime.  The Lodgers is in her collection of short supernatural stories A Touch of Chill.    Not knowing what to make of it, I went on Good Reads and found it got an average of three stars out of five with most reviewers not being clear about what the story is about. The best I can do is to suggest that this is a mid-20th Century story where small town life is subverted into the weird as people like Robert Aickman were doing. I wonder whether the deliberate cultivation of the irrational is taking place here where the weird is not meant to be understood rationally, but there to create atmosphere. The weird slovenly, drunken Colegates come from the Middle East. They have odd paraphernalia such as the 'collecting jar' which seems to be vaguely occult. The reference to the Egyptians and the black and white pillars put me in mid of the ritual magic of the Order of the Golden Dawn. It seems that the Colegates collect the souls of children. In the end, I think young Bob's soul flies out of the window and Desmond Colegate pursues it like a butterfly hunter into the graveyard where the exertion gives him a stroke of a heart attack. But I may be wrong. The boy, and the vet's boy who the Colegate also taught games of cards to (the cards seem important -- Tarot???) both die of natural causes. Are the Colegates then a drunken version of the Grim Reaper? They don't cause the death, they are just around to harvest the souls? If you know, tell me! If You Appreciate The Work I've Put In Here [Become A Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)) For Bonus Stories Or [buy me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)) , if you'd like to keep me working. [Music](https://bit.ly/somecomeback (https://bit.ly/somecomeback)) by The Heartwood Institute Support this podcast

Joan Aiken's stories remind Ursula and Catherine of fairy tales, and they also look closely at Jan Pienkowski's incredible illustrations. 

Fleur Hitchcock talks about the book that made her realise not all heroines needed to be nice.   Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken is the third in a series that began with the Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the first to feature sparky street urchin Dido Twite as it's protagonist.   We also discuss the book's influence on her Clifftoppers series whose characters draw on Dido's pluck, invention and kindness. Explore Joan Aiken's books at bookshop.org Read the accompanying blog post at tygertale.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/tygertale)

We read Joan Aiken’s alternate history wolf dystopia, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase! Evil wolves are roaming free, but they leave you alone more often than you’d expect. The real evil resides at Willoughby Chase manor, in the form of cruel faux-governess Miss Slighcarp and fake amnesiac Josiah Grimshaw. Protagonists Sylvia and Bonnie do everything possible to right their situation, but end up in a Dickensian orphanage with only gruel and raw eggs to eat. Will an escort of geese get them safely home again??We savored this outsize parody of Victorian orphan tales - our only demand is more of Simon and his chestnut flour cakes. Join us!This episode was requested by listeners Clarissa and Angela - thank you both! If you’d like to request a book for us to cover, leave a comment or email us at dragonbabiespodcast@gmail.com.MUSIC - Pippin the Hunchback and Thatched Villagers by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) - Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Love letters reveal so much - especially when the writers are the people who dictate the fate of nations, but who somehow come off as a bit... thirsty? Find out why Napoleon detested being left on read, why Prince Albert used to give Queen Victoria certificates for being ‘most improved,' and why there are two sides to every story.For our Patreon subscribers at Silver Nib level and up, the extended version of the show contains ‘Shit I Wish I'd Known' from Dan's perspective as an author of dozens of books, and as an experienced editor. What do editors wish writers knew? And what drives someone to write so damned much?! Find out on the extended cut. https://www.patreon.com/join/nonficpod Daniel Smith has written over 30 non-fiction books including the hugely successful How to Think Like… series. His book The Peer and the Gangster was described by the Observer as “revelatory and hilarious”  while The Ardlamont Mystery is an “enthralling real- life murder mystery,” according to the Daily Mail. His next book, the Love Letters of Kings and Queens came out in February. You can find Daniel at https://www.danielsmithbooks.co.uk/ and on TwitterWorks MentionedJoan Aiken, Arabel and Mortimer StoriesJoanna Spyri, HeidiRosie Wilby, The Breakup Monologues (NonFicPod episode coming soon!)Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (NonFicPod episode coming soon!)Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks (NonFicPod series 1 episode 8!)Episode transcript available here (Google doc)Find Us Online- Patreon: www.patreon.com/nonficpod- Bookshop: www.uk.bookshop.org/shop/nonficpod- Twitter: www.twitter.com/nonficpod- Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/nonficpodCredits- Hosts: Emma Byrne and Georgie Codd- Producer Emma Byrne - Guest: Daniel Smith- Producer: Beatrice Bazell- Composer: Mike WyerAbout UsBrought to you by author and publishing rockstar Georgie Codd and author and broadcaster Emma Byrne, NonFicPod is your home for the latest nonfiction must-reads. Our premium podcast, Sh*t I Wish I'd Known teaches you the lessons that we (and our guests) have learned about writing - and life. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fleur Hitchcock talks about the book that made her realise not all heroines needed to be nice. Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken is the third in a series that began with the Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the first to feature sparky street urchin Dido Twite as it's protagonist. We also discuss the book's influence on her Clifftoppers series whose characters draw on Dido's pluck, invention and kindness.Explore Joan Aiken's books at bookshop.orgRead the accompanying blog post at tygertale.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/tygertale)

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, HarperCollins Children Books Company is allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until December 31, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of HarperCollins Children's Books. Today's story is "Mortimer Says Nothing," which is the first chapter in the book of the same name by Joan Aiken. This is the last of the Arabel and Mortimer stories I'll be sharing on this podcast. Next time I'll start an entirely new book and author. But you can find many more stories about Arabel and Mortimer in the public library.  And don't stop there! Joan Aiken wrote scores and scores of wonderful books I'm sure you will enjoy! In this tale, Mrs. Jones is having quite a bit of stress. About thirty members of The Rumbury Ladies Kitchen Club have invited themselves to her house for a light luncheon.  Not only is she frantically making scones and macaroons and meringues and mayonnaise and prawn cocktails, but she saw a mouse in the house! At least Mortimer is behaving himself---by refusing to cooperate with an ornithologist sound recorder. Now sit back,  relax,  and listen to this story come to life!

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, HarperCollins Children Books Company is allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until December 31, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of HarperCollins Children's Books.  Today's story is “The Mystery of Mr. Jones's Disappearing Taxi,” a segment from the book Mortimer's Cross, by Joan Aiken. Mr. Jones's taxi has been using a LOT of gasoline lately, and so Mr. Jones, Chris Cross, Arabel, and Mortimer plan a stake-out to discover why. They end up at Rumbury Tower Heights where all sorts of interesting things are happening. Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, and MacMillan Publishers are allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until September 30, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of Penguin Random House publishers.  Today's story is “Mortimer's Tie,” a segment from the book Arabel and Mortimer, by Joan Aiken. Mortimer is trying to help Arabel and Chris Cross wash Mr. Jonses's taxi, but he just creates a big mess, so he looks for diamonds instead. Then he finds one the size of a stewed prune! What will Mortimer choose for a reward: two thousand pounds or a ten-day cruise? Surely whatever he chooses will lead to some excitement. Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, and MacMillan Publishers are allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until September 30, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of Penguin Random House publishers.  Today's story is “The Spiral Stair,” a chapter in the book Arabel and Mortimer, by Joan Aiken. Arabel is staying with her Uncle Urk and Aunt Effie for a couple of weeks. It's exciting, because they live at a zoo, with ostriches, zebras, giraffes and more. There are also some automatic donut making machines that catch Mortimer's interest.  Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, HarperCollins Children Books Company is allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until December 31, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of HarperCollins Children's Books.  Today's story is “Arabel's Birthday,” a chapter in the book Mortimer Says Nothing, by Joan Aiken. There are guests at Rainwater Crescent, Cousin Gladys and her daughter, little Annie Line, have come to stay while Cousin Gladys has some dental work done. But Annie is not a very nice little girl, and she has a doll that whispers secrets only to her. Mortimer doesn't like this, so he makes some mischief! Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, and MacMillan Publishers are allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until September 30, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of Penguin Random House publishers.  This is Season 2, Episode 2, and today's story is “The Escaped Black Mamba and Other Things,” a chapter in the book Arabel's Raven, by Joan Aiken. Arabel and Mortimer get to spend the evening with their favorite babysitter, Chris Cross, while Mr. and Mrs. Jones have gone to a ball. Arabel and Mortimer have fun with all sorts of different coin-operated machines up at the High Street. It's all very exciting! Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. During this time of Covid, many people aren't able to use the library in the same way as in the past. To help bring more stories to more readers, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, and MacMillan Publishers are allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until September 30, 2021. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they're available! Today's story is shared with permission of Penguin Random House publishers. This is Season 2, Episode 1, and the story I'm sharing today is Arabel's Raven, taken from the book of the same title, by Joan Aiken, and shared here with permission from the publishers. Mortimer the Raven is one of my very favorite characters in all of literature, and I'm happy to share with you this first tale of his adventures. Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.

24 Postkarten an 24 Autorinnen biografisch, fiktiv und persönlich subjektiv ausgewählt und geschrieben von Theresa Arlt.

Fleur Hitchcock talks about the book that made her realise not all heroines needed to be nice. Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken is the third in a series that began with the Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the first to feature sparky street urchin Dido Twite as it's protagonist. We also discuss the book's influence on her Clifftoppers series whose characters draw on Dido's pluck, invention and kindness.Explore Joan Aiken's books at bookshop.orgRead the accompanying blog post at tygertale.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/tygertale)

Guest host Hope Davis presents three shows about food, cooking, and company, curated with the online foodie destination Food52:  "Feeding the Fussy," by Laurie Colwin, performed by Tracee Chimo; "Home Turf," by Kiran Desai, performed by Angel Desai; and "Watkyn, Comma," by Joan Aiken, performed by Sonia Manzano. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times. Crawford Award winner Stephanie Feldman joins Gary to talk about the unexpected complexities of virtual Kindergarten; writing about young adult characters and their attraction to the unknown; the appeal of short fiction by Daphne Du Maurier, Joan Aiken, and Angela Carter; the rewards of reading nonfiction; and her recent story "The Staircase" (published in the July 2020 issue of F&SF). Books mentioned include: The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier The Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken  

Ten minutes with... is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they're reading right now and what's getting them through these difficult times. Multiple award-winning author, editor, narrator, and radio personality Ellen Kushner chats with Gary about moving back to New York; ordering favorite children's and YA books from independent bookstores; reading Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Joan Aiken; the brilliance of Frances Hardinge; group reading Shakespeare with friends online; the University of Glasgow's new fantasy study center; and odd historical genres like “silver-fork novels.” Books mentioned include: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken Deeplight by Frances Hardinge The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho The True Queen by Zen Cho Silk & Steel: An Adventure Anthology of Queer SF&F with High Femmes & Dashing Women edited by Janine A. Southard (forthcoming)  

Fleur Hitchcock talks about the book that made her realise not all heroines needed to be 'nice'. Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken is the third in a series that began with the Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the first to feature sparky street urchin Dido Twite as it's protagonist. We also discuss the book's influence on Clifftoppers, a series of books that draw on Dido's pluck, invention and kindness.Read the accompanying blog post on tygertale.com Support the show (http://patreon.com/tygertale)

Fellow Clive Barker fans, we have to apologize. With planning for our 200th episode, the upcoming Kickstarter, the recent interview with Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, and our intrepid news guy, Rob being under the weather, we've gotten behind on the news.  Somebody unplugged all our fax machines and 300 baud modems for the Reef!  Today we're going to fix that, and get as caught up as we possibly can.  So here we go! Clive Barker's appearance at Days of the Dead! Lots of happy fans have been sharing their photos of Clive at Days of the Dead last weekend.  Special Thanks to Raul on our Discord chatfor finding these on Instagram!   https://www.instagram.com/p/BqRPxXslR3A/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1hz1lzij93lg5 https://www.instagram.com/p/BqTQPFqgQ2B?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=4wfty8rnkz08 New Clive Barker Interview on Arrow's Release of Candyman on Blu-Ray. We've seen it.  It's very insightful interview, not just about Candyman, but about his work in general and his feelings about the world around him.  A great special feature. We hope it also shows up in the upcoming Shout Factory release as well.   New Audio Version of Barbie Wilde's The Venus Complexout now, Narrated by Doug Bradley! That was a long title, but this amazing novel deserves it.  It's available on Audible, and Doug Bradley has an amazing range and is a spectacular narrator.  If you want to hear some of his other audio books, check out Mister B Gone or Tonight Again. We talked with Barbie Wilde all the way back in episode 26about this book, and we're thrilled to see it's now narrated by Pinhead himself.   Don Bertram's A Chimneysweep's Tale is available now! You might remember that Don Bertram goes way back as a champion of Clive's art. He's also been a frequent sponsor of our podcast with his Celebrate Imagination art collection benefiting the Texas Children's Cancer Center.  All proceeds for the sale of this book go to the Texas Children's Cancer Center as well, so give it a look on his Etsy page.    Ghost Stories for Christmas. We have to apologize. In a podcast and news post previously we said that Ghost Stories for Christmas was a book, but it's actually a play production that include's Clive Barker's "The Departed" (AKA Hermione and the Moon).  It will be performed at the Lantern Theatre in Brighton, December 20th through the 22nd, and will include the afore-mentioned performance of a Clive Barker story, in addition to stories by Joan Aiken and Ramsey Campbell.  Check the site here for ticket availability. They just opened an additional performance due to demand, so get tickets soon.  

This episode we invite you to join Ren Wednesday, Adam Whybray and a cast of geese, scamps and orphans in the Dickensian horror-romp that is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. Featuring shipwreck, secret passageways and a villainous governess, this book delivers the thrills and chills, and a plethora of Textures of the Week. Content note: description of a child's death by drowning. A full transcript of this episode is available at: https://stillscared.podigee.io/23-wolves

I know it's a little early for a Christmas announcement with Halloween just around the corner, but when Clive Barker is involved it doesn't matter what holiday it is. At this year's Brighton's original Ghost Stories for Christmas- 'Now We are Six', Barker's short story The Departed will be apart of the horrific tales to be theatrically performed that will also include stories by classic horror authors Joan Aiken and Ramsey Cambpell. The event will start on Thursday 20th - Saturday 22nd December 2018 and will take place at the Lantern Theatre. Tickets are only £10 which also includes a piece mince pie or a glass of mulled wine or juice. And the best part about the event is that all proceeds will be donated to the Brighton Alzheimer's Society. You can't beat an evening of horror tales, mince pie, and wine. That's the perfect evening I say. So for our listeners who live in the area make sure to go check it out. ["The Departed" (also known as "Hermione and the Moon") first appeared in the New York Times on the 30th of October, 1992, and one day later in the UK in The Guardian Weekend Magazine.  It has since appeared in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Sixth Annual Collected in 1993 and Best New Horror, Volume 4. This is where I have it.~Ryan Danhauser] For more information and to buy your tickets please visit Ghost Stories for Christmas official website ghoststoriesforchristmas.com. Thanks to Clive Barker: Revelations Facebook for sharing.

Sarah talks about one of her favorite authors from childhood, Joan Aiken, especially about Aiken's Wolves series. She talks about some of the other books she's read by the author, books she didn't realize the author had written, and about the author's life. It's a love fest!As always, if you enjoyed the show, follow us and subscribe to the show: you can find us on iTunes or on any app that carries podcasts as well as on YouTube. Please remember to subscribe and give us a nice review. That way you’ll always be among the first to get the latest GSMC Book Review Podcasts.We would like to thank our Sponsors: GSMC Podcast NetworkAdvertise with US: http://www.gsmcpodcast.com/advertise-with-us.html Website: http://www.gsmcpodcast.com/book-review-podcast.html ITunes Feed: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gsmc-book-review-podcast/id1123769087 GSMC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-EKO3toL1ATwitter: https://twitter.com/ HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/GSMC_BookReview" HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/GSMC_BookReviewFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GSMCBookReview/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Blog: https://gsmcbookreview.blogspot.com/ Disclaimer: The views expressed on the GSMC Book Review Podcast are for entertainment purposes only. Reproduction, copying, or redistribution of The GSMC Book Review Podcast without the express written consent of Golden State Media Concepts LLC is prohibited

 An elderly lycanthropist retires to his estate in the English countryside, but his rest is disturbed by a rowdy village tradition. "Furry Night" is copyright © 1976 by Joan Aiken. Available in THE PEOPLE IN THE CASTLE by Joan Aiken, published by Small Beer Press. Thanks to our presenting sponsor Audible. Start your free trial and get a free audiobook at audible.com/levar.

Welcome, friends, to episode 7 of Drunk Booksellers! We’re here with Sam Kaas, Events Coordinator at Village Books in Bellingham, WA.   Epigraph Bitches in Bookshops Our theme music, Bitches in Bookshops, comes to us with permission from Annabelle Quezada.  Introduction   [0:30] In Which We Reminisce About the Good Ol’ Days and Emma Only Has Time to Read Books About Productivity Currently drinking: Left Hand Milk Stout from Longmont, Colorado. Emma’s reading The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home by Catherynne M. Valente, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande (also mentioned: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, Naked Money: A Revealing Look at What It Is and Why It Matters by Charles Wheelan)   Sam’s reading Clinch by Martin Holmen (pubs 7 June), Goodnight, Beautiful Women by Anna Noyes, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth L. Ozeki   Kim’s reading Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson, A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (also mentioned: The Lives of Others), Curb Stomp by Ryan Ferrier   New/forthcoming books we’re excited about: Welcome Thieves by Sean Beaudoin Dodgers by Bill Beverly (pubs 5 April) The People in the Castle by Joan Aiken (pubs 26 April) Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw (pubs 19 April) Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss (pubs 5 April) The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing (also mentioned: The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking) All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister (also mentioned: Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick) Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye   Chapter I   [18:04] In Which We Discuss Radioactive Bookworms, Lawnmowers, and What Makes a Good Event     Chuck Robinson wrote a book about opening Village Books & Paper Dreams: It Takes a Village Books: 30 Years of Building Community, 1 Book at a Time Shout out to Watermark Books in Anacortes, WA. Another shout out to Third Place Books (opening a new store this year in Seward Park). If Tom Robbins requests a pocket road map of Venezuela, don’t question it, just get him one. Len Vlahos is a rockstar. Here’s proof:   Shit. Wrong image. I meant this:   See? Rockstar. I mean, he’s also a bestselling author and co-owns a little store in Denver, CO called The Tattered Cover. NBD. In other celebrity news, check out Chuckanut Radio Hour. Our favorite events tip: People shouldn’t be calling to ask if there’s an author event tonight, they should be calling to ask what the event tonight is. (hat tip to the fine folk at Elliott Bay Book Company [Kim pumps her fists in victory, even though she has absolutely nothing to do with events at EBBC]) Originally posted by mtv   So, yeah, you should check out Village Books’ event schedule, ‘cause it’s pretty great. Chapter II   [33:37] In Which Sam Builds Us His Wheelhouse, Discusses e-Reading, and Emma and Kim think dedicated e-readers are necessary for e-reading. You can buy one here.    [sign from @wordbookstores​] Kim can’t count. “A novel trying to answer big difficult questions and not necessarily succeeding but at least giving it a go.” = 19 words, not 16, but Sam still succeeded in the 20 Word Wheelhouse Challenge   Emma will read anything blurbed by Kelly Link. Sam will read things blurbed or compared to George Saunders or Sara Vowell. Also books about musicians. (Emma recs Rob Sheffield. Kim recs Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein) Chapter III   [43:25] In Which We Discuss Book Problems in the Apocalypse, Kim & Emma Learn About Cities in Canada, and Sam & Emma Get In a Fight Sam’s Station Eleven book: Ulysses by James Joyce, assuming Shakespeare has been saved by wandering bands of theater nerds Sam’s Wild book: Lyrics & Poems 1997-2012 by John K. Samson (songwriter, rhythm guitarist, & singer of The Weakerthans) Emma and Kim are embarrassingly uninformed about Canadian geography, so in case anyone was wondering, here’s Winnipeg:   Sam’s Reader Confession (a la Bookrageous, Episode 85): Sam believes he might be the only millennial to not finish the Harry Potter series. Emma has lost all respect for Sam. We move on (kind of).   Sam’s go-to handsells: City of Thieves by David Benioff and The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter Sam’s impossible handsell: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James Epilogue   [53:50] In Which Sam Has Never Met a Bookstore He Hasn’t Liked and Discusses His Luddite Cynic Award Sam’s favorite bookstore (aside from Village Books): Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA Sam’s favorite literary media: LitHub, BookRiot, The Paris Review’s Art of Fiction interviews, and old-school physical magazines (such as The New Yorker) Despite the fact that Sam has the Luddite Cynic Award hanging on his fridge and is the last bookseller on Earth not on Twitter, you can hang out with Sam and his mom on Facebook. Or email Sam at sam@villagebooks.com. UPDATE: Just before we posted this episode, Sam made himself a Twitter account. Go welcome him. You should probably follow us on Twitter @drunkbookseller if you’re not doing so already. We’re pretty okay. Emma tweets @thebibliot and writes nerdy bookish things for Book Riot. Kim tweets every few months or so at @finaleofseem. Make sure you don’t miss an episode by subscribing to Drunk Booksellers from your podcatcher of choice. Also, if you read this far in the show notes, you should probably go ahead and rate/review us on iTunes too. Share the love, y’all.

Fighting the flu, and with Swancon just around the corner, I got Gary on the line to discuss small presses, Geoff Ryman and The Child Garden, new Joan Aiken, Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch, and some other things.  Rambling conversation ensued...