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…

Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time, joins John and Andy for a tour of Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the sixteenth-century fable widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, newly translated by Julia Lovell. The Monkey King's powers include shape-shifting, immortality and "being incredibly…

“A masterpiece I don’t fully understand—and don’t need to.” This week’s book is The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, a bold, baffling, and darkly funny novel that has confounded and enchanted readers since its publication in 1995. Joining us to explore it is Chris Chibnall, award-winning screenwriter, playwright, and now novelist, best known for Broad…

Elif Shafak and Lyndsey Stonebridge join John and Andy for a discussion of the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher whose books include The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianismand Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This being Backlisted, we approach Arendt's formidable oeuvre and truly extra…

Sybille Bedford's A Compass Error (1968) is a classic coming-of-age novel, a love story, a family saga and a study in psychological suspense rolled into one. Joining us to discuss it are the novelist Francesca Reece and Krista Cowman, Professor of History at the University of Leicester. The late Hilary Mantel described A Compass Error, Bedford's th…

We explore Elia Kazan's memoir A Life (1988) with veteran biographer and critic John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, amongst others. Kazan enjoyed a dazzling career in both theatre and film, directing the original stage productions of A Str…

A Backlisted Special dedicated to biographies and memoirs, with books by Nancy Mitford, Roger Lewis, Elizabeth Jane Howard, P.D. James and Jean Rhys. John Mitchinson talks to the writer and friend of the show Laura Thompson about five of her favourite books – two of them biographies (Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford and The Real Life of Laurenc…

Classic literary sci-fi novel set in a post-apocalyptic Kent – this is a rerun of 2019 episode recorded live at the Port Eliot Festival. Riddley Walker is widely considered to be a post-war masterpiece. Anthony Burgess included it in his list of the 99 best novels published in the English language since 1939 saying ‘this is what literature is meant…

The 1864 novella that invented dystopian fiction. In an episode first published in November 2021, we are joined by authors Alex Christofi (Dostoevsky in Love) and Arifa Akbar (Consumed: A Sister's Story) for a discussion of one of Russia's greatest writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was born in Moscow on November 11 1821, 200 years ago this month. We c…

Happy new year! We kick off 2025 - and Backlisted's tenth anniversary year - with our traditional Winter Reading episode, in which Andy, John and Nicky recommend a selection of favourite books to see you through the next few months: fiction and non-fiction, old, new and not yet published. "May you go farther sooner." Discussed in this episode and a…

Join the Backlisted crew as we navigate the swells and surges of Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville. That's right, Moby Dick is a Christmas book! Andy, John and Nicky welcome aboard novelist Jarred McGinnis and writer and editor Erica Wagner to discuss and celebrate this legendary literary leviathan, one that has sunk many a podcast before …

We are joined by the poet Katrina Porteous and the writer and editor Patrick Galbraith to discuss Norman Lewis’s account of the of the three summers he spent working in Farol, a remote fishing village on the Costa Brava in the late 1940s. His book records the intricacies of life in a small community whose rhythms are based on the shoals of sardines…

Rupert Everett joins us to discuss David Niven's memoir The Moon’s a Balloon. This show represents the fulfilment of a long cherished ambition: to dedicate a whole Backlisted to a book that Andy and John consider to be the most entertaining ever written. And who better to join them as a guest than an actor, writer and director who has had his own t…

Sam Leith, author of The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, returns to Backlisted to discuss two novels by Nicholas Fisk, Grinny (1973) and its sequel, You Remember Me! (1984). Fisk's SF thrillers were tremendously popular with young readers during the 1970s and 1980s but his work is now rather forgotten, an error we wish to correct as a…

Happy Hallowe'en 2024! Join John, Andy and Nicky, plus guests Andrew Male and Dr Laura Varnam - AKA the Backlisted Irregulars - for this year's Hallowe'en special, celebrating Arthur Conan Doyle's "grotesque and terrible" Round the Fire Stories, first published in 1908. As he was the first to point out, there was much more to Conan Doyle than merel…

Author Will Hodgkinson and actress and director Caroline Catz join Andy and John to discuss James Young's Nico: Songs They Never Play On the Radio, first published in 1992. This is the story of Nico, former model, film actress, erstwhile singer with the Velvet Underground and darling of Andy Warhol's Factory. After a decade of heroin addiction, by …

This episode features a live recording made at Foyles in London, where John was joined on stage by Una McCormack, making her record breaking tenth appearance on Backlsited, and Salena Godden, who returns eight years after blowing us away in the episode on Hubert Selby Jr. The book under discussion is The Parable of the Sower a 1993 novel by the Ame…

This episode explores the third novel by the nonagenarian American writer Lore Segal which was originally published in 1985 by Knopf and is due to be released in the UK for the first time by Sort Of Books in 2025. We are joined by Sort Of Book’s publisher and co-founder Nat Janscz, who made her Backlisted debut back in 2018 on the Tove Jansson epis…

The waiting is nearly over! Ahead of Backlisted Season 3 - and our tenth anniversary year - John, Andy and Nicky get together to chat about books, vintage vinyl, what they did on their holidays, but mostly books: Sarah Perry's novel Enlightenment, recently longlisted for the Booker Prize; The Haunted Wood, Sam Leith's fascinating new history of chi…

A classic episode from 2018 with a new introduction. This week John and Andy are joined by actor and director Sam West and writer and academic Sophie Ratcliffe to talk about Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal. The poem was composed in the autumn of 1938 while Britain awaited the declaration of the Second World War. Other books under discussion are Kat…

Slang lexicographer extraordinaire Jonathon Green joins John and Andy in this episode originally recorded in 2016 to discuss Absolute Beginners, the classic novel of London teenage life set around Soho and Notting Hill. *Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE show in London on Wednesday Sep 25th where we will be discussing The Parable of The Sower by…

Despite the team's somewhat complex relationship with the idea of ‘summer’, this episode is full of seasonal recommendations. Andy previews Intermezzo, the new Sally Rooney (out in September) and enjoys A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria by the guest on our Agatha Christie show, Caroline Crampton. John chooses Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott…

At long last, it's our Agatha Christie show! We are joined by Caroline Crampton, writer and host of the Shedunnit podcast, and Laura Thompson, author and Christie biographer, for an investigation of Endless Night (1967), a late entry in the Queen of Crime's extensive catalogue and perhaps her last truly great novel of suspense and surprise. NB. Whi…

Children's writer Rachael King and novelist Richard Blandford join John and Andy for a discussion of Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, the eerie, disturbing tale of two sick children who meet in a realm of nightmares. First published in 1958, the book is now considered by critics to be a sui genesis classic. Storr was a prolific author, with doze…

Author Rose Ruane (This Is Yesterday, Birding) picks Gaining Ground AKA Abra (1978) by Canadian feminist writer Joan Barfoot. One day, seemingly on a whim, a woman walks out of her home and her marriage, forsaking her family for a life of near-solitude and self-sufficiency. Many years later, her daughter, now grown-up, comes to find her and to ask …

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the subject of this episode of Backlisted. Dr Martin Shaw and Dr Laura Varnam (hwaet Laura!) join Andy and John to discuss this late 14th-century chivalric romance - or subversion thereof - written in Middle English alliterative verse, author unknown. We discuss the poem's chequered history and a variety of transl…

The work of Douglas Adams - comic genius, futurologist and erstwhile hitchhiker - is the subject of this episode of Backlisted, in particular The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts, first published by Pan Books in 1985. H2G2, as it is known to fans, was a cultural phenomenon in the true sense of that degraded term: first a…

Novelist Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient, The Fury) joins Andy and John to discuss Ford Madox Ford's classic novel The Good Soldier (1915), a tale of passion in which, owing to a narrator of almost comic unreliability, nothing can be taken for granted. It is a book that seems to change on every reading, both a kaleidoscopic psychological drama…

John Grindrod, author of Concretopia, joins John Mitchinson and Andy Miller to discuss Memento Mori, the third novel by Muriel Spark. They also pay tribute to the author and agent David Miller, who passed away recently, and read a short story in his memory. Timings: (may differ due to adverts) 3'00 - Food For All Seasons by Oliver Rowe 9'30 - Good …

This episode is a free sample of our subscriber only show, Locklisted, because the next episode of Backlisted has been delayed through illness (though given that its subject is the radio scripts of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, this tardiness may not come as a complete surprise). A conversation about shelftalkers in bookshops…

For this episode we are joined by the writer, Noreen Masud, author of the acclaimed memoir, A Flat Place (currently shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction). The book she has chosen to discuss is A Marsh Island, a 19th century American novel by Sarah Orne Jowett, who is usually considered one of the foremost proponents of American regiona…

Novelist Andrew Hunter Murray and biographer Laura Thompson join us to discuss The Children of Men (1992), a dystopian thriller by the late P.D. James. The author is probably best remembered as one of Britain's greatest exponents of detective fiction, an heir to the Golden Age of female novelists such as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers…

Award-winning poet Emily Berry joins us to consider the work and troubled life of Anne Sexton. We focus on her brilliant second collection All My Pretty Ones (1962). Sexton was a trailblazing American poet of the so-called 'confessional' school of the 1960s, one whose writing continues to provoke controversy and debate; her friends and contemporari…

This fully illustrated, lavishly produced episode of Backlisted represents the last word in coffee table books. Join John, Andy and Nicky as we dip into the origin, design and continuing appeal of specialist hardcover publishing, via some of our favourite cookery books, exhibition catalogues and sumptuous volumes simply too beautiful to leave on th…

This episode of Backlisted is devoted to A Life in Movies (1986), the first volume of memoirs of the filmmaker Michael Powell who, with his partner Emeric Pressburger, is responsible for some of the finest, most magical and soulful films ever to come out of the UK: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, and many more. …

This episode was recorded in the great city of Liverpool and celebrates the life and work of a great Liverpudlian: George Melly, sometime writer, jazz and blues singer, artist, critic, lecturer and aficionado of surrealism. We are joined by two resident experts: the writer Jeff Young and the playwright and screenwriter, Lizzie Nunnery. The book und…

We are joined by the writer Andrew Hankinson to discuss Walter Greenwood’s classic novel of Northern working-class life. First published in 1933, Love on the Dole, revolves explores the fortunes of the Hardcastle family, who live in industrial Salford in the 1930s, just as the Depression is beginning to bite. Greenwood’s authentic portrayal of the …

For this first episode of 2024 we are joined by the chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings to discuss a novel by her fellow Canadian, Margaret Laurence. First published in 1964, The Stone Angel is a landmark in modern Canadian fiction. The narrator is the unforgettable Hagar Shipley, a spiky, sharp-tongued, proud and profane ninety-year-old who is …

For this year’s Backlisted Christmas Special we are joined by the poet and novelist Clare Pollard and our producer Nicky Birch to discuss not just a book, but adaptations of a book – and there are hundreds to choose from – and all have contributed to making it perhaps the most famous Christmas story of them all: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens…

Today’s episode focusses on a single long poem – Briggflatts by the Northumbrian poet Basil Bunting. It was recorded live in St Mary’s Church, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, as part of the Woodstock Poetry Festival. Andy and John are joined by Neil Astley, the founder of Bloodaxe Books, who knew and published Bunting, and Kirsten Norrie, a poet and comp…

For our 200th episode, we are joined by Richard Osman: television presenter, longtime Backlisted listener, and one of the bestselling authors in the world today. We discuss Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), the final novel by Nevil Shute Norway, whose other books include A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957), widely read in his lifetime …

In this episode, we feature the life and work of Samuel Beckett, one of the most important and influential voices of 20th century literature. We discuss Beckett’s writing across five decades, including his essays, short stories, novels and plays: ‘Dante… Bruno. Vico… Joyce’; ‘More Pricks Than Kicks’; ‘The Unnamable’; Krapp’s Last Tape’; and the lat…

Pour yourself a glass of sherry and light a candle, as we dedicate this year's Halloween special to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), the first collection by M.R. James, probably the most celebrated and influential exponent of the weird tale. With the help of undead guests Andrew Male and Laura Varnam we illuminate the life and work of a strang…

This is a new books special episode to fill the gap before we release the Hallowe’en episode next weekend and as part of our episode 200 celebrations. In it, we each select a book we’ve particularly enjoyed over the past year. Andy says The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan (Tyrant Books) is the best novel he's read since Gwendoline Riley's My Phantom…

Episode #197 is dedicated to our late friend Carmen Callil, the founder of Virago, an author in her own right and, on a couple of memorable occasions, a former guest on Backlisted. Joining us are the writer Rachel Cooke and critic and editor Lucy Scholes. Under discussion: The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane J…

In this episode we discuss the controversial and ground-breaking novel, Esther Waters by the Irish novelist George Moore. We are joined by Tom Crewe, author of the prize-winning New Life (Chatto & Windus) and one of this year’s crop of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Esther Waters was first published in 1894 and is told almost entirely fr…

In this episode we are delighted to welcome 2023 Booker Prize Winner Shehan Karunatilaka to discuss Kurt Vonnegut’s eleventh novel, Galapágos. First published in 1985, it is one of his most radical, intricate and humorous works, a Darwinian satire narrated by a ghost from a million years in the future. As Lorrie Moore wrote about it at the time, Vo…

Author and illustrator Rose Blake and writer and musician Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) joined Andy and John at the Greenman festival in Wales on August 18th 2023 to discuss Barry Hines's second novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) and, inevitably, the film adaptation Kes (1969), directed by Ken Loach from a screenplay by Hines himself. This episode wa…

This week, to mix things up a little, it’s our annual round-up of books, old and new, you might enjoy over the summer. John, Andy and Backlisted’s producer Nicky discuss: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker (W&N Essentials); Sheep’s Clothing by Celia Dale (Daunt Books); The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time by Catherine Taylor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson);…

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