Backlisted - The Lowlife by Alexander Baron

Episode Date: April 15, 2018

John and Andy are at the dogs this week, discussing the 1963 cult novel The Lowlife by Alexander Baron. They are joined by London enthusiast Peter Watts(the first person to write a biography of Battersea Power Station) and Gary Budden, author and director of ground-breaking indie Influx Press.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)8'06 - Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart14'49 - Rex v Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders by Laura Thompson20'36 - The Lowlife by Alexander Baron* 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

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. I've seen all of Dun and Slaughter My Boys, didn't you love it? It's marvellous. Andy, did you feel that the charges of cultural appropriation that have been... I don't want to talk about the reasons,

probably entirely justified why it's problematic, because everything's problematic. Everything good is problematic. Sorry. It's brilliant, Pile of Dogs. Thank you. There we go. You can't much remember an hour and a half more joyfully spent.

I'm a long-time lover of Wes Anderson's films. Favourite Wes Anderson? That one. Tenenbaums is my favourite. Yeah, definitely Tenenbaums. Me too, and I like Zizou as well. Then Rushmore, I reckon. I love Rushmore.

I really liked Fantastic Mr Fox. And Fantastic Mr Fox. He's my favourite, I agree. It's brilliant fun. That's crazy about Grand Budapest Hotel. So back to Isle of Dogs. Oh yeah, but it's good. I thought the cold device of them using the Japanese for the humans was very clever.

I love dogs. I hate all this cat shit. I do. I've found the cat videos on YouTube. You never saw my cats and dogs talk. I don't even know what you're talking about. What cats and dogs talk? What do you mean?

I used to do cats and dogs talk, where I'd say basically cats have taken over. You know, 20% of internet content is cat related. They're literally taking over our brains. And they also spread this terrible thing, Toxoplasma gondii, which is destroying brains. I mean, 60% of the UK population are infected. You're actually going to get rid of 50% of our audience by saying that, though.

Yeah, I'm just... Well, it's not for everyone. It's not for everyone. I'm just saying, cats. The point about this was dogs. I love dogs. Who was your favourite voice actor? Bryan Cranston, oddly.

I didn't expect that. And Scarlett Johansson, obviously. I was just happy to see Yoko Ono. Oh, really? Of course. Yoko, getting her due quite right. She was fantastic. I would commend to listeners,

there's a short essay by Michael Chabon about Wes Anderson, which is the thing that I've read in the last ten years that I most would like to have written. Absolutely incredible, and probably only 3,000 words tops, description of why people who think wes anderson's films are twee haven't understood wes anderson or life itself which which is so magnificent and witty and he makes a link between wes anderson's films and pale fire by nabokov which as I say it sounds pretentious and reaching a bit

but in the way it's delivered Shaben's such a brilliant writer it just feels so natural and funny and not a sort of intellectual response to the material which we often see in critical writing but a kind of emotional response to the material

so I think if you google Michael Sh, Michael Shaben, Wes Anderson, it's something like the New York Times or the New York Review of Books or something like that. It's such a brilliant essay. It's great. I mean, I just think he's one of the great modern storytellers. The master storyteller. You should get him on here.

He reads. Yeah, yeah. If you're listening, Wes. We're friendly. Shall we start? Yeah, let's go. Okay. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books.

Today, you'll find us in a run-down suburban boarding house in Hackney in the late 1950s. Big rooms, high ceilings, thin walls. You get the picture. A landlord scuttling around downstairs in the late 1950s. Big rooms, high ceilings, thin walls, you get the picture. A landlord scuttling around downstairs in the cellar and we're getting ourselves ready for a big night out for the dogs. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Joining us today is Peter Watts, a seasoned journalist and editor whose huge range of interests include London, drugs, sports and social history.

He's the first person to write a biography of Battersea Power Station up in smoke. It's published by Paradise Road. And you're also the author of, you're working on a book, aren't you, Peter, about the history of Denmark Street. That's right. Great. Also, listeners, if you are listening to this on Monday the 16th, Tuesday the 17th, Wednesday the 18th, or even Thursday the 19th of April, Peter is doing an event at Pages of Hackney Bookshop on Thursday the 19th

with Owen Hopkins and Dave Hill called Ruins of Modern London. That's correct. It's £5 a ticket. Childcare, throw that in. Cost of getting there. Will it be worth it? It's going to be more than worth it. Great, good.

Not Dave. You have Pete as well. Not Dave, it's not from Slade. We're also joined as a guest by Gary Budden. He is co-director of groundbreaking indie Influx Press, who published our great backlist favourite, A Trib, by Edie Williams, which just won a prize. So congratulations to her, congratulations to you.

Thank you very much. And you are a practitioner of landscape punk. I am. And your collection, Hollow Shores, was published by Dead Ink last October. The book Gary and Peter are joining us to discuss today is The Low Life by Alexander Barron. First published in 1963 and ever a book deserved the tag cult classic. It's this one. But before we go to the dogs, as it were, we're delighted to introduce this episode's sponsor.

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So, thank you to Spoke. We're all here drinking various grades of industrial strength porter. Nicky, as always, is on the mezcal. I'm drinking water. Listeners, we're still working our way through the mezcal from the Under the Volcano episode. Indeed, and we'll be doing it for many weeks to come. So let's switch seamlessly from pants to punts.

What have you been reading, Andy? Forgive me, everyone. Well, all right. So first what I'm going to say is what I've actually been reading this week. And I said on Twitter, they're basically like Lee Child novels, but for me. I've been reading Edward St. Albans' Patrick Melrose novels. I read the first two, Nevermind and Bad News. And I read both of them in a morning each.

Have you read any of them? I feel I have, but I haven't, no. I'm not going to say any more because I need to finish reading all five of them. But, wow. Great. Okay. But what I wanted to talk about, I've also been reading this week, a novel for children called Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart. This was originally published in 1974.

This was one of my favourite books when I was a child. Sort of Lucy Mangan-induced kind of trip. Yeah, I was trying to think about books that I really liked as a child which weren't so well-known, and I was trying to think how I first encountered this book. So Mary Stewart is one of those writers a bit like nora lofts funnily enough who sold a lot of books particularly in the 70s she only died in 2014 she was 97 and she she was the author of books that she is the crystal caves do you remember that they're books about merlin they were sold in

hundreds of thousands of copies i remember from my childhood my childhood. My parents, my mum particularly, had a lot of her kind of historical romances. And she also wrote three books for children, one of which is this one, Ludo and the Star Horse. The way I got to this book was via Jackanory. I remember it being read on Jackanory, and I've been able to look up on the BBC Genome when it was. It was read in September 1975 when I would have been seven and it was read by the actor Edward Petherbridge and I remember at the end of that week, we went to the library every Saturday morning.

On the Saturday morning I went to the library to see if they had a copy of this book, Ludo and the Star Horse, and they did and I borrowed it and renewed the ticket through till Christmas because I didn't want anyone else to have it because I borrowed it and renewed the ticket through till Christmas. Because I didn't want anyone else to have it. Because I loved it so much. I read it and read it and reread it.

And then what happened is, because I was seven, I then forgot the name of the title and the author. And I spent literally decades asking people, saying, do you remember this book that was on Jackanory when we were kids? It was about a boy and a horse. The boy is knocked out, and he has to travel through each of the houses of the Zodiac to get home again. I mean, what a brilliant premise. It makes the hairs on my arm stand on end, as I say it to you. It's very odd how that happens.

I had exactly the same experience with a book called The Giant Under the Snow by John Gordon, which was a puffin. And I had it read out at school. They used to do that when the teachers were bored. They were all going to have story hour or whatever it was, which I always used to love. And I couldn't, I didn't get the name of either side.

And it's, again, the same thing, interrogating people about, there were these things called the leather men who had you know who were just sort of thin brown skin running around in this and the main character was called John Quill if we'd had the internet now well this is what I was going to say

so I spent decades trying to find out what this book was and then it became a habitual Google search and nothing ever came up that I would type in the words you know giaconori zodiac uh switzerland to see what to see what i got and then about 10 years ago i it was being mentioned on a on a forum somewhere who do books you remember from giaconori and there it was ludon's i gotta buy that so i bought it Dunstan. I've got to buy that. So I bought it.

Here it is. I've got my copy here. I read this to Alex when he was small enough. And listeners, I won't lie to you. I couldn't read the last chapter because I was crying so much. It's such a wonderful, magical book, this. such a wonderful, magical book, this. Now, as I say this, I'm going to read you just the opening two paragraphs. Chapter one, Home. This is the story of something that happened a long time ago to a boy called Ludo, and you can believe it or not, as you please. It was told to me by Ludo's

own grandson, and personally, I believe every word of it, but you, Amelie, must judge for yourself. Ludo Spiegel was 11 years old, and he lived in a little mountain village in Bavaria called Oberfeld. Herr Spiegel, Ludo's father, was very poor. He owned three goats and a cow, and that was all, if you don't count his wife and son. Even the old horse he kept for work and the cottage he lived in, poor as it was, did not belong to him, but to the king, who owned the whole valley and all the land for many miles around. So, so far, so fairy story. the zodiac and enters into either conversation or negotiation or physical fights with say a crab or an archer is he's being introduced to the idea of death as he goes on and something or someone

must die in order to get home so it is the most brilliant mixture of simple storytelling, imagination and learning in terms of the referencing within the Zodiac, within horoscopes, but also something useful that you carry out of it, which I had remembered even though I had forgotten the name of the book and the name of the book and the name of the author and it's the thing I think that stays with us about books is often we can't remember the story and we can't remember the author we may not even remember the title but we carry around with us the feeling of the book more than anything else you know and so coming back to this after what was then a 30-year gap was a really uncanny reading experience.

So I would sort of say to people who will now be thinking, oh, Ludo and the Star Horse by Mary Stewart, I'd love to read that. It's out of print. And Hodder, who republished this a few years ago, let it go out of print, and the cheapest copy I could find online was 100 quid. So I apologise to you all for that. Perhaps there's a conversation to be had, Andy. I think somebody should be bringing this back into print.

We were talking earlier, do books deserve to be in print? I'm a bit sceptical about that phrase. It deserves to be in print. Well, you know, books aren't only in print because of an aesthetic reason and yet this book you know i feel is such a classic of its genre and so neglected that yeah it deserves to be in print what age is it what age for children seven eight there's a there's a there's a signed copy copy on eBay for 75 quid at the moment, if anybody would like to chip in for that.

When's your birthday? Yeah. It's actually quite soon. It is next month. Anyway, John, what have you... So that's memory lane for me. What have you been reading this week? Well, I've been reading something very, very different from that,

but quite, in a way, has strange connections with with with with alizana baron only because it is it is a london story uh it's a book by uh laura thompson who was a guest on backlisted uh did nancy mitford for us last year it's called rex v edith thompson a tale of two murders it is the story of the th-Bywaters murder case in which Freddie Bywaters and Edith Thompson were both hanged for the murder of Percy Thompson. A classic love triangle. Percy Thompson was married to Edith. Freddie became her lover. In fact, he lived in the house that they lived in in Ilford.

It's a kind of Venn diagram of suburban london in the 1920s it's courtroom drama you know which we all love and we know that the outcome is bad and it's going to involve hanging which is always and then the bit that i think makes it most interesting there was no evidence to hang her but the letters that she wrote to freddie bywaters are so powerful and erotic and beautiful that society became a victim of the need for society to purge them she was the woman who had the new woman you know the woman who had a job who kind of was was open about sex it was sort of a whole society kind of and even the feministsists, Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West, rounded on her.

Yes, Rebecca West said some amazing thing about her, didn't she? So it's sort of... It's basically... This is the class. She was seen as a jumpy upstart. T.S. Eliot also was incredibly de haute en bas about it. So it became this kind of... I mean, I'll read you just a tiny little bit. The bit, obviously, you know,

with our ongoing stories of the suburbs, Laura is, I think, just a glorious writer and tells the story wonderfully. It's such a depressing story that somebody could have been hanged, basically, because all his letters she destroyed. He, because he was basically a bit of a thug, I mean, you know, sexually kind of magnetic, but obviously a bit of a thug I mean, you know, sexually kind of magnetic but obviously a bit of a thug but they had to kill her

because of what she'd written but I just like this idea of Ilford in the 19... Ilford, albeit of mushroom growth, has a pretty conceit of itself, said the evening news in 1907 its street vistas are beautifully monotonous every front gardener is a replica of its neighbour, while the names of the thoroughfares have a poetry and a distinction that would be found

hard to beat elsewhere. It was quite true that Ilford, just across the border from East London, was a dream of homogeneity. Long straight streets crossed by other long straight streets, the grid system of Houseman's Paris replicated in a couple of miles of Essex. It was also true that these villa-lined streets had names of aristocratic seemliness, Belgrave Road, Seymour Gardens, Stanhope Gardens, De Vere Gardens, Mayfair Avenue. They would form the landscape, pleasing and spacious and poster bright,

traversed by Edith almost every day for three years. What had been a village was developed alongside a branch of the Great Eastern Railway known as the Fairlop Loop, which opened in 1903 and was intended to encourage the new Essex settlements. Chigwell was another. Ilford was therefore one of several Edwardian suburbs, yet somehow it became definitively suburban, a place where people mowed their lawns every Sunday, raised children and geraniums, kept cats that perched sleekly on garden walls, played bowls on the green in Valentine's Park, and died without fuss in their beds.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this milieu in pushing the Thompson-Bywaters case to prominence. The Ilford murder was what the case was called, always and only, as if nobody could quite believe that such a thing had happened in such a place. Ilford murder mystery, so the story began in the Times on 5th of October 1922. Then as the days ticked on, Ilford murder charge, Ilford crime, Ilford inquest, Ilford exhumation, Ilford murder trial, Ilford verdict, Ilford executions today. It's a really, really interesting bit of social history. And it's almost unrecoverable that sense of you know how could this woman hang and the only people who sided with her one of the characters in the book her sister who remained loyal to the end and didn't talk at all for 50 years to anybody about it gave two

incredibly bitter interviews towards the end of the life it's a great story i mean sounds fantastic and i have to say has not had a single review back in my day I would have thought a story like this would have been reviewed that would be the institutional suburban bias against

suburbia that I'm always talking about Peter's written about this as well haven't you Peter see I come from Croydon Peter comes from the bitter rival borough of Sutton. The shit Croydon The shit Croydon I thought it was specificity of place

is really important in the low life I thought it was quite interesting because the fact that there's a brilliant bit at the beginning of the book where he says this is Hackney and Hackney isn't the east end. The East End starts down the road. Well we'll come on to that because I know Gary we were trying not to talk

about this book in the pub before we came in and we failed. But we all re-read this didn't we? For this. And Nicky you hadn't read it before had you? Nicky did you like it? I loved it. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Was it what you thought it was going to be? No. And actually I was half the time expecting something really horrific to happen i'm really pleased that it

didn't you know it felt like it was leading to a big big no spoilers but uh no spoilers yes but i know what you mean he keeps one of the things so good about i agree with you nicky is he keeps moving to places you don't expect him to move we'll pick this up again after some adverts stay tuned to this. So we're going to talk about The Low Life by Alexander Baron. And just before I ask the traditional question of our guests about where they first encountered this book, I would like to say that this is a sort of a first for Backlisted. The reason we wanted to do The Low Life on the podcast is that I bought a copy maybe two or three years ago because I was collecting the Harville's London Fiction series

that was published in the early noughties. This book, Capital by Maureen Duffy, Court by Henry Green, Fowler's End by Gerald Kirsch. And then I didn't read it. I had it on the shelf. And then after we did The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton on the podcast last year, several listeners said, if you like that book, you'd really like London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins,

or you'd really like Of Love and Hunger by Julian McLaren Ross, and you'd really like The Low Life by Alexander Barrett. And I thought, OK, well, I'll get it off the shelf and read it. And I remember, this was only a few months ago, and I remember it blew me away. I think I read it in a day, and I said to John, I emailed John a lot, I said, we have to do this book on the podcast. This is one of those books that I can't imagine that anyone,

any of our listeners would not pick this up, read it, and just enjoy it. It is such a powerful, gripping, well-written book. So it's thanks to the listeners that we're doing the book on here. And of course, it had been buried in my mind because I'd left Harville by the time we did it. But the Harville London Fiction Series was a great series of books.

Cut short, I have to say, because Harville was sold to Penningham Random House. But it was really the brainchild of Paul Bagley, who's now at Picador. But Gerald Kirsch's Fowler's End, and, as you say, Maureen Duffy, Kenny Green. I have two of them here. Marvellous.

I'm very jealous of your edition of The Low Life, and I'm going to have to find one online, I think, and buy it second-hand. It has also a cracking... Jamie Keenan did the cover. It's a brilliant cover. A cracking introduction by Ian Sinclair cover. It's a brilliant cover. That's right, a cracking introduction by Ian Sinclair,

which we'll probably talk about. So let's talk about, then, the low life first. Gary, where did you first encounter this book? It all came from when I moved to London when I was about 22, back in 2005. And for no real reason, I moved to Stoke Newington because I think I had some friends there and just living in the area became I've just always naturally interested in writing about the place I'm living in

which led me quite obviously to Ian Sinclair I think the first book I read of his was London Orbital I can't remember which book of Sinclair's it was but he talks a lot about Alexander Barron and I was very interested It might be that one yeah of Sinclair's it was, but he talks a lot about Alexander Barron. And I was very interested... It might be Nights Out on the Territory, I seem to remember. It might be that one, yeah. He talks about him a lot and I mentioned him in a lot of his books.

And I was like, it sounded fascinating. I think by this time, the Harville edition, I think, had already gone out of print. And this would be a few years before... Black Spring. The Black Spring edition, which was 2010. But I was living by Stem Newington Common, and there's a library just up the road,

and they had a first edition of the novel, so I had to get it out of the library. It was out of print at the time. And that was my first encounter with it, and I read it and I sort of loved it in the way we were talking about how everyone loves it, and I couldn't really work out why it was out of print we should say the low life is currently in print from black spring but very sadly because the founder of black spring died a few months ago it has become clear to me

while i was chasing out one of the other books that some of the black spring books may be slipping out of print so if you want to read this book at the end of, if you don't have a copy and you want to read it after listening to the podcast, may I suggest that you buy one sooner rather than later because I don't know how long it's going to be around for. Peter, so that's where Gary encountered the low life. Where did you, are you right about London a lot? Where did you first come across Alexander Barron?

Well, I started with King Dido, is um another of um Barron's book I was working at Time Out I was feature writer at Time Out um from 2005 to 2010 and then I was made redundant and my leaving present from um the person sitting next to me Rebecca who was a news editor was a copy of King Dido by Alexander Barron and um I wasn't really reading fiction at the time. I was really just reading lots and lots and lots of nonfiction about London. So I didn't really know what to make of this book. It's not a hugely attractive edition. Am I allowed to say that? You're allowed to say it. And I was kind of puzzled, you know, and she was saying, look, this is a great London writer.

She couldn't believe I'd never heard of him. I went home. I was redundant, so I had nothing else to do. So I read it. And I loved it. You know, I loved it. It was, I loved the evocation of place. You know, it really felt like somewhere that I wanted to go and see, which is what I did. So, because I was redundant, I had nothing else to do.

I went to Bethnal Green, and I went and found the street that it's set on. King Dido is a book that he wrote in 69, which is about... It's not a gang street that it's set on. King Dido is a book that he wrote in 69, which is about... It's not a gang war, is it? That's not right. It's sort of turn-of-the-century gang. Not exactly gang.

It's set in order, really, isn't it? It begins with the coronation of... That's right. I forget what it says on the first page of the novel, I think. But it's all set very much in a single street. There's a pub at the end, there's some shops. And the way he wrote about that street, and and he names it it's called hair marsh um it's called rabbit sorry it's called rabbit marsh but it's played based in a place called hair marsh um just near

brick lane and it was you know it was very clearly a real place and i think that's that's something that really fascinated me because it was a it's a tiny little street is that where his mother's from or yeah i think his grandmother. So you found that one. And then after that I read The Low Life about a couple of years later and then I read another one called Rosie Hogarth which is set around here, set in Angel. Yeah, we're recording near Angel and Rosie Hogarth is set where?

Near Chapel Market. There's a street called Barron Street which may or may not be people speculate that it may be where he got his nom de plume from he wasn't born Alexander Barron

why is he such a great you know we talk about him it strikes me after Ian Sinclair we talk about because of Ian Sinclair we talk about Barron as a great London writer at the moment, though that's not always been the case, but at the moment we tend to think of him as a London writer, what is it about

Baron's version of London that really resonates with people now do you think? I think when I first read it, it was just very exciting to read almost like proper literature as I would call it, about the area in which I was living in. Dalston Junction.

Yeah, and it was an area I knew quite intimately by that point, and the fact that I could see someone who I think I would have agreed with, I knew his biography, I'd agree with politically, and I admired in many ways, writing about a kind of... He was a communist, wasn't he? Yeah, and he was involved... Fought at Cable Street.

Involved in fighting Mosley on ridley road market and things like that but the fact he was writing about i think not ordinary people almost like people in the low life a kind of underclass and it's just very complex characters living in to me it felt like this very real place because i was living there i could recognize aspects of it even 50 years later. Pete, you had a bit, didn't you, that you wanted to read about place? Before I do that, actually, I'd like to say something about...

So I was reading a lot of Emil Zola last year because Emil Zola, you know, he lived in Crystal Palace, so obviously he's a London writer. In The Low Life, Harry Boy Begins. Did Zola really live in Crystal Palace? Yeah, he did, yeah. He was after the Dreyfus. No, he never's a London writer in the low life Harry Boy begins yeah he did yeah he was when he was um after the Dreyfus yeah no he never wrote never wrote a London novel he took lots of

photographs of women on bicycles there you go um so at the beginning of the low life Harry Boy is reading a load of um Zola novels and he talks about how Zola's great he says you know loads of sex and violence basically which is quite true Zola isola novels and he talks about how Zola's great. He says there's loads of sex and violence, basically, which is quite true. Zola is a terrific writer. He can be tougher than Mickey Spillane and when he gets onto sex, he's red hot. But I am giving you the wrong idea about him.

He is a serious writer. Profound. Terrific. And the way Zola writes about Paris reminds me of the way Baron writes about London. So he's very specific about the architecture and he's very specific about the streets and he's very specific about the streets and he names the places.

But also it's about the people who live there and the way he writes about them. So it's not just about detailing the architecture. It's about people who populate those. And he doesn't judge them. He writes about the poor. But he's never judgmental. There's a lot of humour in it.

You made the point, Gary, that the book doesn't start there, does it? It starts it starts in no for a book that's such a hack like a specifically a hackney novel i think it's quite crucial that it actually begins in finchley and harry boy is having uh dinner with his older sister and her husband who've um i think representing that kind of that move of the Jewish immigrant families. And I think a lot of Italian families are out of the East End up into North West London, which is a kind of recognisable demographic shift.

And it makes it clear that he is already, essentially, a survival of a different era. Yeah. And that's interesting, because the bit I'm going to read about is where he starts off in the East End, and then he moves to Hackney, and then his family moves on. And the bit I'm reading says he's going back to where he's from, so it's Cable Street. I walked away from the pain, but it was waiting for me in Hessel Street, where she used to shop.

He's talking about his mum. The last ghetto market, a clutter of stalls and holes in the walls, smelling of poultry and vegetables and groceries and in a tenement of dark red brick on the other side of commercial road where we lived i stood in the entry and filled myself with the smells it's always the smells that work on me a thickness of mixed cooking laundry on the boil and the odors of many people close together i love it the stink of home of all that is good i love this whole passage where he's going back there's a lot of nostalgia and he's gone back to where he was brought up um yeah he cries yeah because he sees i think he sees where his mum dies so i'm just going to read the blurb on the back of the harville edition because we did a quick

props to mr bagley props we believe this this is written by paul bagley hello paul there's no royalty for you here i'm afraid so this is just by Paul Bagley. Hello, Paul. There's no royalty for you here, I'm afraid. So this is just to give listeners the premise of the novel. East London, home of dog tracks and boarding houses, winners and losers, mostly losers. Harry Boy is lowlife, scum. But if he leaves the track after the 13th race quids in, everyone will say, there goes Harry Boy Burris, he leaves the track after the 13th race quids in everyone will say there goes harry

boy boas king of the track trouble starts for harry boy when the deaners move into his hackney boarding house quicker than he can place a bet on a dog harry boy finds himself the admired hero and evil genius of the family particularly for the child gregory but harry boy is also the victim of a secret guilt of his own, something unknown even to his doting sister Debbie, ensconced in her nouveau riche Finchley mansion. As the debts from his addictions grow,

Harry Boy sinks deeper into a criminal underworld where violence and revenge are the inevitable comeback to those who can't pay up. Now what, actually you know what, that is a great blurb and one of the reasons it's such a great blurb is what you said nikki that it taps into the feeling that something really bad is going to happen bad things do happen but they're never quite what you think

they're going to be right having reread it i think this is more about the aftermath of something genuinely terrible happening just going back to the bit this is more about the aftermath of something genuinely terrible happening. Just going back to the bit you were saying about the East End, though, I wanted to mention that with Influx Press, our very first book we ever did was called... It was an anthology of Hackney writing, and we took the title from this book, The Low Life, so I'd quite like to just read that little bit.

Oh, yeah, great. I think it's from the same section where he's revisiting his East End childhood. In Black Lion Yard, I couldn't resist stopping at the old dairy. There used to be a cowhouse here in my childhood. Mother used to bring me here for a treat to buy warm milk from the cows.

I can remember them, big, sad, patient creatures, debbies, all of them, in their dark buyers. Years after they were gone, you could still go into the yard and smell the rotten straw and it was like being a child again but now the wooden gates 10 foot high were closed i stuck my nose through a crack and sniffed but no smell of the past lingered and as i came away i saw on a board that epitaph to all our yesterdays acquired for development by and we called the anthology acquired for development by. And we called the anthology Acquired for Development By because it was about issues of gentrification.

And it was interesting to read this because this is 1963 and you could write that sentence about London now. I mean, it is a book about gentrification in a strange way, which I hadn't noticed when I read it the first time round. But reading it the second time, it's about the incomers into Hackney, the middle-class incomers, and the changing of the... And also the fact that his way out of gambling

is theoretically buying property. Yes, he tries to buy some housing. Yeah, he buys for a while. Briefly, he has a terrace of houses. That is a magnificent... I don't want to spoil it. The set piece scene where he acquires property is genuinely palm-sweatingly unfortunate to read.

I mean, it's just... Because you know where it's going. He's already set himself up as a character who will let himself down, let the reader down, let his sister down. Yes, yes. And you watch him, it's like it is, that slow motion feeling of,

oh, no, no, leave, walk out now, go now, but he can't do it. Sadly, I have no audio of Alexander Barron, but I do have a clip that I want to play now because it's sort of, again, it's very good for giving us a sense of place and the kind of characters we're talking about. In his introduction, Ian Sinclair compares this to a film that came out in 1963

called The Small World of Sammy Lee, which is a great favourite of mine. Anyway, here is a clip from The Small World of Sammy Lee, where Sammy, a inveterate gambler, played by Anthony Newley, travels across London and he's gone to his brother, played by Warren Mitchell, who runs a grocery in the East End to try and get the money that he needs to pay back by the end of the day. Very similar premise to the low life. So let's just have a listen to that. So apart from the fact that you look terrible, how are you?

I'm in a little spot of bother. Believe me, Lou, you know I hate asking. How much? 300. 300? I'm in terrible trouble, honestly. I should hope so for three hundred pounds. I've got to have it by seven o'clock tonight.

Three hundred pounds. By seven o'clock. Three hundred pounds for seven... Here, here. Take. What do you want? Three, four hundred? Take a grand. What do you want, you billy? Take it with you or I shall sell or send it. My dear brother, have a look around you. Look at all the business I'm not doing. Look at the customers.

Five teams are getting in the door. I can't take the money fast enough. 300 pounds. All right, Lou, you don't understand. I understand. I understand. You're a machine. Would I come to you if I wasn't in dead stone, would I?

Keep still, will you? Keep still. You are mixing with the wrong crowd. Lou, will you listen to me? These fellas are right bandits. If I don't have this money by tonight, they're going to cut me up. Lou, remember when we were kids? Who was it who took

the blame when you heaved a rock at that copper in Peterhill Street? Who was it who sorted out Maxie Abrams when he was a kind of bash-or-ed him? And do me a favour, eh, Lou? Eh? Yeah, that's perfect. Ah, that film is so great but here's the thing again

no spoilers what happens in the film is the thing that doesn't happen in the book alright so I because I think the scene where there's so much to talk about in this book and you would Gary's just hinting at it

it's a very jewish book full of that kind of great jewish snack but it is also about a man traumatized by war and you were saying pete earlier that that ban was first i mean his first book which is uh from the city from the plow was a massive bestseller and you know hugely acc. V.S. Pritchett said it was the most honest, truest book about the Second World War ever written. So his first kind of flush of fame came as a... And he fought in Sicily. So I get the sense of Harry Boy is somebody who is traumatised by war. Like a lot of people were in that sort of period

and there's something Ayn Sinclair says in his introduction that was really interesting, there's a sort of moment when that was hip the Gerald Cush Night in the City movie and then suddenly the attention moves up to the North and

Alan Silito and then when people come back to London it's swinging London and it's sort of the kind of barren world people have moved on from. I mean I think the barren world has some connections with Absolute Beginners and Colin McInnes and

you can sort of feel it's post-war reconstruction and the people living within it are sort of trying to figure out ways of making money. I mean, all the stuff about, as we were saying, about the buying of houses and selling them. I mean, Marcia, who is the prostitute who slept with thousands of men, but she makes her money basically being a rackman-like kind of slum landlord.

I think what you said there, John, I think that's really interesting. The thing to understand about Baron is, and I know, Gary, we were talking about this earlier. The thing to understand about Baron is, Baron has this phenomenal success with the first book that he writes, From the City, From the Plough, published 1948. I read it last week. I had never heard of it before we started doing this. I read it sold up to half a million copies. It is a stupendously

good book. I cannot understand why that isn't a Penguin Classic or why it wouldn't be considered a Penguin Classic. I read The Humankind, which is the other one that I, because I knew you were reading this one. These are brilliant

novels. Brilliant war novels. So Baron makes his name as a writer about war, the soldier's experience of war. And then we get to The Low Life, which is written 15, 16, 17 years after his first success. And it strikes me two things are going on. He's writing, as you say, John, about being a survivor, and we can discuss a survivor of what.

But he's also, Baron himself is writing, Baron strikes me as the sort of writer who had an eye on what might work. And this is 63. We are in the thick of angry young men kitchen sink drama in certainly in terms of film and in literature as well i think there's a very clear stylistic gear change yeah between the types of book that he had been writing and what he might get away in 1963 but also he said he wanted to write he resist he resisted writing a Jewish book, right?

I think it's interesting the timing 1963 and you're talking about, it's about the kind of the trauma from war. I mean I just reread Ken Walpole's excellent essay about Barron and he's talking about 1961

is the Adolf Eichmann trial and that's really the time when what happened during the holocaust really became yeah no and there was this sort of delayed understanding of what actually happened it's fascinating because we we've had it all you know we had the world at war and we had all the you know but actually if you if you were from 45 to 60 i mean there was belson which was a big story, but the actual scale, the industrialised scale of the Holocaust, I think...

And I think there's just, with trauma of that kind of magnitude, I think there's a sort of real delayed effect. And having re-read the book, when I first read it, I just thought this was a great London kind of crime caper, because I was a younger man and I knew the bits I was going to do. When I was reading Derek Raymond and

other stuff. I read it again and I genuinely think it's him trying to address that huge issue, especially as a Jewish. There's an article online, a very good article by Susie Thomas about interpreting the book as being about the aftermath of the Holocaust.

I really think it is. So it's a book about two things. Survival, no really think it is now. Survival's guilt. Yes, so it's a book about two things. Survival, no, three things, forgive me. Survival, denial, and escape. And a lot of what you see in Harry Boy, he's sort of lying to himself and the reader. So the way he presents scenarios to the reader that he then can't stick to.

He's a great narrator for saying, of course, what you want to do is this, but I couldn't do it, reader. I did something different. Because he's trying to find the thrill, the way out, but does he want the way out? There's also this fantastic thing in this book, I can feel myself growing more enthused, there's this fantastic thing in this book

which is incredibly pioneering about the narrator and Baron's attitude towards the multicultural community. Yeah, yeah. Very, very progressive. Can I, because I was going to read this bit, because this bit kind of brings the two bits together. The story is obviously there's a family that move into the house, the little kid Gregory and Vic, the slightly feeble husband, and Evelyn, who is...

Pretty monstrous. Pretty monstrous. And she is an out-and-out racist, who, of course, as we all know, it still goes on today, out-and-out racist is the first thing they say. I'm not prejudiced. But, anyway, she doesn't like...

A black family move into the house, she doesn't like it. And the D'Souzas, and he is... This is Harry Boy. He's like it. And the D'Souzas. And he is, this is Harry Boy, has had a meal with the D'Souzas. Millie said to me, why don't she like us? I was too busy polishing my plate to answer. It was a Saturday. They called me down to help them dispose of a chicken in chili sauce.

Joe said, I tell you why, Mill. We got too much life. We're not liked because we have too much life in us. Through a mifle i said maybe you joe said you got nothing against us harry i tell you why you got plenty of life too i seen you eat eat yeah i watched you eat that chicken boy the way you tore that wing off and crunch that bone and suck the marrow out and wipe your plate you sure made a meal of it. So, listen, that's how I like to see a man eat. But not her. Not that lady downstairs. Well, she doesn't like me so much either. Go on, man,

you're the best of pals with them. In a friendly way, she hates me too. He thought over this for a moment and then said, sure, sure, I get it. You see, I said, the way we eat, that way we live, you and me, Joe, we mop the plate dry. We suck the last gob of marrow. We lick our fingers. From our fathers and our grandfathers, we know hunger, and we value food. In our blood, we know an axe can fall on us at any second. So we live.

We live. Sure, Joe said. Sure, I nearly added. And these these haters of life they can even murder babies because that moment brought back to me like a twitch of pain in the head my fear that a little son of mine might have been packed into a dark suffocating sealed truck for five days and nights and sent to the furnaces this is amazing i that amazing shift from life into just... Incredible. That's what I got most from this book.

This is a much bigger book than I remember it being. I'd forgotten all that stuff. I'd read it again a couple of weeks ago and I'd just completely forgotten that there was any reference to the war at all. That's radical because it's black characters talking in a novel

in 1963 and being sympathetic and being, you know, there's nothing forced about it. And it's also putting the Holocaust into a novel. It's also, we've got to say that, as I say, it's very hip

as well. I mean, 1963, it's a very kind of... I'm showing you the seamier side of life. And I thought it would be worth... This is not a criticism of Baron at all. I'm fascinated by Baron. Baron would write in any genre that he could. Do you know he wrote episodes of To Serve Them All My Days?

Yes, by R.F. Delderfield. Who we've featured on the podcast before. And Jane Eyre. He was a journeyman. He turned his hand to anything. He wrote The Low Life is published in 1963, and it does well enough that there's a sequel. He writes a sequel called Strip Jack Naked.

That comes out in 1966. And as far as anyone can tell, none of us have read it, as far as anyone can tell, the relationship between The Low Life and Stripjack Naked is like the relationship between the Ipcrest file and Billion Dollar Bro. Where? What started off as a gritty, realistic thriller of the streets

has turned into a ludicrous fantasy. And the reason I say that is I had a look on Twitter to see if anyone had read Stripjack Naked, right? And there's only one person who has ever mentioned it on Twitter, or for that matter, Goodreads, and it is our friend, Kirkdale Books. I asked him, I said, you've read this,

and all you've said about it is it's crap. Can you write me a paragraph giving us a review that we can share with listeners because other than the review from the new statesman in 1966 this will be the most significant statement about stripjack naked by alexander baron here we and here he is this is what he wrote eight years ago i learned there was a sequel to the lowlife a book i love at some expense i ordered it immediately assuming it would be similar that's to say not an ounce of fat on it brilliant characters and atmosphere a cracking

yarn and some good old-fashioned aggro the book arrived no no no no and again no well all i can remember about it now is when the book abruptly moves to Venice. A city which is A. Not London and B. Boring. Harry Boy hooks up with a girl who is nicked off Holly Golightly. She rips him off or something. My diary shows that the next book I

read was Don DeLillo's Libra. Perhaps I could interest you in a copy of that. That sounds terrible. I think the idea of taking Harry Boy out of London... Well, he goes to Brighton, doesn't he? Is it Brighton he goes to? Actually, you're right. Yes, they do go on a...

And it works. They don't really leave the hotel room. But the point I was trying to make is about Baron. I can see Baron's thinking to himself, OK, well, Kitchen Sink was 62. Here we are in 66. Caper movies are where it's at. I'll take him to Venice.

If you Google Strip Jack Naked, as I just have, the first three are about books, and after that it goes straight to Pornhub. OK. Let me just say a bit about Baron himself. So Baron was born Alec Bernstein in Hackney, North London, 1917. He was educated at Hackney Downs School where he was drawn into the anti-fascist struggle against Moses Blackshirts. He left school at 16

to work as a clerk so he could become more involved in the youth wing of the Communist Party and allegedly he was like being basically groomed by the Communist Party to become a leading figure in the Communist Party. He enlisted in the army in 1940 much against the wishes of his comrades um and served actively in several campaigns before being invalided out in 1946 and when he was he had some kind of breakdown and he was asked what would you what would help you recuperate and he said give me a typewriter and so they gave him a typewriter on which he wrote the half million stroke million selling from the city from the plough and then he kind of

he takes on this fascinating career where he he keeps writing he writes 14 novels and although he can't his final novel is called Franco is Dying which Gary's got a copy of there look that's not in print

that one that's got Spanish Civil War but he also wrote the script for a film called The Siege of Sydney Street, a dramatisation of that siege he was a TV writer have we said and his books even in the late

70s, he wrote a novel called Gentle Folk which was turned into a BBC TV series. So the idea of him becoming, having disappeared into kind of, we're talking about him partly because Ian Sinclair talks about him, is really not to understand where he was coming from in some ways. He was a popular and populist writer. Both those things. So why is he not better known? I think Barron's actually in some ways

almost like quite a traditional writer, especially books like Rosie Hogarth, they're almost Dickensian in some ways. Which I suppose perhaps that's a little bit unfashionable now. Too many genres. People don't like a writer who writes across genre, I think, he's written.

Like you said, it's what kind of writer is Baron? I wouldn't really be able to answer that. People say he's a London writer, yes. He was a war writer first and then he was kind of a London writer. But you couldn't even say, what's so interesting about him is, although narrative is a big strength of his and narrative is foreground big uh strength of his and narrative is foregrounded in it in his books but you wouldn't say that's the thing that leads the

way even though i'd loved his london books i'd never thought of reading his war books um i read this for the first time uh in preparation for this from the city from the ploward i and the surprising thing is there isn't that much war in it. I mean, you know, it's not about fighting. My favourite bit in that book is where there's a man in a trench and he's sort of having a cigarette on his own and his close friend has gone out on patrol and not come back again. Oh, yeah.

And he's just sitting there smoking and reading the newspaper and it's about him being alone suddenly, but not mourning because you can't do that as a soldier, you've just got to get on with things. And then suddenly his friend returns and they just sort of settle down next to each other and just continue. They pick up almost as if nothing's happened. I think it's a very unsentimental book as well.

I wouldn't say it's cynical either. It's just, it's almost like this is what war is. I don't know, would you say it's a matter of fact? There's some anger towards the end. I mean, he gets quite angry at the end. He does, but he does a really fascinating thing, which is that he doesn't dehumanise anybody. So although you might have expected somebody

with his communist background to write something that was, you know, lions led by donkeys, he doesn't do that. He makes it clear that there are good and bad people in all strata of society that he wants to write about and that war dehumanises all of them

every individual has their own challenge to face within the theatre of war what I really love about this book is the final few chapters and I think this is sort of the point

bad things happen then more bad things happen then more bad things happen the relentlessness of it the unfairness of it as you say Peter it's sort of he saves it up for the end

but what a good book what a good book. What a good book. Yeah, I mean, The Low Life, I guess, is kind of calamity upon calamity. There is a brilliant... I mean, without giving anything away, you really think the worst has happened, and then somehow he manages to pull that out at the end. I think we should really talk about his... He's not only a gambling addict, but I think it's relevant to all of us, he's also a book addict.

Yeah. It's very interesting that the character, he wins loads of money and he goes to Charing Cross Road and stocks up on novels. And it's interesting that his novel addiction is equated with his... The relationship with Vic. Him being a lowlife. The guy in the house is sort of built around Vic being a reader. All backlisted listeners will be able to relate to this, surely. Yeah you say Gary is absolutely right he's he's a he's a reader

for all the good it does him yeah that's the thing we can relate to that as well there is a branch library two blocks from where I live a noisy place at one end kids scamp around the shelves of their section shrieking with laughter till the librarian hushes them, uncomfortably quiet for a while, then soon shrieking again. At the other end, the housewives chatter, waiting to rush at the librarian like gabbling hens at a fistful of seed every time she comes to the shelf with another armful of romances. At the end of one

afternoon, I went in to look for some thrillers. I like these books, the way they scratch on the nerves as I lie in bed. Chandler and Hammett are my favourites. You don't get writing like theirs nowadays. I've read all Mickey Spillane, but he lacks class. I was looking along the shelves when a fellow came round the end of a bookcase. It was Dina, the husband. He said, hello, seen anything good? I said no, and he held a couple of books out. He said, I've

got these. Two new novels. Fashionable names. The kind that are praised in the highbrow Sunday papers. Every week these papers find another writer who has, quote, earned his place in the front rack of contemporary writing. This front rank must be miles long by now. There must be a lot of poor nits like this Vic, who are so busy keeping up with this front rank lot

that they never have time to read a real book. He said, do you read much? I said, not much. It's hilarious. Do you think that was the same library that you first discovered it? I don't know, actually. That's a good point. I should investigate that.

I think for the sake of creating a beautiful journey and some structure we should assume it was. It's entirely possible. I think, as we said at the top, the thing I love about this book is there's almost nothing this book doesn't do. Yeah.

It packs an awful lot into it. It's very short. 180 pages, something like that. So you can read it fast. You'll be gripped by it. It goes pretty deep. The writing is so spot on and again

it's such a mark of his talent as a writer that the mode of storytelling in this book is completely different to From the City From the Plough and yet they both work I think I don't know about

it's the only one of the ones I've read that's first person as well. So it's the first one that's written in that style. And he brings out the kind of Jewishness of Harry Boy. Straight away, I mean, there's a bit right at the very beginning, but he never ladles it on. What does he say? Four years, a lifetime now.

We should have such luck. Yeah. It's like the great scene with Siskin, the landlord who scuttles around downstairs. He reaches him on the stairs and says, he says to Siskin, in God you don't believe now? God?

Excuse me, I don't know this gentleman. He looks after people. If that's his job, he must be the biggest messer in creation. Go to sleep, Mr Siskin. Millions are murdered. I should believe in God. Boaz, listen.

Above this earth is nothing. On it is only wild beasts.kin. Millions are murdered. I should believe in God. Boaz, listen. Above this earth is nothing. On it is only wild beasts. Men. Men are wild beasts. Shouldn't we know? Let them all drop dead. So what's this to do with burglars? Burglars?

They come in and break your head in. For nothing. Your head they break in. Boaz, I'll give you advice. Keep your door locked. I'll give you advice, Siskin. Go to bed. It's after three o'clock.

I went back to my room i was too tired to sleep so after an hour i took codeines and was like a dead man till midday it's interesting because baron was uh he was he was an atheist and um i've got i've got the ken warpole interview he did with him um talking about this why he didn't want to write about sort of jewish themes at first um He said he always had a personal rebellion against the idea of a separate Jewish identity. My father and both my grandfathers were free thinkers, and so am I. I am an atheist.

I never wanted to live within this defensive world called the Jewish community. But then to ask why he comes to this theme, he just says, I had something to get off my chest. And it's quite interesting, his own ambivalence with Jewishness, I think, is very interesting in this book. It's about food and it's about the Holocaust, really, the Jewishness that comes out of it, isn't it?

And a certain amount about family, but it's not about... It's not religion. It's not at all about religion. No. We have to wrap up. We do, we have to. Listeners, you know, we lie to you.

This is such a great book. And we have to, if there's any doubt about this book remaining in print, that has to be addressed more soon, I'm sure. That's it, folks. Our dogs have crossed the finishing line. But before we take the boat to the Canaries, it's just time for the Unbound Project Worth Backing of the Week. It's murdered by clerks by Twitter's medieval death bot, an illuminating collection of in-depth

looks at the most interesting cases from medieval coroners' roles. For example Thomas, son of Henry Rorbekin, died in 1286 after cutting off his left foot and then his left hand in a frenzy Agnes Bogwiller died 1433 lying in bed

near a weak wall of clay that wall fell on her and crushed her to death so it's great what's great the book will investigate these individual cases so you get not just the one-liner that you get on twitter but a so a lovely slim how about volume um remember if you pledge for it or any of the other 371 unbound projects currently live on the site you get free postage on that pledge by entering the special code BARON as you check out. Thank you to Peter and Gary, to our producer Nicky Birch, to Unbound, and to our sharp new sponsor, Spoke. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, on Facebook, BacklistedPodcast,

and at Unbound's online magazine, Unbound.com forward slash boundless. Also, if you felt like rating us on itunes that would be great also if you have rated us on itunes thank you very very much we have just topped 105 star ratings so thank you that is absolutely brilliant we really appreciate it yep thanks for listening we'll be back in a fortnight until then good night he is a serious writer profound terrific Thanks for listening. We'll be back in a fortnight. Until then, good night. He is a serious writer. Profound.

Terrific. Thank you. 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.