Backlisted - Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

For this year's Hallowe'en special we're joined by Backlisted's old fiends Andrew Male and Laura Varnam, following previous guest appearances on episodes dedicated to Beowulf (2020) and Daphne du Maurier's The Breaking Point (2019). Together we explore the work of the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, specifically her ghost stories, tales of horror and accounts of psychological terror: Something in Disguise (1969), Odd Girl Out (1972), Mr Wrong (1975), Falling (1999), and We Are For the Dark (1951), the volume of strange stories she co-authored with previous Backlisted subject Robert Aickman. NB. THIS EPISODE IS PACKED WITH SPOILERS and you may wish to read Something in Disguise before you listen to the podcast. Also this week, Andy is gripped by Heike Gessler's Seasonal Associate (Semiotext), the novelist's account of working in Amazon's warehouse in Leipzig, while John enjoys being unsettled by Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1980-1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson, the first in a series of 'Weird' anthologies published by Handheld Press.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)08:41 - Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1980-1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson. 14:26 - Seasonal Associate by Heike Gessle. 21:00 - Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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who is this who is this who is this Est este qui venit? Quis est este qui venit? Oh, where did you spring from? Well, I'm a little rusty in my Latin, but I think it reads, Who is this who is coming? Hello. Hello and welcome to our special Halloween edition of Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today you find us back in 1962 somewhere in the home counties. We're standing in the hallway of a large, cold Edwardian house. The heavily leaded windows are too high to add much in the way of light, the huge stone fireplaces are empty, and the yawning expanse of pine wall panels and floorboards fills the air with a joyless odour of polish. A large black and white cat with lemony eyes waddles past, smelling strongly of fish and foreboding. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading

Dangerously. And we're joined today once again by our two Halloween familiars, our revenants, Laura Varnum and Andrew Mayall. Hooray! Quat, everyone! Hooray! Hello,, everyone! Hooray! Hello, guys. It's the Quat woman. Quat! Quat, I'm back.

Prof, Laura Varnham, hello, Prof, returns for her third Halloween backlisted after episode 104 on The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier and episode 123 on Beowulf, one of our most popular episodes ever. Yay! She is a literary critic and lecturer in medieval literature at University College Oxford.

She has a long-standing interest in women writers from the medieval mystic Marjorie Kemp to Daphne du Maurier and now, as a result of this episode of Backlisted, Elizabeth Jane Howard. That's lucky. Her co-edited book of academic essays on Kemp is out next month. And she has recently published some of her poetry inspired by the women of Beowulf. Thank you for having me.

It's really lovely to be reunited with you and Andrew today because our other guest, chained like a ghost in a wishing well to the Halloween editions of Backlisted, one for the teenagers there, Mitch, well done, is Andrew Mayle. Thank you very much. Lovely to be back. Lovely to have you, Andrew. Welcome back for his sixth Halloween episode of Backlisted. As well as Du Maurier and Beowulf, he appeared on the very first of these specials,

number 24 on Robert Aikman, number 52 on Shirley Jackson, and number 78 on Edith Wharton, plus a couple of relatively non-spooky episodes, number 10 on Raymond Chandler, that is quite a spooky episode, and number 114 on The Inheritors by William Golding. Only Lissa Evans has appeared on more episodes of Backlisted.

And when he's not preparing for Backlisted, he writes about music for Mojo magazine and books and TV for the Sunday Times, where I commend him for his recent review of Joshua Ferris' novel A Calling for Charlie Barnes, which I thought was absolutely wonderful and seems already to be disappearing. Such a shame.

And not getting any attention. But your review was terrific, and I agree with lots of things you said in your review. So, listeners, if you can find Andrew's review, find it, and then trust him on how good that novel is anyway. And Andrew regularly clogs up Twitter with photos of his pets, Nico and Klaus.

Are they with us today? They will be. Nico was silenced with the juicy bone earlier in the manor of Auden. And I think Klaus is just out and about. But they'll be here. Andrew is currently working on a 1,500-word book proposal

and hopes to be finished by next year. That's the thing about those 1500 words. No, I'm sure once I get that done, it'll be plain sailing. Mitch, over to you. At this point in the introduction, we usually tell you a little more about the scenario or the plot of the book we'll be discussing. Not today. The less you know about Elizabeth Jane Howard's novel Something in Disguise going in,

the more you'll get out of it. Instead, we're grabbing flaming torches, and as thunder rumbles and rain lashes down, the waves breaking far below, we're lighting a string of beacons along a ragged clifftop. Tongues of fire spelling out in letters 30 feet high. Spoilers! spelling out in letters 30 feet high. Spoilers! It is impossible to talk about this particular novel and this strand of Elizabeth Jane Howard's work without revealing details of what happens in them. So feel free to stop listening at this point,

turn to the podcast after you've read the book, or keep listening and burn along with us. Also, if you do pause this episode now, it still counts on our listening. So if you come back and start again on this episode, potentially we double up on the number of downloads. So there's all sorts of reasons you could help us out by doing that and yourselves. I'm just going to say a bit about what we want to do with this episode. It's slightly unusual. You know, there are several points over the course of the history of Batlisted where we

could have done Elizabeth Jane Howard before. And you could think about her in terms of, well, it struck us there are three different ways you could approach Elizabeth Jane Howard's work. The first way would be to think of her as the author of neglected literary novels from early in her career, from the 1950s, such as The Beautiful Visit or The Long View. The Long View in particular has a great weight of cultural, critical support behind it and is a terrific novel. Elizabeth Jane Howard that way. Or you could see Elizabeth Jane Howard as she became later in her career, the author of the Cazalet Chronicles, which is a best-selling sequence of five novels in total, four of them in the early 1990s, The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off. And then she returned, the last novel she wrote was All Change in 2013 when she was in her late 80s. And that would be very interesting to do as well.

But today, because it's a Halloween episode and because something in disguise has, as John just said, we won't need to keep saying spoilers, will we? Is full of darkness after it seems initially that it won't be. We thought it would be interesting to approach Elizabeth Jane Howard's work from a third angle, which is the little discussed, and when I say little discussed, probably hardly ever discussed, strand of her work as an author of the uncanny ghost stories, horror stories, works of psychological torture. And specifically, I'm giving you a reading list. So if you do go away, it might be weeks before you get back to this episode. But we want to concentrate on a specific strand of Elizabeth Jane Howard's work, which takes in not just Something in Disguise,

her fifth novel from 1969, but also the volume of short stories she co-authored with Robert Aitman, which was published in 1951, called We Are For The Dark. The novel she wrote in 1972, called Odd Girl Out. A collection of short stories, especially the title story, Mr. Wrong, which was published in 1975. And then fast-forwarding to 1999, her fictionalised account of a traumatic event that happened to her in real life. That novel is called Falling. And we all feel there's a thread that runs through all those

books, which is perhaps most fully expressed in Something in Disguise, but it's there running all the way through her work and hasn't been much noticed before. So anyway, we hope you enjoy this trip through this particular, I don't know what we call it, Elizabeth Jane horror. I don't know. But anyway, so that's what we're doing today. But before we get onto that, John, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading, I think appropriate for the season, a wonderful anthology called Women's Weird, Strange Stories by Women, 1890 to 1940, edited by Melissa Edmondson and published by the excellent Handheld Press, who've really kind of nailed, I think, the market in

these brilliant anthologies, particularly in this area of weird writing, they've done sci-fi and they've done supernatural, but the weird anthologies, this one in particular, I think is kind of revelatory. It is, I suppose, the people who like M.R. James or Arthur Machen are going to love this book. What's amazing to me is that there are so many writers, women writers in it that I'd never heard of before. And they're so good. These stories are so good. this book what's amazing to me is that there are there's so many there's so many writers women

writers in it that i'd never heard of before and they're so good these stories are so good they're ghost stories there are some uh i mean classic kind of uh writers in here who you might have heard of everybody's heard of e nesbit there's a great ghost story by e nesbit there's an amazing uh ghost story by Mary Butts. But there's also weird, Eleanor Mordant writes a story in here called Hodge, which is a bit like a kind of really creepy version of Stig in the Dump about a survivor from a previous prehistoric era.

There's a funny, very witty story by Marjorie Lawrence, another discovery called The Haunted Sourcepen set in St. James. But they have that kind of Edwardian feel to them. But because they're written by women, it makes a difference in terms of the characters and what the characters feel. I'm just going to read you the start from one of the ones I really, really loved by Mary Chumley. This was written in 1890. And Mary Chumley was the sort of daughter of a clergyman and published a few novels and stories, lived and died in 1925. But this book, she was accused of plagiarizing a male vampire novelist, and also often gets compared to M.R. James. But she was

actually writing this story before M.R. James had written his stories. The reason I like it is it's set in a church crypt, which, of course, so many of those M.R. James stories are, and it's also set in Yorkshire. It has elements of the women in black travelling up on train into Yorkshire. It has elements of our favourite J.L. Carr, Month in a Country, because, as you'll see, the main character is somebody who is interested in church wall paintings. Anyway, it's a beautiful bit of work, wonderful stories throughout.

One other I'll draw your attention to by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of The Yellow Wallpaper. It's a really, really strong story the called the giant wisteria really creepy perfect collection for halloween i'll give you the beginning of let loose by mary chumley very quickly some years ago i took up architecture and made a tour through holland studying the buildings of that interesting country i was not then aware that it is not enough to take up art art must take you up too I never doubted but that my passing enthusiasm for her would be returned. When I discovered that she was a stern mistress who did not immediately respond to my attentions, I naturally transferred them to another shrine.

There are other things in the world besides art. I am now a landscape gardener. But at the time of which I write, I was engaged in a violent flotation with architecture. I had one companion on this expedition who has since become one of the leading architects of the day. He was a thin, determined-looking man, with a screwed-up face and a heavy jaw, slow of speech, and absorbed in his work to a degree which I quickly found tiresome. He was possessed of a certain quiet power of overcoming obstacles which I have rarely seen equalled. He has since become my brother-in-law, so I ought to know, for my parents did not much like him and opposed the marriage,

and my sister did not like him at all and refused him over and over again, but nevertheless he eventually married her. I have thought since that one of his reasons for choosing me as his travelling companion on this occasion was because he was getting up steam for what he subsequently termed an alliance with my family, but the idea never entered my head at the time. A more careless man as to dress I have rarely met, and yet, in all the heat of July in Holland, I noticed that he never appeared without a high starch collar, which not even had fashion to commend it at the time. I often chaffed him about these splendid collars, and asked why he wore them, but without eliciting any response. One evening, as we were walking back to our lodgings in Middleburg, I attacked

him for about the thirtieth time on the subject. Why on earth do you wear them? I said. You have, I believe, asked me that question many times, he replied, in his slow, precise utterance, but always on occasions when I was occupied. I am now at leisure, and I will tell you. And he did. I have put down what he said as nearly in his own words as I can remember them.

Dun, dun, dun. Great little story. That's Mary Chumley. That's the first volume of several volumes that Handheld done, isn't it? Yes. So there's Women's Weird, which is that one. There's a second volume of that which was published last year. There's another one called British Weird. Is that right?

British Weird, which is, I mean, I have to say, Kate MacDonald and Handheld are, these are the beautifully edited, really nicely produced paperbacks. It's an amazing collection. I'm really, really pleased I found the time to read it. Andy, what have you been reading? I've been reading a novel called Seasonal Associate by Heike Geisler, the German novelist Heike Geisler, translated by Katie Derbyshire and published by Semiotext in the US and the UK in 2018, but the book was originally published in Germany in 2014.

And this is a surprisingly rare novel, considering the situation it describes. In 2010, Heike Geisler, because she needed the money, got a job at an Amazon warehouse facility outside Leipzig. And this is her account of what it was like and how, as a novelist, it made her feel. Now, you could read this novel as an expose, though if you were seeking to read it as an expose, I don't think you would learn many things you didn't already know, certainly by this point in 2021. I saw this book recommended by both Sally Rooney and Miriam Taves, because what it's really about is not so much a book about working for Amazon. It's a book about not the dignity of

labour, but the indignity of labour in the late capitalist system. That sounds fun, doesn't it? I've made that sound like an absolute page turner. But I really, really enjoyed this book, and I like being pushed around by it a bit. It's not particularly likeable. She doesn't waste much time sucking up to the reader at any point. You join her on the warehouse floor and are expected to get on with it. But that feels appropriate to me. And it really made me think about that tension of how we think of ourselves in relation to work. work, how does what we do for money or for fulfillment differ from who we are? Does it differ from who we are? If you work for a fulfillment hub, are you a fulfillment hub? Or are we kidding ourselves? If I'm a writer who takes a job at Amazon, or if I'm a writer who

takes a job as a gravedigger, say, given this is Halloween, am I in reality a writer or am I a grave digger in denial? What am I and who am I? And how does what I do for money, digging graves, interact with what I would like to do for money, writing books? Well, that's kind of what Heike Geisler the seasonal associate, is about. And in this case, she's got a job working for Amazon. She's a novelist. How does she, can she reach a settlement between how she thinks of herself and what she does? So I'm just going to read you a little bit from chapter four of Seasonal Associate, and this will give you just a flavour. So she's been inducted to the

warehouse in Leipzig. She's been packing up various things like dog toys and raincoats and she's just been moved into the book department. So this records her feelings about being closer to the source of what she would like to be doing and yet frustratingly far away. to the source of what she would like to be doing and yet frustratingly far away. I read an essay by Claudia Friedrich Seidel which begins with an admission. Yes, she writes, I too buy my books from amazon.com. Yes, I say, I too buy my books from Amazon. I buy the books there that I can't get elsewhere. What I don't buy from Amazon is books or other things I can get elsewhere, not even if they're cheaper there or delivered more quickly. A few days before, I held a far

too vehement lecture at my mother's kitchen table, preaching that one doesn't necessarily have to buy things one wants from the cheapest source. I said there was no order and no law that you have to choose the cheapest offer. My mother looked at me as though checking whether I meant it seriously, first of all, and secondly, whether I might have turned into a rich woman overnight, someone who could afford to say such things. She goes on, so she gets moved on to the, she gets moved on to the, in the book packaging department, right?

It takes a while before you get deployed in the book section, which incidentally is mainly reserved for women, like reading novels once was. When you come to enter the myriads of books into the system, you might be glad of it or you might not. We'll see when the time comes. I was always glad at any rate to stand beside the gigantic book boxes and enter the books in the system. I looked at the books and knew what kind of thing Germans buy.

So for example, I knew Germans like to buy the humorous health writer Eckhart von Hauscherson because I had a hundred copies of Eckhart von Hausch-Herson's face on their desk and put them in a yellow crate. And I found out there really are an incredible number of vampire novels, something I could have guessed beforehand but wouldn't have thought possible. I was glad of the books every day at Amazon, but one day I found myself with a book in my hands written by a man I know, formerly a good friend of mine. I got a shock. It was an absolutely unexpected encounter between him and me. There, in the

dispatch hall, where I placed approximately 40 of his books in the crate for pre-ordered products, meaning I knew what people would read and what they considered a good Christmas gift, meaning I knew what people would read and what they considered a good Christmas gift. It was as if I were the chambermaid and he were the guest. It was as if we were showing our true faces. The man is part of the world in which a person can feed a wife and child by working a job he enjoys. With his book in my hands, I didn't want to think much, and I didn't think much. I thought, I bet he has time right now to think about his next work.

It would have to be called a work, and he'd have to be called a successful writer. Gosh. That's good, isn't it? That's very good. So I recommend Seasonal Associates by Heike Geisler on this Halloween episode of Backlisted for its depiction of contemporary dread and loathing. The book chat will continue on the other side of this message. I'm going to go to bed. Andrew, did you recognise that tune? No.

Anyone? No. No. It was the musician Nikos Achilles' setting of Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath. That's very good. I was not making that connection at all. The devil's interval you heard there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Precisely, right? I was thinking some sort of 70s film. We'll put a link to that magnificent orchestral arrangement of Black Sabbath on the website for people to listen to. So before we get on to talking about Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard, I thought it might be really useful to do a callback to five years ago and the episode of Batlist about Robert Aikman. And I wondered if, Andrew,

you could just give us an introduction to Elizabeth Jane Howard's work with Robert Aikman on her collection, on their collection, forgive me, We Are For the Dark, which was published in 1951. Elizabeth Jane Howard met Aikman and his wife, Ray, through literary friends of the Dark, which was published in 1951. Elizabeth Jane Howard met Aikman and his wife, Ray, through literary friends in the early 50s. She was trying to finish her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, and they ran a small literary agency and they agreed to help her. Elizabeth Jane Howard's marriage to her first husband, the conservationist Peter Scott, was on

the rocks. And Aikman started to romance her. And it's interesting how she describes this in terms of what we'll be saying about something in disguise. She basically, she says she initially found him supercilious, patronizing, and unprejudiced. Oh, dear. Loved Young Dream. And he told her that he loved her.

And she wrote on a couple of occasions that she had what she called a great hunger to be loved and to be in love. So Robert and Ray, who were in a kind of marriage convenience, he'd married Ray so that she wasn't called up into the army and he was a conscientious objector. So they pulled Elizabeth Jane Howard into their world of the arts, of opera and the theatre, but also their belief that the cultural world was in decline, that everything was rotting and that better days were behind them and no good would come of the future. And that is kind of what caused them both to form the Inland Waterways Association and start rebuilding the canals and making them sort of, you know, useful for sort of holidays

and sort of pleasure boating and all that kind of stuff. And she worked as a secretary. We should make the point, she was really young, right? She's in her early 20s, yeah. Incredibly young, in her early 20s. Yeah, I meant to say that.

Yeah, so she's incredibly young and she's already in her first kind of she's already sort of thinking of divorce from her first husband so she was flattered by him and flattered that he would put so much faith in her he made her the secretary of the Inland Waterways Association and helped her get her first novel published The Beautiful Visit so and then Aikman kind of uses her and basically says, I've got these unpublished ghost stories I've been writing. And he was basically writing them because another member of the Inland Waterways Association,

LTC Rolt, had been writing ghost stories. The story never gets any more normal. It's so weird. It doesn't, doesn't doesn't absolutely not and the thing is that rolls also wrote ghost stories set within the modern industrial world so when we talk about three miles up and this kind of you know novel set ghost stories set around trains and trams and and sort of you know and all that kind of stuff soitman's writing these unpublished stories and basically says to EJ H, can you help me get them published? And so she goes to her publisher at Cape and proposes this

book where she writes three stories and he writes three stories. And the three stories that he wrote were The Trains, The Insufficient Answer, and The View. And the three that she wrote were perfect love, left luggage, and a short story called Three Miles Up, which I think anyone who's ever read it would agree is one of the great modern classics of one of the greatest British ghost stories ever written. Laura, what did you make of We Are For The Dark? Absolutely magnificent. I think Three Miles Up is definitely one of the best ghost stories, if not one of the best short stories I've ever read.

One of the things that I thought was fascinating about the collection as a whole was the way in which you've got these hauntings that are all about movement and about being on the move and being mobile, the move and being mobile um uh the trains and the canals and and something that's not not perhaps the sort of traditional ghost story when you're you know you're in a kind of gothic house setting and there's some of that going on in something in disguise um but i i thought they were fantastic and i thought that um jane's ones had a had a kind of cool clarity about them just despite the the ambiguity and the things that are left uh to your imagination at the end i i felt that you could tell the difference between the two

so three miles up you can get to read quite easily if you can find a copy of um it's in a lot of anthologies if you can find a copy of elizabeth jane howard's collection mr wrong which is a picadil imprinted it's in there too yeah there's just a couple of sentences from three miles up um that i'd like to read that's her description of the mind that I just felt really summed up the way in which she's approaching these questions of sort of psychological breakdowns. So this is where they're in the canal boat. While John snored, Clifford had lain distraught, his resentment and despair circling around John and then touching his own smallest and most random thoughts until his mind found no refuge and he was left, divided from it, hostile and afraid,

watching it in terror racing on in the dark like some malignant machine utterly out of his control. And in that respect, there is a link, fascinating link, between Three Miles Up, written in 1951, and Falling, written in 1999. Those are clearly the work of the same writer all those years apart. But there's also a link with Something in Disguise, isn't there? And the mind games that are played on May by Dr. Seaton. Oh yes, you're quite right yes yes yes yes yeah which

which is kind of that was kind of after she got caught up in the uspensky society didn't she elizabeth jane howard which is kind of i think one of the disciples of gergief and um writes that into something in disguise that where there's this bit which we'll get into later but the bit where things are starting to collapse and she's starting she's playing all these horrible mind games on herself inspired by the terrible dr sedum before we move on um andrew you were saying to me earlier something about the there's there's three characters in Three Miles Up, aren't there? What's the female character called? The female character is called Sharon. And now Elizabeth Jane Howard claimed this wasn't the case,

but what does that make us think of? Sharon, who is Laura? The ferryman. The ferryman who ferries the souls to Hades in classical mythology. Both Andrew and I independently thought that this was the case and then picked up all sorts of clues about what really might be going on when John and Clifford take that strangely ruined branch of the canal. Yes, because she talked, there's a bit, isn't there, where she quite happily talks about the um the burnings the burn the red and burning sky well she's quite at ease in that world and then as everyone is uh getting progressively colder and freezing it doesn't really seem to affect her it's not that you haven't seen that done before in stories, but I don't think I've ever seen it, ever read it done as well and as convincingly.

And even though you kind of know what's going on, the ending when it comes is still, I mean, it's a magnificent bit of writing. It's horrific, isn't it? We're going to hear now a very, this is Elizabeth Jane Howard on the BBC television programme Monitor in 1964. And I want you to bear in mind when you hear this, that this was recorded five years before she wrote Something in Disguise. And she is about 40 years old.

And as we know, she had 50 years of her career to run after this interview. And here she is. She's interviewing here Evelyn Waugh. Mr. Waugh, you were 60 in October. Do you regard your life's work as over? Oh, I wish I could say so. But use any other profession, I'm reaching retiring age. But as you'll find, when you get to my age, writers have to go on and on till they drop. Three score on ten used to be a proper span. Now it may be four score on ten. These awful doctors keep on going years and years and years. I've got longevity with utmost horror.

Do you think that an aged novelist suffers any particular impediments in his work? Well, to compare small things with great, if you compare me with any of the well-known novelists, like, say, Dickens, all their comic and inventive work was over long before they reached my age. It's a very, very rare thing to be able to go on. In Vile Bodies, I think it is, you say, if the young knew and the old could.

Where do you think you stand in respect of writing about that? I was once talking to a first-class lawn tennis player. Oh, shut up! That's enough of that. Of course, in those

days, I was only a tea boy. it's exactly right she doesn't miss her words no that was incredible because i thought war is saying no it's four score years and ten and indeed that's what elizabeth jane howard notched up in her life and her career she published her final novel when she was 89 years old so so she's still got time to run i had the great pleasure to have supper with her once and she was um and i you know you don't know at the time it was it was a literary dinner in bath andy just to put it in the context okay which book you remember was the light. And I remember she was incredibly kind of, she was rather sort of, she says, I don't really know whether this is what I want to be doing. She said, you know, she was so interesting about that.

She said, I mean, people like it. You like it. I said, yes, I think that's marvelous. She said, well, I'm very interested in the family. I don't know. I might get two or three books out of it, I suppose. And that was that was obviously the first of the caslet chronicles and at that point she hadn't she hadn't published

slipstream but she was just so she was a brilliant company and quite naughty and quite gossipy and was i was of course like you know because was 1991, I was fascinated about her relationship with Martin Amis, and she was very, very, she was incredibly, I mean, she was really very, very affectionate and positive and generous about him. And it was one of those, you know, there are people you meet in the literary world who you come away with thinking, what an amazing, good human being, and that is exactly how I felt about it. But that's why actually reading all of this has been quite a revelation

because I had not read outside of the castle at Elizabeth Jane Howard before. And this is amazing. Well, before we go on to something in disguise, maybe that's a good moment to hear from. I mean, Martin Amis recalls Elizabeth Jane Howard with great fondness and also says how important she was in his life for getting his life together and getting him out and getting him into university and the rest of it. I felt, as I'm sure my father felt, that we'd been catapulted into high society

because she was so worldly in the best sense. She knew how to get things done. She was very organized. And I adored my mother, but she wasn't organized. And Jane was. And that's a huge difference. Suddenly things were possible, holidays, sorties into the West End where everything worked like clockwork. And she was completely unintimidated by the world,

although more anxious than she let on. She was basically, I think, an anxious person, but had mastered the social world. She was very good company and she was very witty. For instance, she said, I hate these nude glasses. She had glasses with sort of a slight wing on each of the eyepieces. And she said, they make me look like a power-mad cockroach. And she was full of phrases like that.

I mean, she was a novelist. One is always astonished when you read a novelist by how little of their inner life you see from day to day. You see their social being, but you don't see their creative being. So I thought she's a deeper lady than I thought, and I thought very strikingly instinctive as a writer, in a way she wasn't as a person. Now, I think that is really interesting, again, because that idea of her as an anxious person who

presents a front which masks all sorts of turmoil is one of the themes of the psychological writing that we're talking about here today. So it's probably a good moment to move on to something in disguise. Laura, we put up a spoiler warning in 30-foot-high flaming letters. We said to you, I know we did, do not read even the blurb on the back, right? Are you pleased we gave you that advice? Absolutely delighted. It was excellent advice because when you're reading the novel, there is this sense of a kind of creeping unease

and there are little things that just make you feel slightly off balance, as though you're slightly being tilted somewhere and then the novel comes back to center and you you you keep thinking well i was certainly thinking um given this context well where's the halloween bit going to come in at what point am i going to see where this is going um and i want to read a section from that but uh but a bit later on. It's quite an extraordinary book because when you get to the end, you absolutely see how it's been set up and how it has come to that. And if only you'd been a slightly more careful reader, you'd have seen it coming.

I don't think that's true. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you in a critical way. It's true. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you in a critical way. I think part of the genius of the book is if you don't know what's going to happen, you think, well, I'm in quite a nice comedy of manners. And then suddenly things start sliding downhill. And I can remember saying to Andrew when I first read this book, don't read anything about it. Don't read anything about it. Because the shock I got near the end of the book,

there's a specific chapter I read twice. Did you have the same experience, John? Did you just go, what? I think it's, I really think it's a brilliant book. It's called Something in Disguise. I thought that one of the characters was going to be a fraud. Right. Ah, which is interesting.

And there are several characters that could be frauds. Dr. Sedum is one, but also John, the character who very quickly romances Elizabeth off of. But I knew that he wasn't a fraud. Do you know why? Go on. romances Elizabeth of it. But I just, I knew that he wasn't a fraud. Do you know why? Go on. I can read you a very short passage that will tell you why my, my,

my spidey sense told me that he wasn't going to be the one that was going to be the fraud. Oliver, the brother asks Elizabeth what John reads. Oh yes. He said, and he says a civilized man, not a ghastly specialist for a change.

This is Oliver. He said, but seriously, because he meant it and not to hurt her feelings. But she simply picked up a fig leaf and saying, I think I'll take this moth up with me. When they were on the move again, he asked, what novels does he read? Oh, people called Henry Green, Ivy Compton Burnett, and Elizabeth Taylor. They're his three favorites. He tries a new one from time to time, but he says they never seem to be so good. Have you tried them? Oh, he reads them to me in bed sometimes. I really like it. She added, looking nervously at him to see what he thought. Fine, so long as it isn't all you do in bed, he said. And then she stared at him with a mixture of shyness and bonhomie.

That was, or would be if you weren't her brother, entirely irresistible. It isn't. It's a theme through a lot of elizabeth j howard's books that the character she has characters who read elizabeth taylor novels isn't it can't be i mean the book one of one of the books is dedicated to elizabeth yeah i'll go out yeah so you you just know you can't have a wrong and who's reading elizabeth taylor she wouldn't nobody would push it that far but also it's interesting because um I did want to say that John Cole is very clearly based on Robert Aikman. Ah.

And, you know, and when you think about it, the thick glasses, the interest in opera, the very odd relationship with his wife. And so this is, and also.

The appalling daughter. Yeah. There is also the other, the appalling... That's the thing, you see, because the Aikmans did not have children and hated children. Ray Aikman, Robert's wife, called them wombats. And they found them that. And they instilled in Elizabeth Chain Howard

a sort of distrust of children that she felt awful about later in life because she obviously became such a good mother and she kind of is one of the things that she resented the Aikmans for for turning her against children returning to the idea of what is in disguise in the title something in disguise so the idea is that it might be a blessing in disguise, an extremely ironic blessing if that's the case, right? But also, I was looking at the reviews of this novel, and it was quite widely reviewed. And what's fascinating is the number of reviews that take...

They don't know what they're reading. And I would say The Thing in Disguise is a horror story presented as a quote- woman's novel which i hasten to add is pretty much exclusively how it was described in every review by men or women in 1969 and i just wanted to share with you a couple of i mean this is slightly on the last episode of bat list did we read out a telegraph review and that was quite funny it's comic i've got i've got another telegraph review which is a polite which is a which is a positive telegraph for you so for balance by janice elliott and i thought this was really interesting so this was 1969 she says i have heard elizabeth jane howard's novels

described as hot water bottles. That is harsh, perhaps, but there is a kind of woman's novel of which something in disguise is one that makes me uneasy. They're lovely to take to bed, but like a hot water bottle, they leave you cold by dawn. You know, don't open in Glasgow with it, Janice. Yeah, this latest book is one of Miss Howard's best, a truly awful, very funny tale of defeated love and hope. Poor May, says Elizabeth, poor Alice, poor everyone. If death doesn't get you, writes Elizabeth Jane Howard, life will. Wow.

And similarly, the novel was reviewed by none other than William Trevor. William Trevor said this, Miss Howard parades a fair share of the selfishness, jealousy, cruelty, weakness, and insensitivity with which God has imbued his chosen creatures. Yet she fairly balances the scales of her argument, and her vision is not unkind. I mean, I don't entirely agree with william trevor on the last point i think she's gimlet eyed can i is it maybe a good

time to read um the little extract i chose because i think it's funny we've been talking about how funny she is but also how grotesque it is and how it is possibly there's a kind of unkindness to it as well take it away so yeah this is the introduction of um the wife of um somebody that uh elizabeth has been invited to cook for and this is when we first meet her she was all together like a huge old doll eliz thought. Even her hair had a very wide parting in it, like dolls' hair, and she wore it in a long, permanently waved bob, like Rita Hayworth in ancient films. Mrs. Cole's head and the shoulders of her black crepe dress were showered with dandruff, and well over and above her chanel number five

elizabeth could detect the odor of cheap raspberry jam that so often accompanies this condition what i mean what what the moment that they were alone mrs cole's grip on elizabeth's arm tightened and just as elizabeth was going to pull herself away from this rather surprising and horrible person, she said, While he's away, quick, write down her number. I only want to see her. She had let go at last and was fumbling desperately with her bag. You look for me, darling. Any old scrap will do. I just want to give her my love. And for a moment, Elizabeth found herself looking down into the huge, heavily made up doll's face, whose eyes were of such open agony that she felt her hair prickling with shock. She would do anything to stop someone looking like that. The bag, which had seemed quite

small, was crammed with dirty, broken, spilt things. Loose aspirins coated with brown face powder. A miniature bottle of Gordon's gin. A grey elastic sanitary belt. A screwed up packet which could contain no smokable cigarette. A little Disney type dog made of pipe cleaners. A chiffon handkerchief with a swans down puff attached, some cloakroom tickets, pencils, broken, biro, top off, a tube of something

that was oozing out of the bottom. It's such a good passage, isn't it? Oh, it's brilliant, Andrew, brilliant. But what I think is interesting is if you're reading that as quote-unquote, if it's 1969 and you're a reviewer and you're reading that as quote unquote a woman's novel you'll be thinking what's this stuff what's this shit why why this is what this isn't this isn't right you know it's really gritty but people the way in which people described it as a like the ending especially as

like an unsuccessful genre trick something she tries to pull off that doesn't work as if it's kind of like you know it's some kind of weird gear change towards the end of the novel that doesn't work it's so clear that she is working towards something unpleasant you know that there is kind of you know that there is that under current isn't there of just unease kind of women kind of fitting their lives around kind of domestic obligations and and that they're being something toxic in that that's going to come to her head absolutely it's absolutely right andrew, you know, that scene is so hilarious when Mrs. Cole ends up, she ends up face down in her dinner. Yeah, it's funny, but it's, but also you're thinking, because she, there's a part of you that thinks she is like this because of John Cole. There are

things that John Cole does not want to reveal about his life. He doesn't want to reveal certain details about his daughter. He doesn't want to reveal certain details about his wife. He comes across, as you say, as a good'un, as a charmer. But again, there's something in disguise there. There's something that he doesn't want to show. I'm going to ask Laura to read a bit in a minute, but we've got some very rare extracts of Elizabeth Jane Howard herself reading from this novel Something in Disguise and you can

choose panel which you would rather hear. Would you rather hear Elizabeth Jane Howard read about Elizabeth's cat Claude or would you rather hear her read a section about mayonnaise Mayonnaise I mean Claude is a star in the book. Claude stars would you rather hear her read a section about mayonnaise? Mayonnaise.

I mean, Claude is a star in the book. Claude stars in the book anyway. Let's go with mayo. Right. It was 25 to 8 and the colonel was doling out sparse portions of the salmon trout. What's all this, he said when he saw the mayonnaise. Oliver answered immediately. It is a sauce made of egg yolks and olive oil and flavoured with black pepper and vinegar called mayonnaise. It was invented by

a French general's chef at the Seed for Mayonne, hence its name. How interesting that you should never have encountered it before. The colonel put down his servers and glared steadily at his stepson. May said, Herbert didn't mean that, did you, dear? He meant, what's it doing here, finished Oliver. Ah, well, Liz made it with a bit of help from me. We thought you'd like a sauce with a military background. There was an incompatible silence while the colonel served the fish and handed plates to May for new potatoes and peas. Then he said, I'm all for

plain English cooking myself. You know, I think she is walking that tightrope between what is funny and what is deeply macabre and dangerous. And this comes back to the way she represents gender relations all the way through the book. Quite early on, Elizabeth describes her stepfather, Herbert, she says, he gives me the creeps. He ought just to be poor and funny, but he isn't. And Oliver says, well, he is funny. He's a pompous old fool. And Elizabeth says, you're not a woman.

You wouldn't understand. And I think that speaks to all of the books we're talking about. But the passage I wanted to read is from the Christmas Eve chapter right at the end. Andrew and I were saying earlier today, it's a masterpiece of, it could almost be a short story,

a horror short story. Yeah, it's a brilliant, it would work as a brilliant standalone piece of horror writing. It's incredible. Yeah, so May has woken up in the middle of the night and discovered that um herbert was about to bring her a drink um he hasn't done so and she's been feeling very

unwell uh for quite a lot of the novel um so i just want to uh read a couple of small moments from from this this is when she wakes up she became awake quite suddenly one moment her head was on the block and the guillotine knife was coming down with its inexorable force and the next moment her eyes were open. The alarm clock was ticking away and she was herself in bed with the bedside lamp on. She remembered that she'd been ill and that Herbert was fetching her a drink that she must have dozed off. As she sat up she realised that she still felt pretty awful and she looked to see whether she had any water left. And she goes down the stairs and she goes

straight to Herbert's study because she saw that the light was on there. It was one of those glaring lights, a naked bulb topped by a shallow glass shade. It did nothing to soften, let alone conceal, what she found. Herbert was dead. He seemed to have opened a window just before he died, as his hand was still clenched upon the casement catch, and he lay with his arm, its shoulder and his head upon it, half out of the window. It looked a very odd position, but then she realised that in fact he was jammed there as he'd fallen. The width of his shoulders had stuck in the narrow window frame, the rest of him was sprawled over the low stone window seat and floor. Snow had fallen against the open casement window and his head had clung there

making his white hair look like dirty ivory and he was so cold to touch that she knew he was dead. She noticed all this without feeling anything, but it seemed to her that everything was happening so slowly, like people said about films and things, that for all she knew, she might have run into the room, seen all this, and any minute now would give a shriek. It was just that she hadn't got to the shriek. She never got to it.

There was more to notice in the same slow minute and passionless manner minute and passionless how brilliant minute and passionless so laura you picked up there what i think is one of the themes about the horror content of a lot of the stuff we're talking about which is the relationship between women and men. And after Something in Disguise, she published the short story Mr. Wrong, which feeds directly into this. We don't want to say too much about that. She is happily married for a while, at least, to the novelist Kingsley Amis, trying to help bring up his children.

And it would be good to hear, let's hear from Martin Amis again as a kind of witness to the differences between their methods, between his father's method and Elizabeth Jane Howard's method as a writer. It was a very interesting contrast. Kingsley was a grinder, and no matter how hungover and terrible he felt, he would trudge off fearfully into his study. He confided that every day he thought he would lose the knack. But he would go and put his nose to it,

and he would come out at the other end with 500 words, 800 words. Jane didn't disappear into her study until the last possible minute. She would be gardening or cooking or staring out of the window smoking. And then she would, in a flurry, she would disappear into her study and you'd hear the mad clatter of the typewriter keys and then she would emerge an hour later having written twice as much as my father would in a whole day. I liked Mr. Wrong, which is the title story of a collection. A terrifying story about a murderer. Marvelously sustained atmosphere and very well written in her way. My father

used to pick on her grammar a bit you know there wasn't textbook grammar but it was always better than his so-called improvements that he suggested which were technically correct but lost that instinctive flow that she had how how revealing that is right pick on her grammar right that well i just wanted to say something that's related to that and it's from um the one of the biographies about when she was writing something in disguise in texas um i think it's from slipstream and she says so i drove kingsley in the mornings went back and worked on my novel, something in disguise, then fetched him home for lunch, then drove him back to work,

then went to the supermarket before fetching him back again. And so when Martin Amis says, you know, she was kind of, she might be gardening or cooking. It's also the fact that she is looking after Kingsley as well. To be fair to Martin Amis, elsewhere he has made that point. And we mustn't stitch him up there. He's very clear to say she was having to run the house. And for a writer, that was incredibly difficult for her.

But I think also that is one of the themes of Something in Disguise, isn't it? It is of these women who are attending to these petulant childish men you've got alice looking after leslie in their luxury spanish style bungalow and then you've got may looking after colonel herbert at monks close and one of the things i want to add about it that and you've got ginny you've also got ginny brilliantly at the it's one of the best bits of the whole book where she kind of looks after oliver when he's ill and then just slits him up a tree and leaves him and you think why why is she i mean he completely misreads the being looked after so she's it's almost like there's something really interesting in elizabeth

jane howe's they're saying don't think that because we're doing all this, it's because we love you. The awful things that happen to Alice, and there's this moment at the end where she can't even be bothered to really decide whether it's worth existing or not. And that's the reality of what happens to women who are treated in this way by men who are, on the one hand, incredibly dangerous and calculating, but on the other hand, rather like Herbert. And it's one of the things that the character Elizabeth talks about in the novel. She keeps saying, well, he's rather dull and stupid. What if he's dull and stupid and wicked at the same time? what if he's dull and stupid and wicked at the same time um and it just reminded me of a line in odd girl out where there's a character called anne who has left her first husband um and she she thinks to herself he might have killed me she kept thinking indeed had she stayed there was a very good chance that he might just do that by mistake of course as he seemed to

do most things there are men here who might just accidentally kill women laura did you think um i i don't know how you felt about this both something in disguise an odd girl out are dated in their setting right you know they're quite kind of 60s, 70s fondue, gowns, good life setting, you know. And yet, psychologically, and the issues you've just been talking about, they're ahead of their time. They don't feel dated at all. In fact, I'm trying to think of other writers who managed to pull off that trick, where it's sort of cheese and wine on the one hand, and on the other hand, terrible anxiety and dread about relationships on the other hand terrible anxiety and dread about relationships on the other.

Did you find it contemporary? Absolutely. I mean, there's a similar thing going on in Des Moires, but there's a kind of intensity there, Anna, and maybe it is something to do with the setting, that it feels as though you're within a particular type of book. I feel like I'm kind of slightly criticising DeMaria here, but there is something about Elizabeth Jane Howard where it is that something in disguise. You're seeing these men

who are in disguise and who don't even often know themselves what they're doing. She writes the Caslet Chronicles. They're massively successful. She becomes a huge bestseller, comparatively late in life, in the 1990s. She's very much in the wave of Mary Wesley and Joanna Trollope, and the publisher makes them look like those books. But in fact, they are dissimilar, right? And the look, sorry, Picador, but the look you've put on something in disguise is so inappropriate it's something in disguise i mean it's ridiculous but maybe it works for that reason yeah this is a clip from 1987 and again elizabeth jane howard is a successful novelist in her early to mid 60s when this interview takes place it's for the the BBC. It's in 1987. It's with Sally Hardcastle. And I think I'd just like to feed this into the conversation we're having.

Do you like men? Yes, I do like men. I think I'm rather afraid of them a lot of the time. That's one of my problems. I wish I didn't, but I think I feel that at my age, I feel uneasy with them because I feel that I'm not a young, attractive woman. Is that partly because you were very beautiful when you were young?

Well, I suppose it's because people took a lot of notice of my appearance, yes. I never thought I was very beautiful, but there we are. I don't want to sound coy about that. That's what people said so but yes i think i feel perhaps that i'm a bit of a boy you see i get on with people i work with quite well men i work with i always find that goes very easily and well but i don't think i see men very much except in that way except sometimes my friends husbands or something you know when you say afraid of them what do you mean by that?

I mean that I don't feel equal to being taken seriously or something. I don't know what it is. I know that with women I find it very easy, if I like women, to establish a rapport with them and an intimacy and an evolving relationship. It may be just that I haven't met very many men in the last few years. I certainly haven't met very many men, you know, who are, as it were, available to meet. It may be that, that I just haven't had enough practice. Wow.

That is brilliant, but it's also chilling because it's an interview quite soon after that, the Desert Island Discs interview, that the man who comes into her life who forms the basis of the story falling hears and hears her say something very similar to that and decides to seek her out she publishes a novel in 1999 calleding and this is based on I won't let's keep this short and again we'll try and get away from spoilers but she was taken in by a con man and in the 1990s and uh who as Andrew says heard her on Desert Island Discs recognized a victim and honed in on her via letter and then in person. And she turned that experience into the novel Falling. Now, Laura, had you read this book before?

No, I hadn't. And I was absolutely bowled over by it and completely terrified by it. It actually genuinely gave me nightmares. I read the first chapter, which is in the voice of Henry, who's the con man, who she does this brilliant trick where really she's revealing to you from the get go who this man is. And the hairs on the back of your neck stand up on end and you think, oh, yeah, I know this guy. This guy's really dangerous. He's someone I need to be wary of. I'm not going to fall for this. And yet, as the novel goes on, you do and you're drawn in. And his narration in particular, it makes you complicit.

It's chilling. Henry, apart from being a psychopath, as they mostly are, is an enormous egotist. And he would say I all the time because his world is himself. And really all he notices are things that might or do or would affect him. Daisy is a more balanced creature in a way and able, so I wanted her to be she because she's cooler about it in a way her emotional structure's there all right but she doesn't regard herself as the centre of the universe in the way that Henry does

Henry really is not able to think of anything else now I think most psychopaths are afraid of men and dislike women. And I think that, very generally speaking, I think those are the categories that they fall into. It's why they have no men friends, they are afraid of them. And it's why they despise women who fall for them. I mean, they've just... that's how it goes. So, Andrew, there is a thread there, isn there between we are for the dark something in disguise

and then falling you know that is the same writer revisiting territory but hiding in plain sight you know just kind of these men yeah she identifies them as psychopaths at this point and you can go back and look at something in disguise and look at colonel herbert and and even look at leslie and say yeah they're the same they're the same person they're the same person it's a horrible thing i think to to stumble upon over a 50 year period and what's interesting then is also if you go back to three miles up and you see that these men they might kill somebody by accident because they're incompetent because they're not able to function by themselves and they're waiting on a woman to come in and cook for them and help them

and in three miles up it just so happens that the woman who comes in is Sharon, is, you know, is a figure from the River Styx. But that point when you read all the stories, you realise that those comically inept young men aren't that different from Henry in Falling. from Henry in falling. And societal psychopathy, that's the thing, right? It's the guilt by association, if you like, patriarchal guilt by association. Laura, could you, you were just going to read us the beginning of falling, I think. I think that would be a nice thing to hear. Yeah, I think it's just worth saying her incredible fearlessness in deciding that having been through this experience in her own life, that she would then inhabit it and recreate it.

That is an extraordinary thing. So this is from chapter one and the opening, Henry. She has left me. This last, most terrible blow has knocked me out. I don't seem to be able to think about it for long enough to gain the slightest inkling of why this has happened. She was in love with me, I'm sure of that, or was she simply sexually infatuated? My experience of women, considerable, for I am, after all, over 60, had, I presumed, taught me a good deal about how extraordinarily different they are from most men.

I accept myself here as I feel I've always had an intuitive understanding of the comparatively few women I've been in love with, have known them often better than they've known themselves. I now think that one reason why I found it difficult to get on with my own sex has been that what I've learned of them has been largely through women. It has been through their confidences and sometimes simply their responses that I realised long ago how many of them are mistreated, that that enchanting early awareness of their sexuality and romantic inclination is all too often nipped in the bud. Thus have read the ice maidens, the termagants, the nymphos, the drab domestic servitors and the hysterically sentimental matriarchs. I blame men for these sad consequences, much as other people blame parents for the delinquent child. It has been my good fortune and naturally my pleasure to undo and

heal some of this damage. Indeed, I can honestly say that my greatest joy has come from pleasing a woman, in teaching her to inhabit her own body with pleasure and pride. This cannot be achieved by mere sexual prowess. I have no way of and indeed no interest in measuring my own against that of any other man. It comes from that mixture of affection, cherishing and loving that cannot be assumed, but once present needs constant expression. Women need not only to be loved, they need to be told so. I believe George Eliot had something to say about that. Well, it's terrifying though, right? It's absolutely terrifying. It is terrifying. It's kind of Hilary Mantel beyond black terrifying, isn't it? Well, Hilary Mantel is a huge fan of Elizabeth Jane Howard.

And that's one of the things I wanted to say, that she gets it. There's a piece that she wrote for The Guardian on Elizabeth Jane Howard where she actually says, you know, of course she's known for the Kazalik Chronicles, but the thing about her is the grimmer it is, the better it is. Can we give the last words to Jane, as she called it, Elizabeth Jane Howard? This is a clip from an interview in 2004 about, and she's talking about falling here with Eleanor Wachtel.

And I think this is a good note to finish on. I think technically it's probably my best novel from the craft point of view. It's quite enclosed and taut. I really wanted to write it. I enjoyed writing it, actually. I mean, it is a novel. I haven't precisely described this person whom I knew. I mean, a lot of things are the same,

and the general direction of things are the same, but I was able to make what I wanted. Some of it that has passed was more murky than I've described in my book, actually. But a friend, a writer who lives near me, called Louis de Berniers, said, well, at least you've got a novel out of it. And I thought, that's quite true, that's what happened.

And it somehow made the whole thing the right size. Enclosed and taught. That's what, there it is. There's the description of what we've been talking about today. Enclosed and taught, whether it's three miles up or something in disguise or falling. And like you said, Laura, the bravery, the sheer steeliness of taking that experience late in life and turning it into that book. Well, there goes Andrew. Thanks, Andrew. Oh, thank you very much. And that is where we must pause huge thanks to andrew and laura for returning once more to lead us into the darkness to nicky birch for being both sound and light when all others fail and to unbound for the sherry and fags you give for the mayonnaise you can download or you can download all 148 previous episodes,

plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash blacklisted. We aim to survive without paid for advertising, and your generosity helps us do that.

All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early, and for less than the price of a double helping of potted shrimp at Herbert's Awful Club, locklisters get two extra locklisteds a month. Our extra podcast, Our Flat in Town, where the three of us cook lobster, drink puy-puy-say, and enthuse about the books, films and TV and music that kept us sane in the weeks previous.

Lock listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. This week's batch roll call is Dara McCabe, Roberta Munro, Thomas Robinson, Helen Legg, Susanna Escobar, Kevin Rennie. Z.P. Liu, Lisa Doherty, David Hughes, Neil Crawley, Sally Baudelaar, Dan Porter. So thanks very much for listening, everyone, if indeed you have. We hope you enjoyed the book if you went back to read it. Laura, is there anything you would like to add on this subject

or on Halloween or anything to say before we go? Just a huge thank you for having me, Elizabeth Jane Howard, as absolutely one of my favourite novelists now. Someone commission me to write a book about her. Yes, Macmillan, if you're listening. And finally, Andrew, as is traditional, all long-term listeners will know the point to which this whole show, these whole six years have been leading.

Andrew, if Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard were a Gene Kelly film, which Gene Kelly film would it be? It's always Fairweather. Oh! Magnificent. Because the film begins as a regular stripe of generic MGM musical filmmaking. But underneath and throughout, there is a busy underground stream of anxiety. And it's about men and men's violence and men's unhappiness and men's ineptitude.

And there's a toxic subtext running throughout the film. And then in the end, it ends with the most unexpected gear change that many at the time thought was ridiculous. I'm in awe of Magnificent. Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. Well, listen,

thanks very much for listening, everybody. We hope you have a spooky Halloween. Thank you. Brilliant time. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Nikki. Brave, brave Nikki Birch there.

The line. Thank you and see you next year bye you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.