logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2024
1h 9m

Voices of the Old Sea by Norman Lewis

Backlisted
About this episode
We are joined by the poet Katrina Porteous and the writer and editor Patrick Galbraith to discuss Norman Lewis’s account of the of the three summers he spent working in Farol, a remote fishing village on the Costa Brava in the late 1940s. His book records the intricacies of life in a small community whose rhythms are based on the shoals of sardines and tuna, ... Show More
Up next
Jul 8
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
Angel (1957) by the English writer Elizabeth Taylor, is the subject of this special episode - and, as you'll hear, the next episode of Locklisted too.* Joining Andy and Una for a hotly disputed umpteenth appearance on the podcast is our guest, the critic and broadcaster Andrew Ma ... Show More
1h 14m
Jun 24
The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them (1948) is the subject of this episode, almost ten years since Backlisted covered the same author's classic debut Lolly Willowes (1926). Joining Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss this magnificent and inimitable historical novel - and ... Show More
1h 16m
Jun 9
Summer books 2025
Books we think you might enjoy on a plane, by the pool or in the park. Andy, Nicky and our old friend Una McCormack discuss the following fantastic beach reads - Birch reads? - and a novel from Backlisted's own backlist: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre); The Anom ... Show More
1h 10m
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2025
Douglas Stuart on Shuggie Bain, Storytelling, and the Human Condition (Part Two)
This event is part of Conversations at the Kiln, a new event series at Kiln Theatre programmed by Intelligence Squared. For more events with speakers from the worlds of literature, art, poetry and politics, click here. Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain a ... Show More
37m 8s
Mar 2024
Vengurla with Pranav Gogwekar
GIVEAWAY of Pranav’s book - Expedition to an Alternate Swarajya - Where the subcontinent remained uncolonised! https://forms.gle/T72T2w72RMM4Hhye7 This week, The Musafir Stories speaks to author and content creator, Pranav Gogwekar as he takes us to the coastal town of Vengurla! ... Show More
35m 10s
Jan 2025
Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig
Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with paradoxes — mixing the earthbound and the sacred, the personal and the universal, th ... Show More
14m 52s
Jan 2022
Mother Nature’s Nurture in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 1)
After an absence of five years, the poet William Wordsworth returned to the idyllic ruins of a medieval monastery along the River Wye. The spot was perhaps not so very different from his last visit, but Wordsworth found that he had undergone a significant transformation in the in ... Show More
51m 12s
Jun 2024
EP20 - Star and Star Lover | Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella.  Over the course of the sixteenth century English poets experimented with the sonnet form invented by their Italian neighbours, and the Petrarchan conventions that came with it.  The goal was a long sequence of many short poems which chron ... Show More
1h 21m
Feb 2025
Episode 176: The Air and the Sea and the Land
Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independentl ... Show More
21m 42s
Dec 2024
665 Keats's Great Odes (with Anahid Nersessian) [Ad-Free Encore Edition]
In 1819, John Keats quit his job as an assistant surgeon, abandoned an epic poem he was writing, and focused his poetic energies on shorter works. What followed was one of the most fertile periods in the history of poetry, as in a few months' time Keats completed six masterpieces ... Show More
1h 8m
Jun 2024
613 Celebrating the Book-Makers (with Adam Smyth) | My Last Book with Christopher de Hamel
Books are beloved objects, earning lots of praise as amazing pieces of technology and essential contributors to a civilized society. And yet, we often take these cultural miracles for granted. Who's been making these things for the last several centuries? How have they influenced ... Show More
1h 1m
Mar 2025
Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every ... Show More
15m 35s
Mar 2025
George the Poet on Music, Memory, and the War on Blackness (Part One)
George Mpanga, known as George the Poet, is seen by many as one of the UK’s most compelling voices in poetry, music, and social commentary.  Originally hailing from St Raphael’s Estate in Neasden, Mpanga has spent over a decade working at the intersection of art and politics refl ... Show More
29m 24s