I’m thrilled to announce that on Wednesday 26th February, I’ll be doing a live podcast recording under my podcast’s new name, Author’s Afterword, with guests Alex Hay, Stacey Thomas, and Lucy Barker. It’ll be held at Goldfinch Books in Alton, Hampshire, and will consist of a general bookish conversation with time for audience questions and book signing afterwards. I’m over the moon that Alex, Stacey, and Lucy have agreed to join me – they are fantastic both alone and as a group and I’m looking forward to a second round of conversation with them following Milestone Episode 2.

Tickets are available from Goldfinch Books here. It’s a great, fairly new, indie bookshop with a great bar and I’m happy to say it’s fully accessible. Hope to see you there!

And, because it’s only right, given it’s a podcast event, here’s the announcement in audio:

Alex Hay is the author of The Housekeepers, an Edwardian heist novel which sees a group of disgruntled former employees and associates plan to clear a Mayfair mansion of all its contents over a 24 hour period whilst the mistress of the house hosts a ball. Optioned for film, The Housekeepers was the Waterstones Thriller of the Month for May 2024. Alex’s new novel, The Queen Of Fives, is set in the Victorian era and focuses on a confidence trickster who has five days to win the hand of the richest man in England and make off with his money. It will be published in the UK on 30th January 2025.

Lucy Barker is the author of The Other Side Of Mrs Wood, a comedic tale of Victorian mediumship.  The eponymous Mrs Wood is getting on a bit, at least by Victorian standards, and when she spies a young woman watching her house she seizes both the moment and the girl and suggests an apprenticeship – that’ll keep her at the forefront of everyone’s minds! But Miss Finch has a way about her and soon Mrs Wood finds herself with a particularly gifted student who is close to stealing the spotlight.

Stacey Thomas is the author of The Revels, a beautifully written novel set during the witch trials. We follow Nicholas, a man who can hear the dead sing, as he attempts to end the witch hunts.  With a theatrical atmosphere courtesy of the period and James I’s obsession with stamping out anything related to the Occult, Thomas shows us the horrific reality of the time to stunning effect.

A few weeks ago I received a lovely hand-written invitation to an event I couldn’t miss…

Last night, Orlando Ortega-Medina’s The Death Of Baseball launched at Waterstones Kensington, a brilliant turnout of people on the basement level, canapés and wine on offer, seats surrounded by the well-known black shelves. Train strikes meant that I unfortunately had to leave early, so this post isn’t a full reflection but should give you a good idea of the book following on from my review last month. (Needless to say, I still recommend it.)

The book, a psychological thriller which opens on 5th August 1962 and continues through the 1970s, is about two young men. One, Japanese American Clyde, was born on the August date – the day Marilyn Monroe died – and as he grows up he comes to believe he is Monroe reincarnated. The other man, Syrian American Raphael, struggles with kleptomania and the affects of being told he is a special person within his Jewish faith.

Helen Lederer, interviewing, introduced Orlando; the actress (who herself became an author) met him a few years ago and they share some background – both are parents of immigrants. The star of the evening was wearing particularly appropriate attire – his shirt sported prints of Marilyn Monroe alongside other actresses.

The book begins with a first-person note to the reader in Monroe’s voice. Orlando started it that way to give the reader the belief that there might be something in his premise of reincarnation. The follow-on from the prologue, the textual transition to his character Clyde, was a part of this. (The author later said that the book cover depicts Clyde – with its rendering of Monroe, this is a fascinating idea.)

Of the idea in general, and in the context of the abuse Clyde suffers from his father, the author spoke of Clyde protecting himself by protecting Marilyn Monroe inside him. Clyde is Japanese because Orlando thought that would look interesting, a Japanese Marilyn walking down the street. In order for Clyde to embrace his identity as Monroe, he feels he must dress as her. (In the book, Clyde thinks of transitioning but it’s in the context of becoming Marilyn rather than becoming a woman.) Clyde thinks he’s Monroe because the evidence is there – the author noted Clyde’s father talking about spirits inside of his son and Clyde’s believing the idea but not what kind of spirit his father believed it was. Helen asked about why the child abuse; Orlando cited his normal upbringing, that he’s interested in bad behaviour because of the difference.

In the case of Raphael, he thrives in his religion. Orlando cited him as his favourite character. The kleptomania is not his fault, he said, it’s a psychological condition for which he needs help and support. The familial support is something he doesn’t receive; his mother doesn’t understand him and thinks he can change, easily.

Of the sexuality of both characters, the author noted wanting to make it just another part of them. The relationships/sort-of relationships in the book deal a lot with unrequited love, but Orlando, whilst having a firm opinion himself, leaves the last situation of love in the book to the reader.

The author wanted to explore how people find their identity, having felt himself a foreigner at home having been born in the USA whilst his parents had immigrated there from elsewhere. He’d wanted to explore identity in his previous book, Jerusalem Ablaze, but the opportunity had not arisen.

Orlando’s writing method gels with what you might expect upon reading the book – he writes automatically, writing down whatever flows, and goes where the inspiration takes him. Of the reading experience of the book, Helen summed it up: ‘you do have to concentrate but it’s not difficult to concentrate’.

This reader can only agree.

My thanks to the author for inviting me. The Death Of Baseball published today.

On Monday evening, poet Raymond Antrobus was announced as the winner of this year’s Rathbones Folio Prize.

The ceremony took place in the Entrance Hall of the British Library. It was the culmination of several months of discussion and well over a month of concentrated publicity; the shortlist had been announced early in April; the judges announced last November.

Beginning with live music and time for drinks and conversation, there ceremony was then officially opened. We were welcomed by Rathbones (sponsor) and Andrew Kidd (co-founder of the prize). The shortlisted authors who attended were brought onto the stage for photographs and flowers. The Chair of the judges, Kate Clanchy, then took over to tell us about the judging process, the three judges’ general opinions of the books, and to announce the winner. Alice Jolly, she said, had been a close second.

Raymond Antrobus gains £30,000 for his poetry collection, The Perseverance. Clanchy had introduced him as winner saying it was “an exceptionally brave, kind book – it seemed, in our atomised times, to be the book we most wanted to give to others, the book we all needed to read”. In a show of wonderful humility, Antrobus thanked everyone and noted the poets he spotted in the audience, spending time introducing them. He then read a poem from his collection.

Antrobus is a Jamaican British deaf poet. Born 33 years ago in Hackney, East London, he was considered dyslexic and severely learning disabled, his deafness not discovered until the age of 6. He performs his poetry often and was one of the first recipients of an M.A. in Spoken Word Education (from Goldsmiths, London).

The Perseverance, published by small press, Penned in the Margins, in October, explores issues such as his diagnosis, his mixed heritage experience, masculinity, and his beloved father’s alcoholism and later decline into dementia and death. For it, the poet has received the Ted Hughes Award, having included a redacted poem Hughes wrote about deaf children (‘Deaf School’), and writing a response to it; Hughes’ poem showed to Antrobus a lack of understanding.

The Guardian says the book ‘confronts deeply rooted prejudice against deaf people’. In an interview with literary magazine, Four Hubs, Antrobus said: “This book is me trying to find a use for all the things in my life that felt like a disadvantage, a nuisance, the things I once tried to hide”.

Have you read or do you plan to read any of the books that were shortlisted?

Yesterday I attended the shortlist announcement for this year’s Rathbones Folio Prize. It was great to see Annabel of Annabookbel and Clare of A Little Blog Of Books; we had a good natter about our thoughts so far and of course books in general. The setting was wonderful, a room with a view across the City. As the time came for the announcement we gathered towards the microphone.

Introducing the announcement, Andrew Kidd, co-founder, said:

“The 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize judges, themselves all writers of great renown, have tackled their brief – to identify the single best work of literature published in the English language last year – with amazing energy and flair. The eight, brilliant books now in the running for that distinction cut across all borders and genre, and are a testament to how writers are also the most astute and generous of readers.”

This year’s judges are writers Kate Clanchy (chair), Chloe Aridjis, and Owen Sheers. They chose the following eight books from a longlist of 20:

Ashleigh Young: Can You Tolerate This? (Bloomsbury)
Guy Stagg: The Crossway (Picador)
Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile (Unbound)
Anna Burns: Milkman (Faber & Faber)
Diana Evans: Ordinary People (Chatto & Windus)
Raymond Antrobus: The Perseverance (Penned In The Margins)
Tommy Orange: There There (Harvill Secker)
Carys Davis: West (Granta)

Established in 2013 and sponsored by Rathbone Investment Management, the Prize is open to writers from around the world who write in English. It is open to all types of books – the longlist included a collection of short stories, and the shortlist includes essays (Young), travel writing (Stagg), and poetry (Antrobus). Last year’s winner was Richard Lloyd Parry for Ghosts Of The Tsunami.

The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on 20th May at the British Library.

Disclaimer: I was invited to cover this festival on a press pass.

The Breakfast Club at Curious is a regular feature, held each morning of the festival. It is presented by Paul Blezard and a member of the team of magazine The Week, who are joined by other festival guests. On the Sunday the panel was Simon Nixon of The Times, Misha Glenny, Paul Blezard, Caz Moore (The Week), and Simon Evans. The Breakfast Club is a discussion of that day’s headlines, so there is a lot of politics involved but also lighter stories. This morning, Brexit was front and centre, with the talks about deals taking up many first pages (each panel member discusses stories from a certain newspaper). The news is a couple of weeks old now, so I’ll refrain from repeating it.

At the age of eight, Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock, wrote a book about a mermaid that she sent to a publisher, gaining her her first rejection letter. This she told Rowan Pelling and the assembled audience, her head dressed in a fun, colourful headband, the likes of which had started to permeate the festival late the previous day.

The author, who always tries to get an idea about someone from their objects rather than written sources, had worked in the British Museum where there is a ‘mermaid’ tail. She described it as a grotesque thing (it appears to be this one) and it inspired her; she looked at the idea of a gentleman from the past ordering a ‘mermaid’ and not getting what he’d expected. Even though, she said, the reality of the mermaid is horrible, we still have this idea of beauty.

Speaking of symbolism, Imogen said that the mermaid echoes the idea of a woman having personal agency, which was compelling in the context of the 18th century (in which she sets her story). 50,000 women – 1 in 5 – in London at that time, were involved in sex work. If one’s husband died, sex work was one of the only ways to survive. And it provided agency. It was part of both a luxurious and a wasteful world. A woman who started young might not make as much money as she grew older, but she’d have a lot of secrets in her arsenal she could use as blackmail.

Imogen referenced the life of Emma Hamilton: married to a Lord, later the mistress of Lord Nelson, and the muse of artist George Romney – she’d started out as a sex worker. The author also referenced Kitty Fisher, a prominent courtesan who was one of the first people to be famous for being famous. (She is mentioned in the letters of Frances Burney and Horace Walpole.) She researched sex workers through Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, an annual directory of prostitutes in London. A 1791 report of the List estimated a circulation of 8,000 copies a year.

I left Imogen’s talk to pop into the biggest tent where Matt Haig was talking to Dolly Alderton.

Matt is worried about the idea that he’s at a computer and there’s a wall between him and other people. He spoke of the way the internet can be a short-term distraction that has a long-term effect – ‘everything now is out to distract us’. Today’s young people, he said, are the most knowledgeable about the addiction, and are the best at taking breaks from electronic devices.

The author called the daily news “the drip-feed of doom,” a problem; the need to be completely up to date. He feels more knowledgeable when away from it all.

Next up was Guy Gunaratne talking to Georgina Godwin. A couple of days after this talk Gunaratne’s book was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker.

Guy talked about his familial background. His father was originally from Sri Lanka, coming to England in 1981 and visiting bookstores, Foyles in particular, to learn English. Guy recently tweeted about his book being in Foyles and it went viral because people erroneously thought there was a connection to Windrush¹. Guy was then asked by various outlets to talk about Windrush rather than his book, which he couldn’t do because his ancestry was not that of the generation in question.

What his book, In Our Mad And Furious City, is actually about is terrorism. The thoughts began for him when he thought that a person who was then thought a terrorist looked like someone he knew – the person was not someone he knew but this sparked the idea of an acquaintance with connections to terrorism. He thought of how the person could be him, could be anyone, saying we all have things that could turn us.

Guy felt it was more important to describe the feeling he had than to tell stories. He chose to write about this via 5 characters. He said it was an organic process: 3 characters came to him at first, and he followed them to see where they went. He went where he was led, talking about the method of writing wherein the character leads the author. Language is very important to him.

The estate in the book is inspired by Neasden, a suburb of north London, residence to many Muslims and Hindus. For his writing he embraced the fact that in places, nothing around you says you’re going to be anything special in life, and considered the idea that a person can think they can be the exception and work towards that. If a book is authentic, he said, you talk about readers’ experiences. If it comes from a marginalised community, it can become a way to re-marginalise. We have to be careful.

Originally a film maker, Guy used to pitch human rights stories to news outlets, films that he said would meander rather than have a definite point (he likes that kind of exploration in novels). What he likes about writing books is that it’s private and you’re in your own head space; he said that when you confront things it’s private, no one knows your thoughts. Writing was one of the furthest things away from what he thought he could do in life as a career, though he has been writing since childhood.

Lemn Sissay’s poetry reading started in a big way. Paul Blezard introduced him and it became comedic, with Lemn jumping on his back and later pretending to be Usain Bolt, the signature pose.

Lemn’s performance reminded me a lot of spoken word. In between readings he would tell funny anecdotes: “It’s easy to exaggerate when you’re a poet – ‘Lemn Sissay has performed all over the world!’… Wigan [note: where he used to live].” It was Lemn who was heckled by a Curious dog. He told an anecdote about meeting a woman in a restaurant for a date and, when she asked him what he did for a living, jumping up on the table to perform a big poem, which resulted in her having left by the time he had finished it, the yelling scaring her off.

His poems were great – moving, clever, various – but it was the note he ended on that will stay with me. He talked about his time as a fostered child and the ‘care’ he received from social workers – he recently won his court case against the man who took his parents away from him.

(Lemn’s mother arrived in Britain from Ethiopia, gave birth to him, and then foster parents were found to look after him while she went to finish her studies. However instead of Lemn being fostered, the social worker who took him told the people who came to look after him to treat it as an adoption. Once the couple had their own children, and felt that Lemn had become difficult – he was “eating cake without permission and staying out late at night” (Hattenstone, 2017) – they left him in a children’s home and told him there would be no contact. He subsequently suffered poor treatment in the care homes. It was only after he left the care system that he was able to find out about what happened. In his case file was a letter written by his mother to the original social worker, begging him to return her son. Lemn finally met her at 21 years of age.)

The poet has written plays and given talks about his childhood. Now he is making a documentary on the care system.

“For me,” said Kate Mosse, responding to Rowan Pelling’s very first question, “it’s never the topic, it’s the place”.

Kate found out about the Huguenot diaspora that travelled to South Africa, then found a family that went by the same name as those in her first book, Labyrinth. Wine-making Huguenots were invited to South Africa; the French and South African wine industries come from each other. The research inspired a new quartet of novels – the session at Curious was for her newest novel, The Burning Chambers.

Kate loves the idea of her character going to work as normal, with history playing its part later in the day – in her version a war begins. “History is a view,” she said, “we will never know exactly what happened… We don’t need to know every statistic to know what people felt… those emotions don’t change.” She is interested in the people who don’t appear in the history books.

The author starts her stories with the research so it’s “just there” once she starts writing. She doesn’t plot, instead she just writes with the history behind her. Somewhat echoing what Guy Gunaratne had said a couple of hours previously, she said, “There’s always a moment when a lead character presents themselves.” She dislikes writing graphic violence but believes novelists have a responsibility to make it real – “You owe it to history not to make it pretty”.

Two interesting facts she told us:

• By throwing the Huguenots from their country, France lost its craftsmen, because most craftsmen were from that group of people.
• During the dissolution of the British monasteries, lots of French bookshops opened because they had access to all the books the English no longer wanted.

Comedy headliner, Al Murray, walked onto the stage holding his customary pint of beer. The household name, who calls this persona The Pub Landlord, always ensures there will be biting views that can be laughed at. At Curious he brought the front rows into the proceedings, getting a man to go and get his wife a drink so that she could be asked about their relationship in his absence.

As the sun started to dip and the sky clouded over, the final act of the festival, Gareth Malone, rehearsed with his team in the Gorse tent and then took a ten minute break whilst everyone swarmed in. Gareth is well known for his TV choir documentaries/series – in one he grouped together disadvantaged youths and in another, which spawned a hit single, he gathered a group of military wives – some in the military themselves – to sing at the Royal Albert Hall. But on this occasion, he shared the stage with a much smaller group of people – several members of a choir and a team of four beside him. They sung less musically-layered versions of famous songs – Sting’s Fields Of Gold, Avicii’s Wake Me Up, Toto’s Africa (the last was particularly excellent) – and a few of Malone’s own compositions.

I left as everything was winding down; the last parties and celebrations in force in the main area, the music booming and beautiful, and the food vans starting to pack away; as I prepared to walk through the box office for the final time, I was approached by a member of staff from the Purbeck van, who gave me a serving of my favourite ice-cream, left over from the day. It was a lovely gesture and a lovely way to end a fantastic weekend.

Footnotes

¹ The Windrush generation are people from the Caribbean who emigrated to Britain in the mid 20th century. It is currently a huge story over here due to the political scandal of government departments telling those who have legally been here for decades that they are here illegally and must go home. More information can be found at Wikipedia.

Online References

Hattenstone, Simon (2017) ‘I was dehumanised’: Lemn Sissay on hearing his harrowing abuse report live on stage, The Guardian, accessed 10th August 2018.