x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Backlisted

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

arts books

All Episodes

72:20

Imogen by Jilly Cooper - Revisit

Backlisted ·

2025/10/13

To honour the life of Jilly Cooper, we are replaying this joyous episode from 2019 with a new introduction.Joining Andy and John in this episode are Daisy Buchanan, writer, feminist, host of the brilliant You’re Booked podcast. Daisy’s latest book Read Yourself Happy - How to Use Books to Ease Your Anxiety is published by Dorling Kindersley. She is joined by Dr. Ian Patterson, a poet and retired academic who taught English for 20 years at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Ian has just written Books, A

en

73:59

All The Devils Are Here by David Seabrook part 2

Backlisted ·

2025/09/29

Writer Jason Hazeley joins Andy, Una and Nicky for a celebratory investigation - or investigative celebration - of All the Devils Are Here, the ungovernable literary brainchild of the late David Seabrook and a book we first discussed on Backlisted in April 2016. (You can still find episode 11, which featured critic Rachel Cooke, in the usual places.) This extraordinary work of non-fiction was republished in the wake of our show, since which time it has gone on to find a whole new audience of

en

69:46

The Eye Of the Beholder by Marc Behm

Backlisted ·

2025/09/15

Emmy Award-winning writer David Quantick (Veep, The Thick of It) joins Andy and Una for a discussion of Marc Behm's surreal thriller The Eye of the Beholder (1980). David last appeared on Backlisted almost ten years ago, waaay back on episode 5. On that occasion he brought with him Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson. It is no exaggeration to say The Eye of the Beholder gives that novel a run for its money in terms of sheer audacity, originality and mystery. Marc Behm himself was

en

71:33

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

Backlisted ·

2025/09/01

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (1971), the second Earthsea novel, is the subject of this episode. Joining Una and Andy is writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, current Children’s Laureate. We look at how Le Guin shifts her story from the adventures of Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea to the inner life of Tenar, a girl taken to serve as High Priestess in the labyrinthine tombs. We also consider why, despite her achievements, Le Guin is not more widely known today, and yet her work has clearly shaped

en

77:08

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Backlisted ·

2025/08/18

Leonora Carrington's charming and surreal novel The Hearing Trumpet (1976, probably) is the subject of this episode. Joining Una, Andy and Nicky is author and lecturer Dr Paul March-Russell, who offers insights into all aspects of Carrington's career. Leonora Carrington lived a long and extraordinary life; we discuss the ways in which her biography intersects not just with her books, but her remarkable paintings and sculptures, which at auction now fetch tens of millions of dollars. How did the

en

75:32

A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney

Backlisted ·

2025/08/04

Dave Haslam and Melanie Williams join us to discuss A Taste of Honey (1958), Shelagh Delaney's first play, written and produced when the author was not yet 20 years old. To describe this as an expert panel would be an understatement: Dave Haslam is a former resident DJ at the legendary Haçienda club in Manchester and the author of Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City; Melanie Williams is a professor of film studies at UEA whose most recent book was the BFI monograph on the big screen

en

69:45

The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore

Backlisted ·

2025/07/21

The writer Alan Moore is the subject of this long-awaited episode. Joining Andy and Una is the author and dramatist Simon Guerrier, who has chosen The Ballad of Halo Jones, Moore's collaboration with illustrator Ian Gibson. It was first appeared in weekly instalments in the British comic 2000 AD, before being published in omnibus form by Titan Books in 1986. It tells the story of a bored teenage girl looking for a way out of her humdrum 30th-century existence. For reasons discussed in the show,

en

74:16

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Backlisted ·

2025/07/08

Angel (1957) by the English writer Elizabeth Taylor, is the subject of this special episode - and, as you'll hear, the next episode of Locklisted too.* Joining Andy and Una for a hotly disputed umpteenth appearance on the podcast is our guest, the critic and broadcaster Andrew Male. We last featured Elizabeth Taylor in 2019 when we discussed The Soul of Kindness (1964) on episode 102. Now we are revisiting this most Backlisted of authors, with perhaps her most Backlisted novel, Angel, about a

en

76:13

The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Backlisted ·

2025/06/24

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

en

70:31

Summer books 2025

Backlisted ·

2025/06/09

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

en

75:50

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

Backlisted ·

2025/05/26

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

en

71:44

The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

Backlisted ·

2025/05/12

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

en

66:43

Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Backlisted ·

2025/04/28

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 rude"; listeners of a certain age will be familiar with his legendary exploits - and those of his travelling companions Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - from

en

72:26

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

Backlisted ·

2025/04/07

“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 Broadchurch and Doctor Who, and author of the new detective novel Death at the White Hart.Written in the wake of Ishiguro’s Booker-winning The Remains of the

en

76:27

What Remains by Hannah Arendt

Backlisted ·

2025/03/25

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 extraordinary biography via an intriguing route: her poetry. The book Elif and Lyndsey have chosen for this special episode is What Remains: The Collected

en

74:42

A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford

Backlisted ·

2025/03/11

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 third novel, as 'a powerful and merciless book ... which visits on its heroine a series of humiliations that cut to the quick'. We explore the book in the

en

75:10

A Life by Elia Kazan

Backlisted ·

2025/02/25

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 Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, before making a series of cinematic masterpieces: On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Wild

en

75:20

Biography and Memoir

Backlisted ·

2025/02/11

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 Laurence Olivier by Roger Lewis) and three memoirs (Slipstream by Elizabeth Jane Howard; Time to Be in Earnest by P.D. James and Smile Please by Jean

en

58:10

Riddley Waker by Russel Hoban - Rerun

Backlisted ·

2025/02/04

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 to be.’ Harold Bloom included it in his book The Western Canon, an examination of the work of 26 writers central to the development of Western

en

78:51

Notes from Under the Floorboards by Fyodor...

Backlisted ·

2025/01/21

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 concentrate on his pioneering novella Notes From Under the Floorboards AKA Notes From Underground (1864) and consider its impact and continuing relevance

en

252 results

Similar Podcasts

Podcast Patapoe

0d0a

Diaries: From the Housing Projects to Power

Mia Z. Edwards

九霄电台

九霄电台

The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio| Daily Mystery Dramas

Adam Graham|Old Time Radio Detective Host

The Magnus Archives

Rusty Quill