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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 this podcast, Ronald Malfi talks about Small Town Horror, subverting expectations, creating dread, and much more. About Ronald Malfi Ronald Malfi is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of horror novels and thrillers. He is the recipient of two Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Award, the Vincent Preis … Continue reading

This week Fonseca talks with Megan Hollingshead:Best known for her anime dubbing work, Megan's most famous roles include Nurse Joy, Cassidy in the first 6 seasons of the Pokémon anime series and Mai Valentine in the first 3 seasons of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. She also lent her voice to the Enix role-playing game series Valkyrie Profile as Lenneth. During the start of Pokémon's 7th season, she left New York City to relocate to her new residence in Los Angeles, and continue her voice acting career, voicing characters such as Shizune in Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, Rangiku Matsumoto and Nemu Kurotsuchi in Bleach, Hilda in Eureka Seven, Villetta Nu in the Code Geass series, and Re-l Mayer in Ergo Proxy. Megan's theatre résumé is as extensive, if less so, with roles in performances of The Duchess of Malfi, Baptizing Adam, Spacegrrrls, and Vinegar Tom, to name but a few. Megan studied acting at the William Esper Studio, and is a founding member of the Adirondack Theatre Festival. She serves as a yoga instructor in her spare time. Hollingshead currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her family.Stranger Things how was season 5, Home 3 can happen! Christmas movies and so much more.

A horror novel. Get all the news you need by listening to WBZ - Boston's News Radio! We're here for you, 24/7.

A young widow stands against the expectations of her family. A woman striving for love and agency in a society which demands she claimed neither, she stands firm in the face of torture and even death.Unravel the gripping layers of John Webster's 17th-century masterpiece The Duchess of Malfi, with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr. Will Tosh.The harrowing plot of the Duchess asserting her place in the world is all the more remarkable for being written by a man in the 1600s. Suzannah and Will explore why this tale of love, power, and betrayal remains a fixture on the stage, resonating across the centuries, and discuss the dramatic history of its performances, the transformative power of early modern theatre lighting, and the poignant representation of female agency.MORE:Going to the Theatrehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/7lbdfK2fbgxtXReriTyydMNormal Women with Philippa Gregoryhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/0b5aXZh1HLVhJxyTyQuf2yPresented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

This month we will bring you the 2 other existing episodes of RR, plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Next up: The Dutchess Of Malfi Check out booksboys.com for links to our social media, merchandise, music, etc, as well as patreon.com/booksboys for the latest episodes of Playboys Extra, Darkplace Dreamers, Film Fellows, Animation Adventurers and more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fifteenth episode of SMFMS Bookends, the satellite show for Save Me From My Shelf. Here we read emails, answer listener questions, talk about what we're currently reading, watching, and playing, resuscitate the Bad Sex Awards™, and provide further outtakes and analysis cut from our Duchess of Malfi episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Award-winning horror author Ronald Malfi joins Vince on the show to discuss his highly anticipated novel, Senseless. In this fascinating conversation, Malfi delves into the novel's intricate themes of grief, moral ambiguity, and the intertwining of multiple storylines, offering insight into the emotional complexity of his characters—Renney, Alan, and Maureen—and how their personal traumas shape their decisions. He also shares the challenges of defining Senseless within traditional genre labels, and his approach to crafting layered, immersive narratives. Malfi reflects on his research process for setting the story in Los Angeles, the difficulties of writing without a rigid outline, and how his musical background as the frontman of the rock band VEER informs his storytelling. The discussion also touches on recurring themes in his work, book cover design, and his experiences at conventions, concluding with valuable advice for emerging writers and exciting updates about his band. Tune in for an insightful deep dive into the mind of one of horror's most compelling modern voices! Website: https://ronaldmalfi.com/#author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JRXTJW Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Ronald-Malfi-100046525307662/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronaldmalfi/?hl=en Veer: https://www.veerband.net/ X: https://www.x.com/@ronaldmalfi #ronaldmalfi #senseless #smalltownhorror #psychologicalthriller #moralambiguity #grief #characterdevelopment #breteastonellis #writingprocess #perception #symbolism #losangeles #bookcoverdesign #emergingwriters #musicinfluence #conventions

The fifteenth episode of SMFMS Bookends, the satellite show for Save Me From My Shelf. Here we read emails, answer listener questions, talk about what we're currently reading, watching, and playing, resuscitate the Bad Sex Awards™, and provide further outtakes and analysis cut from our Duchess of Malfi episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our sixty-third episode, we open Season 6 with a look at banned and controversial books with John Webster's hyper-violent Jacobean revenge tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi (1614). This play gives us our first authentic himbo sting in a while, as well as an Oscars-worthy In Memoriam.Cover art © Catherine Wu.Episode Theme: Carlo Gesualdo, Moro lasso al mio duolo (1611), Performed by the MIT Chamber Chorus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.Please consider supporting ARB's Patreon!Credits:Guest: Jared PechačekTitle: Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. EddisonHost: Jake Casella BrookinsMusic by Giselle Gabrielle GarciaArtwork by Rob PattersonOpening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John BroughReferences:Jared's book, The West PassageBy-the-Bywater, a podcast about TolkienAnya Johanna DeNiro's OKPsycheCaroline Hagood's Death And Other Speculative FictionsEddison's The Worm OuroborosThe InklingsBarbara Remington, artist and illustrator. Hard to find good scans of her works; here's a page with the Eddison covers.Anna Vaninskaya's Fantasies of Time and DeathLord DunsanyGriemas SquaresC.S. Lewis's Perelandra, we did an episode on that!Eddison's A Fish Dinner in MemisonC.S. Lewis's Till We Have FacesSapphoJohn Webster's The Duchess of Malfi & The White DevilChaka Khan's “I'm Every Woman”Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and NothingnessJohn Crowley's AegyptBaruch SpinozaPre-Socratic philosophers such as HeraclitusFriedrich Nietzsche's concept of “The Will to Power”Godspeed! You Black Emperor's “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven”William Shakespeare's MacbethHope Mirlees' Lud-in-the-MistMichael Swanwick's Stations of the TideJared's Bluesky, Instagram, Tumblr

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.Please consider supporting ARB's Patreon!Credits:Guest: Jared PechačekTitle: Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. EddisonHost: Jake Casella BrookinsMusic by Giselle Gabrielle GarciaArtwork by Rob PattersonOpening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John BroughReferences:Jared's book, The West PassageBy-the-Bywater, a podcast about TolkienAnya Johanna DeNiro's OKPsycheCaroline Hagood's Death And Other Speculative FictionsEddison's The Worm OuroborosThe InklingsBarbara Remington, artist and illustrator. Hard to find good scans of her works; here's a page with the Eddison covers.Anna Vaninskaya's Fantasies of Time and DeathLord DunsanyGriemas SquaresC.S. Lewis's Perelandra, we did an episode on that!Eddison's A Fish Dinner in MemisonC.S. Lewis's Till We Have FacesSapphoJohn Webster's The Duchess of Malfi & The White DevilChaka Khan's “I'm Every Woman”Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and NothingnessJohn Crowley's AegyptBaruch SpinozaPre-Socratic philosophers such as HeraclitusFriedrich Nietzsche's concept of “The Will to Power”Godspeed! You Black Emperor's “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven”William Shakespeare's MacbethHope Mirlees' Lud-in-the-MistMichael Swanwick's Stations of the TideJared's Bluesky, Instagram, Tumblr

Intro - Phil explains why he's trying to read 100 books this year Content (8:03) - Discussion of Part 1 of Chapter 1 of In Green's Jungles, by Gene Wolfe. This Week's Play - The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster. Check out more at alzabosoup.com.

Does ambition have to be seen as corrupting, or like a kind of illness'? These are the questions the business writer Stefan Stern asks in his book, Fair or Foul: the Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition. He argues that far from the cliché of a scheming wife, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth demonstrates a more sophisticated understanding of human nature, that could help us navigate the pitfalls of ambition today.The playwright Zinnie Harris made Lady Macbeth the hero of her adaptation of the classic play last year. But now she's focused on the figure of The Duchess of Malfi, in a contemporary retelling. Played by the actor Jodie Whittaker, the Duchess defies her family's wishes and control, and asserts her own desires, with devastating results. The Duchess is on at the Trafalgar Theatre, London until 20th December.Mary Queen of Scots spent nearly two decades imprisoned under the orders of Elizabeth I. From her chambers she wrote countless letters, many of them in code. Now 400 years after her death a new cache of encrypted letters has been uncovered. Jade Scott, a historian and expert on Mary's correspondence, brings her captivity to life in Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots. Producer: Katy Hickman

Jodie Whittaker talks to Tom Sutcliffe about returning to the stage for the first time in over a decade to star in an updated version of John Webster's 17th-century revenge tragedy The Duchess [of Malfi]. The super-realism of Japanese food replicas is on show in London exhibition Looks Delicious! Curator Simon Wright and Japanese food expert Akemi Yokoyama reflect on this distinctive art. Baroness Ludford discusses buying single theatre seats. Canadian writer Anne Michaels talks about her Booker Prize shortlisted novel Held, which begins on the French battlefield in 1917 and spans 4 generations.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

Send us a Text Message.Let's head back to the theatre for a really blood-soaked tragedy!  And while we're at it, let's think about the intersection between art and social criticism.Support the Show.Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

On today's episode, we take a look at five novellas from one of our favorite authors, Ronald Malfi, in his new book, "They Lurk".  Malfi's writing is always complex and thought provoking while it mercilessly scares the ever living poop out of you. Tonight we are pairing the book with Belfour Texas Pecan Wood Finished Bourbon Whiskey.  It's another deep and complex offering, and we can't wait to tell you more about it.

As the new season at Chichester continues to get underway, Jack Riddiford sat down with us to talk about the eagerly anticipated revival of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. Often regarded as one of the greatest plays of the 20th Century, we talk about how the show has managed to stand the test of time, as well as about what it's like getting to approach the character of Mick. The Caretaker also marks Jack's Chichester debut as well as Artistic Director Justin Audibert's directing debut in Chichester too. In the latest revival of Pinter's seminal play, Jack will also star opposite Ian McDiarmid and Adam Gillen. In this new interview with Jack Riddiford, we talk about his approach to tackling complex roles like Mick and what makes Harold Pinter still such a towering figure in the theatre industry. In our interview, he also shares his excitement at getting to work in Chichester and  his love for intimate theatres like the Minerva Theatre where the show will be playing. Most recently, Jack starred as Mercutio in Rebecca Frecknall's production of Romeo and Juliet at the Almeida Theatre following their collaboration on The Duchess of Malfi, also at the Almeida in 2019 where he played Ferdinand. Jack has also starred in the West End runs of The Inheritance and Jerusalem, working alongside the likes of Vanessa Redgrave and Mark Rylance. Now as he starts his run in The Caretaker, he shares with us what he's learned over the years about being a good company member and the importance of being egoless in a rehearsal roomThe Caretaker runs at Minverva Theatre from 8 June - 13 July

Following the success of our collaboration with Tricolore Theatre Company and the Catholic Association of Performing Arts, we are pleased to bring listeners more dramatised stories from local writers and performers. Tune in to hear the stories live on the radio! Podcasts of the programmes will be updated after the initial broadcasts. JONAH THE DOG IN THE BOAT by BRIDIE STRINGERBroadcast: Tuesday 7th May 2024, 3:30pm About the Writer: Following careers in telecommunications and NHS management, I undertook academic postgraduate studies in pastoral theology and was awarded a doctorate in 2010. I then became a university lecturer in reflective practice courses for those working in chaplaincies, and also for candidates in formation programmes for the ordained ministry of permanent deacon. I have actively participated in parish, deanery and diocesan pastoral councils over many years and been a catechist for children, young people and adults. I find creative writing helpful in pastoral ministry as it frees people to engage imaginatively with faith rather than burdening them with doctrine and orthodoxy which they might find difficult to engage with. Finally, I am a wife, mother of two loving daughters and grandmother of two amazing grandsons. In short, I am a good example of St John Henry Newman's saying: ‘To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.' Perfection still eludes me!  Readers: JONATHAN COOTE, KENNETH MICHAELS, NADIA OSTACCHINI About the Readers: JONATHAN COOTEAn actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books.  KENNETH MICHAELSKenneth Michaels is an actor and director and has worked in theatre, radio, television and film and has taught in several drama schools. As an actor he has toured extensively in the UK and Europe in works from Shakespeare to pantomime, Pinter to Agatha Christie.  Kenneth works as a specialist ESOL teacher, working with refugees supporting their English learning. He is also the Secretary of the Catholic Association of Performing Arts (CaAPA).  NADIA OSTACCHININadia is an actor, theatre producer, voice over artist, secretary & carer! She was born inLondon of Italian parentage, trained as an actor and is the Artistic Director of Tricolore Theatre Company whose first dual-language English/Italian storybook based on Jesus's parables was published last year.  She has enjoyed Tricolore's collaboration with Radio Maria for Eastertide Stories as well as Advent Adventures last year & looks forward to reading: ‘A Boy Called Porro' to Radio Maria's younger listeners over the radio this Christmas. Website: www.tricolore.org.uk  

8. FISH ON FRIDAYS by VIV LAKE Broadcast: Thursday 2nd May 2024About the Writer: Convent educated, then Pitman's College, worked as Secretary, had a career break raising her family. She returned to work in NHS for 10 years, then for a charity, producing their quarterly magazine. She joined an actors and writers group in 2006, began writing short plays, graduating to longer pieces and full-length plays.Readers: JONATHAN COOTE, KENNETH MICHAELS, NADIA OSTACCHINI About the Readers:JONATHAN COOTEAn actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books.  KENNETH MICHAELSKenneth Michaels is an actor and director and has worked in theatre, radio, television and film and has taught in several drama schools. As an actor he has toured extensively in the UK and Europe in works from Shakespeare to pantomime, Pinter to Agatha Christie.  Kenneth works as a specialist ESOL teacher, working with refugees supporting their English learning. He is also the Secretary of the Catholic Association of Performing Arts (CaAPA).  NADIA OSTACCHININadia is an actor, theatre producer, voice over artist, secretary & carer! She was born inLondon of Italian parentage, trained as an actor and is the Artistic Director of Tricolore Theatre Company whose first dual-language English/Italian storybook based on Jesus's parables was published last year.  She has enjoyed Tricolore's collaboration with Radio Maria for Eastertide Stories as well as Advent Adventures last year & looks forward to reading: ‘A Boy Called Porro' to Radio Maria's younger listeners over the radio this Christmas. Website: www.tricolore.org.uk  

Things start to get fruity in this third episode. Neil chooses almonds, fuelling a historical debate that goes a bit nuts. Apricots are more Allie's jam as she looks at their use in literature and Sam takes the less beaten track of the aubergine, sparking memories of the time she made a parmigiana…on TV!Useful LinksNeil's recipe for - or, rather, interpretation of - medieval blanc mange and modern, sweet blancmange.‘Almond trees in Ancient Greek lore' on the Greek News Agenda websiteHistory of the Bimberlot Festival. ‘A French Party 600 Years in the Making' by Hugh Thomas on the Smart Mouth Substack.‘The "pretty art" of detecting pregnancy in The Duchess of Malfi' by Claire McEwen Duncan via University of British Colombia Open Collections.‘Eggplant (aubergine) — A Mad Apple with a Dark Liaison' on the Vegetarians in Paradise website‘Eggplant (aubergine) Symbol Timeline in Love in the Time of Cholera' on the LitCharts websiteSuggested ReadingIn Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel ProustThe Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) by Elizabeth RaffaldA Midsummer Night's Dream (1605) by William ShakespeareApricot Jam and Other Stories (2008) by Aleksandr SolzhenitsynElinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking (1987) by Hilary Spurling (based on the late sixteenth century manuscript notebook belonging to Elinor Fettiplace)The Duchess of Malfi (1613) by John Webster Pride and Pudding: The History of British Puddings, Savory and Sweet (2016) by Regula YsewijnAnything to add? Don't forget we want to hear your suggestions for future topics.Contact usemail: aisforapplepod.gmail.comlinktree: linktr.ee/aisforapplepodSocial mediatwitter/X: @aisforapplepodInstagram: @aisforapplepod_

Following the success of our collaboration with Tricolore Theatre Company and the Catholic Association of Performing Arts, we are pleased to bring listeners more dramatised stories from local writers and performers. Tune in to hear the stories live on the radio! 6. THE SELFISH GIANT by OSCAR WILDE Broadcast: Thursday 25th April 2024, 3:30pm About the Writer: Oscar Wilde was born on 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland and died 30th November 1900 in Paris, France. Wilde was known as a playwright and poet, journalist, essayist and writer of short stories for adults and children. He also wrote a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891. His best known works are the plays, the comic and acerbic observations of British society, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), An Ideal Husband (1895) and A Woman of No Importance (1893). He was imprisoned from 1895–97 because of his homosexuality where he wrote the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol in1898. Wilde was also known for his witty sayings. Even on his deathbed Wilde remarked, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go”. Shortly before his death, Wilde was conditionally baptised into the Catholic church.  Reader: JONATHAN COOTE About the Readers:JONATHAN COOTEAn actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books.   Our Gracious SponsorsGHIRELLIWith the Rosalet® bracelet Ghirelli® creates an inseparable union between Faith and Design  Rosalet® is at once a beautiful rosary and a jewel that revolutionizes the concept of an instrument of Prayer. This bracelet conveys a depth of prayer with symbols and messages that transcend time and fashion. Website: www.ghirelli.it/  CAAPA (CATHOLIC PERFORMING ARTS ASSOCIATION)The Catholic Performing Arts Association (known as CaAPA), has a diverse group of members whom are comprised of actors, directors, writers, singers, musicians and other entertainers, who share in a creative community where they can also grow in their spiritual values.  They also aim to serve the wider community by presenting productions for charitable causes or by taking productions on tour to schools, local theatres, parishes and elderly homes. Website: https://catholicassociationofperformingarts.org.uk/

Following the success of our collaboration with Tricolore Theatre Company and the Catholic Association of Performing Arts, we are pleased to bring listeners more dramatised stories from local writers and performers. Tune in to hear the stories live on the radio! Podcasts of the programmes will be updated after the initial broadcasts. 4. DISPUTED INCIDENT IN LOYOLA HOSPITAL by JEREMY ROWEBroadcast: Thursday 18th April 2024, 3:30pmAbout the Writer: I was received into the Catholic Church 1977. I am married, with two sons who live in America. I have been an actor, a lecturer in English and Drama and a librarian. I am now co-founding a professional venture for writing and disseminating new Christian/Catholic literature and drama. Email address: collaborative.direct@btinternet.com  Readers: JONATHAN COOTE, TERESA JENNINGS, KENNETH MICHAELS About the Readers: JONATHAN COOTEAn actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books.  KENNETH MICHAELSKenneth Michaels is an actor and director and has worked in theatre, radio, television and film and has taught in several drama schools. As an actor he has toured extensively in the UK and Europe in works from Shakespeare to pantomime, Pinter to Agatha Christie.  Kenneth works as a specialist ESOL teacher, working with refugees supporting their English learning. He is also the Secretary of the Catholic Association of Performing Arts (CaAPA).  TERESA JENNINGSTeresa has worked extensively in theatre, most recently with Middleground Theatre touring the Verdict throughout the UK and Dublin's Gaiety. Lead roles include Maureen in The Beauty Queen of Leenane National Tour Vesta Tilley (one woman show) The Curve, Leicester and National Tour, Ariel in  The Tempest, Joan of Arc and Prim in The Woman Hater, The Orange Tree, Richmond.  Teresa has a BA Hons in French and Drama and won the most promising graduate from Sam Walters's Richmond Drama School. Teresa is also a writer and has worked on world cruises with Fred Olsen running and writing shows. She is a contributor to The Soho Theatre Comedy Project and does regular, varied voiceover work and role-play with The United Nations. Teresa is also a jazz and folk singer.      

Tricolore Theatre Company in collaboration with The Catholic Performing Arts Association (CaAPA) and GHIRELLI present Eastertide Stories, airing on Tuesdays and Thursday at 3:30pm from 9 April to 9th May on Radio Maria England. 2. THE KIND TEACHER Writer: PENNY CULLIFORD Penny is a playwright, author and speaker. Her plays include Warden Pie, The Gingerbread Man, The Golden Chain, Saffron Hill, A Boy Called Porro, and Grimaldi's Last Act for Tricolore Theatre company. She also wrote the Theodora's Diary books, The Art of Standing Still and a children's novel based on her play, A Boy Called Porro. Reader: JONATHAN COOTE An actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books. Reader: KENNETH MICHAELS Kenneth Michaels is an actor and director and has worked in theatre, radio, television and film and has taught in several drama schools. As an actor he has toured extensively in the UK and Europe in works from Shakespeare to pantomime, Pinter to Agatha Christie. Kenneth works as a specialist ESOL teacher, working with refugees supporting their English learning. He is also the Secretary of the Catholic Association of Performing Arts (CaAPA). Reader: NADIA OSTACCHINI Nadia is an actor, theatre producer, voice over artist, secretary & carer! She was born in London of Italian parentage, trained as an actor and is the Artistic Director of Tricolore Theatre Company whose first dual-language English/Italian storybook based on Jesus's parables was published last year. She has enjoyed Tricolore's collaboration with Radio Maria for Eastertide Stories as well as Advent Adventures last year & looks forward to reading: ‘A Boy Called Porro' to Radio Maria's younger listeners over the radio this Christmas. Website: www.tricolore.org.uk

Tricolore Theatre Company in collaboration with The Catholic Performing Arts Association (CaAPA) and GHIRELLI present Eastertide Stories, airing on Tuesdays and Thursday at 3:30pm from 9 April to 9th May on Radio Maria England. 1. Following Down the Road About the Writer: ROGER PRICE Roger Price has for (too) many years been writing drama pieces for use in worship and beyond in the promotion of the Christian faith. As well as monologues and other short pieces he has also written and professionally produced longer shows. Notable pass productions include 'Parables' – all the teaching stories of Jesus in a single show – and 'The Boy From the Boro' – the story of a Nuneaton shopkeeper and his involvement in the First World War. The current show is 'John's Tale', telling the story of St. John's Gospel through the eyes of those who met Jesus in a light-hearted, accessible style. Nevertheless, it still retains the essential message of love and redemption. This is planned to be touring again later in the year. His website is www.unconvetional-disciple.co.uk where examples of these and his weekly blog can be found. Reader: JONATHAN COOTE An actor for many years on stage, screen and radio, Jonathan's favourite roles have included Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac, Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. His West End appearances include Yes, Prime Minister, The Audience, Witness for the Prosecution. At the National Theatre he has appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Home, Emil and the Detectives, Our Country's Good, As You Like It. When theatres re-opened after lockdown, he toured a one-man play called The Man with the Golden Pen as James Bond author, Ian Fleming. An immersive audio recreation of an 18th Century Chocolate House which he wrote and produced is currently running at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Television appearances include: Stephen, The Crown, Casualty.. Radio/Audio: Publish and Be Damn'd (BBC) Six Degrees of Assassination (Audible), The Diary Of River Song (Big Finish) and numerous audio books. Reader: KENNETH MICHAELS Kenneth Michaels is an actor and director and has worked in theatre, radio, television and film and has taught in several drama schools. As an actor he has toured extensively in the UK and Europe in works from Shakespeare to pantomime, Pinter to Agatha Christie. Kenneth works as a specialist ESOL teacher, working with refugees supporting their English learning. He is also the Secretary of the Catholic Association of Performing Arts (CaAPA). Reader: NADIA OSTACCHINI Nadia is an actor, theatre producer, voice over artist, secretary & carer! She was born in London of Italian parentage, trained as an actor and is the Artistic Director of Tricolore Theatre Company whose first dual-language English/Italian storybook based on Jesus's parables was published last year. She has enjoyed Tricolore's collaboration with Radio Maria for Eastertide Stories as well as Advent Adventures last year & looks forward to reading: ‘A Boy Called Porro' to Radio Maria's younger listeners over the radio this Christmas. Website: www.tricolore.org.uk GHIRELLI With the Rosalet® bracelet Ghirelli® creates an inseparable union between Faith and Design Rosalet® is at once a beautiful rosary and a jewel that revolutionizes the concept of an instrument of Prayer. This bracelet conveys a depth of prayer with symbols and messages that transcend time and fashion. Website: www.ghirelli.it/ CAAPA The Catholic Performing Arts Association (known as CaAPA), has a diverse group of members whom are comprised of actors, directors, writers, singers, musicians and other entertainers, who share in a creative community where they can also grow in their spiritual values. They also aim to serve the wider community by presenting productions for charitable causes or by taking productions on tour to schools, local theatres, parishes and elderly homes. Website: https://catholicassociationofperformingarts.org.uk/

Hoy con Ingrid y Tamara en MVS, el organizador del Festival del Adulto Mayor, Javier Sirvent y nuestra compañera Concha León Portilla, nos hablan sobre las novedades que vienen en esta nueva edición del evento. El maestro espiritual Fer Broca, nos explica sobre la importancia de las palabras para crear realidad. ¿Qué hacer en caso de despido? El especialista en derecho laboral, Mario Rebolledo nos dice a dónde acudir y cómo calcular tu liquidación. Pregunta del día: ¿Cuál taco no dejarías por nada del mundo, al pastor, de carnitas, suadero…etc.? El comentarot del día de hoy: https://x.com/mvs102_5/status/1775923611599049100?s=46&t=tn2KT9U8KIhiZCzxxuu6tQ Conversamos con los actores Daniel Martínez y Paulina Treviño, sobre la nueva puesta en la que participan “La duquesa de Malfi”, una obra en donde dos hermanos harán todo lo posible para impedir que su hermana se vuelva a casar. Además, nuestro sylist Vince, nos habla sobre la nueva tendencia en la moda “Cowboy fashion”. También, estrenamos nueva sección, “A 3 de irnos”, donde te contamos sobre las tendencias; Varios cantantes, como Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, Danna, entro otros, se han unido para protestar contra el uso de IA que pueda poner en riego sus derechos de autor Taylor Swift se suma a la lista de celebridades multimillonarias, luego de romper el récord con su gira más grande de la historia. Y lamentablemente la especie Guacamayo de Spix, ave que es conocida por su hermoso plumaje, originaria de Brasil y en la que se inspiraron para la historia de la película “Rio “, fue declarada “Extinto en su hábitat natural” Conéctate con Ingrid y Tamara en MVS, de lunes a viernes, de 10:00 AM a 1:00 PM por MVS 102.5 FM.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

British visual artist Es Devlin has designed spectacular sets for some of the largest stages on earth. As well as designing for the theatre, Es has created unique performance spaces for the likes of Beyoncé and U2. Now, her award-winning stage design for The Lehman Trilogy, about the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, can be seen on stage in Sydney.Also, Pip Williams' bestselling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words has been adapted for the stage, and 400 years after its publication, John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi is back. So, what is this violent and bloody play's appeal in 2024?

Director Tom Bradley chats about The Duchess of Malfi by Arrant Knaves Theatre Company.  Plays at Meat Market (Cobblestone Pavilion) in North Melbourne, February 15 to 24.  Facebook  3CR broadcasts from the stolen lands of the Kulin Nation.

Some stories are too short, some are too long, but some stories are just right. It's the Goldilocks zone: the novella.What is the secret to crafting a longer story but not letting it run away from you? How do you sustain the terror beyond the shortest form? How do you know what to keep in and what to cut out? This is the art of the novella, and I'm joined by a pair of expert practitioners to talk it through. Josh Malerman and Ronald Malfi have both published novella collections this year – Ron's They Lurk and Josh's Spin a Black Yarn contain multitudes. From motel-lot self-mutilation to deathbed serial killer confessions, via the Oregon backwoods and the core of Saturn(!!), these stories take us to places without wasting a word.Josh and Ron provide a masterclass on the art of the novella, as well as ALL the enthusiasm you could ever pack into an hour of conversation. This one will put a smile on your face and inspiration in your typin' fingers! Enjoy. They Lurk was published was published on July 18th by Titan; Spin a Black Yarn was published August 15th by Del Rey Books mentioned: Daphne (2022), by Josh MalermanGoblin (2021), by Josh MalermanGhostwritten (2022), by Ronald MalfiPet Sematary (1983), by Stephen KingThe Long Walk (1979), by Stephen KingMrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia WoolfHouses Without Doors (1990), by Peter StraubBloom (2023), by Delilah S. DawsonThe Turn of the Screw (1898), by Henry James Support Talking Scared on Patreon Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Support the show

On the Literary Life podcast this week Angelina, Cindy and Thomas continue their series on G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Before diving into the plot of these chapters, our hosts discuss the similarities and differences between Chesterton and Kafka's works of fiction. Thomas gives some historical context on anarchy as well as assassinations in the time period of this book. Angelina points out the Dante-esque language in this section, as well as the continuing themes of chivalry. Cindy highlights the character of Sunday and how he looms large, quite literally, over everyone's imaginations in the story. Some other thoughts our hosts discuss include modernity's mindset as it relates to the atmosphere of this story, the idea of the underdog fighting against all odds, and the humorous moments that break some of the tension. Be sure to come back next week when we wrap up our series on The Man Who Was Thursday. If you missed our 2023 Back to School Conference when it was live, you can still go back and view the recordings when you purchase access to the conference at MorningTimeforMom.com. Angelina is teaching a class on How to Read Beowulf at the end of August 2023. Get in on this mini-class at House of Humane Letters. Thomas is also teaching a webinar along with Michael Williams on the modern poets W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot on September 28th. You can now register at House of Humane Letters. Commonplace Quotes: It's important, too, that everything that has a story, such as a myth, should be read or listened to purely as a story. Many people grow up without really understanding the difference between imaginative and discursive writing. On the rare occasions when they encounter poems or even pictures, they treat them exactly as though they were intended to be pieces of more or less disguised information. Their questions are all based on this assumption: “What is he trying to get across?” “What am I supposed to get out of it?” “Why doesn't someone explain it to me?” “Why couldn't he have written it in a different way so that I could understand him?” The art of listening to story is a basic training for the imagination. Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination The biographer is there to explain rather than to judge. To get a clear view of a man we do not need to be told if his actions were good…but how and why he came to do them. Lord David Cecil, “Modern Biography” Or read again The Man Who Was Thursday. Compare it with another good writer, Kafka. Is the difference simply that the one is ‘dated' and the other contemporary? Or is it rather that while both give a powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each one of us encounters in his (apparently) single-handed struggle with the universe, Chesterton, attributing to the universe a more complicated disguise, and admitting the exhilaration as well as the terror of the struggle, has got in rather more, is more balanced: in that sense, more classical, more permanent? C. S. Lewis, “Period Criticism” Selection from Paradise Lost, Book 1 by John Milton Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n, And shook his throne.   What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? Books Mentioned: The Oxford Book of Christian Verse ed. by Lord David Cecil On Stories by C. S. Lewis The Trial by Franz Kafka The Castle by Franz Kafka Day of the Assassins by Michael Burleigh The Defendant by G. K. Chesterton The Song of Roland trans. by Dorothy L. Sayers Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy King Lear by William Shakespeare The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this episode of Cloudlandia, I accompany you on a captivating time-travel adventure to the 1930s era. We explore the nascent media landscape and how the rise of radio and television began to connect the world. We predict how elements like technology, energy, money and labor may redefine our world. We also shed light on 1950s industries like television advertising and iconic artists that profoundly shaped society. Join Dan and me for this enlightening discussion into the past, present, and what may lie ahead.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS The podcast episode explores the evolution of media, starting from the 1930s when radio and television started to unify the world. The hosts discuss the story of Matt Upchurch, founder of Virtuoso, and how his influential magazine became a guide in the complex world of information. They also explore the potential future of global economics, focusing on elements like money, energy, labor, and technological innovation. The episode delves into how these elements could redefine our landscape, especially in the context of a potential plateau period, and how they could challenge us to find more productive uses of technology. The hosts revisit the 1950s, highlighting the significant impact of industries and events like television advertising and iconic appearances of Elvis Presley and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. They discuss emerging trends in mainland experiences, drawing parallels between cash flow and sense of humor, and delve into the realm of digital publishing. The hosts examine the shifts in travel desires induced by the pandemic and the potential of community colleges in providing a pathway to future employment. The hosts plan to set up a new sound studio and propose the idea of creating a digital collection basket at the end of the podcast. They predict that the future will see a growth in high-quality mainland activities as people's standards for travel and experiences have risen after the COVID-19 pandemic. They highlight that industrial land prices in certain areas are going through the roof, pointing towards a trend of re-industrialization driven by automation and the need to bring manufacturing closer to customers. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dean Jackson Mr. Sullivan. Dan Sullivan Mr Jackson, are you having a good mainland day? Dean Jackson I am. I've been, yeah, you know, I've been having a combination of, so far today, been on the mainland and in Deanlandia and there's. That's a good combination. Now yeah, here we are in Cloudlandia. Dan Sullivan Yes, yeah, well, it's a beautiful day We've had. Actually, by my memory, we've had a fantastic summer in Toronto, July and August. It's really great. You know Well, when it rains, it usually rains at night, and so the grass is all green. I've never seen the trees so green, so it's been great. I've been reading about forest fires you know I've been reading about hurricanes, typhoons, volcanoes, not in Toronto. Dean Jackson But we're going to have a, apparently because of the ocean temperatures, we're in for a potentially turbulent hurricane season, which is just getting going here now. So everybody kind of you know straps in between now and end of October to see what happens, right Well as we've been in the news. They'll let us know what you know when they put up the big red buzzsaw making its way towards Florida to get everybody all suitably panicked. Dan Sullivan Yeah, well, it's very interesting. The 1930s are still the hottest decade since the US has had temperature readings yeah, yeah, and the big thing is that we have so much news now. Everybody's a newscaster now with their cell phone. So what's gotten exponentially greater is actually people's first reaction to the weather, you know. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan And climate I've never experienced. You know, I'm 79 and to this day I've never experienced climate. I've only experienced weather. That's right. Is it my feeling? You know I don't have a climate chip in my brain. You know a climate. Actually. You do know how it's the average of a year's temperature in a particular spot. Dean Jackson Yeah, what's the? Dan Sullivan climate Right, exactly, and the spot where you're sitting is different from the year than 100 yards away from where you're sitting. Dean Jackson That's interesting. Yeah, the whole. It's all different, right, everything that whole. Yeah, I look at those as one of those things. We're certainly in you know an age, like you said, with the news there that everybody you know. I mean when you look at from you know I think about the big change again when we went from you know no new. You know the local town prior kind of the voice of what's going on. Dan Sullivan So when we got to, a unified voice of. Dean Jackson You know the, when the radio and the television became the unifying, that's really what it was. It was a unifying thing for the first 30 years of it and then when the affiliate you know the network kind of thing allowed local voices to be, you know, you got the in the beginning. It was when you were born all it was the national radio and national television right. The television wasn't even a thing when you were born in 1944. Dan Sullivan In the 40s, no 40s, so when you were a young boy, you got your first face to Howdy duty. Dean Jackson I mean, that was, that was something, I guess huh. Everybody got introduced to Howdy duty. Dan Sullivan Yeah, I was, and there there was. I can figure it was like 1953, maybe 1953 that I became aware of television, because some neighbors had it and and you know, and it was the three you know ABC, cbs, nbc but then where we lived in. Ohio. Dean Jackson we got Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from there and so I was aware that there was this country across the lake, yeah, and so yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it, that then, you know, by the time we got to 1980, we ended up we had 13 channels. That was a big, that was a big jump in the next 30 years. But all of those 13 channels were both distributing the national content of ABC and BC and CBS, but they were also producing local content. And now we're at a situation where you had, you know, 13 channels with multiple, you know, regional voices, the market affiliate, affiliates, and now we're at a stage where there are, you know, five billion voices all going through the three you know that was funny because, we've come down to, the channels are the same in terms of Facebook, instagram, youtube, twitter. Mr. Beans, yeah right, well, these are part of the YouTube network there, you know, but not now the platforms are there, but everybody but there's, you know, billions of voices on those same things, and that that's where I see that this next 30 years or however long, I don't know how long it'll be because you can't imagine what you can't imagine. But you know, I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to things like. It feels like all the pieces have locked into place for a period, you know, asymptotic plateau of creativity, now that everybody of reach, everybody's got access to it. Dan Sullivan It's really fascinating, and you're absolutely right that I have never had the experience of imagining something that I couldn't imagine Exactly. Dean Jackson That's right, everybody had the first thought to imagine it. You know? Yeah, I was looking. Dan Sullivan I had an interesting project project, a sudden project, this week. Do you know Matt up church? Have you ever? Do you remember Matthew up church? Dean Jackson Matt. Dan Sullivan Matt. Matt, the founder and owner of Virtuoso, and Virtuoso is the biggest network in the world of affluent travel agents. Dean Jackson I'm a member actually. Dan Sullivan Yeah, that's good, okay, yeah, they have this very posh magazine that comes out every quarter, every month. Dean Jackson Yeah, I get it from the Sims. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, and he was. Matt was in the program a couple times. He was in the 90s and then early. I think he came in right around late 90s and was in the 2000s and then I think he was there in the teams and, but in 2003, so 20 years ago right about now I was guest speaker at his annual conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and I think about 2000. They're about 2000 travel agents there and there's a lot of travel companies there to like hotels and resorts and cruise lines, you know, and they have sort of a rapid get to know you sort of day, you know, when you meet somebody for 10 minutes and then you meet for another 10 minutes rapid work. Yeah, so I gave a talk and I created a workbook and so it was probably about a 90 minute talk with about an hour of Q&A and then you know, then there was a half hour afterwards where people just mingled and but what I was telling them about was the, because of digitization, that so much of the standard travel agency business was going to be completely commoditized by Expedia and you know, like that type of thing. And so and I give a set of predictions and I also said that there's a bypass to all this if you master DOS the dangers, opportunities and the strengths and you just zero in very deep on your best clients and you identify, when they're traveling, what are the dangers that they experience. In other words, they could lose something, what are the opportunities that they could gain something in the strengths that they have. And as a test example, I did it on Babs and me, showing that how we like to travel and you know experiences that we really don't like having experiences that we love happening. And the strengths that we have to really enjoy and explore particular type of experiences. Okay, and I gave that to them and talked it through, but I gave as an example a hotel resort in Ravello in Italy. So the Malfi Coast, you know you get South and Naples and you get you know, and you get town and Malfi and Ravello there's like four in the island of Capri is just up here. So I'm sure really classically beautiful and luxury type of setting and it was and I'm not, I can't quite remember, but I think it was probably might have been right near the end of the 90s that we had gone there because we were going on a hiking tour with a group of people for about six days on the Amalfi coast and but before we went for about three days and stayed at the resort in Ravello which is called the Pozzo Saso and it's a beautiful. It sits way up high, it's a couple hundred feet off the water there. You know that part of the Mediterranean I don't think that's exactly called the Mediterranean there, but it's part of the Mediterranean and you can see down the coastline easily 50 miles and our staff had told the staff of the resort that it was my birthday. So the second day was my birthday and from morning till night everybody in the hotel said happy birthday, mr Sulton, happy birthday. Dean Jackson You know. Dan Sullivan And then they there were nonstop treats throughout the day breakfast dinner there were treats and they communicated the conference, the Bellagio Conference. Virtuoso, I communicated. That's how I like that type of treatment. Dean Jackson I like. I like that. Dan Sullivan I like that when my treatment is like every day's my birthday and so, anyway, a really neat little reward for my talk was that then, after I got talking, there were a lot of people came up, shook my hand and everything. And this little man came up and he had almost tears in his eyes and he says Mr Sulton, I'm the general manager of the Pozzo Saso. And I don't I can't, I can't express to you what you've done for my trip to Las Vegas. He says everything I could have possibly hoped for here. You know, because there's competitors, the whole room is filled with competitors. They're gonna spend their money on something you know, and so anyway, it was really funny, and that's it. I didn't remember this, really, for I never used that particular approach again. And so we got a call that they're at their same meeting this year and they have 5,000, they have 5,000 now because Virtuo so has really grown and they asked if I could do an update on what I had predicted. And I went through it and I said well, everything you know, I mean, once you grasp the technology. If you're just giving a standard service, technology is going to commoditize you. you know there's I mean that's not such a great prediction backwards. Dean Jackson That's funny you know you're on the right path. Dan Sullivan You can't digitize that experience that you have, and so they asked me if I had any further thoughts of what the next 20 years would look like, and I'm right on the spot, I said well, the world's gonna change. Everything that you've been experiencing for the last 20 years is gonna change much more drastically than it changed over the last 20 years, and the reason is I call it the force. I just nicknamed this. Dean Jackson The force slowdowns Okay and I said this was the force slowdowns. This feels like breaking news right here. Dan Sullivan Well, this is like Cloudlandia. I mean this. I had to give you that background, just to accept it as a Cloudlandia idea. You know, I mean, there's tough standards. There's tough standards to even be able to listen in on Cloudlandia, let alone speak on Cloudlandia. And I said the first thing is the cost of money is gonna go up and we call it in most places. We call that inflation. So right around the world there's just massive inflation, except for those places that have already been so undermined by inflation that they're now in deflation. And there's one big place where that's happening right now, and then the deflation is where you. Deflation is where the value of everything starts going down significantly. It's not just the cost of things. Inflation is really a function that things that you really want are gonna cost you more. And so for about 20 years we said that around 1%, 2%. You know it was the lowest inflation period since probably the last 20 years have been up until COVID was the lowest inflation. So the cost of money and that means borrowing money is gonna cost you a lot. And you know, here in Canada it's around 7%, you know, 7% to get bank loans, and the US is more or less the same. Second thing is the cost of energy is going way up in most of the world. Okay, and I'm gonna make a proviso where I say in most of the world, it's going to. So, just prior to COVID, the cost of transportation, the overall cost of transportation to get anything in the world, anywhere else in the world, was 1% of final product. So you know you get something from 10,000 miles away. The transportation cost of that was 1% of the final cost and I would say well, first of all, there's places where it's gone 100%. Russia is being one of the places Russia shipping anything in the world. It costs them 100% and the reason is they can't get insurance for any freighter. You know freighter that goes into a Russian port Automatically. None of the big global insurance companies will insure it. You just can't get insurance, and that's not just Russian boats, that's anybody's boat If you go into Russian territory and they don't have that many ports. They've got about four points. I mean they're 11 time zones wide and they've got about four meaningful ports. And two of them are right in the war zone. Sevastopol and Odessa are two big ports and so you can't even get. Nobody will take their boats into that area, so they're in, you know. I mean, the cost of transportation is really high when you can't transport. Dean Jackson Right, exactly, you can't get there from here, right yeah? Dan Sullivan And then the third is the cost of energy, because one, the war is a particular situation, but the cost of energy has gone way, way up. We had really cheap energy over the last 20 years, so now it's gonna go up and this isn't a momentary thing, this is going to be, you know. And then the fourth one is the cost of labor. Especially skilled labor, is gonna go way up, and skilled labor covers a lot of things, but it's basically that there would be competition to hire you if you were working someplace. There would be competition from the outside that you would offer somebody more to move from where they are, and anyone who's got skills that would do that. And if you're so 18-year-old in Toronto today, if they take a 10-week industry sponsored training course, they'll get a certification at the end of 10 weeks and a year later they're making $60,000. Within three or four years they're making $100,000, and they'll never make less. And there will be constant bidding because we've gone basically in North America, a lot of parts of the world. We've gone probably 20, 30 years without any real emphasis on skilled labor, skilled labor, Skilled main land labor. Dean Jackson you mean yeah, or everybody's going into the skilled club land labor. Dan Sullivan Yeah, and a lot of them. Dean Jackson There's so much of it and that's being replaced by AI now, yeah, exactly, you're not gonna have a, you're not going to have an AI sneaking your toilet. Dan Sullivan No, there won't be AI, plumbers, ai, carpenters, ai all the skill trades that's every kind of factory work requires skill training. Dean Jackson So anyway, those are the four slowdowns. Dan Sullivan So those are the four slowdowns and the biggest thing is going to slow down as technological experimentation, innovation, that's going to change really fast and you could see at the end of starting in, probably beginning of 22 last year, there was more firings in the high tech industry than probably in any other industry, and the reason for that was they were hiring people for projects they were going to do 10 years from now and they don't have the cap. The money is too expensive to be paying for things that aren't going to get a payback in 10 years or so. So what I'm saying is and you brought this up, it got me thinking the last podcast we had you brought up that we may now be in sort of a plateau period, like you described the 50s to the 80s. Dean Jackson And. Dan Sullivan I think we're right now we're going back into a plateau period. Dean Jackson Where there's a lot of development. Dan Sullivan There's a lot of development and a lot of more productive uses of what we already have. Dean Jackson Yes, and that's what I think it is now. It's going to be the application through those pipes, just like the iPhone in 2007,. That laid the groundwork for the app culture that brought us Uber and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube all the big things that we use on that vehicle of the phone. And now it's really. This is what I'm fascinated by is who were the big winners and how was the big adaptation to the tool set that was available in 1950. If you think about that, as by 1950, we had television, radio, we had the plane travel, electricity, automobiles, all of those big things that were highlighted in the big change from 1900 to 1950. Were the big winners and continue to be the big winners of that period Of an. Is it adapt, being adaptive on that? Because it wasn't a big period of invention, it was a capitalization of. You look at the packaged goods, the consumer goods really boomed in the 50s and 60s through television advertising. You look at Procter Gamble and big packaged goods companies that knew if we just package up a product, put it in front of the audience. We know everybody. We know 50 million, 53 million people or 60 million people were watching. I love Lucy in the fifth. Those reach audiences. I think Gunsmoke was like a high watermark of the large audience. Then it started going down from there. I saw a chart where that was the peak 61 million I think was the largest television audience in 1960, something whatever Gunsmoke was at its peak. Dan Sullivan Then there were single events like Elvis Presley, the Beatles being on the Ed Sullivan show. You had single events. There were things like that as a series. I bet your numbers are dead on. Dean Jackson While the number one shows on television what did grow during that period. Dan Sullivan I love that period. Dean Jackson That's why I'm asking you and my observation. Dan Sullivan First of all, if you were in putting in superhighways, that was a really big deal. The Turnpike, the cross-country interstate highway system, had just crossed Ohio, probably around 1956 or 57, on its way to the west coast. The other states were building but they weren't connected. They weren't connected yet. Dean Jackson The. Dan Sullivan Ohio Turnpike was just a continuation of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes. These were toll roads. That was it. The other thing was an enormous movement of industry out of the big cities, the big northern cities. I grew up in northern Ohio. Ohio was the most powerful industrial state in the United States, starting probably in the 1880s. 1890s it was just a powerhouse. Pittsburgh was famous for steel, but Ohio City's young down to Cleveland. Cleveland had as much steel as Pittsburgh did, but it was spread out over three countries. It was all geared to Detroit. All of a sudden the automobile industry really consolidated down to just the three companies. Dean Jackson That was just Ford and Chrysler that created the suburbs that created the suburbs. Dan Sullivan The other thing was retail changed because every time you put one of these interstate highways in, you bypass small towns. So small town retail started to die in the 50s because shopping centers and shopping malls may be between two small towns or three small towns but everybody went shopping in their small town, except for daily convenience. But they would go to the shopping mall. The shopping mall went through the industry the other thing that's a whole industry but it was air conditioning. Air conditioning allowed people to move industry and commerce and everything to the south. You wouldn't want to be in Orlando in the 1950s. You weren't too warm to do productive work. Dean Jackson Right, I'm recognizing now the pattern of so. We went from the general store to the main street in small towns, to strip plazas in the 50s, to shopping malls in the 70s, 80s, 90s to Amazon. Now. Amazon is basically or online, where we get everything, every physical good that you could imagine. Online is really the thing. But that's an interesting evolution. Right From main street to when we had automobiles and went suburban, it was the strip mall and then where you could drive your car up into the parking lot and go to the plaza where there was all of the collection anchored around a grocery store, perhaps in a dry cleaner, and putting everything in one place and then that led to the franchise, as a great thing, because the homogen that you created a homogenous vibe in the country by unifying everybody around the television. Everybody was seeing what leave it to be and that whole, all of those shows. Dan Sullivan And the other thing is that the cars became more comfortable because people could go on long trips now, so I remember when you got air conditioning in the cars and so the other thing about it was the recorded music industry went through the roof in the 50s, 60s, you got 45s, came in 33 and a third came in and 45 came in and the late 40s and 40s. Dean Jackson And so the recorded part of what drove the recorded music industry was that they had a discovery device of the radio that you could play music over the radio and that would draw and they would be on bandstand and be on the Ed Sullivan show and be on the thing. So everybody would gain an awareness and, you know, you could create that sensation which drove people to the local record store to buy the records. And that's where that really took off. You know, now we're in a situation where the you know it's certainly, I think, more of a meritocracy now in a way that anybody, it certainly. You look at Peter Diamandis's six D's were certainly up into the democratizing phase of that. Anybody could. I mean you and I could make a hit song if we wanted to and put it out, and we've got as much. Dan Sullivan I think we could have a hit song made. Dean Jackson Yes we don't want to apply it ourselves. Our leadership and finance. Dan Sullivan I think it would upset our daily lifestyle if we were yeah, we can who, not how. Dean Jackson We can who, not how. Dan Sullivan Yeah, it's long right but I had a really great example of that on Friday morning so I had a podcast to Belfast, ireland, great guy, and he's got a coaching program called, which is simple, scaling you know how, helping entrepreneurs to scale their businesses and it was great he went. We went twice the a lot of time because neither of us had a hard stop and but you know he's got a hundred thousand that download the world he's in a hundred countries, you know wow and you, and you and. But you and I have looked at this, you know, from a cost standpoint. I mean, once you bought your computer and you've got an internet line, the rest of it's pretty. I mean there isn't a lot of cost to this. But here we guy, he's got a hundred country worldwide radio station, then he's got a audience of a hundred thousand. You know yeah, and and that my past. And I mean, if you compare that back to what that would have taken, well, let's go 25 years ago. I mean, yeah, achieve that 25 years ago. Dean Jackson It would have cost you so much more, you know when you look at her Carlson, that's a good example right now. Yeah, what's happening? Dan Sullivan I mean it's taking him about two or two or three months to sort of get used to it. And now his show is more powerful than when he was on Fox, because he got three million. Dean Jackson Three million to 13 million average viewer. Dan Sullivan Yeah yeah, and that's. He's done that in three months. You know, yeah, I mean yeah, but now you know the thing is you and I could do exactly like. Dean Jackson This is where the thing is. The difference is the is reach. You know it's not the capability I mean, it's certainly you and I and anybody listening right now has the capability to create a vehicle, to create the podcast, to create a show, to create let's just call it content, to create content that you know could have that kind of impact, but it's just breaches the ultimate scale of this, you know, and it's not, yeah, but that requires the interesting thing is, the more reach that you have, the more you acquire new capability to go along with it, you know and the more your vision gets bigger as your reach gets bigger. Dan Sullivan It was like we have the same landlord are building in Toronto. We don't own the building because they don't sell their buildings and it's a perfect building for us, but yeah, labor Day. So we're a month. Within a month, we will have been there 32 years in that building yeah, you're the you're the only tenant from about the middle of 2020 to the middle of 2022. We were the only yeah, and the check for them was there every month, anything like that. But about 15 years in we haven't. I haven't talked to the landlord. Probably since 2000 I've talked to both of them socially. I've met them, you know, in social events, but I haven't talked to anyone, let's say around 2011. So last or 2001 I've probably talked to them in year 10 of our stay in their building and I was unusually from his perspective, I was unusually funding that day and he says I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember you being that funny when you moved in and I said I find my sense of humor is strictly a function of cash flow, right? yes, there's a correlation there or the bigger the cash flow, the bigger the cash flow, that bigger my sense of humor. Yeah so, so anyway, but it's very really interesting how I you know this is and he really we've had and the reason he did it is because of the book, the ten times since he's here at them, two times okay, and first of all, the way I did the book, you know, with Ben Hardy, that probably was not possible 20 years ago, 30 years ago right the way. I did the book. Yeah, because half the most profitable part of the book is not the book itself, it's actually the audible version of the book. I mean once you made your first audible recording. From the standpoint of the publisher, there's not really any cost, is there? You know right, that's exactly right and yet it works out one to one for every, you know, paper book that sold. There's another sale that's a virtual. It's either Kindle, you know, it's either ebook or it's yeah, it's audible, and so that wasn't possible 20, 30 years ago. So I think, we're pointing out a direction here is that I think there's gonna be two extraordinarily valuable world. I think high-quality mainland activities are getting going, grow and grow and do you? Mean by that, hi what? When you well, I think people had two years basically not going anywhere during COVID yeah and I think there are standards of good what they want to do. If they go so much, somewhere has gone up, I'm going to take the effort to travel. I mean we never gave any thought to travel before COVID. I mean you were all around the world. You were in Australia. Dean Jackson Every year, all the time. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, and you were in Toronto. You were in other places in the United States and I think that it has to be something new, better and different for you to really get on a plane and travel somewhere. And it's the same with me and I've gotten about five. Speech. Offers big audiences 500 to 2,000. And I say I'll do it by Zoom, but I won't travel, I won't travel. And they said but the price they're offering this year for speeches is way above what it was three years ago. And I said it's not the money, it's the time, it's the time to bother. Dean Jackson I said that's not the money Right exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Dean Jackson Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Dan Sullivan I mean in your experience, in my experience. I think you can see a trend here. I am too. Dean Jackson Yeah, exactly, I'll tell you what would be a new and unique and delightful experience is my ears perked up to FreeZone in Toronto in April of next year, that might be enough to tell you I'm very excited to get me on a plane, very excited about that actually. But, D, you know, well, that's good, that's good. Yeah, well, I'm going to go back to my team. Dan Sullivan I said I just got word from Dean that he's really interested and we said, well, it's a lot of work. But you said we just have to have an offer for Dean that's compelling enough that he'll come to Toronto, did you see? That's it. I mean it might be a one person FreeZone, but it's worth it. Dean Jackson The table 10. We need anything. That's what I really miss the most the many of it. Dan Sullivan Yeah, well, the table's still there, but it's not 10. Dean Jackson Hey, did anybody take? Dan Sullivan over Jacques. Dean Jackson No, it's something else. Dan Sullivan now it's not a restaurant anymore. Oh, that's a shame. Dean Jackson Well, when you were saying thinking about the high quality mainland experiences that I'm noticing here. So there seems to be a trend. Now that's happening is gathering spots in a way. Now there's almost like modern day food court type of things, where we're getting a new place. Two of them in Winterhaven that are sort of outdoor common area with venue for live music and tables and picnic tables and that's stuff where you can kind of gather with a bunch of people but five or six restaurant concept, almost like food trucks or whatever, but in places where you can go and have five or six different food restaurant choices other than each of them opening up an individual restaurant they're sharing a common experience and architecturally they're really. They're reclaiming old warehouse space and things that are. They're making them really architecturally interesting and integrating outdoor space to make them really like you want to be there. Dan Sullivan Interesting, I was thinking about that this morning because on Richmond Street West. So if you remember your map, portland, where Portland Street is in North South Street and then you have Portland and a lot of restaurants. So it's just, it's north of Adelaide Street and then you have Richmond, but what's really interesting, there's a whole factory, old factory that was taken over and it was gutted, and it's a food center, just like you say, with lots of but the anchor restaurant in there is Susar Lee, so you can say that, yeah, I was going to say I just read about Susar Lee, yeah. And so the rent he was paying rent on just on King Street. So he's jumped out. His lease came up and he jumped and they offered him to become the anchor rest. So he'll have his whole restaurant in there, but instead of it being out on the outside, it's the rest of the food court with smaller restaurants and there's seating areas out in the center, but he's got his own seating area, like it's like a patio, but it's so. We were thinking about going there this week because it just opened in July and we wouldn't have gone there for the sake of the food court, but we would go there because that's where Susar is. Dean Jackson That's really interesting, because I just like. Dan Sullivan I mean, it's totally what you're talking about. Dean Jackson And it's just so funny that you mentioned that specific place, because I was just on Toronto Life this morning looking at that, because I often go there just to see keep up with what's going on, and I saw this about about Susar Lee's new place. So yeah, that is funny, but so that is kind of like now bringing it's almost like bringing back to the mainland being the, because that's a mainland experience. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Dean Jackson Digitize that yeah. Dan Sullivan And I mean there's just an enormous condo building going on in that area, so the residential population is always going up in that area. As a matter of fact, suit Sasha Kersmerk. Sasha, I think you know Sasha, he might. Sasha is almost 20 years in coach. He's the number one site surveying company in Toronto. Okay, so nothing. No project starts until the site survey is approved. Dean Jackson Right. Dan Sullivan By city officials and he's got roughly 80% of all the site survey projects in the city right now. I mean he's just the dominant and he said that basically from the plan for Toronto is from the lake going north. If you have Jarvis on the east and you have Bathurst on the west, okay, so you can think of all the streets in there that would go there, from there to basically four street, davenport, you know Yorkville. Dean Jackson Okay, yeah. Dan Sullivan It'll look like a mini manhattan island in 30, 40 years. Dean Jackson Yeah, wow, that's very interesting. It'll be all high rise and there's still high rise, yeah, and that's kind of the thing is being able to see that if you just look with your 2040 goggles on to see where that's heading, yeah, it's probably 2050, 2060,. You know and everything like that. Dan Sullivan But the other thing is Toronto is becoming very quickly a major industrial city between here and so here on Lake Huron it's all the way to the bridge across to the United States at Buffalo or at you know, the bridge in St. Dean Jackson Catherine's that goes across, and then in Western Ontario, the. Dan Sullivan Windsor-Chatham area to go across the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and half the Canadian GDP. Gdp you know, money in, money off goes across those two bridges every year yeah. And the Canadian economy and he said the price of industrial land from here to Niagara Falls is just going through the roof. And he said things that were plotted out as residential areas. You know, single family residential areas they're getting outpriced in the market now by the industrial competitors. And it makes sense too if the Canadian dollar remains always weaker against the American dollar. It's, you know, it's $30, $34 today, you know. So there's always this big differential between the, because US is much more powerful economy you know it's got nine times the population. You know it's got nine times. It's got probably 10 times the consumption dollars that are available in all areas of business. So so you know you'll have an American factory and they say we're going to put a factory near Toronto on the Canadian side, and we're going to manufacture everything, paying Canadian prices for the manufacturing, selling it into the United States, bringing it back from the United States. Dean Jackson Wait a minute. That's your playbook. That's not any of your playbook. Dan Sullivan Oh, Mr Sullivan, this is Revenue Canada. We want to have a chat with you. Dean Jackson Yeah, exactly that's funny I was listening to. Dan Sullivan I was listening to Cloudlandia. Dean Jackson Oh man, that's funny. Dan Sullivan I get more tricks from Cloudlandia than anything else. I listen and watch. Dean Jackson I wonder you know if it's so, I think now a lot of this industrialization or re-industrialization, is it, do you think, driven by automation, like robotics and you know, automating manufacturing processes, that or what is it, do you think Well? Dan Sullivan I would say half of it is we can't trust China for anything in the future and everything that's being manufactured in China. We've got to bring it back. And since we're moving it out of China, we can get the same kind of deals in Mexico or even in the middle of the United States, and it will be 21st century industry, industry, and it'll be 21st century. The US has the greatest skilled population in the world. A lot of people don't think that's true, but hands down, at all levels of the economy, united States has more educated, skilled work per capita than any other country in the world. So the US there's factories in the US that can produce that the same, and it's skilled labor plus automation. So automation is definitely, I would say it's 20% of it. But also making your staff really close to your customers has enormous savings. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating times, Dan. I mean, if you're thinking, I have really been thinking about if we are at a plateau. Dan Sullivan Well, I think the I mean if it costs more for money, if it costs more for transportation, it costs more for energy and it costs more for labor, things are going to slow down. Yeah, and you know just that welding example I gave you of the 18 year old who can be making. I mean, somebody goes to you know university for four and learns a lot of theory and you know, is maybe 50 or $60,000 in debt at the end of four years. The person at 18 who became a welder is already buying their first house. You know they're. You know Exactly. Dean Jackson Like think about how, when you take the, you know, when you take the net difference between them investing four years with no income and going into debt to get a degree that gets them an entry level job when they get out with that degree. And so you know that's not compared to coming into a training program and making $60,000 and at the end of the four years making $100,000 and not having any debt. You're so much further ahead on that foundation. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, I think there's going to be an explosive growth of community colleges that are integrated with the local business, you know, the basic industrial population and everything else. I checked the numbers about two years, the number of community colleges in the US and these would be made. These would be mainly two year, two year community colleges, yeah, and there was just under just under a thousand and two things I think are going to happen. That number will probably jump to 2000 over the next 25 years. But even the thousand that exists will double their size. They'll double their enrollment. Yeah, that's interesting, and I wonder, though, if they're you know, because they're doing like yeah, I mean you have like George Brown and in Toronto, and you have there's about, there's probably about four community colleges. That would what do you call a community college in the United States? There are before them in the Toronto area and they're at maximum. You know, they're at maximum enrollment. As a matter of fact, they have waiting lists now to get in. Yeah, and that's all skilled. You know it's all skilled trades. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan You come out being able to you graduate on a Friday and you go to work on Monday. Dean Jackson Yeah. Dan Sullivan The employers come to the colleges and they interview all work interviews are in your while you're at college. You're getting interviewed and some of you you're actually working at the place while you're in college. And you know, and yeah so I think that whole notion. Dean Jackson It doesn't matter how much you're working at the college. Dan Sullivan It doesn't matter how much you spend on college, you'll get paid, you know you'll get paid in the future, you know you'll get paid off easily in the future. I think that ended no 809 actually with the downturn there and I think that that was a huge interruption in the connection between higher education and future employment and I think that COVID put the nail in the coffin to that proposition. Dean Jackson Yeah, Well, yeah, I remember hearing Sheridan College, I guess is the one is yeah, share, yeah, and I remember they were. That was like the Sheridan animators were really in demand, that there was one of the places where you know Disney and others were Pixar were hiring. You know all the newly minted, you know digital animators that were coming out of that yeah. So I think that Ryerson has been another one of those. Dan Sullivan Yeah, there's a new Sound Studio, mostly post production. One of them is just building new studios in our building, but therefore they're not. They're not for live. You know, live production, their post production. So they have editing studios, but right behind us. So Fraser is the front street for us, but behind us is one called Pardee, which is basically a parking lot, and way at the end they have a live production studio, while ours will start being built in September and we'll have it in about six months, based on all the great input by your guy there in Orlando. Dean Jackson You know, we've designed it. Dan Sullivan We can handle six different people at the same time, six different studios being used at the same time Great production. But next, you know, next March, next April. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna live a long time. What's six months? You know. Dean Jackson Right, exactly, yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan Anyway, but I went over and we did our recording of the quarterly book because you need real top-notch studio for a court to go audible and it was really great, but the guy who was handling us was a graduate from Sheridan College. Dean Jackson Yeah, I'm excited, I'm really. This is my thought, for I'm gonna do some thinking about, you know, establishing this thought. If we are in a plateau period. If we are in a slowdown, but in a plateau period of what is gonna be the you know what's shaping up here to do that same thing. I love looking at things like this. We're just gonna put it together Macro level, like that. Dan Sullivan Yeah, I'm gonna do a little thinking to a four slowdowns. You know, money, energy, transportation, labor, and I'm just going to have our clients go through it and say, if this is the obstacle, then what's the transformation? You? Know, and so, and how do you take advantage of the four slowdowns? Dean Jackson I think it's a neat idea I do too, Absolutely. I can't wait. I love it. Dan Sullivan Well, what a great way to spend the late morning on Sunday. I can't think of any better way. Dean Jackson It's like the perfect and there's no collection basket. Dan Sullivan There's no collection basket, no collection basket. Dean Jackson Maybe we should set some in, though without. Oh, there we go. Dan Sullivan Yeah, Anyway, we could have. We could have a digital collection basket at the end. Dean Jackson There we go. Yeah, exactly that's so funny. Dan Sullivan If this was useful, just you know, put your card up there next to the scanner and yeah, that's so good, I love it, no need to make change and no exactly, I'm good so funny, alrighty. I'm good for next Sunday I'll be back here. Dean Jackson Me too, I wouldn't miss it. Okay, okay, thanks, dan. Talk to you soon, bye, bye.

Grupa nastolatków prowadzi youtubowy kanał urbeksowy, na którym zamieszcza nagrania z penetrowania opuszczonych budynków z silną sugestią nadnaturalności otoczenia. Kanał rozwija się kiepsko i część ekipy jest niezadowolona - tym razem w planach jest przygotowanie nagrania z samotnego hotelu w Kątach Rybackich. Sesja dla osób pełnoletnich. Możliwe triggery: przemoc, używki, wulgarny język, horror nadnaturalny, śmierć bliskich osób, opuszczone miejsca.

Author and musician Ronald Malfi joins Staci on this week's Rock & Roll Nightmares Podcast to talk about his horror novels, and his hard rock band, Veer. They discuss his thoughts on being compared to Stephen King, the pros and cons of listening to music while writing, what inspired him to become a professional writer and musician, the best book he's read lately, and his own personal “rock & roll nightmare.”

We've got another AMAZING interview coming your way! Our special guest was none other than Cecilia Vinesse, author of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. ⁠@ceciliavinesse⁠ Cecilia was an absolute joy to talk to and we had the very best time learning about her publishing journey. We know you will too!!!A bit more about Cecilia: Cecilia Vinesse is the author of three YA rom-coms, all of which involve copious amounts of yearning and coffee. She was born in France but grew up between Tokyo, Japan and Greenville, South Carolina. Her obsession with Nora Ephron movies led her to New York City where she attended Barnard College and then worked in children's book marketing, all while living in an apartment furnished mostly by stacks of novels. From there, she headed to Scotland to earn her master's degree in creative writing at the University of St Andrews, and now she lives in England, where she splits her time writing in a sky-blue office, daydreaming in libraries, and holding horror movie marathons with her fiancée Rachel and their pup named Malfi. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is her latest novel about fake homecoming dates, swimming pool kisses, and a very chaotic, extremely bisexual love square. ⁠https://www.ceciliavinesse.com/ ⁠ Order your copy of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR here: ⁠https://www.ceciliavinesse.com/the-girl-next-door⁠ Add THE GIRL NEXT DOOR to Goodreads here: ⁠https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62292417-the-girl-next-door⁠⁠ #writerssupportingwriters⁠ ⁠#authorssupportingauthors⁠ ⁠#writersofinstagram⁠ ⁠#authorsofinstagram ⁠⁠#YABooks⁠ ⁠#RomComBooks⁠ ⁠#CeciliaVinesse⁠ ⁠#TheGirlNextDoor2023⁠ ⁠#QueerBookstagram⁠ ⁠#Bookstagram⁠ ⁠#RomanceBooks⁠ ⁠#ReadWithPride⁠ ⁠#SapphicBooks⁠ ⁠#BisexualBooks⁠ ⁠#BiRomance⁠ ⁠#CozyReads⁠ ⁠#authorsofinstagram⁠ ⁠#lgbtq⁠

Ronald Malfi is a prolific writer, and musician. He has won numerous literary awards including the Benjamin Franklin Award For Popular Fiction.He is the rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist for the alternative rock band "VEER."He joins Vince on the show to discuss his new collection of novellas entitled, "Ghostwritten," as well as his upcoming collection entitled, "They Lurk." They talk about Ronald's writing process, his state of mind during the writing process, and the differences between writing prose, and song lyrics.Website:https://ronaldmalfi.com/Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ronald-Malfi/author/B001JRXTJW?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=trueGoodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3512996.Ronald_MalfiTwitter:https://twitter.com/ronaldmalfi?lang=enFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/people/Ronald-Malfi/100046525307662/https://www.instagram.com/ronaldmalfi/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/ronaldmalfi/The Dark Mind Podcast Newsletter:https://mailchi.mp/720644de464c/newsletter

Philadelphia Carey's Tudor word this week is 'intelligencer'.   Philadelphia opines that she dislikes an intelligencer who rats her out at court. Jessica and Gage discuss the use of intelligencer in a play that's very bloody, 'The Duchess of Malfi'.

Each episode takes a look at a different aspect of the wonderful world of amateur theatre and features an amateur theatre maker talking about their theatrical life, theatrical loves, and the times when they've ‘died' on stage. Our Backstage Pass feature takes us behind the scenes at The Crescent Theatre, Birmingham to discover more about what goes into making a great amateur production. This episode focuses on John Webster's Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. We'll be talking to actor, director and writer Andrew Cowie about his life and loves in amateur theatre, his approach to directing The Duchess of Malfi, and finding out about the unique and bloodthirsty genre that is Jacobean revenge tragedy.Meanwhile Liz has been behind the scenes of The Duchess of Malfi to talk to Lighting Designer Charlotte Robinson about the challenges and rewards of lighting this darkest of plays.

Paper Cuts LIVE! Episode 42 Conversation with author Ronald Malfi (THE NIGHT PARADE, COME WITH ME, BLACK MOUTH, GHOSTWRITTEN, and more)! In this episode we discuss Ronald Malfi's newest releases GHOSTWRITTEN and BLACK MOUTH, the collaborative process of writing music versus the solidarity of writing a novel, the spark of excitement writing stories as a kid, ghostwriting scripts for B level horror films, Halloween traditions, and more! Visit us at https://www.papercutslive.com

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! The first chapter of Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi is a fine example of how one can have the intense opener, change scenes a little, and STILL keep momentum. The protagonist gets hit by a double-whammy of a notice when he just gets out or rehab, but rather than move forward on that time, we backtrack to what caused the protagonist to be in rehab. While I was bothered by this at first, Malfi successfully avoids telling us how rehab went. Rather, we experience the protagonist's spiral downward into a place of intense fear and pain. Could this just be the lack of alcohol, or is there something more sinister afoot? Plus, now that we know the protagonist is about to hear tragic information about his family, we are further intrigued to see how a man in such a state will handle such news. Considering the unique voice and personality of this character, I cannot predict what he will do...and that makes me a happy reader. And what will you, fellow creative, learn in the first five pages? Let's find out!

Bestselling author Ronald Malfi joins Philip to discuss two decades in publishing.We hit double digits! For our 10th episode, bestselling author Ronald Malfi joins The Dark Word to discuss his twenty years of publishing experience, working with agents, and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how books are adapted for film and television.Ronald is the award-winning author of several horror novels, including the bestselling Come With Me, published by Titan Books in 2021. He earned two Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Award, the Vincent Preis Horror Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, and his novel Floating Staircase was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. He lives with his wife and daughters in Maryland. When he's not writing, he's performing with the rock band Veer, whose song Breathe rocks way harderthan we expected.

Latest news abroad in Malfi: The Duchess has run off with her butler. But this happened before the days of newspapers or radio, so Webster made from it an exciting play. (Volume 47, Harvard Classics)  

Sandy and Sam discuss John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's episode covers the excellent first season of Showtime's "Yellowjackets," the extremely mid horror/mystery novel "Come With Me" by Ronald Malfi, and my addiction to what's probably the best open world game ever released, "Elden Ring." I also give a few hints as to what's to come next with the fiction part of the podcast, so check us out!Support us on Patreon: https://bit.ly/34jUJsGYou can also support us by purchasing some merch: https://bit.ly/33bjPtuFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2WxCs8yFollow us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/36svFkYFollow us on Instagram: https://bit.ly/2JIhZIVJoin the Westside Fairytales Horror and Lit Club: https://bit.ly/2WAjT3N

Andy and Alyssa read Goosebumps Series 2000 #8: Fright Camp. They discuss The Art of Goosebumps; cinema verité; McKamey Manor; sailing sunfish; meeting your maker; Basic Instinct; Marianne; The Amber Spyglass; unethical artists; In the Earth; The Haunting of Hill House; Scream 3; sadism; Funny Games; Haunt; real-life horror; Peeping Tom; No Escape; “The Hauntening”; A Serbian Film; candid cameras; The Jinx; imprisonment horror; V for Vendetta; Das Experiment; Shawshank Redemption; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Bedlam asylum; The Duchess of Malfi; The Changeling; The Honest Whore, Part 1; surveillance horror; Vacancy; Caché; The Poughkeepsie Tapes; shoe loss; Big Fish; The Wizard of Oz; the interconnections of the Gooseverse cinema and summer camps scenes; when horror becomes comedy; Willy's Wonderland; & the ultimate hollowness at the core of what we love. // Music by Haunted Corpse // Follow @saypodanddie on Twitter and Instagram, and get in touch at saypodanddie@gmail.com

I am ready to announce my award winner for best book I have read. Yep, I have a clear winner. And, to be honest, this was not even much of a competition. This year, I deem Mr. Ronald Mafi's novel, Come With Me as my overwhelming winner.Seriously, I am not trying to make it sound like this is a commercial for the book, Come with me, but it is going to be unintentionally so.So, the big question is why did I like it so much?Imagine, if you can, careening down a path you thought you knew so well that every twist and turn of the path was known to you even before you had a chance to see the next turn in the road. I mean, you knew that path well enough that no matter what happened you thought you could handle it.Next, I want you to imagine what it would be like if that path suddenly no longer made any sense to you and as matter of fact, now you found that monsters lie in the darkness on either side and the slope became so impossibly steep that you had no choice but to continue on for climbing back up the hill was impossible.Ronald Malfi is a master at putting his protagonist in. I argue that this is quandary we find our protagonist Aaronn Decker in. As a matter of fact, he is so good at descending people through the levels of insanity, that I am amazed with his talents to bring you through the depths of insanity and make it feel completely natural.Truth in advertising, I have been a Ronald Malfi fan for son long. It is hard not to love his work. You have not heard of Ronald Malfi? Have you never heard of Stephen King, or Josh Malerman? How have you never heard of Ronald Malfi, the master of true psychological horror? Well, read on and pick up a copy of this book.In his latest offering, "Come With Me", we see the life of Aaron Decker as he is after the death of his wife. Guilt and grief stricken, we find a man searching for a way to get out of this miasmic existence when a series of strange occurrences lead him to discover something his wife, Allison, tried to keep hidden for so many years.What was she hiding? I would argue her personal obsession as well as cross to bear. An obsession which quickly becomes Aaron's to see through when he discovers a file of notes along with a handgun. This grabs Aaron by the nose and leads him to see the truth and complete the quest his wife was on.By the end of the book, you finally are left to ponder what Allison means in the very beginning of the book, when she implores Aaron, “Come with me.” I know it certainly left the question in my head. A question I will certainly bother Ronald for an answer for, next time I see him. That question, and I don't think I am giving anything up here, is this. Was Aaron supposed to die with Allison that morning? And yet, you have to read the book to understand why I ask this.Amazingly well written, there is a danger in reading this book as it will ensure you forget about eating and sleeping. You simply have to know how it all ends and that is the challenge with a book like this. I really don't say this very often, but this book really needs to become a movie and if that doesn't happen, I will feel there is little justice in the world. And yet, no film adaptation would ever do the book justice. It is just not possible to improve on this work.Check it out here! As always, thank you for listening. If you like what I am doing and want to support me, head on over to my Patreon page and see what else I have out there for content. CLICK HEREUntil next time, this is your host, Bryan Nowak, with All things Writing, signing off.Support the show (http://paypal.me/BryanNowak)

You're in (four) a scare with our (fourth) Horrifying Classic this season…”Come with Me” by Ronald Malfi. — Show Notes: relevanceofliterature.com/notes/ patreon.com/relevanceofliterature — Music by Leo Discenza *Horrifying Classics features effects and music in the public domain. Our Show: relevanceofliterature.com Our old (and yes, still functioning) blog: didionandhawthorne.blubrry.net

In Shakespeare's Henry VI part II, Lord Clifford exclaims, “To Bedlam with him! Is the man grown mad?” That's from Act V Scene 1. This use of the word Bedlam both as a place associated with madness, is because there was a real Bedlam Hospital within steps of The Curtain and Globe theaters where this play was performed in the 16th century and that hospital specialized in the care for the insane. Bedlam Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in early modern London. It was founded in the mid-13th century in service to the Church of Bethlehem, as a house for the poor. By the time Henry VIII gave administrative control of Bedlam to the city of Bethlem in 1547, it had become a hospital for the nation's mentally ill and specifically those who were considered violent or dangerous. Initially, the term “Bedlam” was an informal namebut by the time Shakespeare was writing about Bedlam in Henry VI Part II, the word “bedlam” was part of everyday speech, defined as madness or chaos. In addition to Shakespeare's 8 uses of “bedlam” across his works, Bedlam Hospital itself was staged in many early modern plays including The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, and Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson, among many others during the early 1600s. One potential reason for the popularity of using Bedlam in early modern plays can be attributed to the display of insane people that began in London in 1576 as a way to raise money for the hospital. Bedlam Hospital continues in operation today as a psychiatric hospital, with one of their specialist services including the National Psychosis Unit.  Here today to help us understand the history of Bedlam Hospital and what it is important to know when we see Shakespeare referencing this hospital in his plays is our guest, Duncan Salkeld.

Eric is back and we talk Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody, and the theater (or theatre) we saw in London: Noises Off, & Juliet, The Duchess of Malfi, and Magic Goes Wrong!

Director Steven Soderbergh on his latest film, Unsane, which stars Claire Foy as a woman admitted to a mental health facility against her will. The film was shot entirely on three iphones. Is this the future of film? America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper, a big exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford focuses on American artists in the early 20th century - including Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper - many of whom expressed their uncertainty about the rapid modernisation and urbanisation of their country. The show's curator discusses the significance of these paintings, prints and photographs made between 1915 and 1945, many of which have not been seen in the UK before. How to establish yourself as a solo artist after a successful career in a double act - Stephen Armstrong considers examples from cultural history as Ant McPartlin, one half of TV presenting powerhouse Ant and Dec, is admitted to rehab, leaving Declan Donnelly considering his options.A new RSC production of The Duchess of Malfi will involve the spilling of 3000 litres of stage blood throughout its run. To tell us how, why, and how much we should expect in the world of stage blood, we're joined by theatre critic Sam Marlowe and Giuseppe Cannas, Head of Wigs, Hair and Make-up at the National Theatre.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May.

Eleanor Bron will be 80 on Wednesday. She is still working - she will be in Scottish Opera's production of Ariadne auf Naxos this year. Talking to Samira Ahmed she looks back over her long career, from the satire boom with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, through working with The Beatles in Help and roles in classical theatre such as in The Duchess of Malfi. The Great Wave at the National Theatre explores the abduction in the 1970s of Japanese citizens by North Korea. A look at these kidnappings through the eyes of one fictionalised family opens up questions of identity and belonging. Samira talks to the playwright Francis Turnly and the director Indhu Rubasingham about this little known aspect of far eastern politics .Following the announcement of the death of Sir Ken Dodd, Matthew Sweet discusses the role and significance of this jester who brought the comedic techniques of variety to television, and had extraordinary mass appeal. Presenter: Samira AhmedProducer: Julian May.