Podcasts about pocketful

We flip, dive and punch our way through The Furious and decide if it's really the best action movie of the decade. Plus, we also talk Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles, Disclosure Day, Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai, The Strangers - Chapter 3, Reckless and Beef season 2. Follow the show on Twitter: @thecinemaspeak Follow the show on Instagram: cinemaspeakpodcast Subscribe on Youtube: Cinema Speak

Maggie sits down with tarot reader Angie Banicki for a mystical conversation about intuition, synchronicity, and learning to trust the unfolding of life. Angie shares how she discovered her gift and why even life's "tower moments" can lead us exactly where we're meant to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) is our next totally on-time episode. No technical issues here. The file just decided to be quirky, just like our theme this month. Calum has decided to punish us all by choosing movies that aren't like other movies, but he failed this time because everyone loves that film where the guy finds out he's colourblind and Steve Carrel is depressed. Tag yourself, I'm the van that doesn't have a first or second gear. Join us next week for another quirky film.

In a world increasingly dependent upon screens and technology, it's as crucial as it is countercultural to help kids capture the natural joys and treasures each day holds. Mom of four and award-winning author, Amanda Dykes, unpacks hands-on activities that invite children and their parents to spot the wonders of God's creation. Receive the book A Pocketful of Wonder plus a free audio download of “Discover the Wonder of Nature with Your Kids” for your donation of any amount! Plus, receive member-exclusive benefits when you make a recurring gift today. Your monthly support helps families thrive. Get More Episode Resources If you enjoyed listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, please give us your feedback.

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

Jane has yet again come to work with a smile on her face (the office heating was on and the canteen was stocked with Cadbury's Fruit and Nut). Fi's still off, so Eve props Jane up - they chat Barbara Pym, aliens, bowling with piles, and book translations. Plus, space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock discusses her memoir 'Starchild'. Our next book club pick is 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute. Our most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton. You can listen to our 'I'm in the cupboard on Christmas' playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1awQioX5y4fxhTAK8ZPhwQIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some of Jim Wilbur's stories took decades to write.

As the twelve days of Christmas come to a close once again, we're celebrating Epiphany with two songs about three men. By listener request, we check out "We Three Slow Kings" by Electric Santa, a song that may or may not be a joke, and "If I Were a Wise Man" by Flannel Graph, an undoubtedly sincere song with a familiar Sufjan-esque flavor. The ranking music in this episode is "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield, which is the song Ian couldn't remember the name of. Thank you to Matt for these requests!

GGACP celebrates the 2025 holiday season with this ENCORE of a mini-show from 2017 as Gilbert and Frank (with an assist from Raybone) explore some lesser-known (and deservedly so, in some cases) Christmas flicks, including “Susan Slept Here,” “Pocketful of Miracles,” “A Carol for Another Christmas,” “Santa Claus vs. the Devil” and “The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.” Also in this episode: The cinema of Sonny Fox! Grizzly Adams to the rescue! Gilbert dons a Santa suit! Frank Capra cries plagiarism! And the squirrel that saved Christmas! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Truth in Politics and Culture President Trump's Asian tour nets investment deals for the U.S. and trade agreements designed to blunt the impact of China's stranglehold on rate earth minerals, His meeting with President Xi garners mixed results. The government shutdown enters a critical phase, Erica Trump leads a Turning Point Rally at Ole Miss, VP Vance takes questions..

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Peter Michael Falk (September 16, 1927 – June 23, 2011) was an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo on the NBC/ABC series Columbo (1968–1978, 1989–2003), for which he won four Primetime Emmy Awards (1972, 1975, 1976, 1990) and a Golden Globe Award (1973). In 1996, TV Guide ranked Falk No. 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list.[1] He received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.[2][3]He first starred as Columbo in two 2-hour "World Premiere" TV pilots; the first with Gene Barry in 1968 and the second with Lee Grant in 1971. The show then aired as part of The NBC Mystery Movie series from 1971 to 1978, and again on ABC from 1989 to 2003.[4]Falk was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Murder, Inc. (1960) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961), and won his first Emmy Award in 1962 for The Dick Powell Theatre. He was the first actor to be nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy Award in the same year, achieving the feat twice (1961 and 1962). He went on to appear in such films as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), The Great Race (1965), Anzio (1968), Murder by Death (1976), The Cheap Detective (1978), The Brink's Job (1978), The In-Laws (1979), The Princess Bride (1987), Wings of Desire (1987), The Player (1992), and Next (2007), as well as many television guest roles.Falk was also known for his collaborations with filmmaker, actor, and personal friend John Cassavetes, acting in films such as Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky (1976) and the Columbo episode "Étude in Black" (1972).PICTURE: By Margie Korshak Associates-publicity agency-Falk was appearing at an awards dinner in Chicago. - eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20745073

As the seasons change, don't miss this encouraging, thoughtful, and informative episode with Amanda Dykes -- all about how to teach our littlest ones to be "wonder-spotters" and notice God through the big and small things around us. Amanda is a mom of multiple children, author, and follower of Christ, and is sharing so many tangible and biblically-rooted ways to take the overwhelm out of sharing the gospel with our children. Get your copy of "A Pocketful of Wonder." Couple that with Tara's new book, ⁠⁠Overbooked and Overwhelmed: How to Keep Up With God When You're Just Trying to Keep Up With Life⁠⁠ - out now. FOLLOW TRUTH TALKS WITH TARA ON⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- CONNECT WITH TARA: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Her website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jewelry line⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The free, email family⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sponsor a child through Compassion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the debut episode of our new series, A Feast of Words, airing in honor of National Literacy Month! This episode is a must-listen for both readers and writers alike, as we celebrate the power of storytelling and the written word. We've gathered a diverse group of acclaimed authors to share their work and discuss the art of autobiographies, short story collections, and poetry. Our conversation explores the influence of literary giants like Jack London, the role of anthologies in fostering new voices, and the importance of community and editing in a writer's journey. Tune in to discover fresh narratives across a wide range of genres. Featured Guests & Books - CLIFFORD GARSTANG - Award-winning author, writer, and editor shares from his short story collection “House of the Ancients and Other Stories.” More: https://cliffordgarstang.com/house-of-the-ancients-and-other-stories/    - DIANE DOBRY - Travel writer and memoirist shares her “Happy New Year in Budapest” story from the collection “A Pocketful of Dreams.” Read her story: https://gettinghungary.com/happy-new-year-in-budapest/    - LINDA BALLOU – Travel writer and fiction/non-fiction author shares from her essay “Jack London and Me,” which is in the 2024 San Francisco Writer's Conference Anthology. Learn more,get book links, and hear Linda's full podcast episode about Jack London: https://blendradioandtv.com/listing/linda-ballou-jack-london-and-me/  - HEIDI SANDER – Canadian travel writer, educator, and award-winning poet, shares from her poetry collection “Stratford Gems Book 1: A Poetic & Photographic Journey of Stratford.” * More: https://pages.heidisander.com/books/ and https://www.heidisander.com/ - MATT COST – Award-winning author of mystery and history, Matt discusses his story “Dead Men Don't Kiss” featured in the “Celluloid Crimes” anthology, available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Celluloid-Crimes-Deborah-Well/dp/B0FNPHXDZD * More: https://mattcost.net/ - EVA ELDRIDGE - Travel writer, book industry expert, editor, and co-President of Tucson Sisters in Crime, talks about two anthologies she curated. Both books are available on Amazon: * Trouble in Tucson: https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Tucson-Coast-Crime-Anthology/dp/B0BTRPH84K  * Feisty Felines: https://www.amazon.com/Feisty-Felines-Other-Fantastical-Familiars/dp/1680576194  * More: https://evaeldridge.com/ and https://3sides2authorservices.com/  * Tucson Sisters in Crime: https://www.tucsonsistersincrime.org/  - SUZANNE FLAIG – Mystery writer and author, talks about two anthologies she is part of. The books are available on Amazon: * Mystery Most Humorous: https://www.amazon.com/Donna-Andrews-Presents-Malice-Domestic-ebook/dp/B0F6KRMY7D * Danger Awaits!: https://www.amazon.com/SoWest-Sisters-Sleuths-Chapter-Anthology-ebook/dp/B0FNS2H162 * More: https://www.suzanneflaigwriter.com/ - ARYN YOUNGLESS – Writer, indie publisher, and genealogist, discusses anthologies she is part of, including one she put together in high school. * “Made in L.A” and “A Night of Misfit Stories” anthologies: https://asyounglessauthor.com/read-me/ * “Echoes of the Youth” high school anthology: https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084? params=ujFY7byK3uekkrw6NR3kIQNoGBES3ivK2SdcQjK09Lk * Genealogy Services: https://www.genealogybyaryn.com/    Key Takeaways for Writers & Readers - For Writers: Gain insights into the submission process for anthologies, the value of short story collections as a stepping stone, and the crucial role of editing. Learn about building a supportive community to help you on your creative journey. - For Readers: Discover acclaimed authors and fresh narratives across a variety of genres, including memoir, mystery, travel, and poetry. This episode will help you find your next favorite story. 

Bestselling novelist Amanda Dykes joins The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast for a conversation that will stir your heart, lift your eyes, and invite you to marvel again at the wonder that surrounds us. In this episode, Amanda shares the tender backstory behind her career shift from English teacher to award-winning author, and how deep grief gave way to deep creativity. We explore the making of her stunning new book A Pocketful of Wonder, a field guide for children to experience God's creation through poem, prayer, play, and music. Along the way, Amanda and Ginny talk about the courage to pursue creativity, the mysterious work of God in delays and detours, and why beauty is not frivolous—it's essential. Amanda's words are a balm, reminding us that wonder is a battle cry in a heavy world, and that attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. You'll hear about concrete poems, whimsical squirrel illustrations, nature's instruments, and how a single drop of rain in the desert can unleash the aroma of hope. This conversation will inspire you to step into the preposterous beauty all around—and bring your kids with you. A huge thank you to our sponsors! Check them ALL out below:  Select Quote: Head to www.selectquote.com/1000hours to learn more.  BetterHelp: Visit  www.BetterHelp.com/1000HOURS  today to get 10% off your first month. Quince - Visit www.quince.com/outside and get free shipping and 365 day returns NIV Application Bible - visit www.NIVapplicationbible.com if you're looking to grow in your understanding of Scripture and make it real in your daily life. Cozy Earth - Upgrade your summer sleep at www.cozyearth.com and use code OUTSIDE for 40% off their best-selling sheets, loungewear, and more. Lagoon - Go to LagoonSleep.com/OUTSIDE and take their awesome 2 minute sleep quiz to find your match.Use the code OUTSIDE for 15% off your first purchase Brave Books - Right now, you can get 20% off your first purchase at www.BRAVEBooks.com/1000hours with the code 1000HOURS. COSMO - Right now, COSMO is running an amazing back-to-school deal, plus free shipping and a risk-free 30-day guarantee. Head to www.cosmotogether.com/1KHO  to grab one today. NurtureLife - Head to NurtureLife.com/1000HOURS55 and use code 1000HOURS55 for 55% off your first order PLUS free shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a world increasingly dependent upon screens and technology, it's as crucial as it is countercultural to help kids capture the natural joys and treasures each day holds. Mom of four and award-winning author, Amanda Dykes, unpacks hands-on activities that invite children and their parents to spot the wonders of God's creation. Receive the book A Pocketful of Wonder plus a free audio download of “Discover the Wonder of Nature with Your Kids” for your donation of any amount! Plus, receive member-exclusive benefits when you make a recurring gift today. Your monthly support helps families thrive. Get More Episode Resources If you've listened to any of our podcasts, please give us your feedback.

Welcome to It's A Wonderful Podcast!Celebrating one of our favourites, and one of Old Hollywood's greatest directors at the height of his powers throughout June as we journey through the 1930s with a series on FRANK CAPRA!A fun double feature for the show this week as we look at and compare two different eras of Capra's career with his first Best Director nomination with LADY FOR A DAY (1933) starring Warren William & May Robson, and his own remake of the story, POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (1961) starring Bette Davis & Glenn Ford; his last feature!Our YouTube Channel for Monday Madness on video, Morgan Hasn't Seen TV, Retro Trailer Reactions & More⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvACMX8jX1qQ5ClrGW53vow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The It's A Wonderful Podcast Theme by David B. Music.Donate:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ItsAWonderful1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Patreon:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/ItsAWonderful1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IT'S A WONDERFUL PODCAST STORE:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/user/g9design⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sub to the feed and download now on all major podcast platforms and be sure to rate, review and SHARE AROUND!!Keep up with us on (X) Twitter:Podcast:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ItsAWonderful1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Morgan:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/Th3PurpleDon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeannine:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/JeannineDaBean⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠_Keep being wonderful!!

THURSDAY HR 4 Moe DeWitt travel plans. Moe For THe Weekend Teachers cruise. News From The Headlines Hot Dogs

Today we are going to talk about a new book I started. Keeping it a surprise. Enjoy!

For the first time since the third-ever episode of TCBCast, we're immersing ourselves fully in the music of the US Army's own Tulsa MacLean! Bec and Justin explore the three recording sessions in April & May 1960 that led to the iconic, bestselling #1 album. As it turns out, unusual for Elvis sessions, numerous songs had vastly different arrangements attempted as Elvis and the band struggled to find their footing with the material, as well as contend with external pressures that frustrated Elvis. With classic pop-tinged songs like "Wooden Heart," "Pocketful of Rainbows" and "Doin' the Best I Can" supplemented by material that alluded back to Elvis's earlier 1950s stylings like "Blue Suede Shoes," "Frankfort Special" and "Shoppin' Around," this was a ton of fun to explore. For Song of the Week, Justin decided to pick "Let's Be Friends," which was cut from the film "Change of Habit" and instead became the title track of a low-budget compilation the following year, and tries to puzzle out where it might have fit in the movie's story. Then Bec lays all her cards on the table, selecting "From A Jack to A King," the country classic that Elvis almost semi-jokingly laid down at Chips Moman's American Sound Studio. If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.  

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BETTE & JOAN: EP 2 – THE BEST OF EVERYTHING & POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES “They Live in Dreams” In the second and final pre-Baby Jane episode, critic Elizabeth Stoddard joins me for the pair of movies our former studio queens would appear in just before signing on to star in the […]

Spring Fling is this weekend! March 14-16, 2025 (aff link)https://academy.basicgirlteaches.com/a/2148053588/4zYNyxcmEverything I talked about in this episode can be put into practice at the Repurposeful Retreat later this month!It's being hosted by my friend and mentor Nina Clapperton from She Knows SEO.If you're focusing on your site or your blog this year, you'll definitely want to go check that out!Learn more and sign up here (aff link):https://brittanyverlenich--ninaclapperton.thrivecart.com/repurposefulretreat/This is part of a multi-episode series where I'm talking all about content repurposing!There are generally 3 phases to repurposing content and examining your overall content marketing strategy:1. Recycle2. Reduce3. ReuseThere are also three ways to make this easier - batching, automating, and using A.I.I give an overview in this episode.But if there's a specific tactic, tool, app, or technique you'd like for me to cover, just let me know in the comments below!Want a custom plan that's just for you? Let's work together!➡️ https://www.fiverr.com/brittverlenichThis is episode 121 of the Social Media Magic podcast.Follow this playlist to find out about new episodes released here on my YouTube channel!⬇️⬇️⬇️----------SELLERS & CREATORS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEOGo support and subscribe these awesome teacher sellers and creators!Each of them have great YouTube channels.Michelle Emerson from Pocketful of PrimaryBridget Spackman from Bridging LiteracyAimee Jensen from Aimee's Edventures----------SEE MORE ON SUBSTACKFollow my journey as a I grew a TpT store to full-time income in under a year:https://brittanyverlenich.substack.com/Interested in getting paid to create? Then this is for you:https://teachercreator.substack.com/----------GET HELP CREATING CONTENTHire me and my team to support you!Pick the gig that best suits your current needs on my Fiverr profile:https://www.fiverr.com/brittverlenich

On this episode we are joined by Garrett Powell to discuss all things solar! Garrett is the direct of sourcing and client service at PowerHouse Recycling in Salisbury, NC, and he is here to help us dive into the evolving world of solar and electronic recycling. Garrett does a fantastic job of walking us through so much of the solar industry and provides incredibly valuable insights into this booming time of sunshine power. We hope you're ready to shine!

Aus dem Gasthaus Sternen in Sternenberg ZH schickt Nicolas Senn musikalische Wintergrüsse voll Volksmusik und Jodelgesang. Mit dabei: Ländlerkapelle Huserbuebe, Berner Örgeliplausch, Appenzell Ost, Frauenjodelchörli Embrach, Jodelduett Martin & Hubert Thalmann u.a. Schweizweit bekannt wurde das Gasthaus Sternen in Sternenberg ZH durch die gleichnamige Schweizer Filmkomödie «Sternenberg» (2004) mit Mathias Gnädinger in der Hauptrolle. Der traditionsreiche Familienbetrieb dient aber nicht nur als Filmkulisse oder zur kulinarischen Verköstigung, sondern veranstaltet auch volkstümliche Stubete und Ländlerabende. Und wo Volksmusik stattfindet, sind «Potzmusig» und Nicolas Senn nicht weit. In der gemütlichen Gaststube präsentiert er wieder Ländlermusik und Jodelgesang. Zum Beispiel mit den Sängerinnen des Frauenjodelchörlis Embrach oder den Stimmen der Entlebucher Jodelbrüder Martin und Hubert Thalmann. Auch instrumental gibt es einiges auf die Ohren. U.a. mit der Ländlerkapelle Huserbuebe, dem Trio Appenzell Ost oder dem Berner Örgeliplausch. Ausserdem überraschen die sieben Frauen von Pocketful of Brass mit einer spannenden Neuinterpretation eines musikalischen Klassikers. Und das Alphorn-Quartett Surental spielt anlässlich ihres 45-jährigen Bestehens vor heimatlicher Kulisse eine feierliche Eigenkomposition.

The Attorneys deal with the fallout of the Pocketful of Dead Fish preview. As they face the consequences, the stakes continue to rise while the group decides their next course of action. Support Us Support Us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/drimbus Visit Our Website: https://www.drimbus.com Sign up for The (Not-So) Daily Drimbus: https://www.drimbus.com/newsletter Buy us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/whimsic Buy our Merch: https://www.drimbus.com/merch Find and support our sponsors at: https://fableandfolly.com/partners Cast Amanda Fernandez-Acosta (Barbara) Hannah Schooner (Viper Hale)(Editing) Michael Pisani (Jessica Feltcher) Nick Benetatos (Gary Mogbile) Nicholas Palazzo (Thomas Phelps) Giancarlo Herrera (DM)(Editing/Sound Design) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode#380-Hector answer's the question to life, the universe and everything! Also discussed on this episode: continuing our trip down comic book memory lane with Planetary issue 3... and a whole mess more! For all things Mind Grenade: MindGrenadeStudios.com Leave us an e-mail at MGTwenty14@gmail.com

Descorchamos el 2025 con sorpresa en el menú, una sesión de piezas de jazz y especialmente de blues interpretadas por legendarias figuras al piano.Playlist;(sintonía) RAY CHARLES “There’s no you”RAY CHARLES “Ray’s Blues”JAMES BOOKER “Junco partner”AMOS MILBURN “One scotch, one bourbon, one beer”BIG MACEO “Worried life blues”LEROY CARR “How long how long blues”BIG JOE TURNER feat VAN “PIANO MAN” WALLS “The chill is on”RUTH BROWN feat VAN “PIANO MAN” WALLS “5 10 15 hours”ROOSEVELT SYKES “Pocketful of money”NINA SIMONE “This year’s kisses”FLOYD DIXON “Hole in the wall”PETE JOHNSON “Goin’ away blues”PETE JOHNSON and BIG JOE TURNER “Roll em pete”ROY BYRD and HIS BLUESJUMPERS (PROFESSOR LONGHAIR) “Hey now baby””SWEET EMMA BARRETT “None of my Jelly Roll”CHAMPION JACK DUPREE “Bring me flowers while I'm living”Escuchar audio

Today we are sharing a VERY special live recording of the podcast with none other than a true national treasure, Richard E. Grant. And trust me when I say this episode is packed full of incredible stories!  You will of course know Richard from his extensive TV and Movie career, from the iconic 1980s movie, ‘Withnail and I' to the bathwater slurping smash, ‘Saltburn.' If you are a big ‘Saltburn' fan, you have to listen to our episode with the movie's creator and director, Emerald Fennell, after this episode.  But it's not just this Oscar Nominee's on screen performances that have made him an icon, it's also his joyful Instagram content of frolicking in fields and his beautiful book, ‘A Pocketful of Happiness' which details his life story and his one true love story with his wife, Joan Washington.  Today Richard talks very movingly about losing his wife to cancer, grief and why we need to speak about it more, his foray into fragrance with his own perfume brand, Jack and shares some hilarious stories from his career INCLUDING FROM SPICE WORLD THE MOVIE. SCREAMS!!!  What I really took away from this conversation was just how powerful talking about our struggles can be, so I hope this encourages you to open up about your life, your experiences, your pains and losses because we are all the better for doing so.  If you loved listening to our great chat as much as I did, please get in touch, I always love hearing from you. You can find me across social media @joshsmithhosts and I can't wait to share next week's episode with you too. See you then, Josh xx P.S. In this episode you will have heard me talk about my book, ‘Great Chat: Seven Lessons for Better Conversation, Deeper Connections and Improved Wellbeing' which is out now! You can get your copy here https://geni.us/GreatChat and I really hope it inspires you to start using conversation as a self help practice, empowers you to be a better communicator and helps you build the connections you are deserving of.  P.P.S. This episode is sponsored by Bicester Village which I am so excited about as it's one of my favourite go-to day trips for great chats and great bonding time with my loved ones - especially during the holiday season! If you need a little retail therapy with a pal, Bicester Village is home to more than 150 fashion and lifestyle boutiques, renowned restaurants and five star service - and we all deserve a bit of five star service don't we - AND it's so festive there at the moment!! Luxury also doesn't have to come with a hefty price tag, as Bicester Village offers up to 40% off the original retail prices ALL YEAR ROUND. Race you there? It's only an hour from London Marylebone station if you are based in London!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textSteele's pockets are picked by a street-wise lad who unknowingly grabs evidence in a loan-sharking case, putting his life in danger.Discussion of the Remington Steele episode 'Pocketful of Steele'. Hosted by Eric Alton-Glenn Hilliard and Sara McNeil.Send your comments to SteeleWatching@Yahoo.comWebsitesOfficial Steele Watching PodCast websiteSteele Watching PodCast on TwitterSteele Watching PodCast on FacebookSteele Watching PodCast on InstagramSteele Watchers Group on FacebookPurchase movies/television shows/books mentioned in this episode from Amazon.Boys Town (Amazon Canada / Amazon USA)Support the showPlease consider helping support the show. Help support this show. Become a monthly supporter of this show for as little as $3 (US)/month. Buy Me A Coffee (one-time donation) Paypal (one-time donation) Purchase Steele Watching Swag

We wrap up our G5 previews for 2024 with a look around the Sun Belt.Flipping The Field is presented by Meet At Midfield and Homefield Apparel. Use code SUMMER33 to get 33 percent off your subscription to Meet at Midfield, forever.If you like the show, please tell a friend and leave a five-star review. If you want to keep up to date with the show, subscribe on your podcasting app of choice and follow the show on Twitter at FieldFlipping.If you have a question you'd like answered on the show, send us a DM on the show's Twitter account.

The premiere for The Pocketful of Dead Fish is here! The Attorneys face unexpected twists and turns while executing their plan to capture Reginald Figglesbottom. Support Us Support Us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/drimbus Visit Our Website: https://www.drimbus.com Sign up for The (Not-So) Daily Drimbus: https://www.drimbus.com/newsletter Buy us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/whimsic Buy our Merch: https://www.drimbus.com/merch Find and support our sponsors at: https://fableandfolly.com/partners Cast Amanda Fernandez-Acosta (Barbara) Hannah Schooner (Viper Hale)(Editing) Michael Pisani (Jessica Feltcher) Nick Benetatos (Gary Mogbile) Nicholas Palazzo (Thomas Phelps) TJ Berry (Teronicus) Giancarlo Herrera (DM)(Editing/Sound Design) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Attorneys set their plan in motion and head to the Autograph Theatre to secure their spots in The Pocketful of Dead Fish. Support Us Support Us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/drimbus Visit Our Website: https://www.drimbus.com Sign up for The (Not-So) Daily Drimbus: https://www.drimbus.com/newsletter Buy us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/whimsic Buy our Merch: https://www.drimbus.com/merch Find and support our sponsors at: https://fableandfolly.com/partners Cast Amanda Fernandez-Acosta (Barbara) Hannah Schooner (Viper Hale)(Editing) Michael Pisani (Jessica Feltcher) Nicholas Palazzo (Thomas Phelps) TJ Berry (Teronicus) Giancarlo Herrera (DM)(Editing/Sound Design) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A handy guide to emotional agility. HaHaHappy.org

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with the Legendary Ann-Margret About Harvey's guests: Today's special guest, Ann-Margret, is a legendary actress, singer, dancer, and recording artist who's been dazzling audiences for over 6-decades.   On the big screen, she starred in many iconic films including “Pocketful of Miracles”, “State Fair”, “Bye Bye Birdie”, “Viva Las Vegas”, “Carnal Knowledge”, “Tommy”, “The Cincinnati Kid”, “I Ought to be in Pictures”, “52 Pick-Up”, “Grumpy Old Men”, “GRUMPIER Old Men”, “Queen Bees” and many more.   On television, you've seen her in dozens of sitcoms, variety shows, TV specials, movies and miniseries including “Who Will Love My Children”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “Life of the Party”, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town”, “Blonde”, and of course, her recurring roles in “Ray Donovan” and “The Kominsky Method”.   She headlined in Las Vegas for decades and has toured all over the world with her exciting live show.  She's received 2 Academy Award nominations and 2 Grammy Award nominations, and she's won 5 Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy Award, 2 Photoplay Awards and 3 Golden Apple Awards.  And for her contributions to the film industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.   She's recorded 14 albums, including her latest album released earlier this year, entitled, “Born to be Wild”, featuring guest appearances from Joe Perry, Pete Townsend, Cliff Richard, and our recent guest Pat Boone among many others.   Our guest's longstanding commitment to the men and women of the American military is well known and admired by all.  In the 60s she toured 3 times with the USO to Vietnam and Southeast Asia, performing for tens of thousands of servicemen.  In 2003, the USO honored her with its Spirit of Hope award, and in 2005, she appeared at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, to welcome troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.   And now, she's produced a new Ann-Margret perfume, available online at ANNMARGRETPERFUME.COM, with all profits going to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.  Last year, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Nevada.  And she's also been awarded the highest honor from her native Sweden.   She's a Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star.  And most recently, she received the Living Legend Award from the Women's Image Network.  And if all of that weren't enough, let me add that Empire magazine ranked our guest as number 10 on its list of the 100 Sexiest movie stars all time. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about Ann-Margret, go to: https://annmargretperfume.com/  #AnnMargret    #harveybrownstoneinterviews

The actor on the late love of his life, his wife Joan Washington, and the final message she left him

Chantel and Liz reminisce with their producer, Kahm, about all the great guests, amazing knowledge that was shared and funny moments from the episodes in 2023.If you have any questions you would like us to ask our Subject Matter Experts, send them our way to apennyforyourthoughts@centrisfcu.orgFollow Centris on Social!Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedInThis is another Hurrdat Media Production. Hurrdat Media is a podcast network and digital media production company based in Omaha, NE. Find more podcasts on the Hurrdat Media Network by going to HurrdatMedia.com or Hurrdat Media YouTube channel!

GGACP continues its celebration of the 2023 holiday season by revisiting this mini-show from 2017 as Gilbert, Frank and Raybone take a longer look at some lesser-known (and deservedly so, in some cases) Christmas flicks, including "Susan Slept Here," "Pocketful of Miracles," "A Carol for Another Christmas," "Santa Claus vs. the Devil" and "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't." Also in this episode: The cinema of Sonny Fox! Grizzly Adams to the rescue! Gilbert dons a Santa suit! Frank Capra cries plagiarism! And the squirrel that saved Christmas! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTOP Entertainment Reporter Jason Fraley interviews filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who screens her new documentary “A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings” today, tomorrow and Thursday at The Avalon Theatre in Washington D.C. They discuss the making of the film, her family's tragic experience with the Holocaust and why it's a powerful statement against rising fascism and antisemitism today. (Theme Music: Scott Buckley's "Clarion") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WTOP Entertainment Reporter Jason Fraley interviews filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who screens her new documentary “A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings” today, tomorrow and Thursday at The Avalon Theatre in Washington D.C. They discuss the making of the film, her family's tragic experience with the Holocaust and why it's a powerful statement against rising fascism and antisemitism today. (Theme Music: Scott Buckley's "Clarion") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway,” contributed an essay to the Book Review recently in which he discussed the evolving role the cadaver has played in detective fiction and what it says about the genre's writers and readers.Towles visits the podcast this week to chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about that essay, as well as his path to becoming a novelist after an early career in finance.Also on this week's episode, Sarah Lyall, a writer at large for The Times, interviews the actor Richard E. Grant about his new memoir, “A Pocketful of Happiness,” and about his abiding love for the book “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

On this Summer Special of The One Way Ticket Show, Host Steven Shalowitz welcomes Hollywood icon, Ann-Margret, to the program. The Swedish-born actresss and performer has won five Golden Globe Awards, has been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammys, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards – winning one.   She's been a headliner at sold out shows, and has 56 films and counting to her credit, everything from "Viva Las Vegas" to "Grumpier Old Men", "Bye Bye Birdie" to "Carnal Knowledge", and "The Cincinnati Kid" to "The Break Up". She has worked alongside the great performers of the 20th and early 21st century, including: George Burns, Bette Davis, Elvis, Steve McQueen, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Jack Lemon, Claudette Colbert, Jack Benny, Sophia Loren, Jack Nicholson, John Forsythe, Anthony Hopkins, Carol Burnett, Anthony Quinn, John Wayne, Alan Arkin, etc. In 2003, the USO honored Ann-Margret with its Spirit of Hope Award, named in honor of Bob Hope, her friend whom she performed with in Vietnam during the war. In our conversation, Ann-Margret touches on: Performing with the USO, first in Europe as a college freshman at Northwestern, then in 1966 in Vietnam and back in 1968 with Bob Hope What she learned from Bette Davis while working on the 1961 film (her first), "Pocketful of Miracles" Elvis' greatness as a performer and if we'll ever see the likes of another What Bob Hope did for soldiers serving in Vietnam which revealed his caring side John Wayne's kindness Why she loves motorcycles  How her drama teacher at New Trier High School told her at age 16: “Olsson, you're going to be an actress in the movies”. Plus, Ann-Margret shares how her dear friend, actor Justin Chambers, said he was going to create a perfume for her.  Twenty-five years in the making, the limited edition Ann-Margret Eau de Parfum has now been launched with all profits going to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. To purchase, visit: www.annmargretperfume.com

Oscar-nominated actor Richard E. Grant (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?,""Gosford Park”) has kept a diary since he was ten-years-old. His archives cover everything from his early career as a struggling actor to caring for his late wife Joan Washington after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Richard tells guest host Talia Schlanger about his new memoir “A Pocketful of Happiness,” which chronicles their love story and how Joan – an acclaimed vocal coach for actors – was his most trusted collaborator. Scarborough, Ontario's Loony talks about the story behind her new single, “Old Friends.”

Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness.Also, podcast critic Nick Quah reviews Dreamtown. Comic Leanne Morgan calls herself the "Mrs. Maisel of Appalachia." She says she's interested in speaking to an audience that she says gets forgotten — middle-aged women, mothers, and people in rural America. She has a new Netflix special called I'm Every Woman.

Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness.

The boys decipher clues to track down Mr. Godwin's whereabouts.  Follow Us on Social Media: Instagram: @talesfromthegroup Twitter: @tftgpod Cory's Twitch: @sirvalentinian Dustin's Medium: @dustytomes Podcast Art by Hayley Foster (@doodlesbyred on Instagram)

Hi friends!! I love the weeks where I have nothing but good news to share, so lets get into it!Today we are chatting about: My two movie reviews: Spiderman & Elemental My mini breakdown with The OtterBig ENGAGEMENT NEWS Tales from my weekend Kourtney Kardashian's big announcement Ask.Ashlee: Getting ready for a new job ISW: Social media suggestions! Please share this podcast with someone who you love!!

We're coming to you mid-Sunshine Double, which at this point is more like Sunshine Month? Sunshine Quarter? Anyway, pack your SPF. We're seeing storylines emerge for the year: is there a WTA Big 3 emerging? Who else will join that top tier? Is Carlos poised to dominate? Will the racquet talk? Beyond the tennis being played, we're covering two continuing stories: the attempts by the WTA to protect players from abuse and exploitation, and the CVC/WTA deal and what that means for revenue. We also have a discussion on one of our favorite topics: the state of tennis journalism and its many challenges.   0:35 Hashtag tyranny 4:55 Rybakina beats Iga & Aryna to win Indian Wells - a new “big 3?”  14:20 Carlos comprehensively picks apart the draw in IW 19:00 Miami so far: is Bianca “back?” Taro Daniel bagels AZ, the world cheers 24:30 Iga debuts a new clothing sponsor 29:40 Continuing story: new developments with the WTA's efforts to combat abuse  37:45 More on the CVC deal: finding new revenue opportunities based on the social (and real) value of equal prize money 43:50 The conundrum of tennis, or any sport, having a diligent, critical, and *paid* press corps 55:10 Listener questions: Scream 6 and Daddy Pedro Pascal

THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT!But you might not have thought to use THIS particular app in the classroom.What is it?  Google Keep!If you haven't thought about using the Google Keep app for your productivity and organizational needs in the classroom - then buckle up - all that is about to change!Today's guest is none other than the amazing Michelle Emerson from Pocketful of Primary.Michelle Emerson has taught 2nd grade and 4th grade for seven years and now supports teachers around the world by creating digital teacher resources, producing educational videos for teachers on her YouTube channel, Pocketful of Primary, and sharing productivity tips on her podcast, Teaching to the TOP. She believes all teachers should feel empowered by their profession instead of overwhelmed and seeks to help educators master technology and create a work-life balance through her tips and strategies.In our conversation, Michelle is going to blow your mind with new ways that you can use Google Keep to get (and keep) all your ducks in a row!  From checklists to collaboration, and so much more - Google Keep is about to become your new virtual teacher bestie.FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES VISIT:  classroomnook.com/podcast/142LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODEGrab Michelle's FREE Google Keep Headers HERE!Follow Michelle on Social Media:YouTubeInstagramPodcast: Teaching to the TOPWebsiteCLICK HERE to grab our LIMITED TIME FREE LINKtivity on Space - perfect to use as fast-finishers, at-home learning exploration, school breaks, and MORE!

No Camberwell Carrots are on the menu in this week's episode with – yet another national treasure – Richard E Grant. Richard E Grant's new book ‘A Pocketful of Happiness' is published in hardback by Simon & Schuster on 29th September. Buy it here. Follow Richard on Twitter @RichardEGrant and Instagram @richard.e.grant Recorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive. Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations). Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial. And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show. Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.