Stephen Fry in conversation with Shappi Khorsandi

a warm welcome to all of you out  there in the vast virtual world and i   know that you've come from everywhere to hear  the rsl's brilliant speakers this evening   i'm lisa penazi i'm chair of the royal society of  literature and it's my very great pleasure to be   here to launch this first of our rsl 200 events  which celebrate 200 years of the royal society   of literature that historic fellowship of writers  that is ever alive to the changing and to the new   our partners tonight are the great and wonderful  british library the living knowledge network   which broadcasts to libraries across  the uk and the union chapel itself   the literature matters RSL 200 series brings  together some of the world's best known   writers for unique explorations of the impact  of literature on their lives and indeed on   society as a whole before i introduce you to  our truly fabulous speakers this evening let   me just signal that the next rsl 200 event  is with novelist david mitchell and composer   brian eno again in partnership with the  british library on thursday 8th october   members of the rsl i should mention attend these  events and all our events for free so do join us   but tickets can also be booked  through the british library   while we aren't able to be in the same room  together tonight we do take questions just   look at the bottom of the screen and type we will  get through as many of these questions as possible   at the top of the screen you'll find tabs to  open that will enable you to buy a selection   of stephen fry's books online including the  chance to pre-order your copy of his new   book troy there's also a tab there to click which  will enable you to give your feedback on this   event and various social media links too so do  tap away and now to our wonderful duo this evening to introduce stephen fry properly would take most  of this hour writer novelist actor comedian larger   than life personality unafraid to engage in  championing mental health issues or lending   his way to important public interventions  stephen has somehow even been able to give   the word intelligence popular repute in a climate  where its value has not always been high he grew   up in a house with colossal bookcases filled with  classic works of literature using them as medicine   cabinets to treat his childhood he has remarked  that writing is a newer technology only five or   six thousand years old by which we can change  utterance into permanence once when asked for   writing advice he responded the important thing to  do for those who want to liberate their writing is   to be able to let go of their self-consciousness  to allow words to write for them after captivating readers with his formidable  mythos and heroes stephen in his new book troy   published at the end of this month turns his  attention to another great narrative from ancient   greece troy richly reimagined witty and spell  blindingly told troy explores the timeless human   passions that beat at the heart of this age-old  story of heroism desire despair and revenge Shappi Khorsandi established herself as one  of the country's finest comedians in 2006   with her sellout edinburgh show asylum speaker  which told the story of how her family were forced   to flee iran and gain asylum in the uk the show  led to the publication of her childhood memoirs a   beginner's guide to acting english her first novel  nina is not okay came out in 2016. she's appeared   on numerous tv and radio shows including mock the  week have i got news for you and of course QI   she recently received the james joyce award  from university college dublin would it have   been me she is the vice president of the british  humanist association and is also currently hoping   to receive an apology from ealing council for  consistently failing to remove her bins on time   her screenwriting debut was in the  form of sky's little crackers in 2011   and she's now working on a drama script for  bbc television stephen Fry over to you so hello stephen fry hello it's so nice  to be here with you in this beautiful   deserted union chapel it's rather extraordinary  it's the first reasonably public event i've   been involved in since the 15th of march  when i was in the royal festival hall   and it's a rather amazing experience really  seeing this empty there is no audience really   i mean you've got some family here and we've  got our camera people but that's it i kind of   i think it's beautiful though because every  time i've been in this room before it's been   heaving we've been watching comedy performing  comedy watching bands and now it's just like   a still old friend and i'm delighted to  be chatting with you literature matters   now this is a a a real uh exciting thing for me  because i get to sit here and ask you whatever   i like about literature and i guess the first  thing i want to ask you is that obviously you're   known as someone who is terribly well read when  did you at what point in your childhood did you   discover well i was always quite sort of perkily  adept at reading and writing from a very early age   i think and this isn't false modesty  because i'm so bad at everything else that   nature is odd like that and and i have as the  old joke has it van gogh's ear for music and   um i can't paint or draw and i can't you know  run in a straight line or catch a ball or   dance or or you know do almost anything but but  language from a very early age was extremely   important to me and i i'm sure you're like that as  well as a as a reader and a comedian and so some   of whom words have always had a very special part  of one's you know consciousness and being and the   surprise is it's not true of everybody because it  is the miracle of humanity this thing that we are   doing and i'm doing it no more by talking than you  are by listening you're processing language just   as much as i am by talking and it's incredible  incredible art and i've always thought it i   always found words remarkable and i remember  very early at school getting stared at and   treated as peculiar because a music teacher had  written the word orchestra on the blackboard to   she was going to start and tell us all about the  instruments in the orchestra as you always do   and i yelped cart horse because i saw the anagram  just coming out of it a bit like some sort of   strange floating thing i saw the letters rearrange  and um uh and people thought that was odd   uh and i used to read it was a boarding school and  i used to read stories i mean alistair mclean you   know sort of all mclean is it thrillers and things  under the covers with the torch in the dormitory   at night i was always the one asked to read the  story and i loved doing it uh but it really took   off for a number of reasons which i think you'd  probably understand well i know when i was about   maybe 11 or 12 growing up deep in the countryside  um far from the nearest habitation or as sydney   smith the great um early 19th century whit put  it when he was moved to a new parish he was a   divine a parish priest and he wrote a letter to  a friend and said i find i am simply miles from   the nearest lemon isn't that wonderful it kind of  gives and we were miles from the nearest lemon in   in rural norfolk you know you'd have to have to  find one in a market in norwich somewhere but   and my parents didn't approve of television  very much so there was a tiny little television   store that you know which came out for  big events like churchill's funeral or   man landing on the moon but one rainy  sunday i watched a film and i was   absolutely captivated by it because of the  language i had never heard people speaking   in the way they did i remember a man saying to a  woman i hope i will not in any way offend you if   i say that you seem to me to be in every way the  visible personification of absolute perfection and i sort of followed this  thing and i laughed it was funny   then i ran to my mother afterwards and i said  mother would you be in any way offended if i   said that you seem to me to be in every way the  visible personification of absolute perfection   and she said what are you talking about anyway  she said oh because i explained what i've been   watching she said that's the importance of  being earnest and i said well what is it she   said well it's a play and it was the film  i'd watched the film the anthony asked film   well being in the middle of the country the  nearest library was a long way away but there   was a mobile library this little gray van that  would come every other thursday and about half a   mile down the lane would stop and a few cottages  and houses in our house would go and queue up   so i went into this this pantechnicum and and  asked if they had the importance of being earnest   by oscar wilde when you were 20 years old and  the lady with the powdery cheeks and the chain   and her pants nay said well let me have a  look young man and she gave it to me and i   rushed home it was a collection of four his four  comedies you know woman of no importance ideal   husband and lady windermere's fan and and i read  them covered and particularly the importance of   being honest which i kind of learnt by heart  i just i wanted to own it i wanted to eat it   and then two thursdays later i rushed down  and i said have you got anything more about   and she found her complete works so i took that  and i started we did some of it mysterious the   soul of man under socialism and essays like that  but you know there were the children's stories the   wonderful fairy stories and other things and  i just found him mesmerizing the way he used   words and then i came back two weeks later and i  said we've got anything more she said well you've   just had the complete works and that if that's  the complete works that's the complete works   um and so i went up and down the library shelves  and i saw a book the trials of oscar wilde i said   but there's this she looked at me said how old  are you young man and i sort of lied i said 14.   she said i don't think you should be reading that  i said no please please i'm i'm really really you   know i admire this man so much she said well all  right she's stamped it out and i started to read   about this extraordinary fellow and his group of  friends and i was mesmerized by the power he had   over people through his wit and his language and  his charm and this circle then slowly it imploded   his world became this nightmare of the trial and  imprisonment and of course somewhere inside myself   i knew that i shared a nature that was like  his so it gave me a terrible shock i associated   the literary power and the majesty of his language  and the such a high sense of art and beauty and   and it was such an exciting world but at the same  time doomed and then i would get on a bicycle and   ride to norwich which is about 12 miles away and  there was a big library there and the equivalent   of the world wide web is the bibliography the  card indexes you look at the book and in the back   are the source books for that book and you so i  would make lists and i would read about reggie   turner and richard lagalian and max bierbaum and  obviously bosey his lover and all these other   characters until i it widened and widened and over  the three or four years of my early adolescence i   had become a sort of mad addict of late 19th  century literature and all the connections   that then grew and grew right up through to the  sort of paul boles's and then american writers   it wasn't all the sexuality though there was that  charge and i found libraries places of magical   eroticism and danger and a kind of kingdom like  the male matilda well yes i suppose and i need to   know if you're the same with me i i if if i'd been  born 20 years later i would have been a lot less   convinced that my life would be one  of seclusion and guilt and shame and   hiding away but also i would never have i  suspect had this key to literature it may be   it may be almost a bad reason to to welcome and  to to find literature uh the fact that it chimes   with something my instinct when you talk about um  finding Wilde at such a young age and connecting   with him um actually that's a very tender age to  realize that that thing about yourself that you're   keeping hidden belongs also to somebody that  you admire so much and then to read what the   officials of the day did to him and then up to be  just 12 11 or 12 and come across homophobia yes of   that extent to someone you admire so much do you  think that was like contributing to perhaps not   being able to i think it's a double thing because  in some ways you're also getting a vindication   um some of the older people watching may remember  panther books which was a paperback imprint i   think about anthony blonde was the publishing  uh genius behind it and they published um roger   perfect and uh jean journey and european what  we'd now call queer literature i suppose and   there was a freedom and a and a fury and a zest  about that that that uh that made it slightly less   i mean the rule was if you were british you would  escape england you would you would you would go to   through france to italy to capri or to tangier in  north africa to the sunlight and the decadence and   the freedom and the license of uh away from  the sort of dark fusty puritanism of- go west- exactly um but i mean i mustn't  paint myself as someone who was just   pure literally figure i also i mean i loved pg  woodhouse and to this day i love pg woodhouse and   i loved um uh conan doyle and evelyn war and um  uh and and many other writers and uh and i loved   and still loved agatha christie and i used to  tear through books apparently insomnia was the   other thing oh can you do you find it easy to read  with insomnia because some insomniacs part of the   um battle with it it's uh difficult to concentrate  on reading well fortunately i'm no longer an   insomniac but what i used to do was yeah it  was difficult to read in bed while trying to   get sleep and then thinking i'll read and stuff  but if you you go and sit in a chair and read   then somehow i found out i could do an hour of  reading in a chair and then go to bed and could   sleep some weird way doing it but but um yeah  the question is if the internet had existed   would i have turned to books i i really doubt  it in the original sense of doubt i fear um   uh and in that sense as in so many others i feel  really lucky to be the generation i am absolutely   you know that is a big thing for um for  now and you know i have two children   who are my eldest certainly is far more interested  in the dramatic visual yeah of um online whereas   you know i'm his mom he grew up reading we grew  up reading together and and you know i used to   read him when he was nine and big a book called  johnny swanson about a boy who'd lost his son   his dad in the war and and then was being bullied  and his mother's house was being taken away by a   horrible landlord and he was nine and he got  really teary and he reacted emotionally to it   um so i'm hoping just recently we had a chat and  he said well i just can't get into it and i you   know my passion is these games and i was like you  just you wait till your heart gets broken you know   minecraft can't help you then then you'll want  poetry then you'll want words because the i mean   i be careful what you wish for of course and i i  welcomed the digital age when it started to arrive   in the late 80s and particularly through the  90s but reading is a private experience between   you and the writer absolutely private unmitigated  by anything it's the page it's it was historically   printed and you own it so even reading something  on an electronic format on an ipad or a kindle uh   there are so many ways of you know you select text  it knows what you're reading you you're almost   aware that you are being watched in your reading  amazon knows you have this kindle you know it's   it's it's still participatory and participatory  things are good you know they predate writing and   reading uh they're sitting in caves telling each  other stories was a communal act so in a sense   what's happening with the the the sort of the lack  of privacy in reading now is perhaps harking back   to an older period but i miss the idea of this  unique engagement with a writer it's just you   and them you know i remember when i was at school  um we had to have a special assembly because local   people had been complaining about the children  from the school because they were reading   on their walk home and not looking where they  were going when they were crossing the road and   i remember i was one of those children that  on your walk home you you want to escapism   you know a child doesn't want to just bounce  along the road so we'd read our books and then   next you know you're in the middle of the road  and now of course it's the same but with phones   so what and i try not to lament it too much  because you have to move with the times   it's pure escapism that's all it is and somehow  literature has now become this highbrow thing   ordinary reading has become a high regard as a  high brow pursuit yeah and and that's it no it   isn't and i suppose the urgency of which is why  i'm you know so pleased to be a member of this uh   literary society uh because so much of it is  outreach as they say in the church you know   trying to you know fuse with libraries and  other institutions to to make reading a an   obvious act of pleasure and not not to make it  a worthy thing or a medicine or a kind of you   know a level that you have to reach but but also  transgressive and wicked and naughty and and and   full of fun and danger and fizz and juice like  we saw still a text as well and parties to say   is it that the the juiciness the the pleasure the  joy of the text and and and of the fact that it   is a sensory experience it's not just good for you  or and it's hard to know how to do that i remember   saying to my publisher when i first was being  published and they were talking about these   things called ad shells which i'd never heard  of and i i as so often i i kind of it was too   late for me to ask what they were i'd kind of  nodded but actually all they are is glass posters   put a poster in you know in in on going up tube uh  escalators and things those apparently ad shells   um and uh and i said well maybe instead  of spending all that money maybe   maybe all the publishers should get together and  do some television ads in which i don't know they   show people on buses who are in jungle costumes or  are diving under water or weird because they're   reading and the reading is taking them out of the  the commuter train or the or the bus and to show   that what a portal to to another world a  book can be and how thrilling it is and how   dangerous rather than being a sort of speccy  kind of clever thing to do i remember reading   in um one of my favorite childhood books a little  princess by francis uh yes and there's a bit where   um sarah crew she's at this boarding school her  father's in india and she she's reading and she   says when i'm reading i'm totally absorbed in  my story and if someone interrupts her she says   i feel like they've slapped me in the face and  i want to slap them back and it's that feeling   it's that feeling that that for me is is the  the drug of absorbing yourself in a book i went   on holiday to barcelona with a boyfriend many  years ago and i stupidly got absorbed in a book   on the on the plane i didn't see anything of  barcelona i sat outside tourist venues um you know   beautiful works of art reading my book while he  went and saw the god of family on his own and all   of that and i just couldn't and he was like we're  on holiday i was like i can't yeah i can't and there is that desperate need for escapism i think  there is people who are really voracious readers   course almost by definition of what we're  saying with escapism and so on is likely   to mean a fictional world and and books are so  much more than that and i wonder what you felt   about the cliche which i i fear is broadly true  and it's absolutely not completely true that   that men seem to move away from novels  i i read nothing but novels when i was a   teenager and then i did english literature  as a subject at university and novels and   poems and uh uh what were really it and  plays obviously but fictional creations   but as i moved into my 30s and 40s suddenly it was  history and biography and science and to this day most of the literature or literary literary  books that i read are biographies of writers   yes or groups of writers so i i  don't think that's a cliche but   i also think it is an age thing yeah  there was a very long period of time   sadly also when i was at university  i simply couldn't read non-fiction   um i couldn't read it and all i wanted to do  was read fiction and history became a passion   once i sort of got to about 40 and autobiographies  yes of people who um are just very good writers   and i i read um andre agassi's autobiography i had  quite brilliant isn't it isn't it yeah one of the   very best sports in tennis and i think one of the  first lines talked about how much he hates tennis   and i wasn't i wasn't expecting that and again  it was one of those books i just picked up from   someone else's shelf when i was i know waiting for  them to finish off in the kitchen or whatever and   i was like oh can i borrow this um yeah and so  i think that happens and perhaps as we get older we we want to know much much more yes about i  think the curiosity and and also all the things   we missed at university or at school about history  although all the gaps you know so it's wonderful   when you you get these like the william Dalrymple book on the east india company or the   uh the Frankopan uh Peter Frankopan book about the silk road those sort of books   really do because certainly my generation  never learned world history in the way that   we ought to have done no and so Frankopan's books if someone had handed them to me at 20   i i would i would go um i've got wine to drink  yes i've got you know sylvia plath to memorize   thank you all very much i'm from  the east i don't need to read about   you but now of course it's at my  bedside table and i have read it so um   the relationship with what can we  talk about poetry yes as well because   personally poetry has been for me   therapy it has been the best because the poets  speak about our state of mind better than we can   acknowledge them ourselves what was the first  poet that really grabbed you and absorbed you um   aside from my mother reading the wonderful rhythms  of um uh a.a mill you know james james morrison   morrison whether it be george dupree took great  care of his mother although he was only three   j.j all those i just loved the rhythm i just  absolutely loved it coddlestone cottlestone   cottleston pie and things like that then really  it was a godfather for my 12th birthday i think   gave me paul graves golden treasury which is  the absolute standard middle class collection   of great english poetry it's sort of slightly  shorter than the oxford book of english first but   very similar it it goes from dunbar and  chaucer up through its resolutely british   poetry but it contained keats and i fell in love  with keats um particularly to fancy you know and   the big oads obviously nightingale and autumn and  greece and urn and so on and the you know the what   used to be the standard poetic fair for british  people uh tennyson browning arnold thomas gray   those sort of poets i absolutely love them it  took me a long time to to become confident with   modern poetry um but like many teenagers i fell  hookland and sinker for t.s eliot particularly   proof rock and then the wasteland i mean  absolutely adored it and just bore people with   lines and lines from it it's um because i wasn't  born in uh england i was born in iran and came   here when i was almost four the poetry in the  rhythm for me because it was a new language   and my nature is to feel completely at one with  you know the the place i'm in so i wanted to   it was so important to me to get on top of  the language even as a tiny child yes and a.a   milne was everything yes absolutely everything  because my mum used to take us to the library   and i would go straight to the poetry  section because it was easier to read   for me because i was only you know i didn't  i wasn't reading as a toddler i wasn't i   wasn't doing you know english letters  latin letters um when i first met you   when i came on qi i was so proud i told my  parents because you instantly quoted roomy   to me so my mum used to read roomie to me at  bedtime while i was asleep you know while i was   sleeping i think roomies overtaken pablo neruda as  probably the world's most popular poet these days   didn't beyonce name her baby roomy I know i know  but they they are wonderful it's strange because   obviously poets can often get  rather cross at the idea that   they are merely instruments for doling out uh  solace to unhappy people and unhappy lovers and uh   and for having their words put against a landscape  of uh of a kind of bob ross painting and and some   little tiny little phrases i mean there are  some there's a roomy phrase i i i have written   down um which is sell your cleverness and by  bewilderment which i think is wonderful i mean   very very good but but again  like all phrases if you start   making it an aphorism or a tea towel it can become  yeah um but yeah it's interesting isn't it that   persian poetry as i suppose it used to be called  iranian perch the parsi poetry i guess um that   the best known in britain used to be omakayam  and and um every every household had its limp   leather uh collection um translated by fitzgerald  you know the the uh uh the the the moving figure   rights and having rit moves on and uh or nor all  your party or whit can cancel out a word of it and   and a jug of wine and loaf of bread and all  that and and they're all they're all poets about   don't worry have a glass of wine absolutely no you  know even though even these sufi characters like   hafiz and yeah and and roomy they they they  believe in in in drugs and drinks there's a   there's a roomy poem about about the different  types of you know about hashish and and wine   and and how there is in everything there is a  drug yeah and that it's it's really interesting   so different from how we now think of iranian  people and certainly the theocracy that's the the   the essence of iranian culture is within those  poems and you know the idea of sharing and the   drinking of wine and it's just so polar opposite  to our uh you know the last 30 40 40 years   of our culture there's actually i was really  proud there was a half um half-assed poem   with my surname in it course andy where because  means contentment and joy and he says if there   is to be a prophet i'm translating from the farsi  in my head if there is a prophet to be made from   this bazaar this world this marketplace that we  call the world it belongs to the humble darvish   and may may god make me a horsandy darvish because  what's he what he's saying is that the profit the   profit that you get from life profit with an  f.i is is uh being a humble contented person   and all of the chill out you know vibe that  they have chill out vibe i never thought i   would hear myself talking about persian literature  stephen fry and the only words that came into my   head was chill out vibe for me it's it's that is  iranians yes you know you have a problem they sit   and we talk yeah and it's very weird where  did he come from shiraz type of grape   absolutely absolutely whereas britain  it's you've got a problem make a joke yes   yes you're right have you ever spoken to somebody  who's grieving a british person who's grieving   puts themselves in a position to console you if  you sound so sorry for your loss they instantly go   oh but they want to console you they don't want  you to feel they don't want to burden you yes   whereas you know a persian would throw themselves  in your arms yes there's what's that word that   descri that is the culture of hospitality in in  the persian home you know this kind of turtle yes   is that yeah where you offer things and you say  no and then you offer again and you say no then   you offer again yes please walk on my eyeballs  and uh my children are your slaves yes absolutely   it's it's generous and it's it's super abundant in  its uh and the british are very not like that well   i got a shock at university because i was going  into bars with lots of people for the first time   and i'd say what would everyone like to  drink and iranian friends would go oh   don't be so silly we're all in the same boat  i'll get my own and all the students would go   oh cheers i love a snake and i was overdrawn  by hundreds of pounds immediately there's um   there's a very good essay that ian foster writes  about english and it's a very famous essay   in which he talks about the the underdeveloped  english heart but he he also describes a friend   of his from india um who could not understand  forster's kind of emotional accounting so this   friend who was of course we now know was a lover  in fact of foster's an indian lover of his but   um would cry when when foster would go up country  for a week he was gonna be and foster would say   look in four weeks i'm going to  go all the way back to england so   to cry now is absurd you know cry and the friend  would say emotions are not potatoes that can be   weighed out you know if i want to cry at a  small thing i will cry all the tears i have   you don't measure them and and it's part of part  of western culture which has given us technology   the kind of technology and science that we we  developed i suppose in the way we did is measuring   things even things that are unmeasurable and i  suppose one of the pleasures of art is that it   it it takes us away from that world of measurement  and allows us to feel enormous wells of emotion at   small transactions and you know that's the great  thing about about the novel isn't it is that once   you once you enter its world simply someone  closing the door on someone can make you go   like that in the most fantastic kind of way oh  that's made me think of dorothy parker again   one of my favorite poems of hers interior ah let  me know if i know it's off by heart i'm going to   take the gamble go on her mind lives in a quiet  room a narrow room and tall with pretty lamps to   quench the gloom and mottos on the wall they're  all things are waxing neat and set in decreased   lines there are posies round and sweet and little  straightened vines her mind lives in a quiet room   a way apart from noise and wind and pain and bolts  the door against her heart out wailing in the rain   oh wow there you are there's somewhere  between dorothy parker and mrs dalloway   yeah i mean that's that's that's well  done that's good memory oh you know i'm   very pleased i remembered that that  would have been awful if i didn't   yeah um are you ready for some questions  absolutely sure we have some questions from   lovely people who are watching all over the place  oh so um pg woodhouse said this is from tony brown right from islington libraries there's no sure  a foundation for a beautiful friendship than a   than a mute sorry i i can read it's just  it's not like a small print yeah i don't   want to let you know but i can't actually  and there's no surer foundation for a   beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in  literature or this is a hard one which three   books would you recommend to cement a beautiful  friendship no that's very good um well   it's one of those questions that you give  a different answer to every day i think   um and if you're reading a really good book  at the moment you'll mention that rather than   one you read three years ago so um there's one  book i'd love to recommend because it's just so   astonishing it's by a i took quite a dutch chilean  or chilemio writer called benjamin labatoot   and it's called when we cease to understand the  world and it's it's extraordinary mixture of   poetic biography of scientists and mathematicians  which sounds weird but it's it's it's poetic mad   and it describes the way in the 20th  century science moved into the insane realm   of quantum which makes no sense science  suddenly stopped making sense and einstein   was repelled by it famously said god doesn't  play dice with the universe and he couldn't bear   and yet the equations were true but everything  altered in the world and the people responsible   were such geniuses and some of the stories behind  them are incredible one of the greatest stories   of the 20th century the the most i mean i'm  amazed someone hasn't done a film about it is   france harbor a german chemist of unbelievable  talent who is probably responsible for saving more   lives and causing a greater growth in population  than any human being because he was the first   person to invent and he won a nobel prize for it  a way of of of getting nitrogen out of the air   which was what allowed fertilizers before then  there had been a trade in bones uh people have   been digging up the bones of old buffalo killed in  america the millions of buffalo and and egyptian   tombs had been raided for their bones and uh you  know and bat poo and guano were a huge thing and   suddenly there was nitrogen and starvation began  to end of a certain nature and the population boom   began at the beginning of the century but he then  went on for his country to develop chlorine gas   the gas used in the trenches of the first world  war and it it he went and he taught the men   how to read the wind and how best to deploy it  and was able to watch the french trenches with men   shooting themselves because of the agony of their  burning throats clawing their eyes out at the   horror of this gas his wife who was a brilliant  chemist was so horrified by what her husband was   doing that one day she walked out into the garden  where he was talking to friends and shot herself   it was extraordinary but it gets even worse than  that he was jewish so by the 1930s having won   the nobel prize he had been working on this  insecticide that was so powerful um it was   called a cyclone which in german is zyklon zyklon  b the huge irony is of course it was what was used   by the ss to kill in their killing camps it was  the poison gas that was used in auschwitz and   all the killing chambers including most of his  family who were killed by it so this one life   encompassed so much and it didn't stop there  in a way because zykron b and its derivatives   became roundup which is the the insecticide and uh  that that is responsible for so much damage to the   environment to this day so this this anyway there  are stories like that in it and and he becomes   what's so fascinating is the book becomes more and  more fictional so that's one book i'd recommend   it's called when we cease to understand when we  see the world a very wonderful little uh it's good   to to recommend a good publishing house that's  not that well known called the pushkin press yeah   they're really good aren't they and so that that's  one and then there are two european books that i   always think uh well they're not european but  they're kind of um uh having european sort of um   one is beware of pity by uh stefan zweik which i  think is an extraordinary book because it's such a   marvelous description of how a tiny  action can have such huge consequences   um so it's a it's a it's a fine novel i think um  and thirdly what would i recommend i just have   to choose one for the time being you know i i  ethan from by by edith wharton do you know it   it is fabulous but it's so unedith wharton it's  not like um it it it's not like a high society i   want to write all these down before i go because i  want to be it's set in the snows of a really hard   winter in in new england i think it's a great book  and um so those are the three i'd choose today   well you have way more intense friendships than i  do i was going to say the secret diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and three quarters- what's wrong with that that's a great  call you know for me it's um there's certain books   that are very important to me that my kids read  yeah and they've got to read them at the right   time there's there's no good it's no good reading  the catcher in the rye when you're 40. no you have   to be annoyed by it yes you have to read that when  you're an adolescent so there's certain promises   that they've made me and it is the complete works  of adrian mole catcher in the rye which is a book   that i adore and i think anything by sue townsend  and edgar the queen and i would have the queen   and i don't know the book that i loved um that  i found in a dusty old library belonging to a   my father's friend had this massive boarding  school in oxfordshire so it was this big stately   home and we used to go there for sunday lunch we  were kids and we you know the adult conversation   would bore us so we'd go into the library  this massive library just read all day and   i found edgar allan poe oh yes and i remember  sitting down and reading the cat and the canary   the cask of the montiado and the yeah the  telltale heart the telltale heart the pitch   and i read all this and i was like  like this in the car on the way home   and the first opportunity i could i i bought  it um so those would be around my but like   it's like saying what are your three favorite  albums no what depends what mood you're in   so um dallas brooks asks any favorite banned  books seeing that as this is banned books week   oh well yes i know this causes many people  to groan and they think anyone who says this   is either lying or showing off but ulysses  which was of course a banned book uh has   the c word amongst many other uh many other  naughtinesses um i'd absolutely love it i mean it   it it is of course a monumentally uh monumentally  sort of dense and rich book so that it's it's like   you know recommending an extraordinarily  heavy meal to someone it is a book to be   to be slid into and never to be worried about not  getting because some of the language obviously is   alarming to people it's nothing like as difficult  as finnegan's wake but it is still for some people   you know if they you know uh come across you know  strange phrases like again bite of inwit they look   at that and think what is that supposed to mean  you know one month in the luck to be an electable   modality of the visible and phrases like that  and they think oh come on just tell the story   you know what but it it it it really does get  inside you there's a beauty to it a flow to it um   so that's one band book um lady chat is that i'm  not great admirer of um i i've never quite managed   to pierce the dh lawrence vale except as a poet  i love him as a but particularly as a funny poet   he wrote wonderful satirical poems about there's  one called the oxford voice which i do as a party   piece which is which is terrific just making  you know about how you you hear a certain accent   when you're on a bus and you just want to shrivel  up and die and and i know it that from both points   of view because i know when i hear it but i also  fear that i sound it right you know and he's   very good at that sort of thing um who else was  banned um well uh last exit to brooklyn by hugh um   what was his surname sellingcourt is that right  anyway uh that was a very bad book and again that   was a very very exciting book to read for me when  i was 17 or something because it was so bruisingly   frank about sort of gay life but that was banned  for a long time a strange thought isn't it yeah   we i don't want to get into this but you know we  we may be living at a time when books are going   to be banned again um and people will say ah but  this is for good reasons and uh and you and i will   have to go to the barricades and say there are no  goods there are never any good reasons never good   reasons to ban any no any words no i wouldn't ban  my campfire i would be disappointed to think that   people were distributed in schools and so on  and so it's playing on their coffee too yeah   it's it's baffling what's happening at the moment  with um banning and shutting down and canceling   and stuff which perhaps is a conversation for  another i recently reread lady chateley's lover   um actually because i when i was younger i was a  massive d.h lawrence you were yeah um and i think   for a million reasons where the the region that  he spoke about because as i said because i'm not   from here i i was just really fascinated about the  sort of um you know the colliers in the world of a   colleague what what even is a collis had to go  and find that out and and the class um when he   talks about class and all of that sort of stuff  i don't know why i read it again recently i think   i'm going through a bit of a phase of rereading a  lot of things that i read when i was uh very young   and with fresh eyes it's a completely different  it's not as wild as i thought it was and   but i still have a very uh i've got a soft spot  for that for lawrence yeah he's he does feel   like blood he does feel life on the pulse system  yeah and you know now with with the head and the   sensibilities i have now the way he describes  a woman's you know sexuality is a bit you know   it here's a book i'd recommend in fact two  books by him because he's he's a he's such a   sort of out of kilter academic literary critic  and professor john kerry do you know i mean   he i think at sunny times he's the literary editor  of and and he's a professor or emeritus now i   think or maybe not at oxford and he's written two  two books uh one is called an accidental professor   which is just an autobiography about a young man  from a clever young man from a quite ordinary   family who just found that he had this gift of  reading and he could read so intelligently but so   it's so unlike anybody else he was so out  of the mainstream of either of any sort of   methodology and um and his his other book is  um uh literature in the masses i think it's   called it's it's basically a rather brilliant  attack on the snobbery of of writers and how   so much of the 19th late 19th and early 20th  century writers were snobs they feared the masses   they thought the masses were ugly and smelly and  not good enough for for their books so he kind of   really trashes virginia woolf and he enforced  her and the only ones he really champions are   um arnold bennett really and writers  like that who went completely out of   fashion but i'd recommend them because both  books are so readable and he's such a good   clear guide to reading he makes you want to go and  read for example arnold bennett and h.d wells and   others who are rather out of fashion these days  well i'm excited i'm i'm doing a i'm doing an open   university mma next year in english literature  fantastic i'm very excited i'm very excited   you haven't started it yet next year and do you  have you got a reading list yet that they've given   you i have actually it's it's yeah some of it i've  read already but i'm really excited about it and   when you were talking about ulysses i'm so excited  about reading things with much more confidence   than when i was younger because i'm dyslexic  so and that that was a real struggle so there's   only certain kinds of books i could read um  and i think i've developed my own ways of   dealing with it but also there are companions to  ulysses which which are one uh anthony burgess   or it's a very good one samuel beckett uh  uh joyce's friend will also wrote one but   perky one um and and there's nothing wrong with  you know saying oh because you can't read it naked   you can't as it were you can't just walk into and  say here's this book i shall respond to it without   knowing anything because it is keyed to the the  homer's odyssey and it has scenes that are related   to it and if you don't know that you're missing a  heck of a lot and that doesn't make it a failure   of a book it makes it more of an adventure i think  you see we read the odyssey my son and i when   he was um about eight obviously a kid's version  absolutely beautiful and as i was reading it i was   like oh mate that i've only just you know this is  brilliant for me too um one of the gorgeous things   about um having kids in your life is that you  get to read the sort of books that sparked your   interest in reading in the first place and a  good writer is a good writer whether writing for   a 10 year old or a you know or a  grown-up shall we have another question oh right click here to view i don't know what i'm doing look how not go  there we go there are all the questions okay   so um this is a question from samyogita  forgive my pronunciation if it's incorrect   um lest you sh i can pick this up can i yeah  oh you know i'm learning so much today about   technology les you should think he never  could recapture the first fine correct   robert browning do you think  it's possible for literature   to hit us with the same force once we  enter proper adulthood as it does when   we're younger that is such a good question i i  have a particularly strong relationship with my   adolescents which is a long way away now um but  i so keenly remember being aware even at the time   that art and literature was hitting me with  a force that it probably never would again   and it's probably and the browning line about  you know the first fine careless rapture   which you can't hope to recapture is probably  easier to remember with music because which of   us didn't discover a song or a piece of music  on a on a rather crappy piece of uh technology   with bad earphones that we listened to again and  again and again and sent us into a frenzy of joy   and now perhaps if we're lucky we're well off  well off enough to have a much better sound   system and can hear it as many times as we like  and we still love that piece of music but we're   never going to have that aha feeling that absolute  feeling and there's no point regretting it because   that but but you can it's like when you go back  to your school or something to give a talk and   you think this chapel was never as small as  this it was huge once uh you know things look   different and time does extraordinary things to  to time and memory to do remarkable things to to   to physical objects and to things like books but  but you go such is the power of the the created   world of a book whether it's high literature  or a thriller it doesn't really matter but   there can be a believe me a 50-year gap and  when you pick it up again your mind is taken to   the same room that you constructed the scenes  in when you first read it yeah so you know if   you if you if you had a particular way of seeing  sherlock holmes and watson's room in baker street   when you pick the book up and get there it is  again or a particular way of looking at long john   silver or whatever you know it doesn't matter how  long ago it's all still inside your brain and so   there's that thrill of going back and it will be a  bit smaller and but you know after all when you're   very young sometimes did you have that thing when  there were illustrations in a book there were some   you were afraid of and you'd turn the page rather  slowly because you knew that picture was coming   well that's a marvelous thing isn't it  and of course you won't get that back but   but you might still get a little tickle of it and  and it's necessary that that we accept growing   older and not having the the the mind and heart of  a teenager at least not only having the heart and   mind of a teenager we still have that heart  inside us but there's a few other ones have   accreted on top of it and i personally find age  now 63 i find that a very pleasant thing to be   and the fact that it's not um it's not all  passion spent do you remember that's a was that   a virago book i can't i think wasn't it i can't  remember who wrote it but anyway that that great   phrase all passions but it isn't that exactly  it's it's that the older you get you are uh you're less involved you're less frightened you're  less uh ecstatic and euphoric um things are less   trans transcendent to you perhaps but you can  choose to make them so it it just it doesn't hit   you but you can move into it so you can say i will  submit to this book now yes whereas when you were   young you just don't have the choice i love that  you're less frightened that's so true i think and   you're also more patient on you you you you yeah  yes you are less frightening anyway and actually   there's another part of the same question which  i really like um which book affected you most   deeply or turned your world view upside down  in recent years in recent years well that's golly golly golly golly they're gonna have to stop  and think now you maybe you've got an answer let's this is to do with a certain kind of book  that has become very popular over the last   few decades perhaps the the popular science book  the malcolm gladwell stephen pinker the the uh   uh noah um um harari um those sort of books have  been very uh um influential uh to the whole world   of course sapiens and homodaeus and and books like  that uh are great talking points and we all think   about the ways of looking at human development and  in the future and so on but there's there's one uh   dutch writer thinker called bregman rutger  bregman who who's written a book called humankind   which i read a few months ago he was kind and i  was in all his publishers were kind enough to send   me the manuscript and it's a book that argues not  not quite like stephen pinker that everything's   getting better which is a harder position to hold  to now than it's ever been i think but it's it's   the the human nature is not as dark and black as  we constantly think it is the the famous part of   the book that was as soon as it was published was  extracted by a lot of newspapers which he makes   this distinction which is a pretty good one  as far as european philosophers go between   thomas hobbs and jean-jacques russo uh russo  who who believed that we were all wonderful   children of nature and that only civilization  and hierarchies and so on had had tamped down   the human spirit and that if we were left to be  children of nature we would be good and happy   thomas hobbes believed the natural condition  of man famously is nasty brutish and short   and that we are beasts and we need to be  controlled uh and we need to order and   between these two views there's a little sympathy  really yeah um and he he sets out showing that   actually we're a lot better and kinder than many  people think he exposes a lot of fallacies about   people walking by on the other side or you know  ignoring crime and so on the famous stories in   newspapers that turn out not to be true and the  most important one is the lord of the flies idea   which we all grew up on because it's  like catcher in the rye it was the   the british catcher in the rye in some  ways the book that all school children were   were made to read and and basically what  it was telling us is that we're all beasts   and that if we'd not uh kept in order and we  don't have a hierarchy or a system of order we   will turn to tribal monsters and piggy will fall  down the cliff and the conch will be broken and   and animals and painted will allelating  and it will all be ghastly well he said   the most wonderful way let's see if that's  true has it has such a thing ever happened   and lo and behold it had a group of school boys  had actually been marooned on a desert island   or somewhere of papua new guinea in the 1950s or  early 60s australian kids and they had really been   in just the same situation and they had formed an  orderly happy society in which they were kind to   each other looked after each other and quite the  opposite of the so so that's the book humankind   i think it's slightly uh i thought this who turned  it upside down because i've always been a bit of a   fooling sentimental optimist about human nature  if not human history and human behavior certainly   human nature uh i do think pg would have something  first question i quoted uh always said if you if   you if you throw a brick in leicester square  it's going to land on the on the head of a of   a of a good person you know a decent chap and he  he always claimed that when he lived in london he   would have a large correspondence he would write  his letters he would he would put the address on   the envelope with a stamp and seal it and throw it  out the window reasoning that the average person   seeing a stamped dress envelope would pick it up  and post it and he claims he never had to let it   go astray do you write letters um occasionally  not as much as i always feel i should i   deliberately try and push my i nudge myself too by  having nice stationary and proper pens and ink and   i look at it and think i must but yeah i mean i  tried to with thank you letters and you know the   sort of proper things you were brought up to but  my mother and her generation are so much better at   it yeah so it used to be an activity what are  you doing on sunday i'm writing letters yeah   and the great writers were great i mean byron and  flo bear their letters you could read you know you   could read for a year they were so voluminous and  so fantastic i mean just brilliant letter writers   um yeah and indeed the novel started as really the  first novels almost all of them were epistolary   weren't they even pride and prejudice originally  was written as an epistolary novel and then i   think she changed it wasn't dickens as well um  well he went in episodes i don't think he didn't   write them as letters to different people yeah  no okay so um of all your different written work   over the years stephen which by the way i to  everyone watching and i i can read and i also   have bifocal lenses which i'm never wearing  again um which are you the most proud of   and why and that's from holly and rachel which  of your own work you're the most proud of that's you know the sententious answer is but  you're asking which is my favorite child um in some ways my second novel the  hippopotamus because it was the second   novel and i was terribly afraid that i would  the second novel syndrome would strike and i   liked the character that uh that emerged from it   and also because it had so many problems to solve  structurally and i was pleased with that but um   i can't answer that question i really i wish i  could uh i've i'm aware of how lucky i am because   i made my name if that's the right phrase as a  performer a writer performer i suppose in comedy it was easier for me to get books published and  much easier for me to get them publicized than it   is most writers and i can so imagine what a an  honest diligent novelist would feel when she's   walking along the street and she turns to look  at the window of waterstones or whatever and sees   my books piled up in the front with the photo  of me and sure you know because it's cheating   it's cheating to use your name to sell books all  i can say is i know i was born to be a writer   more than i was ever born to be a performer  that that that the performance was an accident   that came out of writing funnily enough it  was at university that i wrote a play and   someone said look could you join this club this  performance club called the footlights and um   because we need writers fed to write some sketches  and things and i would perform them as well and uh   so but i do understand that um it's so hard to  get your book read and noticed yes anywhere it's   all very well talked about selfishly although i'm  going to interrupt you i think i i think that that   all of your you didn't pull it out of a hat  it's not like i want to try my hand at this all   performers or all comics who write their own  material we are of of the world of writers   yes we write first we write first a comic as  a writer first and that's why sometimes it's   it's always a bit um odd when uh people write you  know put comics and actors under the same umbrella   and they're not comics and writers are much more  um close together yeah than than actors and the   most natural progression for a comic writer  and performer is to then write a novel it is okay so um we have a question from theresa and sarah ah can  you recommend a novel as an antidote to covid-19   please well that's la peste out isn't it um well i  mean i've mentioned PG wodehouse and uh i think   people might get tired of it i suppose doesn't  suit everyone though i do think uh if people   knew what a great writer he was just simply at the  level of the sentence what a simply extraordinary   uh pusher of the pen or tapper of the keyboard  in his case he was um so i would always say   yeah go you know read the inimitable jeeves for  example a collection of jeeves taught stories or   you know lord emsworth and others of blanding's  ones because it's not just that he writes so   beautifully and they're not all just silly  asses who are all upper class brain oaths   with monocles it's not that sort of thing at  all there is a sunniness an interior benevolence   which is very hard to find in many other writers  and it's not something that could be faked it's   it's real there's a uh evil in war who was quite  the opposite i mean also a brilliant writer and a   brilliant comic writer but with a heart of malice  and and cruelty um he said you know he writes of   eden before the fall it is a pre-lapserian i  think it's the word for that isn't it it it is   a beds of for hiding under not for sex you know  it is in that sense innocent which make might   sound like rather sort of peculiar but it isn't  it's just sunny it is of such a good disposition   he wrote himself he he he wrote in one of his  comic uh sort of essays he he wrote about how   the majority of his letters came from um  prisoners and uh people in hospitals when he came   to to sort of tot up the letters he got and he was  saying that to another writer who said so the the   sick and the and the criminally disposed uh uh are  those who like your books and would have thought   well i suppose that maybe that's right then he  thought well maybe it's just those who most need   cheering up and and it is just stuck it is to  be cheered up is a good thing i i i know this   sounds rather weak but i do think cheerfulness is  is the eighth of the you know the great virtues it   is such a a wonderful thing and in the face of a  world where cheer is hard to find not just stoical   resolution and you know putting a head down and  facing the buffeting winds but actually to be   cheerful is a remarkable thing and you don't have  to be alive to be cheerful that's the glory of   literature is that there are dead voices that can  be raised to solace and to calm but also to cheer   i totally agree with you you know right now  we we are really um undervaluing cheerfulness   and we look for our camps of anger fury  and inspiration and all of that and okay   so here is a question from brian as a teenager  i always intended to become a fiction writer   but in my 20s and i'm now in my late 20s i haven't  been able to get back into it what would you say   is the trick to getting back into writing well the  the trick is to do it i know that sounds silly but   and the trick is not to let yourself stop doing  it but the most common experience i think for   people who write is that they they write a very  good first page in a damn good second page and   probably the third page is excellent and maybe  a good chapter and possibly even a good chapter   and a half and then bang they hit a wall  and they lose faith and confidence and and   the advice i give it's not for everybody but it  sort of works for me is write your way out of it   just keep on writing and let it be nonsense  because allow it to be a ball of plasticine   and and the more plasticine there is the  more you can then go back and shape it yes   michelangelo when doing the david didn't start on  the toe and make the toe perfect and then throw it   away because it wasn't and then finally when that  toe was perfect the other toe and then build up   he he roughed out the shape and then went in  so you can do that with the book so don't give   up because it isn't perfect uh after the fourth  page and uh just keep going absolutely there um   and if i may also offer my advice i've only i'm  on my third book writing and you say you're in   your late 20s brian jay i remember all always  knowing i was going to write books but also in   my 20s i and early 30s i knew that i wanted to  be out yeah i you know i'm a stand-up comic and   i and i knew that it wasn't until i was older  i would have i would want to hold myself away   and i remember when i was writing my my second  book i was stuck and i didn't know what to write   and um my my son who i think was about nine at the  time ten what good ages they are he went oh come   on mommy just let the dumb stuff out first yes  right how wise let the dumb stuff out don't be   afraid of being terrible in any creative endeavor  because you no reader is reading it while it's   done absolutely you've always got the chance  to go back and improve it and improve it yes   especially with the technology of word processes  and so forth and it's quite fun as well it's you   you rewrite yeah exactly thomas mann said a writer  is just an ordinary person who finds writing more   difficult than anybody else in other words writers  realize how hard it is and that doesn't stop them   because most people think oh i'm finding this  too difficult i can't be a writer no if you're   finding it difficult that means you are a  writer a writer understands how hard it is   it is insanely difficult to write i mean what i  mean there are three major elements i suppose you   could say there's character and there's story and  there's language and each one of those different   people find you know hard some people find  the getting the right characters difficult   others have the characters just walking in and  then announcing themselves in their books but   can't make a plot can't make a story you can't get  a character out of a room into a hospital visit do   i do i take them out of the room down the stairs  into the car along the street or do i just cut you   know we use cinematic language don't we yeah and  and and then you go to look at another book how do   they do it and all of that everybody goes through  that they're bound to um and that's part of the   the excitement do i do he said or he replied she  she said kirkley or adjectives are always bad   aren't they or are they and you know there is the  problem all those are issues of self-consciousness   and as with acting or any other form of sport  you know any other form of performance really   self-consciousness is is what makes you fall  from the the tight trip um and if you just   you know abandon this self it's weird because  you're throwing yourself into it it is yourself   controlling your universe but don't think  there's a teacher watching you or there's a   you know or that you're your own teacher just let  it because it's hard sometimes like because i um   a few years ago i started reading coetzee  for the first does that pronounce his name so for ages when i was writing i i was like well  if there's far too many words in this sentence   yeah he wouldn't have written it like that and i  i have to pass the hemingway problem yes i have   to stop reading yeah if i'm writing yeah because  they get into my head and there's a very good book   i'd recommend doing by cyril connolly who was  a great arbiter of literary taste in the middle   of the 20th century and he wrote a book called  the enemies of promise and the first half of   it is a description of two different kinds of  writing which is very simplistic in a way but   it's pretty he calls one mandarin which is ornate  language language that is self-conscious and   flowery it doesn't have to be actually flowery but  which relishes the joy of the text and the word   and there is the non-mandarin which we think of  as like you know hemingway nick saw the fish and   nick's father said that's the fish and nick said  i could see the fish you know wow but somehow   it's brilliant in the hands of hemingway but it  is absolutely bald and clear like good thriller   writing like like lee child or something like  that you know jack reacher writing really clean   and you know without ornament um i i realized  very early on i couldn't write like that i just   you know and it annoys some people there's  a profusion of words i just love doing that   some sometimes i have to trim them back but but  but i want the growth of language i i like that   and and you have to decide what kind of  right you are i think that's yeah and i   think you have to be very um kind with your with  yourself and think you know i know that i'll   probably never write the sort of books that i i  read but that's okay because what i write sorry   i'm just going to go on about that you've  asked about writing now it's your own fault   um i write in the voice of a 17 year old 16 year  old young woman in my first novel and in this   novel and i think i'm gonna have to do this until  i stop doing it yeah whatever but that's right   that's what your readers will probably be is an  adolescent voice i can't write in my own age yet   we shall see maybe i'm just as the old joke has it  avoid cliches like the play yeah exactly okay so okay this is from naomi calagaro could you  please comment and this is directed to you   steven she didn't specify that but i'm going to  throw it to you could you please comment on the   role of irish writers in english literature  oh it's enormous isn't it well particularly   in the 20th century of course i mean there are  these giant irish writers joyce and beckett and   shaw who is less fashionable now of course and  the playwrights um and all the way up through   the john banvilles and so on and i suppose  it's a very noticeable thing that english   which is the language of the oppressor in ireland  was taken by them and repurposed into a a living   flowering thing that they they made better than  than the english i mean you know the whole ah   the joy of it you know the thrill of it the  the the the intensity and the wit and the   um indeed the mandarin language the the  sheer the sheer belief that language is a   musical instrument in everybody's throat and  that it can seduce and beguile and delight   it's a very irish thing and it's spat back  at the british to some extent you feel that   we're all too i say you can't talk like that you  know um and i think that's true of a lot of uh   what we charmingly call commonwealth  writing in other words ex-colonial uh   english writing from nigeria and and the west  indies and all kinds of other places is that english force measure is the language they speak  fosmosia is not english stephen that's a perfectly   preposterous way of putting it but you know what  i mean and um and if they're going to speak it   they're not going to speak it as it were with the  finger on the forelock they're going to speak it   proudly and so i think it's it's there's something  so energetic about irish literature it's been   it's been a you know a force of uh uh in in in our  literature that is hard to overestimate isn't it   and i i love it i mean i've started rereading  beckett's um not plays but his you know malone   dies and all that form and he just i mean it's  breathtaking you have to put the book down and   go home and you have to read it out loud as  well because it's so so oral that's what i   was going to ask you do you do you read out loud  to yourself a lot well during lockdown i i have   mostly in been in norfolk where i have a place  where all my families my mother's not that far   away and my sister and my brother all the family  are there but i have this um sound studio i mean   it sounds very grand it's it's it's not like  some soho thing but it's yeah i mean it is a   it's purpose built it's a thing you can get and um  so i've been reading reading books for for uh for   audio for audiobooks which which is a fantastic  pleasure and for example i did some orwell and um   i'd never never read orwell out loud orwell is  one of those writers everybody kind of knows   animal farm in 1984 they know the stories but if  you if you had someone who could do a parody of an   all-wealth paragraph i'd you know i'd give them a  large amount of money because does he have a style   he has a he has a perfect non-style yeah he wrote  about it graham greene's slightly similar you kind   of think you can't do a parody of that you could  do a parody of so many writers but a pastiche of   all well you'd only do a pastiche of 1984 but that  wouldn't be of all well it would be of the story   yeah so it was fascinating to read it out  loud and you realize he does have certain   certain mannerisms which are very interesting and  very which repeat a lot you become so much more   aware of a writer's use of language when you read  it out no there's no question about that i get   quite emotional i my voice cracks sometimes if i'm  reading yeah out loud if i want to read a you know   i got really excited about some poem and i went to  read it out to a friend and sort of standing in my   kitchen um yeah it is absolutely do do you um do  you listen to audiobooks at all do you plug in   just started to i i i was a i was i never used to  but um i do now and this is an age thing i used   to run and listen to music but now i run and  listen to audio books yes i found with music   you're always stopping and saying no no not that  true not that tragic this is another one yeah   whereas they are um edited um oh no i i can't  be doing it but i didn't really look for the to something on audio and out loud i repeated  a phrase i just heard because it was it was   so beautiful i was just found myself sort  of outside boots sort of talking out loud   to myself and i was like no this is good this is  good it felt really good do you have a companion   to telling you a story as you go for a walk  fantastically good it's the best thing we used   to have them when i was a kid tapes yes tapes of  stories i did the harry potter books and uh um you   you spent about half an hour afterwards going side  a oh you no cassette three side a cassette three   side b cassette four side a and he just dropped  but there was so many it's exhausting as well   okay who is your favorite female author that's  tough it's very tough uh i would say i don't   really notice the gender which is called nonsense  uh sure it it's it's you can't dismiss jane   um uh i i take great pleasure every year in  reading this is really pretentious but the   the oxford edition of jane austen on oxford india  paper which has this peculiar thing at the bottom   right of every page is the first word of the next  page oh right i don't know what there's probably   a printer's name for that little thing with i've  never seen it it's the only sort of big addition   i know that in and i am i always have been  passionate about jane austen that and persuasion   in mansfield park those three emma i do like and i  like all the others as well but particularly love   mansfield park i don't know why i found people  find it rather overdone george eliot i mean   hard to hard to beat george elliott i mean  she's probably of whatever gender you want   to talk of the the greatest mind of any novelist  i think that i've ever come across just the most   intelligent i suppose is the word you want to  use just extraordinary feeling of being in the   presence of something so a real mighty intellect  which it's not because it wears itself heavily but   because you are just know that there's something  so important in the way she tells tells you things   and makes i mean there's a is it in middlemarch  there's a phrase i remember thinking this is   what writing does that nothing else can do music  even can't really do it she writes about how a mirror pier glass if it's been polished by a  clumsy maid it has random scratches all over it   and if you look at its surface it just  has random lines where it's been scratched   but if there's a lamp you put it under a lamp  all the random scratches turn into a sort of   nest a round shape which is shaped by the light  and she uses that as a metaphor both for religion   the light of god makes sense of what is completely  random and happens but also of reason so you know   a religious person can think that's a brilliant  image but so can a non-religious person that   all the accidental scratches that make up this  randomness of the universe into which we were born   if you shine a light at them they gather into  a ball that makes sense and i stop and think   about that and that's the kind of thing george  eliot can do that very few other writers can it's   just it's simple i mean it's it's  she probably didn't think much of it   just quick sort of thought but i remember being  staggered by it just thinking that's it that's   beautiful and a beautiful way to end  a discussion i have enjoyed so so much   thank you so much stephen thank you you're such a  good companion thank you very much oh well let's   let's um hope we can do this one day with real  live people yes and thank you for watching and   thank you especially to all the libraries that  have uh that have enabled this and good luck   to you all in this time absolutely thank you  everybody for watching it's been a real treat   thank you stephen and sharpie  for a splendid conversation   if you want to come to more events like these  and for free please do join the royal society of   literature membership starts at a mere 40 pounds  and gives you access to the rsl's events our   publications and our book groups members will also  have special access to the rsl's 200th birthday   announcements at the end of november so do join  us through rs rsliterature.org thank you to our   partners the british library the living knowledge  network and of course the wonderful union chapel   and now from all of us in this beautiful building  in the heart of islington have a very good evening

Channel: The British Library

Views: 42,871

Rating: 4.9044776 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: aG7FqTDa2oI

Length: 84min 30sec (5070 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020