Backlisted - The Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Forty years ago the writer Paul Theroux hoisted his knapsack on his back and set off on a journey on foot around the coast of the United Kingdom; the effects of Thatcherism were being felt in earnest and the Falklands War was in progress. The Kingdom by the Sea, Theroux's grumpy, funny account of this journey, was published the following year (1983) and caused outrage in many of the seaside towns the author had passed through and seemingly written off. In this episode the Backlisted team - Andy, John, Nicky and Tess - revisit the book, and a few books like it, to discuss whatever happened to travel writing; how Britain has changed since 1982; and what Theroux got right - and wrong - about his adopted country. In addition, John enjoys a more recent travelogue, Felicity Cloake's new book Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey (Mudlark); while Andy reads two poems from Fiona Benson's stunning new collection Ephemeron (Cape Poetry). Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 08:16 - Fiona Benson. Ephemeron. 15:44 - Felicity Cloake's new book Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey. 22:28 - The Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux * 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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Today you find us somewhere on the south coast of England in the summer of 1982. The sea stretches out ahead of us under a low grey sky, and in the uncertain light we make out a man coming towards us along the shore. He's wearing large tinted spectacles, a battered leather jacket, a brown checked shirt and oily hiking shoes. In his hands, an ordnance survey map flaps against the wind. And a knapsack. Surely a knapsack. The legendary Thoreau knapsack.

Let's put that small knapsack in as well. 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. Welcome to Backlisted, the greatest literary podcast in the world. Not my words, but those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Reputedly. We have no way of proving that he said it, but

more personally, no way of disproving it either. But that is what Gabriel Garcia Marquez is reputed to have said about Batlisted. It is the greatest literary podcast in the world. We can't, we just can't know either way. I choose to believe it, John. What do you think?

It did seem the sort of thing he would like. It does seem plausible. It's plausible, but he's long deceased now, isn't he? So I don't know when he said it. Where's the origin of this? It's me. I started this reputed rumour. It's a good rumour.

But, you know, it's after the Oscar Wilde speaking through a medium thing. I thought, well, if you were to contact the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez, don't do it at home, everybody. It's not good rumour. But, you know, it's after the Oscar Wilde speaking through a medium thing, I thought, well, if you were to contact the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez, don't do it at home, everybody, it's not tasteful, he'd probably say, what have you been doing? Oh, I've been hanging out with Oscar Wilde and listening to the greatest literary podcast in the world, Backlisted. So it seems, it doesn't seem that much of a leap, Nicky. We should put that in the show notes.

Yeah, it may not be true, but it may be true. It may be true. Exactly. It's reputedly, reputedly. We've no way of proving it. Anyway, we're joined today by... Now, the reason we're introducing two people most of you already know is because the last time we did one of these,

we failed to introduce two people you already know properly and people who didn't already know them complained and said, you guys didn't introduce the guests. So we are introducing the guests properly today. They are Nicky Birch and Tess Davidson. Nicky Birch is a long-time backlisted listener. In fact, she has listened to and occasionally piped up on 105 of the most

recent episodes. She's even listened to some of the ones before that too, haven't you Nick? Occasionally. That's because she is our editor and producer.

Some of her favourite backlisted shows have been Imogen by Jilly Cooper, The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks, The Railway Children by E. Nesbitt,

and one of those episodes even made her cry in the edit. Which one was it? It was The Railway Children. Of course it was. Did it make you cry several times? I think everyone who listens to that has got something wrong with them if they don't cry several times. It's a beautiful, beautiful show. Beautiful book.

When Nikki is not cycling up a mountain mountain you can see how she got the job everyone can't you what with her cycling and her kayaking skills or indeed editing

this show Nikki works for BBC Sounds and appears on fortnightly for patrons only on the absolutely bloody brilliant show Gabrielle Garcia Marquez

lock listed she is joined today by Tess Davison hello Tess thanks for. Hello, Tess. Thanks for coming on. First time guest. Long time associate. Tess is a radio producer who enjoys writing,

listening to far too much music and making playlists for days. She grew up in a tiny coastal village and carries the sea's energy with her wherever she goes. How do you carry it with you? I carry Croydon's energy with me wherever I go. But the sea, how do you, what do you mean? It's a combination of, I always feel very much at peace when I'm by the sea.

It feels like I'm a whole. And then I think there's a kind of wildness to the sea that I feel that, I carry that. I can feel that in my chest kind of wildness to the sea that I feel that I carry that. I can feel that in my chest when I'm not near the sea. But I bring it with me. Oh, I like it. It's great. You see, with Croydon, I feel I'm always carrying around a concrete urban sprawl within me.

It's like I feel I carry the spirit of my pigs within me in the lodge. When you eat them? Yeah, bacon, sausage. Tess is also a key member of the Batlister support team. She manages our Instagram account. She keeps the website up to date. She is an increasingly, and also, and here's the most exciting thing, listeners,

she's taking an ever bigger part in the admin, which let me assure you for me and john is the best thing that's ever happened so thank you test thank you for coming today john what better book to read in preparation for a summer edition spent with friends than the american travel writer and novelist paul theroux's account of his journey made clockwise around the British coast, The Kingdom by the Sea, first published in 1983 by Hamish Hamilton. Theroux's stated aim was to witness the particularities of the British present, or the present that was 1982, which meant no sightseeing, no cathedrals, no castles, no churches, no museums, just a procession of promenades, seafronts, beach huts and down-at-heel guest houses and the succession of strange and

memorable characters that made the coast their home. As Oberon Waugh wrote in a review of the book, this was a decision which risked limiting him to some of the nastiest areas and most boring people in the kingdom. And its publication generated controversy in some quarters for the unvarnished, let us say, portrait of a confused and confusing country which Theroux offered. However, in the 30 years since it first appeared,

it has increasingly come to be regarded as a classic of the golden age of 80s travel writing. And we also thought it would be a great book to talk about here in the year 2022 40 years since publication so we could get a sense about uh what has changed and what hasn't changed and the things that through got right or maybe we feel were unfair and just try and put this book back into the culture in some way. When we told people we were doing this show on Twitter, it was really interesting, wasn't it, guys?

The response was either, I've never heard of that book, I've never read it, or, God, I remember when that came out, it caused a real kerfuffle at the time. But I get the sense it's not read much now no i don't think so which is a shame as it turns out as we will hopefully hopefully prove it's one of those things that probably dated quite quickly and now has become a really interesting historical piece of work you know what i mean so suddenly it was like oh that's really out of date and now

what makes it out of date is also what makes it interesting now yeah yeah i think you're right um and also because it's because of its structure it's it's a it's a very particular i mean that was the thing i guess obram war was driving it's a very particular way of looking at britain how typical is the coast how typical are the coastal settlements of this country in terms of the culture as a whole? Anyway, before we grab back our ghouls and head off in search of sand and shingle... And our haversacks. No, knapsacks.

Andy, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading a new collection by the poet Fiona Benson called Ephemerine, which was published by Cape Poetry a couple of months ago. If you've been listening to Backlisted for a while you may recall that on episode 105 which is dedicated to the

Rings of Saturn by W.J. Seabelt which relevant indeed to our discussion coming up about the Kingdom by the Sea I talked about Fiona Benson's previous collection which was called Vertigo and Ghost and I think that's one of the best collections of poetry I've read in this particular

century. It won the Forward Prize for Poetry and we had an amazing reaction to it when we read a couple of poems. No, one poem, I think, from that on that episode of Batlisted. So Ephemeron is her new collection, her first one since Vertigo and Ghost. It doesn't seem to have attracted much attention, which is a great shame because, once again, it's stunning. It's a book of about 120 pages with four sequences of poems. They are called Insect Love Songs, Boarding School Tales, Translations from the Pacify and daughter mother and each one has a very particular specific character each of those sections insect love songs is exactly what

it says it is it's their poems dedicated to different types of insect boarding school tales is a school reminiscence and yet each section speaks to the other sections in a way that by the end of the book, I just thought, wow, Fiona Benson's amazing. There's nothing she can't do in poetry. She is funny and she's moving and she becomes very angry and she makes you angry, but she's also able to draw on the classics in such a way

that opens those up to readers who perhaps aren't familiar with them. I'm so blown away by this collection. I don't want to actually spend too much time talking about it. I'm going to read two poems for you. They both contrast with one another in tone but also have quite a lot in common. So the first poem I'm going

to read is from the final section of the book, which is called Daughter, Mother, and it's called Dispatches. My daughter wakes in the deep, dream-ridden dark, hoists herself up by the bars of her cot, and screams into the wall. She's facing the wrong way out, like a sailor lost at the keel of her ship, screaming at the storm. I pick her up and rock her, feel her body soften, warm and heavy, snuffling at my shoulder, then soothing at my neck.

I hold her for a while, look back to night shifts at the nursing home where I once worked, its smell of disinfectant and piss, the old women pulling themselves up by their bedguards and crying for their mothers down the dimly lit corridors, like tiny wizened orphans in their long flannel nightgowns, hoarse, bewildered, lost. I'm afraid my daughters will come to this, dragged up by metal hoists to be washed, as all the maps and star charts of their brains dissolve, and the near world crumbles out from under them, like white chalk cliffs washing away to a cloud of milk in a black and churning sea.

I'm afraid that at the furthest outposts of the self, they'll remember me and call, and I won't be able to come, gone well ahead into the dark and left them alone. My girls, you were pilot lights to me, in the worst storms how you shone. Let me somehow coalesce in in your last firing cells. I hope my arms seem warm to you and that you hear me tell you how deeply you are loved. Wow. Wow. She is beautiful. She writes the most extraordinary poems.

Now, how could you possibly follow that poem? Answer with another of her poems about cockroaches. This is called Mama Cockroach, I Love You. Blattodea. Because you cosy with your aunties in your

reeking slums, and are intimate and sweet. Because you begrudge no one a meal, but ooze a faecal trail to lead your commune to its source like a dirty bee. Because you are joyfully promiscuous. Because you pouch your young and hide them in the sweaty creases of the house near subterrating food so they'll hatch to a feast. Or keep your eggs with you in a special purse shaped like a kidney bean and clutch it fast. Or reinsert them into your abdomen and womb them there.

Or carry them as yolks and give live birth, then feel your pale brood secretions from your anus or your armpit glands like milk. Or deep in the flesh of a rotten log, pass them a bolus of pre-digested food, mouth to mouth. Because you suffer your young to swarm upon your back, and do not flinch or buck them off, but carry them like a human playing horsey with her children, down on hands and knees, decrying the swag of your own loose flesh

because you twirl your antennae gracefully to test your crawl space because strokingly you caress your offspring's backs and gentle them with pretty pheromones and chirps because you purr when your young stroke your face. Because you would leave your body for your offspring to dine upon. All the liquors and gravy of the obscene world, your work in the crannies delivered to the living. work in the crannies delivered to the living? Because you are, despite all rumours, mortal.

And what if you are crushed before your eggs can be delivered? What if your sisters drive you, hissing, out? What if your kitchen is fumigated? What if the mongoose, the lizard, the snake, a muscular tongue prying at the warm and greasy interstices of your stubborn occupancy take you in its mouth? Someone must care for the dirt. Wow. So good. That is a fabulous song. Go From This Place, listeners,

and by Ephemerine by Fiona Benson. It is extraordinary. I know we overuse that word here, but it is an extraordinary collection for one person to have written. John Mitchinson, what have you been reading this week? Very different,

but I think it's a book that fits nicely with the theme of the show, which is travelling around the British Isles. It's Felicity Cloak's Red Sauce, Brown Sauce, a British breakfast...

Our former guest, Felicity Cloak. Our former guest. And it is as joyous and life enhancing a travelogue as you could hope for I very much liked her one more croissant for the road

published a few years ago but this is an attempt not only to kind of explore a British obsession with breakfast, but also it's stuffed full of brilliant recipes. So she goes on journeys and talks to people. She goes to the Tiptree factory in Essex

to talk to the jam makers. She goes to Kipper makers on the Isle of Man. She talks to food producers, but she also, she's doing this by bike. So she's on her... I was about to say, she loves a bike, doesn't she? She's on her trusty bike, Eddie. Ah, look, she's won Nicky over already, right?

Eddie, her bike Eddie with its two yellow panniers. She's also a very, very good food historian. So inside each of these chapters, each one is a journey. You get the tea break, where you'll get a kind of a slightly more kind of in-depth scholarly dissertation on what lava bread is for example or how honey is made and then you'll have recipes and at the end of each chapter i love there is

there is red sauce or brown sauce and she's obviously asked all the people who she's met on her journeys whether they prefer red sauce or brown sauce with their breakfast, or no sauce at all. She famously got onto, I think, the front of the Daily Mail for saying she preferred in her bacon sandwich marmalade and mustard. If you're interested in food, this book is brilliant. And she does her wonderful The Perfect... recipe column in The Guardian. She's one of the best recipe writers around. But she's also, I think, I really think she's a wonderful travel writer.

I'm just going to give you a little bit. This is a non-food bit. Although there is food, everything comes back to food in the end. This is about the Baked Bean Museum in Port Talbot, which is run by a man called Barry Kirk, who in 1991 had his name changed by deed poll to

Captain Beanie. So she says she goes to visit him. And, you know, he was, as they always are, a shy, introverted child who nevertheless had a grand passion for drama. While he was working at BP, Chemical Works at Baglan Bay, he started doing crazy stuff for charity. I love a cause and I love dressing up. Photos show the altars formerly known as Barry selling knickers for a knicker,

that's one pound, to jolly ladies at a Tom Jones concert. Save them the bother of taking their knickers off to throw at him, you see. And pushing a supermarket trolley while dressed for reasons unclear as the Angel of Mercy. But it wasn't until 1986 that he hit upon the role that was to define him. I came across this album. He passes us up an LP of the Who sellout. On the cover, Roger Daltrey stares up balefully from a bath of baked beans above the tagline, get saucy. Well, that got me thinking, see, if it's good enough for him, you know. So I did some research to find out how long people had laid in various substances, custard and so on, and found there wasn't a record for baked beans. If it wasn't for the album cover, I don't know where I'd be where I am today.

Anyway, it goes on. I love the account of them visiting there. He didn't win Great British Eccentric of the Year 2009 for nothing. trigger of the year 2009 for nothing. The spotless displays are guarded by an inflatable alien in a Heinz cap and apron, holding a Heinz shopping bag, standing on a Heinz rug between two Heinz bins, and gazing

expressionlessly at a life-size cut-out of Beanie in full superhero spandex and gold pants on the back of the door. I can feel Martha next to me, shoving me towards it as we admire the selection of Mr. Bean memorabilia. I got there with the whole Bean thing before him,

Beanie says with some bitterness. I asked him, do you have a patron of the museum? But I never heard back. At this tender moment, there's an actual buzz. That'll be the next lot. He bounds off along the corridor and I realise 90 minutes have flown by on a puff of leguminous wind. Genuinely, Beanie is one of life's good guys, I think,

as we hurry giggling down the stairs into the fresh air. A bit complicated, perhaps, but who hasn't wanted to run away from reality occasionally. He's done it in gold pants and orange high heels, and he's helped a fair few people in the process. Good on him. That said, I suspect his interest is less in Beanie specifically and more in anything that offers a brief escape from the sheer

ordinariness of existence. Had he looked at a different side of the LP sleeve, he could have equally found himself condemned to 40 years dressed in leopard print and clutching a teddy bear like John Edwistle. True, how true. But I suspect he wouldn't have got so much attention because beans occupy

a cultural niche somewhere between foodstuff and national treasure. They're the stuff of childhood teas and school dinners that you eat when you're feeling a bit ill or sad or too tired to cook. They're reliably, comfortingly consistent, easy to prepare and even easier to consume. There's a reason I could buy a baked bean jersey for this trip, and Beanie has been able to amass such a collection of memorabilia. Like it or not, they've become part of the UK's collective identity, which I'm fine with, as long as they don't come on a plate with eggs.

Wow! Sounds brilliant. I just think she's a tremendous writer. It's called Red Sauce, Brown Sauce, A British Breakfast Odyssey. Now let's take a break and list our Hit Sound Countdown. This week there are five new entries. The first of those is at number 30 from The Clash and Rock the Casbah. At 29 it's Survivor and Eye of the Tiger. Another new entry is at 28, Leo Sayre and Heart Start Beating.

27, new entry from Wavelength and Hurry Home. John Wayne is Big Leggy from Hazy Fantasies at number 26. Still at 25, Junior with Too Late. At 24, Buckspiz. Now those days are gone. Odyssey is at number 23

with Inside Out. Donna Summer moves up five places with Love is in Control to number 22. At 21, The Associates and 18-carat love affair.

But let's go back to number 27 and join Duran Duran on location in Sri Lanka performing Save Our Love. Amazing. And don't worry, everybody. We will be going all the way to number one later in the show.

That was from your original recording, yeah? It was. It was like Pete Buffini's. I sat by the TV with the cassette. Pause, record. Yeah, pause, record, yeah. We'll be back in just a sec. So Paul Theroux undertook his journey described in The Kingdom by the Sea

in the spring, winter-spring of 1982, didn't he? It's like a three-month. Before we start talking about the book, let me ask each of my colleagues what they remember about 1982. Where were you, John Mitchinson? Interesting. start talking about the book let me ask each of my colleagues what they remember about 1982 where were you john mitchinson interesting i'd spent most of 1981 traveling around the uk so i i felt i felt very connected to to to the through narrative but 82 i'd gone back to new zealand and i was uh i was doing my first year at university in Auckland, hearing extraordinary tales of, you know,

the invasion of the Falklands. And in a way, my kind of memories of that period of England are sort of a year earlier than Theroux's, but they chime very much about the general sense of unease that he picks up on in the stories that he tells. OK. I was 14, so it's all about XTC and Elvis Costello for me.

I don't really remember anything else, right? I don't really remember anything else about 1982, apart from the major historical events described in this book, of course. But also we used to, I mean mean my dad was diabetic we never went on holiday abroad because there were difficult issues to try and get our heads around in those days about food values and my lovely mum and dad always we always went on holiday but we went on holiday to seaside resorts of the sorts described in the kingdom by the sea in this period right up to this

period right through the 70s through to the mid-80s. I found it really evocative to go back to it. It just reminds me of how I spent every summer in these down-at-heel towns described by Paul Theroux in this era. Nicky, where were you in 1982? Well, I was seven and I was probably reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the resources room in the school library um or you know doing Raffia McCramey or something at home but um I I did also go to the seaside a lot because my grandparents lived in Brighton and I spent a lot of time there

so I spent a lot of time in Brighton and then there's sort of there's a lovely there's lots of passages in this book where they talk about um chalets or chalets by the sea um and there's a lot of i think they had a they had a um or friends of theirs had a a chalet by the sea and so in rottingdean and and so we spent a lot of time in i can really picture old and we also they had my grandparents had a camper van, a VW camper van, which we would, you know, go and stay in various different seaside resorts on the South Coast. So it's very, it sort of makes me think of those times and old people by the seaside. So it's been very nostalgic for me. for me in 1978 i went down uh to brighton on my friend paul wilson's uh 10th birthday party and we went to the aquarium did you watch the dolphins sing you happy birthday i've got i've

got a thing about that we went we saw greece at the cinema and then we went for the first chinese meal i'd ever had. That was all on one day. Can you imagine that? That was as good as it got looking back. It never got better than that. When my son was little, I took him back to Brighton to the aquarium. I thought, oh, he'll enjoy seeing the dolphins. And we got there and there were no dolphins.

And I went, oh, there are no dolphins here. And then I remembered that as a student at the University of Sussex, I had marched to get rid of the dolphins from Brighton Aquarium so I so we had achieved our goals and quite right too quite right too but I totally forgotten uh Tess let's cut to the chase you weren't around in 1982 so we all we're all a gog we would like to know, if we say the 80s, what is the 80s to you? Describe what you think the 80s was like. Yeah. Oh, the 80s.

Okay. So we've got good hype for the royal family at this time. Things are on a good note. That is correct. Historically verifiable, yes. I would say that we're moving towards really good like dance culture, rave culture at the end of the 80s. That's a real kind of moment.

And a lot of Falklands chat as evidenced in this particular book, I would say. I think we're still at the point in the 80s where the 80s is still the 70s. And with the benefit of hindsight, the 70s is still post Second World War. So we're still in that, you know, for better or worse, Thatcherism is beginning to be felt in earnest. But it's pre-boom. We're still in the kind of post-war, utterly broke, bankrupt Britain. Rationing is, I mean, the thing is is rationing only ended like 25 years earlier isn't it yeah it's pre-digital revolution because it all changes really in the 90s doesn't it all kind of flips to to the internet comes in the 2000s then everything changes so that's where we're all coming from not like the Smurfs that's where we're all coming from uh for this particular

book um John what do you remember about Paul Theroux from our period as booksellers? Paul Theroux was like one of the leading travel writers of the genre, which I'm not sure has a currency now, but that's what I remember about him. Yeah, he was definitely one of the sort of big beasts with, I mean, I guess you'd have alongside him, I mean, Colin Thubron was a big name,

and Bruce Chatwin, who we obviously talked at length about Chatwin's reputation. But Theroux... And Jonathan Rabin, who we'll come on to later. And Jonathan Rabin, but they were thoroughgoing. Although, interestingly, the novel, The Mosquito Coast, which is probably Theroux's most successful book, came out the year before Kingdom of the Sea, which I confess never having read, although I did see the Harrison Ford film version of it many years ago. was a travel writer who, he wasn't one of the ones that I would naturally gravitate towards. I read The Great Railway Bazaar.

I think that's the only Theroux previous to this that I, in fact, ever, I've ever read. I was thinking about looking at, oh, no, of course, the famous, I did read The Isles of Oceania, which, again, was, caused massive kind of upset in New Zealand and Australia when it was published because he was seen to be very ungrateful and rude about the people who'd been incredibly nice and kind and generous to him on his travels. But the opportunity to go back and read more through it was interesting because I'd realised I hadn't read any for a long, long time.

And this book really, really really stands up it stands up far better than I was expecting it to I was expecting to as Nikki said earlier to find it dated actually I found it an incredible snapshot of a really interesting moment which feels for all kinds of reasons much more relevant than it should so I first read this book about 20 years ago. Didn't really when it came out, but I read it in about 2001. And I remember loving it at the time and finding it hilariously grumpy. That's one of the things that absolutely appeals to me about it. The idea that you would travel around the country, meet a series of people, go to a series of places and find them, almost without exception, terribly

disappointing. And actually say so in a book seemed to me really, really funny. And indeed, when The Kingdom of the Sea was published, it did cause a bit in 1982, it did, 83, sorry, it did cause a bit of a controversy. It got some quite sniffy reviews, which we might talk about in a bit. But also Paul Theroux appeared. Did you know this? Paul Theroux appeared on an episode of BBC Two's programme Bookmark, where he was taken to task by the wrestler-turned-actor Brian Glover,

who told him he needed to cheer up and told him how he could go about having a good time in Mablethorpe and Blackpool. So I couldn't source that for this. I would have loved to have brought you a clip of that, but I couldn't get it. But coming back to it here in 2022, I found it totally fascinating, Nicky. Like you were saying, the time capsule element

that perhaps wasn't there 20 years ago, especially in the light of events in this country in the last five or so years I thought was totally fascinating what did you make of it I found it actually mostly really funny I have to say I read it a bit like a kind of I'm going to say toilet book which is the really terrible association but I I'm sorry sorry Paul sorry Paul but you know you've had enough praise. No, no. Um, in the, I could just read a few pages at a time, be really entertained and then put it down. You know, I just knew that I was going to pick it up, have a laugh. He's going to hate somewhere.

That's really funny. Uh, and then I put it down again, then you can kind of pick up another page. And basically he, he makes his way around the coast, starting in Kent and going in a kind of clockwise direction. And, you know, it's rarer that he goes somewhere that he likes than it's somewhere that he doesn't like. And that's sort of, you know, it's very funny. And because he's an American, but who's lived in London, you know, prior to this. He has that sort of distance, doesn't he, that he can look at the Brits. And also he's got a kind of London snobbery as well. So he got kind of not just the Brits but the seaside Brits.

Sorry, Tess. But, you know, but that is another layer of kind of who are you. And he just goes around and he kind of, you know, critiques them. And it's very funny. I mean, I think I can understand in 1983, if I lived in the seaside, I might feel very differently. But, you know, 20, 40 years later. He did burn a few bridges and piers on route.

He just doesn't, he doesn't really make much of it. I mean, he's very honest about it he's not making an effort to engage in in what he thinks that people there's a there's a classic bit where he really hates aberdeen the guy is sort of saying to him you know what what is it that you that you that you like about or don't like about aberdeen. And it's just, I just, I love what he says. He just says, but what I liked in Aberdeen was what I liked generally in Britain. The bread, the fish, the cheese, the flour, gardens,

the apples, the clouds, the newspapers, the beer, the woolen cloth, the radio programmes, the parks, the Indian restaurants and amateur dramatics, the postal service, the fresh vegetables, the trains, and the modesty and truthfulness of people. And I like the way Aberdeen streets were frequently full of seagulls. It's like no interest in the museums or the cultural heritage. And this caused outrage in Aberdeen, didn't it?

I mean, I believe local papers fed off, like seagulls, fed off this book for weeks after it was published, saying American slags off our town. Tess, what did you make of it? I mean, first of all, did you read anything by Paul Theroux before? No, I'd never read anything by him. I knew, yeah, that he was renowned for his travel writing, so I was quite intrigued. And my dad had kind of forewarned me about how he wrote about home.

So I was quite intrigued to see his interpretation of Northern Irish people. It's interesting. I wonder, so I was born 12 years after his trip. And I just, I'm curious if it's just, yeah, a generational thing. I couldn't stand it. And I couldn't stand it and I couldn't stand him I the number of times I was like I had to put it down because he was annoying me that much um I think I let him get to me which is probably yeah he's probably one in that sense is it the bit where he said Ulster

folks seem forever on the boil trying to swallow and be cruel at the same time Nikki I swear to god I I've got so many little lines here of what you said about people from home. I, oh my goodness. Yeah, he went to town on us. He really did. To be fair, he's an equal opportunities offender. He pretty much opens it on everybody.

Oh yeah, completely. Why don't we hear a clip from Theroux himself talking about well he'll talk about why he wrote it the way he did but also he goes on to talk about Blackpool specifically and the reason for that is this is from a 1989 arena documentary on the BBC about Blackpool which is absolutely terrific we'll put a link to this documentary on the website. It's on YouTube. You should definitely, definitely watch it. And Theroux is part of that programme. I wanted to go around Britain because I had lived in Britain for 11 years. And I decided that I wanted to write about it, but I couldn't write about Britain without making some kind of gesture, without inventing

a trip that would encompass the whole country, the whole kingdom, because I also wanted to include Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And I needed some form. I needed a trip. And the coastline is a trip. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Blackpool was a word. It's in the mind.

It's in the memory, perhaps. It's part of oral history. And that when someone went there, they saw what they wanted to see. They felt what they wanted to feel. And that, in a way, it can't fail because it's an invented place. It's part of the imagination. It's part of perhaps the northern myth or a continuation of all the northern myths.

And what it looks like to an alien like me, a foreigner, is nothing. I don't see what people see because it's not part of my folk memory. I've never heard stories about it. The only time I just saw it in films. In those old 60s films where people were having a dirty weekend. But a lot of places

are that way. People go to China and they wonder what all the fuss is about. You have to be part of the North. You have to be a Northerner. And you have to have known it perhaps from early childhood to see it, to feel it, and to have some emotional response to it. Otherwise, I think it's a letdown.

I'm not going to lie. I'm feeling an almost punkish thrill at the willingness to just not play nice in Paul Theroux on that. You know, I struggle to think of a writer now who would be willing to be quite so, depending on your point of view, high-handed stroke, willing to tell the truth, right? It very much depends where you're coming from,

how you would feel about that. He is gratuitous. I thought, you know, the kind of, you know, gratuitous and patronising at the same time, which is, you know, quite an achievement. I don't agree. I think he's being true to what he is artistically. He's trying to get to the heart of what his method is.

One of the really patronizing things he assigns everybody a name he meets people along the way and you hear these stories and he says i just make up names for people and so which is which is so kind of i didn't bother to actually remember their name or actually meet them but i and so he describes people he's like you know you know there's nora and han and and Jim and they're walking down there, you know, and you kind of think, well,

is that really their name? I just thought, well, who cares what their bloody names are? You know, I'd rather he didn't make up their names or give them or scribe them any names because what he's writing about is him. That's what I think. Yeah,

I think that's what he's writing about. It's about him, right? So I don't care. But I think in, in making up names for them, he's determining, he's doing a bit of nominative determinism a bit, isn't he? Yes, I agree.

You are like this. I'm going to tell you what your name is. He's casting. He's casting for his little drama that he's writing. He's blowing from place to place. He doesn't stay. If he gets bored with somebody, he hates a conversation, he just moves on.

It's great. And I think the thing that really struck me, the thing that I enjoyed most is the language. He's a brilliant capturer of place. Also, he does it sensually. I just made it, also he does it essentially, I love all the smells. He's got a list of smells here. The road smelled of private schools,

a certain kind of soap and a certain kind of cooking and the sound of young voices and laughter coming from the open windows of large rooms. Sandwich in Kent smelled of furniture wax and hot bread. The train on the Isle of Wight

was rattly and had a London smell of cigarettes and brake dust. A B&B in Newquay smelled of furniture wax and hot bread. The train on the Isle of Wight was rattly and had a London smell of cigarettes and brake dust. A B&B in Newquay smelled of cooking and disinfectant, but mostly it smelled of in-laws. It just goes on. And my favourite is that the Hotel Harlech smelled of mice and unwashed clothes. The smell of rags is like the smell of dead men anyway, but this was compounded with the smells of dirt and wood smoke and the slow river. The language is just brilliant

at evoking that kind of sense of being somewhere that's empty, being the only guest in hotel rooms, being kind of alienated and not able to connect with anything. I think it's an amazingly entertaining book about having a really grumpy journey. Amongst the books that The Kingdom of the Sea owes a debt to, clearly one of them is The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. Another book which is criticised, has been criticised ever since it was published,

depending on your point of view, for Orwell telling the truth as he saw it or for Orwell being unkind about how poor people smelled right that's the ongoing controversy around that book ever since it was published and it struck me you've got the same thing here

is one judging the work or judging the person writing it the person writing it has to take some responsibility because they've put themselves and their views in the centre of the narrative. They are putting themselves into the stocks for you to throw things at them. And I tend to fall on the side of thinking that's brave.

Reckless, perhaps, but brave. Yeah, no, I agree. At the same time, you can see why people got upset. I can indeed. Tess, have you got a bit you were going to share with us? Is this a bit that you found particularly infuriating? Or is it a bit you thought was okay? Do you know, I had to hunt for some decent words about back home,

but I agree with John. The way that he writes about the landscape and especially the coast, the Northern Irish coast, it is just, I mean, I live right kind of smack bang in between a lot of the different places that he visited. And it is breathtaking in its barrenness. It's just like vast expanse of of land and the sea and it's just it's so primal and raw and it's but it's it's so lonely and alienating at the same time so that I find some redeeming uh aspects there so yeah there's a he there's um I had a couple of

little sort of snippets that I pulled so he, when he was talking about the Giant's Causeway and he described the landscape as becoming monumental once again in this emptiness. So that idea again of it just, I felt that was when he was at his most humble as well, when he kind of was observing just the sheer vastness of these landscapes that he's surrounded by. So he talks about the train journey from Lorne to Belfast

and he passes through a series of little small towns. One of them is Whitehead, which is where I grew up. So I used to get this train every day for years into Belfast to go to school. I'm tense now. What does he say going through? To be fair to him, actually he manages for one, two, three, four, five,

six lines not to say anything negative. We're on to something good there. Hey, well done. But it just made, I love that train journey and it made me laugh thinking about it because we used to have such old rickety trains, like even whenever I was going to school

and you had to kind of clasp the top of the window and push it down to like reach out to unlock the door to get off the train. So it was very, very retro. So yeah, I'll just, I'll read that. Sarah, let's have a look. It was a warm and rattly branch line train with bushes on the embankment

beating against the door handles and bog ferns sliding across the wet windows. Now we were smack on the coast, leaving Whitehead and swaying towards Carrickfergus on a narrow shelf just above the sea. So it is very short. You know what though? You've cut to though you've you've cut to the test you've cut the chase because what um through lax in human sympathy he makes for up for in his love of

railways yes in this book yeah he really does love his railways nick he does there's all sorts of like elegiac stuff about branch lines and the british you know the british had this incredible railway system that they're in the process of deconstructing in 1982 yeah and uh it was this before or after he did his book on the patagonian express because he obviously was he was you know he which was the train journey all around argentina wasn't it? So he obviously has a thing for train journeys. Trains is his thing, yes, absolutely. Trains is his thing, exactly. But, yeah, he's got this fantastic scene

where he's eating in a train carriage and he sort of ruminates that he's the only person being served at the dining cart in the train. And the British people are all eating sandwiches out of packed lunch. What are they doing? That's down to Cornwall, isn't it? That's the train down to Cornwall.

There was a dining car on the train down to Cornwall in 1982. And he does say, I think this might be the last time this happens. But we're as far from that now as that was from the Second World War. I know, it's astonishing. That's one of the points, right? That the idea is you're still, Britain is still effectively dealing with the debt incurred by the second world war at this point it's it's really on its uppers here and john you

i know you were you you found a a relevant section um to trains didn't you yeah well i i was just just wanted to to the the thing, he does love railways, but he really hates railway buffs. Railway buffs were a sure sign that a branch line was doomed. The railway buffs were attracted to clapped-out trains like flies to the carcass of an old nag. It's like they... I love that. But here he is in Edinburgh, 1982,

one of the things, as well as the Falklands War, there was a railway strike in the middle of the year. And he says, in Edinburgh, I was told that a railway strike was looming and that in three or four days there would not be a single train running in Britain. This event was not viewed with much passion by the general public. The sort of punishing strike that created misery in other countries

Was met in Britain with either excitement A kind of community thrill at the drama of it Or else indifference The British were fatalistic It was the origin of their cynicism But it also made them good sharers of misfortune Oh well, mustn't grumble Yeah, yeah, oh well, mustn't grumble, yeah oh well mustn't grumble yeah yeah and that that feels

that's 40 years ago but it feels very much like last week as well i think we'll go back to the charts now that's all right with you up to 20 the excellent junior and too late 19 the brad chalk dust the umpire strikes back at 18 love is in control donna summer 17 david essex me and my Far Strikes Back. At 18, Love Is In Control, Donna Summer. 17, David Essex, Me And My Girl, Night Clubbing. 16, Half A Daily, He's Alright, The Firm. At 15, Take It Away, Paul McCartney. At 14, it's Cliff Richard, The Only Way Out. At 13, Da Da Da, Going Down, Down, Down, Trio.

At number 12, The Cla clapping song from the Bell Stars. And at number 11, it's Japan. I second that emotion. Not a great week for music, though, is it? John Peel. Don't worry, it's all to come, Nicky. It's all to come. Speaking of seconding that emotion,

one of the extraordinary things about The Kingdom of the Sea is there's a really fantastic bit where he arranges to have lunch with his friend, the writer Jonathan Rabin, who is also working on a book about the coastline of the British Isles at the same time. And indeed, that book was published several years later under the title Coasting. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to read you the bit about Theroux's account of meeting Jonathan Rabin, and then John is going to read you Rashomon-style Jonathan Rabin's account of the same meeting. So this is from The Kingdom by the sea i had someone to see in brighton jonathan raven was there on his boat the goss field made moored at brighton marina just

beyond kemptown and the nudist beach quote bathing costumes are not required to be worn past this sign jonathan had said that he was taking a trip around the British coast and was planning to write a book about it. This interested me. All trips are different and even two people travelling together have vastly different versions of their journey. Jonathan was doing his coastal tour anti-clockwise, as opposed to clockwise, which is what Theroux is doing, stopping at likely ports in his boat. He seemed contented on his boat. He had framed prints and engravings on the walls, and King Lake's Eotham was open on a table under a porthole.

It was strange to see a typewriter and a TV set on board, but that was the sort of boat it was, very comfy and literary, with bookshelves and curios. This must be your log, I said, glancing down. The entries were sketchy. Light rain, wind, ESE. Nothing very literary here. No dialogue, no exclamation marks. He said, I keep planning to make notes, but I never seem to get round to it. What about you? I fiddle around, I said.

It was a lie. I did nothing but make notes. Scribbling from the moment I arrived in a hotel or a guest house and often missing my dinner. I hated doing it. It was a burden. But if I had been in Afghanistan, I would have kept a detailed diary. So why should I travel differently in Britain? I said, I hate Brighton.

I think there's a kind of wisdom in that. The British person or even the foreigner who says simply, I hate Brighton. What's there to like here? It's a mess. Yes, it's a mess, Jonathan said. That's one of the things I like about it okay so now let's hear let's hear let's see that again from the point of view of Jonathan Raven four years later who hadn't taken any notes in coasting right take it away Johnny at noon I spotted my visitor 100

yards away across the catwalks focusing on focusing on him with the binoculars i saw he was wearing an elegant pair of miniature binoculars himself in his papadoc tinted spectacles an ll bean duck hunters camouflage shirt with a little brown backpack hoisted on his shoulders paul through was on his travels hi how you doing Ten years before, Paul and I had been friends and allies, but the friendship had somewhat soured and thinned since. Nor had either of us been best pleased when each had discovered that the other was planning a journey and a book about the British coast.

It was too close a coincidence for comfort. Paul was working his way round clockwise by train and on foot, while I was going counterclockwise by sea at Brighton the two plots intersected briefly and uneasily aboard Gosfield Maid, that's his boat it took Paul less than five minutes to sum up the boat he hunted through the saloon inspecting pictures, books, the charcoal stove the gimballed oil lamps, the new lavender smelling gleam of the

woodwork. Yeah, he said, it's kind of tubby and bookish. The phrase rattled me. I rather thought that somewhere I'd written it down myself. You making a lot of notes? No, I lied. I seem to be too busy with other things like weather and navigation to notice anything on land. What about you? No, Paul lied. There's nothing to write about, is there? I don't know whether there's a book in this at all. I may just turn out to have spent the summer walking.

Still, it keeps you fit. You know what? You know what's brilliant about that? If you compare those two, there is an incredible truth contained in those Rashomon-style accounts, which is the way writers bullshit one another, especially if they're competition over similar nautical territory. Are you writing a novel?

Yes, neither am I. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, a bit later on, he says, when the book The Kingdom by the Sea came out a year later, I read it avidly and with mounting anxiety. It had only one seriously flat patch, I thought, his account of our meeting in Brighton. There wasn't a single start of recognition for me

in his two pages. What he described was not at all what I remembered. It's funny, though, Rabin, of course, has the benefit of having read the book and then building his accounts. He does. There's an incredible bit in Coasting. If people haven't read Coasting,

not that we have to choose one or the other, I enjoyed The Kingdom by the Sea more than Coasting, but there's some great stuff in Coasting and Rabin is a great writer obviously. The meeting with Philip Larkin. It's brilliant. Oh, my goodness.

The whole book is worth it for Larkin tootling up in his whatever it is. I want to say Morris Traveller, but if it wasn't a Morris Traveller, it certainly should have been. Morris Traveller. Eating his very first Lebanese meal. Yeah. Oh, absolutely glorious. Theroux says that he's taken notes for his whole life.

He's a massive note taker. That's what he does. And he talks about note taking being a necessity of a travel writer and for him all the time anyway. And are you a note taker? Are you someone who just has to, at the end of the day, jot down your thoughts? Yeah. There's bits in all my books which which have involved me going to look at things talk about things meet people in the style of some of these books and i actually take a dictaphone or my phone

with me yeah and my way of doing it is i do take notes but i tend to mutter into my phone as I wander along so I don't I so I don't lose anything what the and the edit comes when you then listen back to it or think about it and think okay what's going to work what's going to be useful I mean I would say Tess I don't know what you I'd like to talk about travel writing a bit as a thing now travel writing was very popular in the 80s did you find when you read this what books did it remind you of did you think oh this is travel writing this is what travel writing is or was or did you think no this is like other stuff yeah I know that's a good question because I was sitting and thinking about that um it didn't feel like travel writing to me. It felt like it was a time capsule. It felt like it was this self-contained sort of historical

artifact almost and I don't know as well if that's because that's a landscape and a sort of environment and time that I just I have had like no exposure to at all. So I'm looking back at something as a younger generation so I thought that was quite interesting but then I was trying to think if I'd read any travel writing equivalents um and I couldn't think of anything at all that I isn't that fascinating that's so interesting isn't it isn't it right when I was growing up in the 80s, travel writing was the coming thing. Yeah.

That was the expanding section of bookshops and libraries and newspapers and the authors John mentioned earlier. But going back to this book now, what I realised, John, is how those distinctions we make are actually pretty arbitrary. You know, the books this reminded me of were The Rings of Saturn by Sebald, which you would not call Sebald travel writing,

but they're not that different in terms of ruminating on a subject and, you know, perhaps making bits up if you feel they will work for you and having a cultural focus or Waterlogged by Roger Deakin the beginning is so like All the Devils Are Here, much loved on this Ian Sinclair's Lights Out for the Territory

Absolutely Actually the writer Ian Walker who's got a book coming out I think next year where he does a similar appraisal of the British coastline. He compares The Kingdom by the Sea to Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson. And he says, Bryson, he says, I don't believe Bryson hadn't read The Kingdom by the Sea.

What's clever about Bryson is he shares a lot of Paul Theroux's kind of American. But he's much more positive. Well, he has many of the same kind of reservations, but he remembers to say every few pages, but the phone boxes are amazing and you have red buses. You know, he's learnt the lesson of Theroux, which is if you're going to roll into town and be mean, remember to also emphasise something positive at the same time.

And funny, Bryson is really funny. I take nothing away from him. He's amazing. But why isn't Ian Sinclair a travel writer then? Well, it's really interesting. That's a very good question, Nicky. And I think the answer is that... I'm glad you asked me that.

That's a very good question, Nicky. And I think the answer is that... I'm glad you asked me that. I think the answer is that it kind of became what now gets called psychogeography, you know, of whom will self... Or nature writing. Or nature writing. These are all in a...

We're dividing them up, but they are, you know, speculative, ruminative non-fiction. They're all that thing, aren't they, John? I guess that idea of the journey goes right back to the beginning of literature

and Theroux quotes Daniel Defoe and his journey through the British Isles and there are others. Obviously the famous journey around Scotland of Boswell and Johnson, which is, you know, sort of sets the bar quite high for grumpy people travelling in a landscape where, you know,

they're not having a great time. I think what's interesting now is you were saying, Andy, about whether you could write with quite such sort of almost vicious abandon about places that you go through. It's not vicious abandon. It's just you're not. Could you write without buddying up to these places? That's what's so weird to read now. I would say it's more about making an attempt to understand them on their own terms, which he doesn't particularly.

He kind of, he looks at it and he gives his opinion of what he thinks is going on and then he moves on. And I think that's fine. I mean, it's fine unless you find it, you know, really troubling and offensive. But I think what I would say is that, like all of these books, it's important to read the whole narrative because I think he does get to some really profound truths

about the country and the British character and the weirdness of Britain. There's a really funny bit where he talks about the English. He's staying in a new key B&B and he's saying the English, the most obsessively secretive people in their day to day living, would admit you into the privacy of their homes and sometimes even unburden themselves for just five pounds. I've got an awful lot on my plate at the moment,rs spackle would say probably not her name there's bert's teeth the hoover's packed up and my enid thinks she's in the family way when it was late and everyone else was in bed the woman you knew as mrs garlic would pour you a of cream sherry say call me ida and begin to tell you about her amazing birthmark Yeah, right. That Britain has, I mean, maybe it doesn't live on, does it? That's gone.

You either stay in a travel lodge or an Airbnb. That kind of landlady, that kind of false intimacy. I think they do exist. I think they exist. I'm not sure. Bed and breakfast definitely still exists, yeah. The lying about it's always about to pick up. Yeah.

That's right. Explain that. That was really funny. He says in August they said, yeah, in June they said. He looks into the book and notices that they're saying it was busier last week and there were no more people in the previous week. I'm so pleased you talked about Felicity Cloak's book. Yeah.

Because one of the things I did think about this and Raven's book is they're both very male, aren't they? I have a thought about this because I'm reading this all the time thinking, you've got young children. And their names and their names are marcel and louis yeah but no no it's not who then who his famous children are it's more where did they feature when you're traveling around the country because i'm thinking are you doing this all in one go or at any point are you popping back to london to you know do the school

run show us your workings yeah show us your workings here because if you're not, I don't, you know, it's either I don't believe you, you did this all in one go, or how could you have left your wife to look after your kids for three months while you travel around the UK? You know, so either of those things annoyed me. And then I looked into it and I started looking at

Anne Theroux, his wife at the time, and she wrote the book. She wrote a book about... Came out last year. Came out last year called In his wife at the time, and she wrote the book. She wrote a book about... Came out last year. Came out last year called In the Year of the End, which was about the year that her marriage to Paul Theroux broke down. And she then subsequently became a marriage counsellor. So she had some skin in the game.

First-hand experience, yes. First-hand experience, I think we call it. I mean, quite brutal. So imagine being Louis and, you know, having your family put this all out there. But anyway, she has this line in there that says professional travellers, like some foreign

correspondents and eternal expats are frequently charming and adventurous. However, they come with a shadow side that is distant and brutal. The two go together by necessity yeah i thought that was very sort of telling it's a very you know an interesting phrase there's a fantastic review of anne theroux's book the year of the end by our former guest rachel cook yeah which is on the guardians website she reviewed it for the observer last year and she says in that

review we'll put again we'll put a link on the website it's the observer last year and she says in that review we'll put again we'll put a link on the website it's really worth going to read she says in that review paul through was a great hero in our house my dad really liked him i really like his books it's hard to read this book because simultaneously you feel great sympathy for Anne Theroux, but you also respect her for acknowledging the truth in the room, which is that guy is doing stuff that most people can't do. But does that mean he gets to behave how he wants? Probably not. So like you said, Tess, this is a time capsule.

You read this as a time capsule, right? These events took place and Paul Theroux wrote the book if one wrote this book now if somebody went on a journey around the coast now what would be different or what would be the same yeah it definitely resonates these little like little rural communities with salt of the earth uh bed and breakfasts that i mean those definitely still exist where i grew up i mean they they kind of populate the landscape and they probably have about two guests every six months and um that definitely felt true but something i was thinking about i wonder how technology and digital platforms, how these places market themselves. So these rural locations, that becomes a selling point.

And so these characters, would they be more kind of self-conscious in a way now, like a self-awareness now that's built into a brand and a sense of a landscape and a market and a local economy that maybe wouldn't have existed in the same way when he was travelling around. I love that idea. I'll tell you what that has resonance for me. It's when you watch old episodes of Antiques Roadshow

and the public in the 80s Antiques Roadshow hadn't yet learned how to appear on TV. When you watch Antiques Roadshow now, everybody's kind of, they know what's required of them. But if you watch an 80s one, it's all old women going where the expert says, well, it's a great shame you've had these chairs recovered. And they think, that's just your taste.

You haven't learned yet how, as you say, Tess, how to do a good impression of yourself in in on on in the media and i wondered like nicky you were saying a lot pre-digital this is like michael bracewell's book uh souvenir is about this same period this like the end of the analog era the early 80s as you draw into the mid to late 80s digital technology starts to begin to encroach. So how did you, what do you think would be different now if you were doing this journey? Well, I think what's amazing is that he manages to actually find somewhere

to stay. You know, he doesn't get kind of lost and has to sleep on a park bench, which you'd think he just kind of rocks up somewhere and always seems to be okay. But basically now, yeah, as you said, you'd think this he just kind of rocks up somewhere and always seems to be okay um but they're basically now yeah as you said you'd be able to book somewhere in advance you'd be able to kind of get the bus timetable the train you know all of that stuff is life is it's easier to travel now and therefore probably less interesting or exciting because he he's just this he's much more like a hobo in this he's and i i picture him with this tiny knapsack but like

where did he change but like where did he change his clothes where did he wash you know all these sorts of things i'm interested in the detail that he doesn't offer because he's so busy slagging off the pensioners i think you've established that he went home at weekend i think he did i think you refuse to to credit the alternative john what do you think's changed or is the same i I think it's in a way what's survived. A lot of these coastal towns have renewed themselves. That's right. The branch lines didn't all close.

A lot of them are still going. You know, his sort of melancholy and things will never be what they were. It's a shame this country sort of just... I think you'd be hard pressedpressed to find a better psychological portrait of the sort of country that would vote for Brexit. Yes. I was going to say that, exactly. The deep roots of Brexit are all in this book, absolutely.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. That was the thing that I found so interesting, and I'm using that word in the sense of may you live in interesting times. That was the thing I found so interesting about going back to it now. That to write about this country as both a post-war and pre-Brexit nation at the exact midpoint between those two victories or disasters, depending on your point of view. I thought, wow, I don't want to say everyone should read this,

but for that, for that, a lot of people should read this book. I found it revelatory and to Theroux's great, enormous credit to diagnose certain things about the British and English, particularly the English character. John, why don't you wrap us up before we finish with the wonderful section near the end of the book. About Typical. A great piece of writing.

This was the reason typical was regarded as such an unfair word in England. And yet there was such a thing as typical on the coast but to an alien something typical could seem just as fascinating as the mosques of the golden horn. There was always an esplanade and always a bandstand on it, always a war memorial and a rose garden and a bench bearing a small stained plaque that said to the memory of Arthur Wetherup. There was always a lifeboat station and a lighthouse and a bench bearing a small stained plaque that said, to the memory of Arthur Weatherup. There was always a lifeboat station and a lighthouse and a pier, a putting green, a bowling green, a cricket pitch, a boating lake and a church the guidebook said was perpendicular.

The newsagent sold two greetings from picture postcards, one with kittens and the other with two plump girls in surf. That's a selection of cartoon postcards with mildly filthy captions. The souvenir stole rock candy and the local estate agent advertised a dismal cottage as a chalet bungalow, bags of character on bus routes, superb sea views, suit, retired couple. There was always a fun fair and it was never fun

and the video machines were always busier than the pinball machines or the one-armed bandits. There was always an Indian restaurant and it was always called the Taj Mahal and the owners were always from Bangladesh. Of the three fish and chip shops, two were owned by Greeks and the third was always closed. The Chinese restaurant, Hong Kong Gardens, was always empty. Food to take away, a sign said. There were four pubs.

One was the Red Lion and the largest was owned by a bad-tempered Londoner. He's a real cockney, people said. He'd been in the army. To town centre to set a sign on a marine parade where there was a tub of geraniums golf links said another and a third public conveniences a man stood just inside the door of gents and tried to catch your eye as you entered but he never said a word the man with the mop stood at the door of ladies outside town was a housing estate called happy valley yanks had camped there in the war beyond it was a caravan park called golden sands the best hotel

was the grand the poorest the marine and there was a guest house called Bella Vista. The best place to stay was a bed at a bed and breakfast called the Blodgits. Charles Dickens had spent a night in the Grand. Wordsworth had hiked in the nearby hills. Tennyson had spent a summer in a huge house near the sandy stretch that was called the Strand, and an obscure politician had died at the rookery. A famous murderer, he'd slowly poisoned his wife, had been arrested on the front where he'd been strolling with his young mistress. The muddy part of the shore was called the Flats, the marshy part the Levels, the stony

part the Shingles, the pebbly part the Reach and something a mile away was always called the Crumbles. The manor, once very grand, was now a children's home. Every Easter, two gangs from London fought on Marine Parade. The town had a long history of smuggling, a bay called Smuggler's Cove and a pub called Smuggler's Inn.

Of the four headlines nearby, the first was part of a private golf course, the second was owned by the National Trust and had a muddy and wooden steps on its steep bits, the third, the really magnificent one, was owned by the Ministry of Defence and used as a firing range and labour danger area on the Ordnance Survey maps,

the fourth headland was all rocks and called the cobbler and his dwarfs. And so on and so on and so on until he gets to the end where he says the pier had been condemned. The dog was a Jack Russell terrier named Andy. The new bus shelter had been vandalised. It was famous for its whelks.

It was raining. Oh! Oh, whelp, come on. Now let's see how far we get as we go back to our Hit Sound countdown. Number 10 this week is Bad Manners and My Girl Lollipop. At nine, Stool Pigeon from Kid Creole and the Coconuts. At number eight, Madness driving in my car. At seven, up one for The Stranglers and Strange Little Girl.

At six, up 15, Can't Take My Eyes Off You from the Boys Town Gang. Hot Chocolate are at five with It Started With a Kiss. Yazoo at four with Don't Go. Fame with Irene Karas at number three. And at number two, up four places, Survivor and The Eye of the Tiger. And as I was the first guy to play this record, I'm particularly pleased to see Dexys Midnight Runners go to the top of the charts with Come On, Eileen!

Yay! I thought it was going to be wherever I lay my hat, that's my home. Sorry, sorry. This Dexys fan couldn't allow the moment to pass Nicky I'm afraid that's all we have time for

the cafes are closing and the sun's gone in for good huge thanks to Nicky and Tess for accompanying us on this journey back in space and time

and to Unbound for all the crisps and the flask of Bovril you can download all 165 previous episodes of Batlisted, plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at

batlisted.fm. We're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter, Facebook and now on Instagram too, where Tess Davison will be happy to field your inquiries. Thanks Tess. You can show your love directly by supporting our Patreon

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and to all our patrons, huge thanks for enabling us to continue to do what we love and enjoy Let me ask each of the guests are you going anywhere nice for your holidays this year? Tess, are you going anywhere? Oh, no No, great

Nikki, are you going anywhere nice for your holidays? We know you are. I'm going to the south of France next week. Oh, my goodness. By branch line train? By Eurostar, yes. Yes.

And then TGV. TGV. Okay, TGV. John Mitchison, are you going anywhere nice for your holidays? I'm staying at home, Andy. I'm going to have a staycation and enjoy the joys of the English countryside. Well, I am going to Cornwall next week. No dining car, I'm sorry to say.

But other than that, it should be good. So thanks very much, everybody. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you in a fortnight. And let's leave you in the traditional manner. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted.

As well as getting the show early, 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.