Backlisted

Nov 12 2024 228 ep. 68 mins 1.8k

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The literary podcast presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller. For show notes visit backlisted.fm and get an extra two shows a month by supporting the pod at patreon.com/backlisted

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Grinny & You Remember Me! by Nicholas Fisk

Nov 12 2024 72 mins

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 matter of urgency. The plot of Yo

Round the Fire Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

Oct 31 2024 65 mins

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 merely being the creator of Sherlock Ho

Nico: Songs They Never Play On the Radio by James Young

Oct 21 2024 75 mins

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 the early 1980s she was living in

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Oct 07 2024 58 mins

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 American science fiction writer, Octa

Her First American by Lore Segal

Sep 23 2024 69 mins

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 episode. She is joined by the distin

Season 3 Prequel

Sep 16 2024 70 mins

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 childhood reading; I Will Die in a Fo

Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice - Rerun

Sep 09 2024 77 mins

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 Katharine Kilalea's OK, Mr Field and

Absolute Beginners - Rerun

Aug 26 2024 66 mins

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 Octavia Butler, with guests Salen

Summer Reading 2024

Aug 12 2024 72 mins

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, a re-issue of a controversia

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Jul 29 2024 63 mins

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. Whilst we refrain from revealing the