Paula Byrne on Thomas Hardy's Women, Jane Austen's Humor, and Evelyn Waugh's Warmth

Donate to Conversations with Tyler https://mercatus.donorsupport.co/page/cowenconvos25?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shownotes Give Crypto https://thegivingblock.com/donate/mercatus-center/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=shownotes Other Ways to Give https://www.mercatus.org/donate/howtogive What can Thomas Hardy's tortured marriages teach us about love, obsession, and second chances? In this episode, biographer, novelist, and therapist Paula Byrne examines the intimate connections between life and literature, revealing how Hardy's relationships with women shaped his portrayals of love and tragedy. Byrne, celebrated for her bestselling biographies of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, and Barbara Pym, brings her unique perspective to explore the profound ways personal relationships, cultural history, and creative ambition intersect to shape some of the most enduring works in literary history. Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf's surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy's ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen's writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh's hidden warmth, Paula's strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more. Read a full transcript https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/paula-byrne/ enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video https://youtu.be/Nrhs3FmD9n4. Recorded November 14th, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X https://twitter.com/cowenconvos and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cowenconvos/?hl=en Follow Tyler https://twitter.com/tylercowen on X Follow Paula https://x.com/paulajaynebyrne on X Sign up for our newsletter https://mercatus.tfaforms.net/5060931 Join our Discord https://discord.gg/JAVWP7vTxt Email us: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here https://www.mercatus.org/podcasts.

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• 1:24Tyler Cowen?

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• 2:01Tyler Cowen?

  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm talking with Paula Byrne. She has a new book out here, which I found in Daunt Bookstore in London. It is called Hardy Women: Mothers, Sisters, Wives Muses. It's about the women in the life of Thomas Hardy and in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Paula is a very well-known and bestselling biographer. She has, among other things, books on Jane Austen, which are wonderful, Evelyn Waugh, a bestselling book about JFK's sister, based on new archival research, a bestselling biography of Barbara Pym. She has done work on 18th-century slavery, images of Jane Austen. She has written two novels, and she leads a group called Relit,

• 2:46Tyler Cowen?

  devoted to the notion of bibliotherapy. Paula, welcome.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:53Tyler Cowen?

  Simple opening question. What did Virginia Woolf think when she went to visit Thomas Hardy?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I loved what she said when she says, "His face looked like a round apple," because I always think of him with apples, partly because they made cider at home when he was a young boy. And I think it's just such a brilliant description of that sort of little apple, sort of slightly like an old, a withered apple, but still retaining some sort of juicy flesh. I think she did really like him. I think she liked him more than she expected to like him, which I think often happened with Hardy. People expected him to be really dour and pessimistic because, obviously, of the books. And then, when they met him, they were quite charmed. He had a very soft and gentle voice. And it was quite, it was

• 3:43Speaker 01

  quite bewitching. It was quite mesmerizing. So, and I think she was very moved, obviously, because of her father. On her Lesley Stevens relationship with Hardy. So she wasn't as a serb as she was with quite a few people. I think she gave him quite an easy time on the whole.

• 4:01Tyler Cowen?

  And this would have been in the teens, right, of the 20th century that she saw him?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just, he was quite sort of caustic about the sorts of novels that she wrote. And that don't have a beginning, middle and an end. So and I really, and she took it in, you know, in good humour, but he, he was definitely sort of feeling that the world of the novel had changed beyond recognition, which it had, and that she was a pioneer of some of that. But he was still very sort of old fashioned about a story must have that trajectory, beginning, middle, end. But I think they got on very well.

• 4:37Tyler Cowen?

  If one visits Wessex today, are there still traces of Hardy's world? Or is it just simply homogenised and that's quite gone?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it is quite homogenised. The house, Max Gate, which is where I got the idea for writing the book, obviously retains that original sort of charm. It's very dark and it's an ugly house. But it's still, I think the spirit is there. And I vividly remember two things. One was the, his study at the top of the house where he wrote Tess and just feeling just, just the power of that room. And then the other room that really inspired the book was Emma's attic room, where she disappeared for sort of 15 years. So I think you get a little feel of that in the house in Max Gate and certainly in the cottage, because that is so beautiful.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  I've been, I've made many pilgrimages to Hardy's birthplace over the years and that feels so unspoilt. But, I mean, Dorchester, for example, is grim. It's, it's shut down. It's, it's just a horrible place. So you don't really get much of the sense of like, the real rustic flavour. But, but the cottage is charming still.

• 5:47Tyler Cowen?

  But say if one goes to Cornwall or Northumbria, you do feel traces of the past, Liverpool for that matter. Why not Wessex? What went wrong there?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. Liverpool, I, I, I don't know, maybe Liverpool, you know, it's a port. And I think that's really important that the thing about a port, I'm in Manhattan now and I'm by the river and it really feels like Liverpool. I feel like I'm back in Liverpool. I think there's something about a port because it's always changing. People are coming and going. There's musical influences. So you'd almost think that somewhere like Wessex, it would be easier to retain some of that. And yet it does, it just has, I felt it looks very run down. I mean, I'm, I'm thinking really here with Dorchester, but obviously places like, you know, the, the seaside, Lower, the Cove and all these beautiful places are still incredibly gorgeous.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And I think that's where you do really get a feel. And, and to some extent, Dorchester, you know, where the prison was and you look at Winchester where Tess was hanged. I mean, there are, there are places in England where I think you can get a feel for that. But I think if you live in the life of the imagination, like I do, I can really see it. But I took my son with me and he was like, this is a dump. This is horrible. There's no Hardy here. So I think from the young guys, he was just like, this world has gone. This world has evaporated. It can never come back.

• 7:07Tyler Cowen?

  If we ponder, say Jude the Obscure, what's your implicit model of why it is for Hardy, first marriages are so hard to break from?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I mean, that is a massive question. And Jude, I think so much of Hardy's life is poured into Jude. It was such a personal book for him. It would take a very, very long time to answer that question. But it was also around the time when he was writing Jude, that his marriage had by then completely ended and there was no going back. And really interesting, it was the first book that Emma did not like, didn't want anything to do with, because there is this idea running through it is why can't you end a unsatisfactory marriage? Why can't you just live with somebody? Why can't you just? Divorce somebody. And this is a refrain, like, what do you do if you can't afford divorce?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Or it's still frowned upon? Well, you could sell your wife, like in the Marigaster Bridge. Or, you know, you can do what Jude does, which is you live with the object of your desire for the second time around. But it's, it's a question. The second marriage question was so huge for Hardy, because he was so miserable. He was so miserable in his first marriage and he just couldn't see a way out. But he did also come from that background, that working class background where it's still really frowned upon to divorce or to leave your marriage. And it was so, so complicated with him, because when she does die, he sort of fell back in love with her, which is so typical Hardy.

• 8:36Tyler Cowen?

  But why, why write the 1913, 1914 poems to her? He's in, he's in what, the first year of his marriage to Florence? She can't be crazy about that. Why is he self-destructive? Or is it what he needs to do to make a second marriage work?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, there was a cruel streak in him, I think. I think you have to be quite cold-hearted to do what he did to Florence. Because having sort of moaned and complained about Emma and pretty much moved Florence in, then to fall back in love with his wife is a little perverse. And of course, it made Florence feel completely awful. And then she couldn't live with, it was like Theresa Cahn, she couldn't live with the dead ghost. But I do also think, this is where my sympathy swings for Hardy, that when somebody does die, you tend not to think of the bad things they've done. You tend just to remember the good things they've done. I've noticed this over and over again. People tend to just, just really linger on the positives. And there was, there was so much remorse.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  And he just did remember that beautiful young Emma. So he did want to pay tribute to that. But you've just got to remember Tyler as well. He's a writer, like, he's going to use that for copy. And he knew those poems were good. And it did unleash something so emotional in him. And that, and I, he wanted to be a poet. He didn't want to be a novelist. And I think that's really important to remember. He did not want to be a novelist. He felt almost pushed into it. He wanted to be a poet. And I think then when he starts writing this amazing poetry, he knows this is good. And that's how he wanted to be remembered. And I think in that, in that sense, he didn't really care that it hurt Florence.

• 10:08Tyler Cowen?

  Now, you're also a couples counselor. Do you still see this in couples today with first and second marriages?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:19Tyler Cowen?

  Good answer.

• 10:22Tyler Cowen?

  Why do so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Can you say more about that?

• 10:27Tyler Cowen?

  Well, the story in, say, Jude the Obscure, right? There's, there's two women, there's two men, there's a total of, there's multiple marriages. Mayor of Castor Bridge, there's the doubling is a theme.

• 10:40Tyler Cowen?

  It seems very Shakespearean, right? That there's a kind of ensemble of tragedy. And different stories mirror each other, or they, they, they show different facets of each other.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I've never thought about it, but I think it's a really lovely point. And I think that it's, it's, it's a great plot technique as well. That sort of shadowing and that mirroring. I think, I mean, he's a great, I love his plots, you know? I think it's really, it's just so hard to get a plot right. And he does that really, really well. So I think again, but again, for me, for me writing the book, I was always conscious of this is a man that between those later novels wants to get out of his marriage. So he's always looking at the alternative relationship, like what would happen if this happens? Or what happens if that wife dies? So he's always got that refrain going through in those later novels, but not in the first ones when he's still so madly in love. But also with Hardy, he's always in love with the unattainable. Like that's what, that's the whole thing with him.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  That, that's why I think the well beloved is so interesting because it's the pursuit of the well beloved. That you, once you get it, you don't want it. And I see that in Gobbo's castings a lot. It's that, you know, once you get it, you know, and, and you know, you, you might have an affair. And then you've got what you want. And then suddenly, all those small horrible things that you haven't seen, because it's all been so romantic. Like, oh God, he doesn't brush his teeth before breakfast or, or those sorts of tiny things. And the illusion is broken and then you're just back in the same place. So I think for me, for Hardy, he, almost as soon as he married Florence, he was falling in love with somebody else. And that's just what he seems to do all throughout his life, that unattainable beauty.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Because he's so susceptible to female beauty.

• 12:22Tyler Cowen?

  In your readings, what do you take to be the primary Shakespearean element in Hardy? Just subjectively.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I think there's a divinity that rough hues or ends shape them, as you will, that sort of sense of, I'm thinking again of Tess here as well. The idea that the gods are.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Peevish and they've got a plan and they don't really care and that they're just going to move the pieces of chess on the board. And I think of King Lear as well on that and the heath. So I think that sense of, yeah, that sort of fatalism, that sense that almost there's no free will, like what could Tess do? There's nothing she could do because the gods have got a plan. And that sense of providence, that is really deeply Shakespearean and Shakespeare's very dark period, I have to say.

• 13:10Tyler Cowen?

  As you point out, Hardy never really stopped working until he had to. How good is the unknown Hardy? It seems to me everyone reads the same few novels. What do you recommend from the rest?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I really like the minor works and I'm gonna, I am gonna confess like everybody else, I'd only read the, before I undertook the biography, I read all the big ones. So obviously the first thing I did was set myself to read everything and I did it in chronological order because I think that's really important. I always do that. I did that with Evelyn Moore, just read everything because I think you can really see the growth. And I do think some of those minor novels are really, really fascinating and sort of not Hardy-esque, you know, Two on a Tower. It's just so fascinating. It's so brilliant. The Telegraph and all the, the sense of the new world and innovations. So I do, I really like the minor works. I

• 14:00Speaker 01

  find them interesting, but above all, I really love the poetry. And that, I really, really fell in love with the early poetry written when he was sort of 25 because it's so modern. It was so shocking. Like when I read some of those early sonnets, I just thought this sounds like somebody is writing it today. It has the most fresh feel and voice. I would urge anybody who thinks they know Hardy to go back and read those early poems because they, they're really quite astonishing. But I do, I do really like the minor works as well.

• 14:31Tyler Cowen?

  Now, in another book, you argued that Mary Robinson was arguably the most interesting woman of her day in 18th century England. Why?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I think because she really understood celebrity, even before celebrity had been invented. She really understood how to market herself, how to fashion herself, how to reinvent herself and how to support herself. And she was really, I think, a very, very interesting writer. She understood the importance of image really before many, many, many people did and used it to her advantage. So I think she is, for many, many reasons, so fascinating. And the Portrait of the Morning Post, I mean, she was a prolific writer and poet.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  She didn't let her disability impede her. Just more than I think she just really, I was really frightened of her when I was writing about her. I was like, I don't ever want to meet this woman. She's really scary. But I couldn't wait to get out of my house when I'd finished writing about her. But I still, I think about her all the time. In fact, I'm writing a novel about her at the minute.

• 15:41Tyler Cowen?

  That's great. Who is arguably the most interesting woman in England today?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Hmm. That is such a good question. I don't really find anybody interesting in England, really.

• 15:53Tyler Cowen?

  Catherine Rundell?

• 15:57Tyler Cowen?

  Amia Srinivasan? I would think Catherine Rundell, whether or not one agrees, she would be the obvious first pick.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I just, my mind just goes, like, I instantly go to people like Sally Rooney, but I don't really like her. It's like, I just, I'm so.

• 16:10Tyler Cowen?

  And that's not England. Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  And that's Ireland, yeah, not Great Britain.

• 16:15Tyler Cowen?

  Well, you are from Liverpool, right?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I am from Liverpool, yeah. On the other side of the border, Mersey side, so yeah.

• 16:22Tyler Cowen?

  But they have a lot in common culturally.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they do, they do. But I, I, yeah, I've been living in America for far too long. I've been, I've been in America for six years, so I'm like, I. I'm really not sort of aware of interesting women, much to my shame.

• 16:38Tyler Cowen?

  Now, you've had a longstanding interest in Jane Austen. What's your sense, if you think of late Georgian theatre in England, which was a big influence on Austen? But just how good was it? If you or I went to one of those plays, would we be bored? Would we think it's stupid? Would we be amazed and wonder why the theatre had declined? What do you think? Obviously, it's guesswork, but you must have a sense.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  I think they did it quite interestingly because, you know, they would do like a five act serious play and then there would be like a farce and then there would be or a dance. And so there was a little bit of something for everybody. So you could go and see your Shakespeare. And I think particularly in the Georgian era, this is the time when those really great actors, you know, Sarah Sidens and, you know, obviously Garrick, coming to the end of Garrick, but Kemp Keen, Edmund Keen, George Cook, you know, these Dora Jordan, these absolutely brilliant actors. And it's so hard because we don't know how, why they were so great. Like we've, I mean, Jane Austen talks about Edmund Keen in her letters and says it's, he's so natural. But we don't know what that means. Like to us, it's like we think of method acting, don't we?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  We instant, we might go to Sean Penn or we might go to the great method actors. And so when they say, oh, he's so natural, what does that actually mean? It can't mean the same thing that it can mean to us. But what I do know is it wasn't like declamation and, you know, throwing your hands and being like over the top. It was, it was tempered down. I think when Jane Austen calls it real hardened acting, good acting is real hardened acting. So I think there was definitely, you could, you could see some of that. But a lot of people just sometimes went for the farce and the farces, I think, were great. Like she stoops to conquest, hilarious. So the rivals Sheridan, people would just go and, you know, spend, they go halfway in and see the last bit of the, the main play and then they'd see some great farce.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And I think often people went to see each other, you know, they went to look at each other. So there was a lot of gazing around the room and who's there, what are they wearing, what are they doing? And also it's very noisy. So people didn't sit there in deference like they do now. They'd be chatting and jostling and talking and it was much more sociable. And it's a, it's a place where the classes intermingle and there aren't many places like that in Georgian society because it's so stratified. So I think it's really fascinating as a, as a sort of social space where you might, you might mistake a prostitute with a fine lady because she's wearing the clothes of a fine lady because she's bought them second hand. You've got all these interesting things going on, but I think it would be really good fun.

• 19:05Tyler Cowen?

  And how is the farce related to Austen?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Well, she loved farce, you know, she, in her letters, she talks about going to see Don Durin and she, and it's a, it's a farce. And she's like, oh, a compound of cruelty and lust, she calls it. But she, and there's other farces that she, The Wonder, A Woman Keeps a Secret, not very feminist, by Susan Sontiva. And she's laughing, she says, oh, the farce really pleased me. And I think she had quite low taste. I think she was hard to please. So she really liked the farce. And also she used to take the children of the family so they'd like a good farce. So I think she was quite eclectic in her taste, but you know, these clowns were really funny. They were really good. And I think, as I say, she wasn't a snob. She wasn't an intellectual snob. She didn't just, she did want to see Mrs. Sidens in, in The Great Shakespearean Rolls, but she also loved comedy.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  And she is a comic writer, which we all forget about, which is the most important thing to remember about Jane Austen is how funny she is. So, and I would, I argued in my very first book that she could never have been such a good comic writer if she hadn't watched all those farces. If they hadn't performed them at home, if she hadn't read them. Because her sense of comic timing is derived from 18th century theatre. Pride and Prejudice is so much dialogue. So it's, it is like being at a play and then she used to read her novels aloud and that is like. Being a play as well. So for me, that was such a big and undervalued influence.

• 20:29Tyler Cowen?

  How is Mansfield Park set against a background of war? Total war, you could say, by the standards of the time.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Well, she's a war novelist because many of her novels are written in the background of the French wars and the Napoleonic wars. Mansfield Park, I think, is particularly, 1814 is a really interesting year. There's some very interesting books being written in that year. It happens to be my favourite Joan Austen novel, Mansfield Park. I know everybody hates, but I really love it. I find it so different to the others and so much more serious and so much more interesting. So although she doesn't set out to deal with, she's not a war novelist, but it infiltrates, you know, it's so turbulent, you know, there's something is always happening in the shadow hinterlands. You know, you will get that feeling with Mansfield Park, a great unease, I think, that the house itself's corrupt.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I've always felt that the Crawford's coming in and corrupting the house isn't what's really going on. It's the house that's corrupt. And the house is built on the spoils of the slave trade. So I think it's much more interestingly politically.

• 21:35Tyler Cowen?

  The trips to Antigua, there to slave plantations?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Very clearly, and she says so. And Sir Thomas, the house is built, it's a new house, Mansfield Park, it's built on the spoils of the slave trade. And he goes out because there's unrest and we don't know what that is, but there were enslaved riots happening at that time, especially in Antigua. And he takes his wild son with him in the hope to get him away from wild company, which doesn't work. But I think you always get that sense of the spoils of the slave trade. And then, of course, Fanny's the only one brave enough to ask Sir Thomas when he comes back and she asks the question about the slave trade. And nobody else is really interested. They don't want to talk more about it, but she does. So it's, and you know, it's a very important moment in the novel that the shy,

• 22:21Speaker 01

  timid, diffident little girl is the one who says, what, you know, tell me more about what's happening with the slave trade. So, and again, the Lord Mansfield connection, anybody reading Mansfield Park is going to think of Lord Mansfield and his, his role in the abolition of the slave trade. So it's, that's about the nearest, I think she does come to, to politics. She stays away from it, a bit like me, but it's, it's there.

• 22:45Tyler Cowen?

  It all seems political to me, just the relationships between the sexes and class and who does what to get ahead. I'm not sure she sees a relevant alternative, but it's mostly an indictment as I read those novels.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree.

• 22:58Tyler Cowen?

  She was an abolitionist, right?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. She was obsessed with this really interesting man called Thomas Clarkson, who wrote the first history of the slave trade, who also from Liverpool, or he went round Liverpool. I know he, he might have been from Liverpool, I can't remember. But she was obsessed with Thomas Clarkson, who was the first person to argue that instead of slave and human traffic, if you want to trade with Africa, you could do this with goods, with beads, with clothes, with all sorts of different things. And she really, really, so she, she absolutely, I think, abhorred the slave trade and everything it's stood for.

• 23:32Tyler Cowen?

  And when does the opium trade pop up in her novels?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Does it?

• 23:36Tyler Cowen?

  Persuasion? Maybe I'm misremembering. Anyway, we will ask ChatGPT in our spare time when we're done.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 23:45Tyler Cowen?

  You recommend a movie, Patricia Rosima's version of Mansfield Park, which is now on my to watch list. But why is that more interesting and vital than most other Austin adaptations?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I think at the time, it was quite a while ago I saw it, and it did feel very refreshing because it was, it really engaged with the politics, it engaged with the slave trade. I think it revealed Franny as more, as more spirited. It's not a faithful adaptation, put it that way. And I know it really did divide people. But I thought at the time, I was like, it's really fun. It's really risque and it's fresh. But then I saw it again recently and I was a little disappointed. I was like, oh, it's not as brilliant. You know how you go back to a film that you love and you think, oh, that's so great. And you go back and you're like, eh. I don't think anybody's really got Mansfield Park right, but there was something very new and fresh and vivid

• 24:37Speaker 01

  about the way that she filmed it as well. Filmically, it's really interesting. And I really liked her depiction of Tom Bertram, the wayward son and his engagement with the slave trade. And I really liked the way Harold, because Harold Pinter played Sir Thomas. And he was really a, he was, he was a bully, which I've always felt that Sir Thomas is a bully. So she took, she took lots of, lots of risks. I mean, ultimately, she doesn't get Fanny right, but I just felt at the time, yeah, keep it fresh, keep it relevant. We don't have to be so faithful and we don't have to be like all frocks and smocks and big houses. Like every Jane Austen adaptation, the house is way bigger than what, what it would have been. She's not interested in aristocracy. She's interested in gentility. So she is, they've always kind of got it wrong. And the ones, the films I like, I love Clueless. Clueless is the best.

• 25:21Tyler Cowen?

  Yes, love that.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Adaptation. Because it's so funny, like she just gets the funniness and that's the really important thing. Clueless is so great. And that, that has never lost its charm. For me.

• 25:33Tyler Cowen?

  Your book on Evelyn Waugh, the phrase pops up and I quote, naturally fastidious. Why can it be said that so many British people are naturally fastidious?

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Your questions are so crazy. I love it. Did I say that?

• 25:51Tyler Cowen?

  I think Evelyn Waugh said it, not you, but it's in the book.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Do you know, give me the context of that.

• 25:57Tyler Cowen?

  I'd have to go back and look. It's just in my memory. But it's, it's a claim.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  It's a great, it's a great phrase.

• 26:03Tyler Cowen?

  We can evaluate the claim on its own terms, right? I'm not sure they are anymore. It seems maybe they once were. But the stiff upper lip tradition seems much weaker with time.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Evelyn Waugh would be appalled with the way England has gone. Naturally fastidious. So yeah, I think, yes, it's different to reticent, isn't it? It's, it's the fastidious, hard to please. It means, doesn't it? It's a naturally hard to please. I kind of think that's quite true of even was general, certainly of even war. Because he was naturally fastidious. That literally sums him up in a phrase.

• 26:41Tyler Cowen?

  If I go to Britain as an American, I very much have the feeling that people derive status from having negative opinions more than positive.

• 26:50Tyler Cowen?

  And that's quite different from this country. Would you agree with that?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I would. And I would agree. And I think one of the things I have always loved about America was that, I know it's such a cliche about, you know, Americans have this sense of positivity and you can do anything, but it's true. And, you know, and I do find in England, there is a sort of real e or sort of dour, sort of putting, putting you down or putting you in your place. But I kind of like that as well. So like with Scouse humour, it's very much keep you in your place. Don't get too big for your boots. And I kind of like it because I think the corollary, the, you know, the opposite of that is what the phoniness of Americans like, you know, when you go to LA and everyone's like, oh my God, you're so beautiful. That is amazing. And like, oh my God, like, you know,

• 27:38Speaker 01

  and you just think it, you don't mean a word of what's coming out your lips. So I think like the, the balance, New York, New York feels like the balance is pretty right.

• 27:47Tyler Cowen?

  When did, when did that start in Britain? Does it exist at the peak of Victorian Britain? One doesn't feel it in John Stuart Mill or many other writers. What's the evolution of that? Because you've written British biographies about a number of different eras.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  You mean the stiff upper lip?

• 28:02Tyler Cowen?

  Well, the nega, the negativity as, as a means of conferring status upon yourself.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's slightly tall poppy syndrome that you don't want to big someone up too much because it makes you feel small. And it takes your light away from you if you, if you're a tall poppy. But I think it is tied in with something that I've really come to value, the older I've got, which is English reticence and English diffidence. And I actually, the older I get, the more I'm like, I really like that because it, it does feel very intrinsic to who I am as a British person, which is, it, it may not be, you might say negative, I might say realistic, you might say pessimistic, I might say honest. You know, it just sort of depends how we define these things. But I think when someone gives you a compliment or to me, they mean it in England.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  He means it because he very rarely give you one. And I'm like, oh, you must really mean that. And that comes, that has value. And I think that stiff up a lip has value. And as a, as a therapist, it also does not have value. As a, as a therapist, family secrets are the worst thing that you can ever do. So I see both, both sides of it, if that makes sense. But in terms of the novel, and in terms of the great writers, I think you're on to, I think, I think you're right about that. There is a sort of deep pessimism that runs, like, a strain that runs through it. However, as with Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen, you always get that leavened with satire, with humour, with, don't take yourself too seriously. I think that's the great British sin. Don't take yourself too seriously. If

• 29:36Speaker 01

  you take yourself too serious, you're doomed.

• 29:39Tyler Cowen?

  And do you read Waugh as actually a snob and a misanthrope? Or is that a kind of put on? And that actually, he's very good natured about humanity?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  The latter. I completely think it's put on. And I, I argued this really strongly in my book, that he, everything was a joke, everything was up for a joke. And he played the part of the sort of grumpy Colonel, which he talked about himself. Deep down, he was incredibly kind to his friends. He was deeply sensitive. He wasn't a snob. He made, he made, and again, he makes fun of, of the aristocracy in Brideshead, even though people don't always see that. I don't think he was any of those things. I think he was a snob about cleverness. I think he was a bit of an intellectual snob. I think if you were really stupid, he wouldn't have much time for you. But I, and maybe that's a British thing too. But he really valued wit and good conversation. But it didn't matter whether

• 30:30Speaker 01

  you were, when he was during the war, his, his bagman adored him. And, and there's an interview where they're trying to get this bagman to sort of say, oh, he's a horrible snob, wasn't he? He said, no, he was absolutely lovely. Did he shout at you? Was he horrible to you during the war? No, no, he couldn't have been kinder. And he just, he, he was somebody who knew him intimately during the war. And he, he just did not have a bad word to say about him. So it's become a bit of a parody. And he became a bit of a parody of himself. He parodied himself. But I think he played that part. And for me, he certainly was, was not a snob.

• 31:02Tyler Cowen?

  If I understand your life history correctly, you and your husband come from very different status spans in British society. How do you think that shapes the books and biographies you write?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I think we're both interested in social class, but I think if you live in England, you are because it permeates everything. Another thing I really love about America is, and I know there is an American class system, I know that, but I've always felt very free in America because people don't judge me by my accent, whereas in England, you're instantly, or you were instantly judged by, oh, you're a northerner, that means that you steal things, or you're a northern and that means that you're stupid. So, and I've never got that in America. So I think my husband and I have always been really fascinated, and we come from different classes, different backgrounds, but the great unifying thing for us always was books and literature and art and music and all the things that we have in common.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So I think it's, yeah, I mean, it does shape, it does shape the writing because I'm interested in people who write about social class, Jane Austen even more. Now, obviously, I'm drawn to those writers. I'm same with him.

• 32:09Tyler Cowen?

  But do you have the sense that in your books, you're working through something about your own life and your own history, and that's what you have to get out? And that by doing it indirectly, through some way you can psychologically resolve that where it won't quite work so directly? Because I feel that way about my books, that I'm always writing about myself in some ways.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And I've said it many, many times, that all biographers are writing autobiography, is that you, even the fact that you choose to write about these certain people, I mean, it's something that appeals to you, or you may have been shaped by. So I was really fascinated, but right, going back to the Hardy book for a moment, I was really interested in working class women's stories because I come from that background. And the background I come from, it's very matriarchal, it's Catholic, it's women had a lot of power. I could never understand with middle class women saying women have no power because I was like, oh, my God, you've never been in my family because, you know, they were always the storytellers, they were really powerful. The men were like, really not as strong as the women. So I was really fascinated by.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Female lore in Thomas Hardy, like, what are these stories that go through the generations? Do we believe them, these illegitimate children? I was always, always interested in giving people a voice. And I wouldn't be drawn to that if I hadn't had that background, because I know that's how women talk and speak. And I think Hardy was really fascinated by working class women and their strength of character and their stories and their, you know, all those things. So I think you're completely right. I don't think in the single book I've come, I've written where I feel cold, where I feel like I don't know this world, or I don't share something of myself. And I think it's just a fallacy to say, oh, I'm really objective. I wrote that book and I'm so objective. I just don't think it works like that. I think you see things that you think, ah, okay, that's, that's really fascinating.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Somebody else might say something completely different and not see it. So I think, yeah, for me, it's always, there's always my own autobiography. And I hope it doesn't distort it too much, but.

• 34:07Tyler Cowen?

  No, that's great. I love that in the books. I, I feel a bit, I mean, I don't know you at all, but I feel a bit, I know you just reading the biographies.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a lovely thing to say.

• 34:16Tyler Cowen?

  A related question, does Paul McCartney still have a Liverpoolian accent? Because he pretends not to. If you listen to 1963 Paul McCartney, or a more recent Paul McCartney, it's a very different way of speaking. But underneath, do you still hear that he's from Liverpool?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%. See, the thing is, I just think he sounds so Scouse to this day. I think, I think, I know, and it's softened because a bit like me, I haven't lived in Merseyside since I was 18, really. I came back for a bit and then moved away again. So I really hear, I really hear his accent. But I know what you're saying, like those early, like the accent's really thick and it's very guttural, that, it's right from back from the throat and it's softened. But to me, I so hear that accent. I'm like, oh my God, he's so Scouse.

• 35:04Tyler Cowen?

  Could you explain to me as an American, what you've called the poison pen episode? So your husband has a governance post at Oxford and you're there with him and someone starts writing these nasty letters about you. Now, people write nasty comments on the internet about me every day, basically. And and no one cares, but in the society you're in, this is somehow an event. There's multiple newspaper stories about it. You end up writing a novel partly based on these events. Like, how is it that the poison pen letters have force? It's very puzzling to me.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Again, I really like this line of questioning. And I think there's something powerful about somebody who takes the trouble to go and buy a nice sheet of paper and a first class stamp. Oh, in this, I'll tell you a really funny story about that in a minute. And and write this beautiful letter about as care and precision has been thought about. And then you go and you take it to the postbox and you post it. And that's not like, come on, Tali, that is not like writing, Tali, you suck on a tweet. Like, it's really not the same thing, you know? And I'm like, I and then I remember I, when it first happened, the same thing had happened to my best friend, who's a clergyman in London. And I called him up and I was like, oh, my God, I've got a poison pen letter. And we were talking about the power of this, the question you just made.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And he said, he said, darling, you know, there's, there's one question I have to ask you. And he said, is, did they send a first class? It's so British, this response, by the way, a first class stamp or a second class stamp? And I said, well, it actually was a second class stamp. And he said, oh, yes, cheap as well as vicious.

• 36:41Tyler Cowen?

  And how good was the penmanship?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Oh, it was superb. And I knew straight away it was an academic because it was so clever. And I knew it was a woman because it was so clever and bitchy.

• 36:50Tyler Cowen?

  And did you ever find out who it was?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  I did.

• 36:54Tyler Cowen?

  And you found out factually or you just inferred in a Bayesian sense who it must be?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  No, I flushed this person out via Twitter. So I, she eventually made a mistake. She she hosted a letter with where there was a camera. And I, and it was by registered posters. She made a mistake, so I pretended that I had camera footage, which I didn't. And I tweeted it and said, sorry, you've been caught. I know who you are. We've got CCTV camera. You better fess up. And she fessed up.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  And there was, I mean, I sued her as well. There was, there was, I mean, I didn't want it to go to court because she was clearly on well and I didn't want to do that. But I, you know, it got very far and, you know, it did get very far and full apology and.

• 37:40Tyler Cowen?

  And what do you take to be the true motive behind it? Just viciousness or mental illness or?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Little bit of vicious, a lot of mental illness. I think it was someone whose life hadn't really.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Really turned out the way she'd expected, and I think she sort of, there was a little bit of envy, I don't know why, but there felt like there was like, it should have been me sort of thing, and like really wanting to put me down. Again, that class, that British class thing, that who are you to be parading around Oxford as a provost's wife? Who knows? Because I never had met this person. I did not know this person. I'd never, ever. It was just like, why would you even do that? And everything was from Twitter. Like she'd talking about Twitter, it was my Twitter novel, because I figured out earlier, I was like, oh my God, every, this person doesn't know me. I was like, everything that's in these letters are things that I've tweeted. So I, and, and that was the case as it, as it happened. So little link there with our Twitter experiences, Tyler.

• 38:38Tyler Cowen?

  How many letters were there?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  I think there were about, maybe about 20 for a five year period.

• 38:43Tyler Cowen?

  That's a lot of letters. It's a lot of penmanship.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  And they were very long. That's how I knew it was a boring academic, because they were so long and convoluted. And I was like, oh for God's sake, like academic, like typical academics never write any books and whinge and take all their long holidays. Sorry, everyone's going to absolutely kill me for this.

• 39:01Tyler Cowen?

  No, they'll love it. They'll love it. Keep on going.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  And, and then don't even do anything. And then I was like, you're writing me these 30 page letters? Why don't you write a book, love? Like just do something with the other. I knew it was a, it was a female academic and it was. And it was just like, so it was just, it took, it just took so much of her time. She basically, she later said alcohol had played a part. So I think she would just get completely smashed and then decide to take me down and write these letters. But honestly, they were hilarious. Like they were so funny that I was like, I have to use these letters in a book. This is a waste. This is so, so funny. Like this stalking of me. I was like, it's hilarious. It was, it was just so, but it was so bonkers. It was like baby reindeer before baby reindeer.

• 39:42Tyler Cowen?

  Now, if I had known of this at the time, I would have inferred that you were a non-conformist and in some way, some mix of like quite interesting and ambitious and wanted to meet you. Did other people in England react that way? Like, did you become a heroine? Or did they just assume the letters were somehow some correct, you know, critique of you?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't think I was a heroine at all. I was absolutely vilified. I think so many people were just really like not happy that I went public. And when I wrote the novel, I was a little bit critical of Oxford as an institution and that really didn't do me any favours. So, no, I did not get many admiring. That was not the greatest career. It wasn't my greatest career move. However, I wanted to flush her out and I wanted her to stop. So I, you know, I was, and I was absolutely determined that something positive would come out of this horrible, because it is distressing. And I know I make light of it, but it is really, really horrible. It was so nasty and vicious and cruel. And then you just think, who is it? And then you start

• 40:46Speaker 01

  thinking, is it my friend? Or is it so and so? And it's, you do become quite paranoid. I really feel sorry for famous people because I'm like, they must get this all the time. And then who do you trust? And it's hard enough in an Oxford college to trust anybody because they're all such backstabbers. So like, I was like, oh, my God, what if it's somebody like who sees me every day? So you do become a little bit paranoid. But so I think writing the novel was cathartic. And it did enable me to sort of step back from it and say, come on, this is actually quite funny. But I, I didn't get any people saying good. I just, a couple of people went, good on you, good on you for doing that, but not many.

• 41:22Tyler Cowen?

  And do you think there's some element of jealousy that you are lady bait? And that to some sense, someone feels that's not deserved. And there's a sort of protest.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I think they think I'm Lady Docker from Liverpool. And like, I think they think how, who the hell does she think she is? And those, none of those things don't matter. Anything, to me, that was Jonathan's accolade and he deserved it. So like, anything that I, you know, getting a title from that is not my title. Like, it's lovely for him and I support him and I think he deserved it. And he, he was, I think he's the only second person to be knighted for services to literature. I was so proud of him. But it wasn't mine. But I definitely think there were some people, particularly in Oxford and Cambridge, who were really, really angry about it and really thought, who, because I am outspoken, Tyler. I do say it as it is. It is the sort of Scouser in me and I don't really put up with bullshit. And I don't

• 42:16Speaker 01

  think people like that. They thought that I should look, just shut up and put up. And so I think there was, there was a lot of viciousness that came as a result of the title. And really, interestingly, I don't think you, you can't know this, but it's absolutely true. The first letter came. A week after the knighthood was announced. So I think that was the trigger. I was like, ah, somebody's seen this in the papers and this is the trigger. So whether there was, I don't know, I can't say whether there was some sort of, not even envy, but just like, who does she think she is?

• 42:48Tyler Cowen?

  Do you think you're an outspoken Liverpudlian as a therapist?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:52Tyler Cowen?

  So you'll just call BS when you hear it?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Completely. And you have to with couples. I love couples. I do all therapy. I do family therapy, but I love couples because you have to call it out. Like you've got to call people's bullshit out. And of course, you'd only do that when you've created that bond and, and, you know, but I absolutely will because I will not waste people's time or money. And I will say, you are wasting your time, you're wasting your money. You don't want, you don't want this enough. I will absolutely call it out because I can't bear people who just go into therapy for therapy's sake and waste their money and their time. And in America, it's expensive. It's, it's a lot of money to, to, to, to speak to me. I've got to be worth it. I've got to be worth it. You know, I want them to feel good about this. So I am outspoken,

• 43:37Speaker 01

  but I'm gentle too. And I think I'm, I've always been a good listener. So I've not had any complaints.

• 43:42Tyler Cowen?

  Now, I know it's hard to generalize, but if you think about how American couples are different from British couples, I mean, what ideas come to mind?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I really think American couples are incredibly, I know this makes me sound a bit of a tosser, but they're so sweet. Like, I feel like, well, I lived in Arizona for so long and I was just like, oh, the relationships are so lovely. They're so kind to each other. They're so warm. And I was like, British people are just so horrible to each other. I feel like we're always in an Ivy Compton Burnett novel where everyone's like whispering horrible things under their breath to their husbands and their wives. I feel like this, the family values in America is huge for me, but it may be the West Coast thing as well. I was like, wow, so much family and support. And of course, not everybody, but my, just generalizing, I'm like, wow, there's, there's a real.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Support with within the the family that I don't haven't seen quite so much in England. I think it's seems a little bit more fraught and so many people who marry their college sweethearts. I'm like, how does that even work? Like, how can you still be married to someone you knew when you were fourteen? It's like, seriously? Do you really want to stay together? You can leave.

• 44:52Tyler Cowen?

  Do you think there's evidence of any kind of mental health crisis in the US today? And maybe only with people's children, but I see some of this. Parents with teenagers or children, say, in their twenties. I hear of many more issues than I would have, say, fifteen years ago. Maybe people just talk about it more, but this to me is notable. Do you agree or find the same?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I do agree, and my my favorite group apart from couples are teenagers. They're the population I always wanted to work with in therapy. And I'm fascinated by teenagers. I love them. They're hilarious. And, you know, they are just great. And I'm shocked by how many teenagers are seriously depressed. Like, I'm seeing eleven year olds with depression, twelve year olds with depression, thirteen year olds with depression. And that's something that I think is new. And just the sense in which, and I'm not going to blame social media for this, I think social media is fantastic. But the pressure, young women in particular, I noticed in therapy are under to that sort of cult of perfection. And also, when you're bullied, there's no escape. You know, I can remember being bullied and I was like, at least you'd go home.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And then your parents would be nice to you and it'd be fine. Your siblings would just, you'd laugh it off. But you, there's no escape. There is no escape at all. I love that population and I think there is a huge amount of health crisis. No matter what, however way you cut it, there really, really is. And the sad thing is, is that I'm a family therapist, so I really love families. I love getting families in a room because you can't just take one person's perspective. Everyone has a different perspective and and making families stronger. I think therapy is just so brilliant and important for all families in order to connect. That's the EM force to think, isn't it? Only connect. But I've been really scared by the mental health crisis amongst young people, and particularly in America. I've seen some pretty shocking stuff, I can tell you.

• 46:42Tyler Cowen?

  Why do you think it's gotten worse? Because I don't know.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Again, I mean, people will blame social media and to some extent, it's that. I think a lot of children are really lonely. Both parents work. And they they often go home to an empty house. I mean, I've just heard such horrific stories about there's no community, like America's great for community, but I'm like, what? We don't really have that sense of community anymore, which I think is so important. Like, you know, I don't know, churches or whatever, like having a sense of community is really important and we just don't have that anymore. And I think that's a problem. I think there's all sorts of things that I do. I do think social media plays a part. I mean, honestly, it's fascinating. I think about it all the time. I'm like, why we got,

• 47:28Speaker 01

  why we got this badly? What's happened? Why are we in this state that we're in? And I think it is lack of connection, a real meaningful connection.

• 47:37Tyler Cowen?

  Now, one hears often of a human capital crisis in northern England in particular, which of course is where you're from. How would you diagnose that? Because it did not exist in earlier times. What has happened there? Is it just deindustrialization? Or there's something else in the story?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Again, it's complicated, isn't it? Definitely. I mean, I was just thinking of the Full Monty when you said that, that brilliant film.

• 47:59Tyler Cowen?

  Yes.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  About the sort of, you know, the emasculation of men, you know, when women could get jobs and it was the men sort of pushing the prams. And I can remember seeing that in the north, like the shipbuilding industry, camelards closing, and you suddenly see more men pushing babies in the prams. It really did make me think of the Full Monty and you said that. But then I think I've been tourism as since Liverpool was capital culture, it became really more prosperous again. And that people were getting jobs and there were the garden festivals. And so I've seen such big changes, but I've been away from it for so long, Tyler. I've been away from the north. I know I haven't really been back for a long time. My sense when I've gone back to Liverpool is it seems so thriving. It feels prosperous in a way it didn't in the eighties.

• 48:45Tyler Cowen?

  Oh, it's great.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  When I was growing, it just, it wasn't.

• 48:47Tyler Cowen?

  I went there during pandemic. I loved it. It's fantastic. Have you ever bought anything on Penny Lane?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  No, but I've been, I've been down Penny Lane many a times. I love the people, the people are really warm. My, my children love going back because I always took them home because my parents and my family mainly is still there. And my kids who were brought up in Oxford just said, they just thought the North of England was the best places. They, they think the people are friendly and warm and kind and funny. And they found people in Oxford very snobby. So they've always really, I love seeing Liverpool through their eyes as well because they're like, oh, they're so nice. Everyone's so kind and people say hello on the streets.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  I just, I, I really don't know really so much about the politics because I'm so out of touch, Tyler. I'm really out of touch and, and I'm, I'm so disillusioned. I'm disillusioned with Keir Starmer. I'm disillusioned with Labour. I'm disappointed. I'm saddened. You know, I'm, I think Britain's become, well, like America, a very divisive place. Like families arguing over politics has become really vicious. You know, within, you know, within families, people not speaking to someone because you voted for Donald Trump or you, I'm like, wow, how did it get to this? Like I don't, who cares what you, who's somebody who votes differently to you. You still can love them.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  But it just become, it's become so divisive. And I think the pandemics and the pandemic going back to mental health, huge, huge impact on adolescents. They really had a hard, many of them had a very hard time during the pandemic. So I think there's, you know, I think there's lots of complementary and complex issues around, around that really.

• 50:25Tyler Cowen?

  What's the most underrated Beatles song?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Hmm. I love the Beatles. I really like the B-sides a lot and I like George a lot. I'm going to go with Yes, It Is.

• 50:37Tyler Cowen?

  It's a great song. Yeah. Wonderful harmonies. I said, you won't see me when someone discussed this with me recently, but Mr. Moonlight also, no one likes, but it's what, an amazing vocal, one of John's best vocals.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Uh, You Won't See Me is a great song.

• 50:52Tyler Cowen?

  Yes.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  That is a great song.

• 50:55Tyler Cowen?

  The melancholy in there is just incredible.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  The melancholy and the harmonies. And I love this boy, you know, I love all, I think the harmonies of just those early harmonies are so beautiful, but I, I really love the B-sides and yes, it is. Yeah.

• 51:07Tyler Cowen?

  Yeah, excellent choice.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Gorgeous.

• 51:09Tyler Cowen?

  What's the weirdest thing about living in Arizona? Like truly weird.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  The weirdest thing about living in Arizona. Oh gosh, there's so many. Oh my God, I'm really.

• 51:24Tyler Cowen?

  And you're in Phoenix, you're near Phoenix, right? You're near Phoenix?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yes, sort of Scottsdale. I love, I love the landscape. It's incredibly beautiful. What's the weirdest thing? Do you know what I think it is? I know this makes me sound so incredibly shallow. It's that the restaurants are in malls, shopping malls. I'm like, where are the restaurants? Like, where are there cafes? Where are, where are people sitting outside? Like people watching, but you have to go to a mall to get a meal.

• 51:50Tyler Cowen?

  You can't sit outside for five months of the year.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And you can't sit outside. And that's a kind of obvious one, but it is incredibly beautiful. Northern Arizona, which I really loved and spent a lot of time, is so completely gorgeous and beautiful. And the landscape is so different to, to Phoenix at that. I did a lot of, I really tried to explore the area when I was living there. And I'd take the kids and we'd go to all these places and all these like really weird places and just press it and just really get to know. And Bisbee, have you been to Bisbee?

• 52:20Tyler Cowen?

  No, what's in Bisbee?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Bisbee is the coolest place. It's, it's a mining town. So it look, you feel like you're in sort of the Alps of Switzerland. And it's full of music and bands and it's cool and it's the best place in the world. And there's all these inns that are built on the mountainside where the mining, the mining used to take place. It is, it's really, really cool Bisbee and I'm, I'm a big, big fan.

• 52:44Tyler Cowen?

  Before my last question, let me just put in another plug for your books. I very much like all of them. The most recent is Hardy Women, Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses, about Thomas Hardy and the women in his lives and in his work. Last question, what will you do next?

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I've just finished literally today before I spoke to you, I, I pressed send on another novel. It's my third novel. It's an historical novel and it's about Jane Austen's lost, secret seaside romance.

• 53:15Tyler Cowen?

  That's great. But after that, now that that's sort of done, what will you do next?

• 53:20Speaker 01

  I probab-, I'm not sure I'm going to write because there's no, honestly, I can't afford to, there's no money in it. Nobody reads anymore. I'm really depressed about it.

• 53:28Tyler Cowen?

  I read.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  I'm probably going to practice. Yay. I'm probably going to practise therapy for a while. And maybe, I always say this of Tyler, I'm like, this is it. Last book, no money, can't do it. Nobody's buying books. And then I always like, oh, my God, I've got this really good idea. So actually, I am writing a novel about Mary Robinson. You mentioned her earlier. So I think the historical novel thing is just so much fun. I really like it. And I don't have to worry about footnotes all the time. So it's quite freeing to be a creative fiction writer rather than non-fiction. So although I say this is the last one, I have been saying that for like 20 years.

• 54:01Tyler Cowen?

  I say that too, you know.

• 54:04Tyler Cowen?

  And there's typically one more. But Paula Byrne, thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Thank you, Tyler.

• 54:12Tyler Cowen?

  Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowen and the show is at Cowen convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.