24. Jane Austen, Nazis and Murder: The Ultimate Summer Reading List

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1:40Tabby: There was so much time that marvellous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the plain. It was a sort of stage magic. Now you don't see. Indeed, there was nothing to see. Day after day it was like that, and each morning I leaned on the yard gate, dragging at my first fag, and I'd like to think, marvelling at the splendid backcloth. But it can't have been so. I'm not the marvelling kind. Or was I then? But one thing is sure, I had a feeling of immense content, and, if I thought at all, it was that I'd like this to go on and on.

2:23Tabby: No one going, no one coming. autumn and winter always loitering around the corner summer's ripeness lasting forever nothing disturbing the even tenor of my way as I think someone may have said before me so hello everybody welcome to the book club that was from a month in the country by JL Carr with which Dominic and I are now both very familiar because we recently recorded it on the show and it will be coming to

2:47Dominic: the book club in August I think I think so yeah perfect for summer perfect for summer and it is

2:55Tabby: indeed a wonderfully elusive haunting story about loss and beauty and art and it's set in the aftermath of the first world war and it's in that long hot summer of 1920 and so with summer at the forefront of our minds we thought well we should probably do a summer reading bonus so each of us has picked out three books that we think are fun reads you know escapist and gripping in different ways that you can take on holiday with you to some you know appropriately summery places sometimes tied into the book at other times less so okay yeah dominic take it take it away

3:30Dominic: well first of all summer reading summer reading is quite a special experience isn't it because you've basically got a week or two away from the office or whatever or away from school or

3:41Tabby: university or whatever it might be away from your desk where you read endlessly to read endlessly

3:46Dominic: on a beach but I actually genuinely would I do take loads of books on holiday and one of the joys for me of going on holiday is is doing loads of reading when I think back to when I was a child so our producer Nicole said oh have a think about your summer reading experiences and actually the one that really sticks out for me so i went on holiday when my parents on this sort of 1980s package holiday and i ran out of books in this terrible hotel which i think was in like roads or crete or somewhere like this sort of high-rise monolith and they had a little bookshop in the lobby and not many english language books and i bought this one it was a historical novel about the cathars and it really stuck in my mind because i was about 11 or 12 and it was the first book i'd ever read that had sex scenes in it and descriptions of female nudity so presumably at this point you were perspiring i was just like going redder and twitching i was going kind of bright red and what was worse was it was like a comical mishap with the hotel so the booking had all gone wrong and instead of having two rooms like me and my brother in one room my parents in another we all had to share the same room which i remember like my brother and i thought it was quite fun but my parents my brother was like six or something but my parents were gutted and i couldn't we couldn't understand why they were so gutted anyway so i was reading this book and i kept thinking oh my god i hope my parents don't see what i'm reading but just kind of it was like a sort of my my this sort of nuclear bomb was in my head or something getting bigger and bigger and i was about to explode it's your innocence lost totally so that's my most memorable summer reading experience what

5:16Tabby: i actually had something quite similar because you know i was going to say well presumably this book didn't look you know saucy it didn't exactly look like the kama sutra like presumably it just had I don't know like a castle on it or something so I had something similar I went um on holiday and the house that I went to I finished my book halfway through and there was you know we didn't have kindles and stuff like that so and I just didn't know what to do and I think this is probably why that fear of it's quite pretentious I know but being left without a book I hate which is why I like to have two on the go at one time so I got stuck with this dilemma I was without a book and I found in the bookshelves of this house something that looked wonderfully historical and I was very into history I was about eight or nine maybe and it was Philippa Gregory's the I think it was called the Virgin's Fool or something and it's about this girl from Spain at the high point of the Inquisition who comes over to England because she's escaping persecution because she's a Jew she comes into contact with Elizabeth I as a young girl and Mary Tudor whatever but the important thing to say is that philippa gregory's books can be extremely raunchy saucy saucy bodice rippers the queen's fall that's what it's called the queen's fall had such passages in it and my mom thought it was fantastic i was really getting into the tudors you know getting understanding of the geopolitical situation during that period or whatever it was and so she was like this is brilliant and she bought me like 10 philippa gregory books to read for the next few months and I was just slowly like consuming like sex scene after sex scene as an eight or nine year old and my teacher at school was like your mum's bought those for you like is she okay are you okay and I was very very sad when I got rumbled well as you know this is Sambrook Jr's

6:57Dominic: experience with Game of Thrones I do know this is true my dad bought him Game of Thrones I'd read the book but I was like I think it's much tamer than the tv series yeah it's much tamer than the cathars and then I kind of opened it to try to justify this to somebody I think to my wife and said look at this it's absolutely fine and it fell open on this page and i was like oh god it's

7:15Tabby: terrible presumably that's the night the daenerys targaryen's her wedding night with karl drogo

7:19Dominic: it was that scene and i knew he'd already read it and he said yes i did discuss it with people at school and i was like of course you did anyway we've got massively off track off track as usual

7:28Tabby: let's get to this first summary okay so what's your first summary why this one and is it associated

7:34Dominic: with any particular location for you so first of all i thought i like i'm a big fan of islands I like going to islands on holiday.

7:40Tabby: Sorry, say more. You like islands?

7:44Dominic: I like an island. If I'm on holiday, I like the experience of island hopping or similar. So for example, the islands of the Adriatic. I like a boat trip. I'm obsessed with boat trips.

7:52Tabby: You're a yacht man.

7:53Dominic: I'm not a yacht man. I'm more of a... I like a ferry. Private yacht. The book is one of the most famous books ever written set on an island. It is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. So lots of listeners will know that this book was originally published under a different title, which I don't propose to mention on the show because I don't want us to be cancelled. But the title was changed for, I think, fairly understandable reasons. The book was published in 1939. And it's set on a place, in the book it's called Soldier Island. But it's based on a real place that I've actually been to. And it's called Berg Island.

8:26Dominic: And it's just off the Devon coast. And basically if you go there, there's this big beach. And there's this sort of sea tractor that takes you, when the tide goes out, across the channel to this island. And on the island there's an Art Deco hotel. A hotel that's actually now been restored and it's an amazing kind of art deco condition.

8:42Tabby: I read an article about this. You can literally only get there when... Yeah, by the sea tractor. By the sea tractor, yeah.

8:47Dominic: Exactly, when the tide is out. Yeah. Exactly, amazing. Agatha Christie stayed at this hotel and they now, it's very much a place that you go for Agatha Christie nights or murder mystery nights and stuff. Yeah, they completely buy into it and you can understand why. Because the book is one of her most famous, one of her most celebrated. I think Agatha Christie, I mean, we are going to do Agatha Christie on the show in a few months.

9:05Tabby: Yeah, quite special circumstances.

9:07Dominic: In special circumstances, exactly. And I think she is one of the most underrated modern writers. People have always decried her fiction as very underwritten. But I actually think she's a master, or indeed a mistress, of releasing information to you. But also she's got a really dark view of human nature. This idea that kind of we are all potential killers and that crime, evil is often born out of weakness and out of jealousy and all of this. I love all this. I love her sense of psychology.

9:37Tabby: I remember you discussed this on a Sherlock Holmes episode and I thought it was very, very interesting. You compared the fact that he sort of has these grand scales and this, you know, in the hand of Baskerville's supernatural element. Whereas with her, it's kind of like the guy, you know, you're the person you feel, you know, the person that shares a bed with you every night. What are they hiding? You know, the living room is full of dark secrets, not, I don't know, the Morelands.

9:59Dominic: It's domestic. And the person who's going to kill you is either motivated by, it's either money or sexual jealousy in Agatha Christie's fiction. And in this particular book, it's such a brilliant, it's such a brilliant conceit. It's these 10 people who get an invitation to, an unexpected invitation to basically a sort of weekend party on this island. And they're like, oh, well, it sounds great. Why not go? and it's from a mysterious person called Mr. U.N. Owen. I mean, it's unknown, basically. And they go...

10:32Tabby: And none of them think to question this.

10:35Dominic: No, because then there'd be no story. Yeah, that's true. And they all go, and the 10 people all have dark secrets. Of course they do. And when they get there, they find out that he's not there, but this kind of tape-recorded message, if I remember right, and then, I mean, it was published in 1939, this isn't a massive spoiler, that the conceit is one by one they start to die and they are being punished for these dark secrets exactly things they did wrong crimes they committed that have never been uncovered they're a cross section of society men and women from a sort of nervous young woman to a kind of sort of septuagenarian judge or something they become terrified and they start to turn on each other a little bit sort of lord of the flies or something there's this mood of growing darkness basically somebody is dying every couple of chapters so it's absolutely gripping and I think it's I think it's the kind of book that once you even if you dismiss Agatha Christie I reckon if you start reading it you will find it very hard to put it down is that your favorite Agatha Christie

11:29Tabby: or is that the one that you most associate with a particular holiday in the summer it's not my

11:33Dominic: favorite but I associate it with this place because we went there a few years ago to this beach and to this hotel and I think the fact that it's on an island you're isolated in a hotel on holiday i just think it works it's a really nice match for the holiday experience i like that i

11:47Tabby: think that's an excellent choice and yeah i'd love to get my hands on it okay so my first choice yeah um it's an obvious combination so it's going to be sun sea and nazis because yeah i have chosen fatherland by robert harris and i slightly incongruously read it on a beach holiday that i was on last year and you know it was actually a natural fit because this place that i was staying

12:10Dominic: at there wasn't loads to do where was the place Debbie just uh I think it was Devon it wasn't

12:16Tabby: Devon it was the Maldives oh Dominic you're gonna make me start talking about package holidays no what did I say companion vouchers yeah um sorry it was the Maldives but there's not a lot to do because you as you say you're like on a you're like an island and to be honest you could carry out a fantastic murder mystery in the Maldives because you're boated out to like this island with like 200 other people you're all staying in this one place and there's nowhere else to go it's not much to do so I literally lay in the sun for a couple of days reading and I think I devoured fatherland because it is totally gripping so what's it about it's it's the ultimate what if it reimagines a world in which the Nazis triumphed in world war ii so it's set in 1964 in Germany.

13:02Tabby: It follows a detective who is investigating what initially seems to be an ordinary murder, but he quickly discovers that there is this conspiracy at the heart of it. And it extends to the very top of the regime. I'm not going to spoil anything because really, this is, it's, you can't put it down. And I don't want to ruin it for people that are considering reading on their next beach holiday, but it's brilliant. It's a thriller. The pace is brilliant. it has very brisk pacing short chapters the tension builds there's a sense of slightly grotesque mystery in the background and there's the strange thing is as well as if you know the history of the second world war or at least you know what the nazis did which you know i think most people do your your pre-knowledge combined with this strange alien but yet believable world and the growing understanding of the reality of what has happened is very unnerving and the world building is i think is excellent because he doesn't explain anything he just will put details into this reimagined europe you know everyday details street names political names what's you know the fact that who's on the throne in england the condition in america that make you like it really does pack out every corner of a reality in which the nazis might have won and it's very very uh engaging and i couldn't put it down and it really sped up what could have been quite a

14:24Dominic: dull holiday it's a dull holiday no it wasn't it was your traveling companion will be delighted

14:33Tabby: well no it was a wonderful holiday it was a wonderful holiday i could just imagine him

14:37Dominic: listening to this his face no he'll be frilled he'll be fading because he uh he read it straight

14:41Tabby: off to me because i i you know you recommended it you're like god this is so boring you have to read and i thought well maybe now we can talk about it so right yeah find something to talk didn't my poor fiance is getting a massive kicking right now so it's it's the book that made robert harris's name really isn't it it was a very big hit so it was published in 1992 in the uk and it became an international bestseller almost straight away and as you say it made his name tabby you you know i know robert harris i do know this and i've always been very envious and i think my one of the times i've been most starstruck was when i produced um on the rest of history an episode that you did with him i remember that so well i was kind of a drooling mess confronted by

15:19Dominic: this guy whose books I've always so enjoyed you said after we did it I said what did you think of that and you used an expression I've never I've seen written down but I've never heard anybody

15:26Tabby: use you said I was pink with glee oh god I use that all the time yeah well there you go so you

15:34Dominic: were pink with glee that's brilliant and Robert Harris I interviewed him in covid for a literary festival it was like an online thing they moved online and he he was exactly first time I'd really met him sort of virtually and he was exactly like I'd hoped he would be he was sitting because he's obviously made a lot of money from his books and he was sitting in this fantastic library in his house yeah and he was sitting there in this sort of leather armchair facing the camera and smoking enormous scar i was actually gonna say that as a joke but sincerely no that's genuinely what he was doing anyway i read i recommend fatherland to people as well i read it my experience of yours is in the maldives i read it on a bus in wolverhampton

16:13Tabby: and I remember I think that's very glamorous and I remember like hoping that the bus would travel more slowly yeah yeah because there'd be a traffic jam or something because I didn't want

16:24Dominic: to get off the bus because I had like 20 pages to go and it's the bit where he's he's basically

16:28Tabby: found what the mystery is all about goes to Switzerland yeah which has been sort of nagging

16:33Dominic: at us the whole time because we of course know the story of the Third Reich anyway it's a great book it's an absolute you know if you're after a thriller I think there are a few better he does

16:41Tabby: throw it so well like the second sleep then you know like he did precipice more recently and that was a quiet steady book that i thought about asquith um in the build-up to the first one i

16:50Dominic: thought that was a brilliant one of his best yeah i think sometimes they're better at the setups than

16:55Tabby: the resolution i i agree i i don't want to speak ill of the great man but i think sometimes the final portion tails off a bit the pacing goes awry not however in fatherland so i'm not going

17:05Dominic: to choose my second book i am going to italy loads of people like going to italy and um if you're sort of um you know a high-end traveler like me tabby you might go to or james bond you might go to the amalfi who loves a ferry yeah you might go to the amalfi coast some very good ferries amalfi coast by the way because you get a ferry to capri or to ischia so it's uh just outside naples so actually we went there for our honeymoon went to naples and the amalfi coast and i read this book then so it stuck in my mind because it was set in this place and the book is the talented

17:39Tabby: mr ripley by patricia highsmith you know what that is a truly exquisite choice good for you

17:45Dominic: oh thank you that's kind so you've obviously read it i'm guessing so for people who don't know it's published in 1955 patricia highsmith quite a strange woman quite a dark woman i think with a very bleak view of human nature she'd already published books like strangers on a train that made her name but the talented mr ripley is probably her best known book now definitely because of that movie because the film and then the tv series um and she takes she has a brilliant idea which is basically she takes this incredibly amoral almost psychopathic central character tom ripley who is an everyman and he travels from the us to italy and he basically insinuates himself into the lives of these incredibly rich kind of playboy people rich americans who are holidaying permanently they're like a permanent gap year in um southern italy and they're very cool and they've they really do have the right yachting shoes and the right gear and stuff they really do yeah perfect like buffons yeah he's very first awkward nilatese he's not from a rich background but he works he copies them he works his way into their sort of friendship group there's one guy in particular played by Jude Law in the film Dickie Greenleaf beautifully yeah he's the ultimate kind of beautiful posh rich boy isn't he there's an element I think we discussed this very briefly

19:05Tabby: in our secret history episode that we did a while ago I think that this was probably a big influence on the secret history the idea of someone from a different class trying to inveigle his way into who considers to be the upper echelons of society.

19:17Dominic: Yeah, so I think it's got links to a few books we've done on the show, actually. So The Secret History, The Great Gatsby, so the idea of the outsider coming in and trying to pretend to be something he's not, the American idea of reinvention, but also actually American Psycho. We're about to record an episode on American Psycho, and in American Psycho, obviously, the central character, you know, we are, in a sense, complicit in his crimes.

19:42Tabby: I could not agree more you're so that's what I've been thinking about kind of non-stop for the last two days that element of when you read books like this and you're like ought I to be enjoying this? Yeah ought I to feel ashamed? Yeah

19:54Dominic: and Taliesin Mr. Ripley you want him to succeed he's a hero you do but he goes through the book because he basically turns spoiler alert he starts killing people and because he has to he's driven to it because he's going to be found out as an imposter and whatnot and you absolutely you know You're on his side, you're on his team, even as you're appalled by what he's doing. I think that's a huge element of it, the self-reinvention, but also the location. The Amalfi Coast, it's real honeymoon territory. It's picture postcards. You've got the sea, you've got the cliffs, you've got these little Italian villages clinging to the side.

20:30Dominic: It's drenched in the world of 1950s Italy, so it's kind of ice creams and that kind of Italian...

20:36Tabby: The birth of pasta. Yeah, what is it?

20:40Dominic: Carbonara invented in 1978. or whatever exactly so i think it's a wonderful book and if you haven't read it you will definitely

20:48Tabby: enjoy reading on holiday that's an excellent selection and what's yours i bet you're gonna go you're gonna go really highbrow and blow me out the water oh i hate to do this to you but i am i'm afraid yeah okay yeah so you say that you know it has that the setting how you know when you're when you're reading on holiday so often the setting can become totally intertwined with and associated with with a book yes so for instance cersei for me i always think of like the sea and everything like that obviously but this book that i'm my next pick is very much intertwined with kind of the english countryside for me because i would come here on holiday in the summers and this is emma by jane austen wow you have gone highbrow i have gone highbrow i just want to show everybody the real intellectual is on this podcast okay so it's written between january 1814 and march 1815 after she'd written jane austen had written mansfield park and then it's published in December 1815 and it's set basically at the same time like the 1810s yeah and it's set in an imagined village called Highbury in Surrey and it follows this heroine Emma over the course of roughly a year as she kind of maneuvers herself through the society of that wonderful kind of Jane Austen world you know everyone's drinking tea and going to balls and the stakes aren't that high and yet they are so high and it's wonderfully bitchy and witty and the other thing is much of the novel actually unfolds you know on walks in the English countryside and garden parties and kind of picnics and strawberry picking like there's this famous trip to Box Hill I was about to say Box Hill yeah exactly it's this kind of warm pastoral setting which felt so appropriate to reading it on these trips to the English countryside stay with my aunt and my uncle and it's very very funny and and emma herself is a very polarizing heroine and when the book was published she divided opinion some people loathed her and therefore couldn't get behind the book and some people really liked her and jane austen herself said i'm creating a heroine who no one but myself will much like because she is very flawed she's petulant she's childish she's spoiled she jumps to conclusions that she ought not to she can be quite harsh with people quite judgmental but she is so amusing and for some reason I don't know I've always rooted for her and the dialogue is sparkly and witty I was just obsessed with I think I used to honestly dress up I used to kind of get my mum's son hats and try to turn them into bonnets and stuff right oh and yeah it's and it's a very easy read as well it's it's you know the plot's fairly simplistic and yet you're kind of hooked with every page you want to know what happens next you want to know whether Emma will succeed in trying to set everyone in highbury up essentially will she herself find love it's very

23:24Dominic: rewarding it's very rewarding in literary terms it's very sophisticated because basically there's such an irony between what you know it's one of the great examples in literature of emma sees everything one way exactly you know she plans everybody's future and she judges everybody's character and she's totally and utterly wrong and i can't think of many examples before that in literature of a heroine you know somebody with whom we're invited to kind of sympathize we see the world through her eyes but about two-thirds of the way through it dawns on us that she's utterly mistaken about everything the story is is her realizing how wrong she was yeah and kind of

24:01Tabby: growing up and and even though she's wrong you still want her to be happy and and she she feels real guilt and remorse as well and it's this wonderful jane austen has this wonderful way of voicing a character without you actively always being in her head. So you get a very strong sense of her from the outside with a slightly satirical knowing voice guiding you through it all. One of my favourite books ever, I think, by one of my favourite authors. So I would say it's a fantastic summer read.

24:27Dominic: Okay, brilliant. So let's go darker with the next one.

24:30Tabby: Always you, bringing us down from our highs.

24:34Dominic: Yeah, well this book should appeal to you, Tabby, because I know that you like, you love visiting like historical sites on holiday. oh yeah i have a real weakness you probably do it more than i do i think i probably do if there's some like crumbling monastery or something you're absolutely there i made my fiancee drive me to wayland smithy for a bank holiday and what do you think of it i loved it i people always say oh it's

24:56Tabby: so disappointing i didn't it's so places like that there's ancient sites you know old ruins

25:00Dominic: so full of possibility okay well i i thought i thought it was i know it's a massive trudge from

25:06Tabby: the car park no it is a massive trudge from the car park but if you're you know vigorous and spry no challenge

25:13Dominic: well I didn't find it a challenge, it's kind of boring

25:18Dominic: also, okay, so that's Whalen and Smithy, the possibility of advertising from them has now well and truly disappeared so you might, some people here might be thinking I'd love to go to the monastery of San Michele in Piedmont you know, it's amazing

25:31Tabby: you took the word straight out of my mouth

25:33Dominic: or they may be thinking, do you know what, it's good but there are better monasteries than Germany and if I was going to film if I was going to make a film based on Italian monastery I'd probably shoot it in Germany if you're one of those people you're laughing because the book I'm about to choose is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco so it's another mystery I make no apology for that because I love whodunits and for holiday

25:56Tabby: yeah nothing better yeah of course

25:58Dominic: for holiday reading a whodunit or a mystery you absolutely need it so Umberto Eco wrote this book and published it in 1980 and it was a truly gigantic worldwide hit won lots of awards and then there was a film of it made in 1986 it is set in 1327 in an unnamed monastery in northern italy and our heroes they're sort of holmes and watson duo they're a monk called william of baskerville there's a literary nod and his sort of uh apprentice or whatever is novice who's called i think adso of milk and there's an abbey milk in and in the film there's sean connery and christian slater and they arrive and there is a series of crimes, murders at the monastery.

26:41Dominic: Monks are dying and they have blackened fingers and blackened tongues and we don't really know why. And Umberto Eco, who was a professor of kind of semiotics in Italy and absolutely steeped in history and literature. This whole book is drenched in, first of all, it's drenched in 14th century history. So the rivalry between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, the papacy is in Avignon, not Rome at this point. There's loads of that kind of political background and whatnot and sort of ecclesiastical politics, which might make it sound a bit dry. But also the actual whodunit element is riveting.

27:15Dominic: It's narrated by the young Christian Slater character himself. For people who are interested in literature, it is also a book about books. It's a very postmodern book. There are lots of in-jokes. The William of Baskerville is obviously a Sherlock Holmes in-joke.

27:28Tabby: It's like a literary treasure hunt almost.

27:30Dominic: Totally it is.

27:30Tabby: I don't think I got that when I read it because I was a teenager. I think your experience of reading it later in life would have been so much richer than mine, because I wasn't aware of all of these.

27:41Dominic: So I've read it twice. I read it most recently and really picked up on all this. So for example, one of the big characters is modelled on another monk. He's the librarian. He's modelled on the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

27:52Tabby: Is he really?

27:53Dominic: And the library, he's called Jorge of Burgos. The library that's at the centre of the monastery and is at the centre of the story, this secret library is based on the libraries that Borges wrote about. And for example, in a short story, the library of Babel. So there's loads of in jokes and stuff, but you don't, I mean, even beyond that. So I first read this as a, on another family holiday, right? Another package holiday to like Greece or something.

28:17Tabby: You've got to stop doing this to yourself. Having these sort of like teenage awakenings.

28:21Dominic: Well, wait, get this, right? So you want like a teenage awakening. So I read this book and there were sections in Latin. and at the time because you don't realize you don't know why you sort of skip over these obviously

28:34Tabby: because no one can really read latin yeah it's like the songs in lord of the rings well some

28:38Dominic: people read the songs some people don't and that's poor or the or the hamilton sections in easter feed anyway um there's the bits in the internet is coming after you again i know again i'm just doing it to provoke them and when i was reading it at the time i thought well it's kind of obvious what's happening these are like sex scenes or stuff that adso our narrator is embarrassed by and then a few years later i decided i was at home with my parents we decided to watch the film of the name of the rose and i'd forgotten about this element of it and i was probably then about like 13 or 14 and i remember watching this film with my parents and then such a poor decision there's this peasant girl who comes in like the christian sater finds her in the kitchen he finds this peasant girl she's absolutely she's extremely good looking right and good uh he disrobes he disrobes this peasant girl and this was the first time i'd ever seen a scene like this on tv but the worst thing was watching it with my parents that's actually one of the most

29:36Tabby: it's mortifying i had that love actually when i was young oh really good i mean insanely i had that with basic instinct oh my god you watch basic instinct with your parents i know mad that's just

29:49Dominic: inviting family drama it so is anyway so that was a traumatic experience however the name of the rose is great back to the book we'll definitely have to do it on the show so that we do have to to tell this anecdote again oh good yeah this is literally like your hillary mantel story well i'll work on it and it'll be better it'll be more i'll embellish it yeah so name of the rose brilliant and now tabby your final choice yeah so my final choice i'm going to take us even further

30:17Tabby: back so i'm going to take us back to the late to late fifth century britain because my final pick would be the winter king by bernard cornwell and this is the first book of his warlord chronicles which is a historical i suppose it's fairly you know supposedly realistic retelling of the king Arthur story yeah but it is not set in its traditional sort of medieval chivalric setting which is you know when the King Arthur stories became popularized it is set in the late 5th century Britain as I say approximately kind of 480 to 500 AD and it's after the Romans have withdrawn from Britain around 410 AD and this is what we know as it's kind of a nothing term but we know as the dark ages and Britain has been is divided into competing kingdoms this is kind of Bernard Cornwell speciality isn't it because he also does the last kingdom and the Saxon invaders are pushing west and while all of this is happening the old pagan religions and there's an element of magical realism to this because you never really know if the magic in the book is real or if nothing's really happening and and it's just kind of the force of people's personalities because the old magic and the old pagan religions are dying because Christianity is on the rise and Christianity and the old pagan religions come into conflict.

31:33Tabby: And Arthur is not a king in this book. He is merely a gifted warlord who has been given the future king of Britain, young Mordred, taken him to war essentially. And the setting is glorious. It is so believable and immersive. It's the Dark Ages, you know, brought to life because there are muddy battlefields. Everyone stinks. You know, it's tribal kingdoms and monasteries, these rugged landscapes. everything feels incredibly vivid. Arthur is the Arthur that you want him to be if you love the King Arthur legend which I know you do as well. Yeah there's nothing disappointing about him but our narrator is a guy called Dervil and he's kind of a soldier who rises up alongside Arthur and all the characters in it are extremely wonderfully real and sort of believable because you have Arthur, you have Dervil Kadan, you have Merlin who is...

32:25Dominic: He's a druid isn't he?

32:26Tabby: yeah he's a far cry from the merlin of i don't know mythology he's this eccentric enigmatic certainly odd druid who's constantly talking about eating cheese and and it and it kind of catapults you between very dark bloody realism and fantastical epic almost fantasy and i remember i think some one of our sort of earliest actual proper conversations on the rest is history and I said I loved this book and I remember you like I love that book yeah and I'd never really come across anyone else I was so annoyed that it wasn't his big hit because I loved it so much and I know I always say this with so many books but I really have gone back and read it many times it was a

33:09Dominic: foundational bonding moment Tabby yeah it's foundational bonding moment of this show and I

33:13Tabby: hope listeners are wiping away tears from their eyes and it's just fantastic it's so enjoyable and I actually reread it last on a trip to you say like sort of old historical brains on a trip to Hadrian's Wall and the setting couldn't have been more perfect. He could stand on the wall and imagine, you know. I can so imagine you doing that.

33:34Dominic: That's so you to take it to Hadrian's Wall.

33:36Tabby: We're sobbing in the background, not another one.

33:38Dominic: Yeah, he was traumatized enough by the Maldives and now he's been forced to go to Hadrian's Wall to wear Bernard Cornwall.

33:44Tabby: Yeah, as well as Waylon Smithy.

33:45Dominic: Yeah, and Waylon Smithy, oh my God. I know, poor guy. So yeah, I agree with you actually. So I've read quite a lot of the Bernard Cornwall's books. Never the sharp books, but I've read The Last Kingdom. And I think these are in a different league. There was an ITV version, adaptation, which I refused to watch because I thought the trailer made it look rubbish.

34:01Tabby: I agree. Don't even talk to me about that. The trailer condemned it for me. Okay.

34:05Dominic: But I think you're right, actually, that Bernard Cornwell's books are quite sort of... Earthy. They're quite earthy, aren't they? They're quite... They're very... There's a grittiness to them. They're very readable, but they're kind of... They are unsentimental, I think.

34:19Tabby: Yeah. So I think... Have you ever watched Vikings, the historical?

34:22Dominic: Yeah, of course.

34:23Tabby: Yeah, so I always think that style of shooting, that style of...

34:27Dominic: Is what they should do with the Winter King.

34:28Tabby: Is what they should do with the Winter King. Yeah, you're right. Because it's kind of, you know, Dervil's always saying how smelly he is. And it's actually quite romantic. He does Guinevere so well.

34:37Dominic: So isn't this one of the interesting things? I mean, actually, there's a lot to talk about with this. We should do this on the show. So with the Winter King, Guinevere and Lancelot are kind of horrible, aren't they? Isn't that the point of them?

34:46Tabby: Yeah, Guinevere is more complex than that, though, because she sort of comes good. But yes, Lancelot is an antagonist.

34:53Dominic: Yes.

34:54Tabby: And commits, you know, terrible crimes against King Arthur and Durval.

34:58Dominic: He's arrogant. He's a Frank. He's a Frank, that's right.

35:01Tabby: He's always brushing his hair, his long, luscious hair. Because, you know, in the myth, it's, you know, beautiful, handsome, so Lancelot. He's not chivalrous, you know, chivalrous at all.

35:10Dominic: He's a massive show pony. But the other thing that I was going to say was, why I think your analogy with the Vikings TV series is good is because in the Vikings TV series, there is a kind of slight magical realist element. There is. There's that weird character, Floky, who's like always, like, I don't know, communing with the gods. Yeah, exactly.

35:28Tabby: And you know, in Vikings, he'll turn around and see a raven and you think, oh, is that Odin? In this, you think, oh, is this cauldron that they have to dig up to save Britain and the pagan religions, you know, is that going to save them? Does that save them? Or is that just kind of a lucky coincidence, you know?

35:43Dominic: That's the second book, isn't it?

35:44Tabby: The Battle of Baden.

35:46Dominic: Yeah, all good. Fantastic. They go to the second book. They go to get this cauldron, Anglesey. Yes. And actually, Anglesey is where I've been spending a lot of my time. Because you know I'm doing this Welsh walk with my mates.

35:55Tabby: I do indeed. Yeah, your very own odyssey.

35:58Dominic: We're walking around the coast of Wales. And we've got to Anglesey. And it's gutting because at that point you have to stop. And to finish the walk, you've got to walk around the whole coast of Anglesey.

36:06Tabby: Yeah.

36:06Dominic: And a lot of Anglesey. So you think you're done. Yeah. There's nothing there.

36:10Tabby: Worry not. There are about 20 more pubs to conquer. We should ask Nicole if we can do this book in Anglesey.

36:16Dominic: wow that would be amazing also i could knock off some of the walk which yeah brilliant you can only choose one you can choose one to recommend to people of your three books which is it okay so

36:25Tabby: we're going on holiday us the whole production team we're on holiday to anglesey which book are we taking yeah okay okay i can only take one so tough you've only got three to choose from or you could choose one of mine if you want really can i i'm not gonna but i'm actually gonna go with because just speaking about it it's probably because it was last on the list and i was so animated by it i'm gonna go with the winter king i just want to ask you one question and see if i get an honest answer how many times have you read that book probably four that's a lot i think that's a lot but that's what that's like that's the whole series that's the three books wow okay so i can

36:58Dominic: choose one and i'm going to choose the name of the rose nice okay yeah because i think it's got i think you can read it purely as a whodunit uh it's because you can read it on so many different levels and it opens the way to so many other books and it's also longer so you want our listeners to suffer yeah no because the angith the christy you'd be done and dusted in two days the name of the rose could you could get a week out of it yeah it's true the winter king's like

37:21Tabby: it's over 400 pages so plenty of reading to do so coming up we have my brilliant friend so back to italy brave new world for whom the bell tolls we're in spain bain rebecca we're in cornwall Lolita.

37:36Dominic: American road trip. Perfect for an American road trip.

37:39Tabby: Yeah, fun for all the family. Lord of the Flies. A Month in the Country, with which we started this. American Psycho. So we're... New York, I guess.

37:49Dominic: It's not really a holiday read. It's not a holiday read.

37:51Tabby: I don't like reading before I go to sleep at night. Jane Eyre. Fantastic. Goldfinger. The Bell Jar. White Nights. The Shining. So we're at a creepy hotel. Things Fall Apart. Master and Commander. To Kill a Mockingbird Money so you've got a great anecdote about money yeah Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tess of the D 'Urbervilles Dune Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Norwegian Wood and that brings us to the end of the year and then we're starting January with a real bang but I'm not going to spoil it yet

38:23Dominic: so much reading do you know I'm taking American Psycho on holiday

38:25Tabby: are you? oh that's depressing

38:27Dominic: which is that's my summer reading on that bombshell Tabby have a very nice summer and have a nice holiday

38:34Tabby: Dominic have a wonderful time on holiday you're off in the blink of an eye

38:38Dominic: yeah I am so everybody who's listening thank you for supporting the show and have a wonderful summer read loads of books and recommend books to us and we'll hopefully do them on the book club

38:48Tabby: thanks for listening bye

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