The literary podcast that has been giving new life to old books since 2015. For show notes visit backlisted.fm and get an extra two shows a month by supporting the pod at patreon.com/backlisted

Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them (1948) is the subject of this episode, almost ten years since Backlisted covered the same author's classic debut Lolly Willowes (1926). Joining Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss this magnificent and inimitable historical novel - and to consider what, if anything, we have learnt during the last decade - is our friend Tanya Kirk, author, editor and the Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge; Tanya appeared on previous episodes about Winifred Holtby's South Riding and Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes. Described by one commentator as the ultimate workplace novel, if your workplace happens to be a medieval convent, The Corner That Held Them reflects Sylvia Townsend Warner's love of nuns, nouns and nonconformists. It is a story without a plot that somehow grips the reader from beginning to end; a work of fiction, according to the author, written "on the purest Marxian principles", that foregrounds the struggle of the individual within enclosed systems i.e. a hastily-constructed nunnery; and an epic novel spanning two centuries of religious persecution, plague, murder, famine and betrayal, that still locates humour in the bleakest, dampest prospect. It is a truly magical book and it was an absolute delight to return to it here, for the first time.



* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive music writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted

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The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Books we think you might enjoy on a plane, by the pool or in the park. Andy, Nicky and our old friend Una McCormack discuss the following fantastic beach reads - Birch reads? - and a novel from Backlisted's own backlist: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre); The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, trans. Adriana Hunter (Penguin); Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes (Faber); and The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (Faber). This is Backlisted's 10th anniversary year, so over the summer, we'll be revisiting a few old favourites or titles by much-loved authors that somehow slipped through the cracks. We last discussed The Lowlife on Episode 64 back in 2018, but it has just been republished and is back in bookshops now. PS. Andy would like it to be known that books can also be enjoyed indoors.

* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted

*You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summer books 2025

The wonderful Nina Stibbe, award-winning novelist and diarist, joins us for a discussion of Sue Townsend's classic comic creation. When it was first published in 1982, the confidential journal of Leicester's foremost teenage poet and intellectual was an overnight success, eventually going on to become the best-selling British novel of the 1980s. Four decades on, we can see it for what it truly is: a masterclass in the art of writing comic prose and a work of political satire that stealthily made its way into several million British homes. Nina, Andy, John and Nicky celebrate Sue Townsend's life and career, laugh at her jokes, and make the case for her to rank alongside Charles Dickens, Stella Gibbons, George Grossmith and E.M. Delafield in the pantheon of British writers.

* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted

*You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

To discuss The Image of Her (1966) by Simone de Beauvoir we are joined by writer and translator Lauren Elkin, whose previous books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, Scaffolding and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir was also a prolific novelist. In The Image of Her—newly translated by Elkin after more than forty years— reads like a dispatch from the smooth surface of a life coming quietly undone. Laurence is a successful advertising executive with a picture-perfect Parisian existence—handsome husband, lover, chic flat, weekends in the country—but when her daughter starts asking difficult questions about injustice, that surface begins to crack.We trace the novel’s shifting reception—from period piece to prescient critique—and consider Beauvoir’s voice as a novelist: ironic, exacting, and unexpectedly funny.

* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted

*You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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