00:00:01:00 - 00:00:24:12 But. Hello. Welcome to this edition of the Hertford Literary Podcast. I'm Emma Smith of the fellow librarian and I teach English, and therefore it's a particular pleasure to welcome today's guest who read English with us at Hertford 00:00:24:23 - 00:00:44:08 Alex Preston, who's a novelist, critic, nature writer around man of letters. I'm desperate to ask him about his forthcoming book called Winchelsea, which is a historical novel but I going to hold my excitement about that and just ask some some introduction. 00:00:44:08 - 00:00:57:22 So Alex, welcome to the podcast. Lovely to be here, Emma. And and great to see you. It's really, really good to have you. Let's just tell us a bit about you and writing and how that fits with Hertford. 00:00:57:22 - 00:01:21:14 Were you a writer back then? Was that what you were always heading for? I think it. I think it was. I mean, it's been a slightly haphazard path, but I think it's always been there. And there was a poet who was teaching at Hertford when I when I was there, Jamie McKendrick, brilliant, brilliant poet who 00:01:21:14 - 00:01:44:08 started a series of creative writing evenings. We we went to the basement of a pub up in Jericho and read, certainly in my case, very, very bad poetry to one another. But it was this sort of glimpse into the possibility of a writing life that I got at Hertford. 00:01:44:08 - 00:02:05:11 And then, of course, you know, my tutors, yourself and particularly Tom Paulin, you know, really, really nurtured that side of me and talked to me in really interesting ways about it. And I think so much about being a writer is about confidence and is about, you know, the old cliches of finding your voice and 00:02:05:18 - 00:02:27:21 that definitely happened to me when I was at Hertford. Your first novel, which rightly, I mean, sort of erupted onto the scene, won loads of prizes, was sort of an extraordinary debut, This Bleeding City, so that drew on experience you had in the financial sector, which so did you do that straight after college? 00:02:28:14 - 00:02:47:24 Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's a terrible idea to let 21 year olds make decisions about their lives. And I, you know, I feel like sort of my time, I managed to get both the best things about Oxford and the worst things about it, all at once. 00:02:47:24 - 00:03:03:05 And and I definitely sort of fell in with slightly the wrong crowd and had my head turned by lots of sort of parties in wonderful houses and and, you know, racy trips to London. And so when I left Oxford it was 00:03:03:05 - 00:03:18:08 this sort of crazy time. It was the dot.com boom and I set up an internet company. I remember several times having conversations with you and Tom about whether this was necessarily the best thing for me to be doing with my life. 00:03:18:09 - 00:03:32:09 But of course, you let me make those decisions, and I think that was, I think, you know, maybe it is good to make those sorts of mistakes, but it was a long mistake for me, and I worked in the city after leaving Hertford for seven and a half years. 00:03:33:03 - 00:03:51:17 And really, it wasn't the right place for me and and I'd always sort of thought I'd write a book about it because there were just so many extraordinary characters and events. And finally, I did. And as you say, it did, it did very well. 00:03:51:17 - 00:04:12:11 It came out as the financial crash hit, which I think was also quite helpful. But, you know, it's interesting, one has a weird relationship with the books that that one writes and and I still look back on that and I'm proud of it, even if recognizing that, you know, it is basically autobiography. 00:04:13:06 - 00:04:34:06 It's a really memorable book, the scene, the sort of awful, sort of ghastly, kind of clammy climax it comes to when the central character who's got sort of no sense of what's important leaves the child in the overheated car and completely forgets, forgets about them. 00:04:34:07 - 00:04:49:01 I mean, that's just sort of, it whirls to a kind of nightmare about about that world and and its values, which if it is autobiographical, I see that it makes me feel very pleased that you got out. Well done. 00:04:49:11 - 00:05:04:19 Yes, I never left a child in a car I would like say. No, no, no, no. But it seemed to me and emblematic. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it becomes a sort of, I mean, it's not as heavy handed as the words suggest, but it's a kind of, yeah, an allegory 00:05:04:19 - 00:05:22:15 Or or emblem. Yeah, completely. So what what how did you make the step away from that world and back towards the literary sphere? I mean, you know, they had been two parallel strands in my life. 00:05:22:15 - 00:05:38:14 I don't think I ever, you know, there was never a time when I wasn't writing. But obviously it was, you know, it was hard to fit in around a full time job in a very highly pressured world. 00:05:38:22 - 00:05:57:24 And so I wrote This Bleeding City, you know, on planes, on the tube. In the morning, I would sit and sit by my wife, girlfriend at the time, I think as she watched telly in the evening and I would have headphones in and be writing at the same time. 00:05:57:24 - 00:06:09:21 So it was, you know, it was really a matter of just finding the sort of margins of the day in which to write and. And I recognized that, you know, it was something I loved doing and that I wanted to do it more. 00:06:09:21 - 00:06:30:00 Now I wish I could say that, you know, I got news that my book would be published by Faber and immediately went in and quit my job. But it was, it was slightly less dramatic than that. It did take, you know, the success of the book and the recognition that I could make something approaching a living 00:06:30:00 - 00:06:48:24 from writing before I, before I chucked in the day job. And you know, it was obviously the best decision I ever made. It was it was a struggle at first. My second book, I'm not hugely proud of and I don't think it quite did what I wanted it to do. 00:06:50:05 - 00:07:06:19 But you know, the third did alright in the fourth did alright and the fifth I'm very, very happy with. So, you know, it feels like this is, this is now the path I'm on. I have thought such a lot about your third novel. 00:07:07:03 - 00:07:18:04 I think I perhaps wrote to you and if I didn't, I meant to... No you did it. I remember I was thinking about it a lot during the strange kind of lockdown period. Just tell us a bit about about that. 00:07:18:04 - 00:07:36:22 About that. Yeah. So In Love and War is set in Florence in the years of the second World War. And it's about a young man whose father is high up in the British Union of Fascists in the UK and is sent out to Florence to be a kind of liaison with Mussolini. 00:07:37:06 - 00:07:58:21 Florence was one of the leading fascist cities during during the war. There was a really evil figure running the secret police were called Carita it. I went to Florence and I just found these stories. I think I actually saw you on the on the plane, on the way back, randomly which is lovely. 00:08:00:10 - 00:08:26:19 And that was the, you know, I think I mean, I basically lived there on an on-off basis for three years researching this book and just kept finding more and more extraordinary stories. But but what you wrote to me about was the the kind of quarantine that many had to go into in the city to escape the 00:08:26:19 - 00:08:49:15 attentions of the secret police. And there's a long, sort of almost like an interlude where the hero and his and his lover Ada, to go up to a villa just outside of the city and have this kind of weirdly blissful time, even though they know that everything is horror around them. 00:08:50:10 - 00:09:07:22 And, you know, it did that. I mean, that was sort of what my experience of lockdown was like, in terms of, you know, having really tragic things going on around, but also recognizing that that was a kind of purity of the life at the time. 00:09:07:23 - 00:09:32:20 And so, yeah, it was something that I had also thought of, but I think you put it very nicely. I really recommend the book. That interlude, as you put it, I suppose, in part because it resonates so beautifully with a trope from, I don't know, Le Grand Meaulnes or something, all the way through this. 00:09:32:20 - 00:09:50:05 This sort of idealised, rather simple, I mean, simple and also grand, kind of escape. It's a really wonderful. Well, it was, it was sort of modeled on, I mean, this sounds a bit pretentious, but it was like it was modeled on The Decameron, 00:09:50:08 - 00:10:10:10 Yeah. And this idea of of the city under plague. And you know, I mean, it is not a new idea to try to link the kind of disease and fascism, but this idea that it would be possible to retreat into a world of books and and sort of, 00:10:11:15 - 00:10:33:03 Rarefied thought and mixed with a kind of, sort of, bubbling up of sexuality, and that's what I wanted to say. I wanted I read a lot of The Decameron or read it a lot during that period and and actually returned to it for obvious reasons last year. 00:10:33:24 - 00:10:50:15 It's such an amazing book. Yeah. And and one of the texts that has so come into prominence in different ways over the last year or so. I wanted to ask you then about that all that research. 00:10:51:10 - 00:11:10:17 Partly because I want to get to Winchelsea. That's an extraordinary sort of investment of research, research time. Is that always going to be, is that always your model, what's the research you've done, maybe maybe a different question is what is the research you've done for Winchelsea? 00:11:10:17 - 00:11:26:09 So, so that's the 18th century, is that right? Yeah, that's right. You know, I think it's very, it's kind of fascinating to think about one's own process because you you don't think of yourself as having a way of doing things because each book feels so different. 00:11:27:16 - 00:11:49:06 And it seems to me that the research needs to flow out of the life. So, you know, I had spent a lot of my childhood in Italy and had loved Italy and had sort of lost touch with Italy and had actually sort of forgotten my Italian and In Love and War was a way of 00:11:49:06 - 00:12:12:06 reconnecting with that Italian past. And I had to relearn my Italian because some of the people I wanted to interview didn't speak English, and I didn't want to pay for a translator. And so, you know, definitely that kind of immersive and real, you know, trying to get to grips with primary sources and all of that 00:12:12:06 - 00:12:38:16 sort of stuff, that that was really important for me. Winchelsea was a slightly different thing in that. So in the beginning of 2016, well, let me take you back a step further, in 2015 we did a huge road trip across the states and just staying in little sort of, you know, villages and country towns and spending 00:12:38:16 - 00:12:57:03 all the summer outside. It was it was nine weeks long and it was just bliss. And we drove from Miami to New York and, you know, it was just heaven. And then we came back in the September to London, and it just felt like everything was kind of grey and closed-in around us. 00:12:57:03 - 00:13:15:10 And so we almost sort of, without thinking about it, decided to move out of London. And we moved to the Kent, Sussex border just north of Rye and Winchelsea. And so, I mean, this was the beginning of 2016. 00:13:15:10 - 00:13:29:24 We moved and and, you know, Brexit happened, and it was all slightly horrifying because we suddenly recognized that we had left a place where we knew both place and people very well and moved to a place where we knew neither. 00:13:31:14 - 00:13:45:09 And so Winchelsea was my way of really immersing myself in this place and its history. And there was a there was a road that piqued my interest just down the road from me, and it's called Dumb Women's Lane. 00:13:46:19 - 00:14:06:19 And I, I found myself driving up and down it quite a lot, and I wanted to know, well, what was it called that? And it turned out that it was a lady who had lived on the lane who had peached on the Hawkhurst gang, so had told the authorities about their doings, so now 00:14:06:19 - 00:14:24:24 The Hawkhurst Gang was a smuggler gang that basically ruled the whole of Sussex, Kent and Hampshire in the 18th century. And the reason it was called dumb women's lanes because they'd cut out her tongue. And I mean, it was a bit like some of the stories I found in Florence that it was something where I 00:14:24:24 - 00:14:42:23 was like, OK, this is a story. And so I started reading about the Hawkhurst Gang. I started visiting archives. I spent a lot of time speaking with local historical societies and spent a lot of time in which you'll see itself, which I don't know if you've been. 00:14:42:23 - 00:14:59:21 There is a really kind of atmospheric and fascinating town with that, with an extraordinary history. And and, you know, with the research, you want to get to that stage where the book sort of starts writing itself. And I definitely got there. 00:14:59:21 - 00:15:13:01 I mean, it's taken me sort of, I guess, three and a half / four years. But it was it was such a rich source of stories and and it ends up being what you leave out rather than what you put in. 00:15:14:19 - 00:15:33:21 I'm really, really looking forward to it, one thing I noticed when I was, you know, finding out about when it was coming and this is I noticed you've changed publishers and I wondered if you, as somebody very connected with the literary world, could just sort of explain to us how that works or what the what the significance of that 00:15:34:11 - 00:15:52:01 is? Yeah, it was. It was an interesting thing. So you tend to sign deals for, you know, several books at a time. And so I had a multi book deal with Faber initially and loved being published by Faber. 00:15:52:13 - 00:16:08:11 They published my grandfather in the 1970s, and that was a nice sort of connection there. But, you know, it has been a, it's been a sort of interesting time for publishing and and things have changed a great deal. 00:16:08:11 - 00:16:27:12 And my editor at Faber, Walter Donahue, is, you know, he's an absolutely wonderful man and I love him with all my heart. But he is not a young man and he is sort of entering the, I guess, the foothills of retirement. 00:16:29:00 - 00:16:52:17 And so my deal with Faber, it ended and I'd also changed literary agent. And that was sort of again, it was a sense of, I felt like I felt like I just wanted something new with this book and that I wanted it to find perhaps audiences that the previous books hadn't. 00:16:52:18 - 00:17:12:20 I felt like it would be perhaps beneficial to me as a writer to have fresh eyes on my work. And so my agent, Carolina Sutton at Curtis Brown, sent out the book Winchelsea to just a handful of publishers. 00:17:13:03 - 00:17:29:08 And you know, I mean, I think to describe it as a bidding war would be, would be overstating it. But there was, you know, there was significant interest from a few parties. And actually, Canongate ended up making the the best offer. 00:17:29:08 - 00:18:00:10 But also, I had really admired how they'd published other writers and particularly I had had quite a bit to do with Maaza Mengiste, whose book The Shadow King. I sort of picked up early and admired greatly. Wonderful book about the war in Abyssinia, Ethiopia, and I just loved it. 00:18:00:10 - 00:18:16:20 And it is actually her editor, Joe Dingley, who I have ended up working with. And, you know, I mean, there, I have always admired those writers who stay with, you know, the same agent and the same editor and the same publisher all the way through their careers. 00:18:17:21 - 00:18:41:18 I had already left Faber for my nonfiction book As Kingfishers Catch Fire, which was published by Little Brown really because I had a very particular vision with what I wanted that book to look like. And Faber did not share that vision, and Little Brown absolutely said what I wanted that book to do. 00:18:41:18 - 00:19:02:15 So, you know, I sort of I feel I miss Faber, but also Canongate are a really, really wonderful publisher and I'm very, very happy with with what they've done so far and I'm absolutely thrilled with the cover they've put together for Winchelsea, which I think is just absolutely fantastic. 00:19:03:06 - 00:19:28:19 And it will be out when? February, next year. Wonderful. OK, that was absolutely great. I'm so pleased you mentioned the nonfiction book, which is absolutely a beautiful object. It's interesting to hear that the backstory to that beautifully, beautifully illustrated and absolutely wonderful book, which I have given to all kinds of, all kinds of people. 00:19:29:17 - 00:19:47:06 What was the, was that also a kind of move from London sort of book? Was that part of that recalibration? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. It was, it was begun before the move, but it was clearly part of that, that whole process. 00:19:47:06 - 00:20:12:13 And you know, it's that idea, you know, I mentioned it, I had been a nerdy bird watcher as a kid and birds had always been really important to me and I recognized that even though I no longer went and sort of stood on the marshes at Pagham or, you 00:20:12:13 - 00:20:32:12 know, took myself off on twitching trips that I looked for birds and in the books I was reading and was drawn to books that were good on birds. And so I thought it might be interesting to put together a book that tried to be both anthology and memoir about birds. 00:20:33:06 - 00:20:58:21 And so it sort of tells the story of my life, but through birds and books and birds in books. And it's, you know, for me, it's so much about Neil Gower's extraordinary illustrations. Neil had done the maps and illustrations and the beginning of chapter motifs in In Love and War, and we 00:20:58:21 - 00:21:20:01 became and and our still great friends. And so the collaboration with him on Kingfishers was just such a thing of of joy and and you know, yeah, I was really interested in the idea of creating a book that was just a beautiful object and about beautiful things. 00:21:20:07 - 00:21:39:19 And I think we did that. You absolutely you absolutely did do that. It's it's a great book, and it was such a revelation to me. It's very interesting hearing you talk about your Oxford life and these other things that were sort of in abeyance or slightly suppressed during that period. 00:21:40:07 - 00:21:53:21 We must go to Otmore or something one time when you're when you're in, in and around Oxford, that would be lovely. You know, and this is the thing, I mean, my sort of regrets of the things I didn't do while I was at Oxford. 00:21:53:21 - 00:22:15:02 I feel like probably heaven is the ability to relive Oxford with the benefit of hindsight, because I, you know, I think it's but I think it's a good thing not to take, you know, because that's surely the classic experience of Oxford is the experience of not having really made the most of it and yet still 00:22:15:02 - 00:22:35:15 to have benefited so much from all the opportunities that one did, probably accidentally. Yeah, what? What is this making the most of it? Anyway, as you say, it would be about a sort of weird temporal palimpsest where you had the wisdom of age and and the the energy and the ability to go on with 00:22:35:16 - 00:22:59:22 not much sleep of youth. That's kind. I mean, it was interesting. So I did. I did my PhD here at UCL, and I did. I was sort of I mean, it was a slightly ghostly experience because I would go and work in the library there every day, and I was surrounded by undergraduates and I sort of 00:22:59:22 - 00:23:14:05 wanted to say to them and just breathe it all and enjoy every moment. Don't, don't get distracted. Go to all your lectures, you know, all of the things that I wish that I'd done when I was there. 00:23:14:05 - 00:23:32:20 But I think I have a really strong memory of, you know, what must have been certainly my final week at Oxford of walking down whatever that street was called, that sort of goes around the back of queens that goes under the Bridge of Queens Lane, New College Lane! 00:23:32:23 - 00:24:03:11 Yeah. And that sense of recognizing what an extraordinary three years I had had and how unbelievably lucky I'd been and how much I had changed as a person, and not necessarily all in good ways, but also that thing of living in ideas for three years, which I think university, at its best, should be about. 00:24:03:21 - 00:24:24:00 I had really achieved that and it was, you know, I mean, it is still the defining experience of my life, the time I spent there. Yeah, that's that's really, really wonderful, really wonderful to hear. And I think, you know you, you did it, you did it the way, you did it brilliantly and 00:24:24:00 - 00:24:35:11 well, you did it, the way that you were going to do it authentically at that time, I think that's all anybody can ask. And as you say, looking back and saying thinking, you know, why don't I do it as I would now do it as a grown up person? 00:24:35:11 - 00:24:58:19 This is us, as we're saying, kind of to miss, to miss the point of it. One of the things I admire about you, Alex, is how generous you are to other writers, how much you are a positive force, a generous and constructive force in the wider world of letters through reviewing and through literary festivals. 00:24:58:19 - 00:25:21:03 You are a patron of the Oxford Literary Festival even through things like the writers cricket team that know that you're in. Is that how we should understand the literary world, is your version of it, which is, you know, about kindness and delight in other people's success and the sort of rising tide and all that kind 00:25:21:03 - 00:25:34:10 of thing? Is that is that what the literary world is like? Or do you feel as if you are sometimes an exception? It's really interesting. I got, I got skewered in in Private Eye the other day for saying for being too nice about about books. 00:25:35:14 - 00:25:55:10 I would have some more, you know, sort of pointed problems in our world for satirical skewering right now than than than you're reviewing. But anyway... You've made it, you've made it now! No, but you know, but the what was what they didn't recognize. 00:25:55:10 - 00:26:21:04 And so I have a very, very good relationship with my editor at the observer, Ursula Kenny, who is just a wonderful, wonderful woman and we've worked together now for ten years. And from very early on, we came to an agreement that I would review books that I wanted to review and that I would put forward 00:26:21:04 - 00:26:42:16 to her and that if I read a book, you know, particularly a debut. I mean, I remember This Bleeding City did not get universally good reviews and you know, I mean, it was not a time at which a recently former banker or, you know, at the time when it came out, I was still working in the 00:26:42:16 - 00:27:00:16 city. It was definitely not a time that you knew you were guaranteed a good press. But only I just feel like there is enough kind of nastiness in the world. And so if I read a book and I don't like it, I just say to Ursula, you know, would you mind giving it to somebody else or would 00:27:00:16 - 00:27:19:06 you mind if we didn't review this one? And so it means that I end up reading a lot more than I review. But that's fine because I read a lot and I read reasonably swiftly and I feel like what I want to do is to get behind the books that I love. 00:27:19:11 - 00:27:40:13 And I love a lot that I read, and I, you know, there's that John Updike had of kind of rules for reviewing, and the one that has stuck with me is 'establish the spell that the writer is trying to cast and do your best to submit yourself to it'. 00:27:40:23 - 00:27:57:00 And I think it's a very simple idea, and it's something that I tried to do with every book that I pick up. I don't try and read it for what I want to get from it. I try to work out what it's trying to do and how successful it is at doing that. 00:27:57:02 - 00:28:22:22 And so, you know, I definitely have a good review to hatchet job ratio that is more skewed in one direction. The most people I take down are successful writers if I think they've done a bad job and I, I also feel, you know, I'm incredibly lucky that I have built a career in writing 00:28:22:22 - 00:28:48:20 that enables me to, you know, to be spending all of my time in one way or another, immersed in books and the literary world. And if I can help others up along that path and through, you know, certainly my early years in my writing were tricky and I had some disappointments and I had some wonderful, wonderful friends 00:28:48:20 - 00:29:08:16 who helped me along and some writers who were generous to me, in ways that they absolutely didn't need to be and if I can pay some of that back then, then of course I will. And what's your take on how the literary world looks right now? 00:29:08:17 - 00:29:23:02 I mean, we hear a lot of, sort of, rather conflicting ideas. I think about how many books people are reading or who gets published, or whether anybody, you know, sells any books. Or do you think that literary fiction is in is in good heart at the moment? 00:29:23:17 - 00:29:40:07 You know, it is, I think, in better heart than it was when I started out in writing, you know, the sort of end of the noughties and early 2010s were a really tricky time for the literary world. 00:29:40:07 - 00:30:02:09 I think things are better. I think the literary world is involved, as the broader world is, in asking some some serious questions about, you know, gatekeepers and about whether we are publishing enough books with sufficiently diverse voices. 00:30:02:10 - 00:30:22:14 I think that is getting better. I think there are all sorts of problematic moments, but I feel like the general trend is in the right direction as far as that goes. You know, I'm delighted by the success of of people like Sally Rooney. 00:30:22:14 - 00:30:43:06 I think that, you know, I actually didn't love the latest as much as I enjoyed...I really liked the first one Conversations with Friends. But you know, the fact that people are buying the books of somebody who is doing interesting things with the form, in the numbers that they are, I think is such a wonderful, wonderful sign 00:30:43:13 - 00:31:06:03 Yeah, fantastic. Those pictures of people, you know, queuing up! Like they queued up for Harry Potter or whatever. I mean, it's just absolutely thrilling. And so, you know, I yeah, I mean, I'm sort of a naturally optimistic person, and it's very hard not to map one's own sort of proclivities onto the broader world. 00:31:06:04 - 00:31:28:21 And but I, you know, I look at my own kids and I look at their friends and I think about the, you know, so I've got thirteen year old and an eleven year old, and I, I love recommending books to them and their friends and seeing how they get passed around between, particularly now my son's reading 00:31:28:21 - 00:31:49:08 kind of grown up books and you know, we were on holiday this summer and and he and his friend, little 13 year old friend, who we were on holiday with, were both reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt like, I totally remember that moment to reading it myself and just be completely dragged into that world. 00:31:49:09 - 00:32:07:21 And it's, you know, there is still no experience like the complete colonization of the mind that comes with reading a really, really good book. And I and I have an Oculus Quest and have, and have played immersive games on it. 00:32:07:21 - 00:32:27:16 And it isn't. It isn't anything like the the just the transformative impact that reading something amazing can have on you. Yeah, The secret history is absolutely full of that Updike spell that you've mentioned before, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. 00:32:29:11 - 00:32:47:03 Well, we could keep. Actually, there's one thing I want to ask you about before, right before I come back to Hertford, which is the bees. How are the bees doing? I mean, 2020 was, you know, the bees were not the greatest tragedy of 2020, but the bees were a victim of 2020. 00:32:49:06 - 00:33:11:21 And actually, weirdly, I guess it was to do with lockdown that my bees had such a bad 2020. We had been, we had a kind of swamp in the garden that, suddenly being at home all the time, turned it from something that was merely unsightly and kind of vaguely unhealthy looking. 00:33:12:08 - 00:33:28:06 You know, the breeding ground for mosquitoes, et cetera, into something that we actively needed to deal with. The bees were kept near the swamp. And in order to have the swamp drained, I had to move the bees. 00:33:28:07 - 00:33:45:17 I had three hives of of bees. You can either move bees three feet or three miles. Otherwise, they can't reorient themselves. So I took them to a friend's house while we had the swamp dredged and drained. And I mean, it was hellish. 00:33:45:18 - 00:33:57:12 I got them in the car. You know, I took a corner too quickly, one of the supers, the top hive came off and the. These were all over the car, and it was just I mean, it was completely hellish. 00:33:57:21 - 00:34:12:05 My suit wasn't done up properly. They got down inside. I'm slightly allergic to bee stings and so was driving along with bees crawling over my face, into the corners of my eyes. I mean, it was just it was awful. 00:34:13:00 - 00:34:35:10 Anyway, I got them finally back in place in sort of late September, but I think it was just too late, and bees need to be at a kind of critical mass to make it through the winter. It's, you know, they needed to have the ability to keep themselves warm, and they just didn't. 00:34:35:10 - 00:34:52:09 So I started again in late May with just one new hiVE, and they are thriving and they are doing wonderfully. I have deliberately not taken any honey from them this year. I just want them to get established. 00:34:52:18 - 00:35:14:04 I want them to sort of feel comfortable. And then I will start taking honey next year. They are next to the chickens who are a new arrival as well. I mean, we are slowly becoming self-sufficient. You know, it's a very clichéd lockdown experience, but the chickens are wonderful as well. 00:35:14:04 - 00:35:31:24 So yeah, and the bees are Just a lovely, lovely thing to have around. They're a source of joy. I shall come to you I think for for some bee instruction because they're definitely starting. Yeah, well, I'm really keen to. 00:35:32:04 - 00:35:46:02 I don't have any, but I'm really keen to do that. So this is a conversation for another day. But it's making me think of Hertford Beekeepers Network would probably be, oh well, I would be delighted to come and give you a lesson. 00:35:46:03 - 00:36:08:00 I mean, again, as my friends down here did for me, my first few years of beekeeping, I had bee mentors all around and it was, you know, because it is, it's all about the, I tried to do beekeeping initially as I tried to do everything through books and just read and read 00:36:08:00 - 00:36:31:02 and read. And actually, I realized that the books are not sufficient alone. I'm not letting as end on that note, though! No, no, absolutely! And so one of the things that, as you know, Alex, that's prompted us to get in touch with and celebrate Hertford writing in all kinds of genres is our plans to develop the 00:36:31:02 - 00:37:00:03 library. We've got these exciting plans, which include an underground reading room with a big roof light, but also a kind of terrace which looks out over Radcliffe Square and there are some kind of wonderful aspects to this. But I'm asking all our all our guests about them and Hertford Library whether it was or was not a kind 00:37:00:04 - 00:37:27:14 of place in their geography of Hertford. So how was the library for you as a bookish English student? I mean, it will maybe not surprise you because I think you remember my student life that it sort of, the library, bookended my time at Oxford in that I took my studies very seriously when I first turned up and then 00:37:27:14 - 00:37:48:17 did almost nothing for certainly the end of my first year and the beginning and the whole of my second year. And then it was really in the third year that I basically lived in that library and we are still as a group and I'm talking about my year in Hertford and largely that the English students from that 00:37:48:17 - 00:38:19:11 year, just incredibly, incredibly close. You know, two of my children's godparents are members of the English cohort from that year, and all of us meet up regularly. And and you know, it was, I guess, what it's supposed to be, but I feel maybe slightly more than is usual in that we are, we have remained such a 00:38:19:11 - 00:38:49:09 tight knit group and see each other so regularly even, you know, we've had some people go abroad and some people, you know, who have got very different shaped lives, but we remain incredibly close. And the library was where we hung out and my memories of being that were how usefully it totally destroyed one's sense of time so 00:38:49:09 - 00:39:22:17 that you really had no idea whether it was day or night outside when you were cocooned in the downstairs rooms. And I remember sitting next to my great pal Hermione Air, a great novelist now as well. And she used to bring in a bag of silver spoon sugar and would sit and work and slowly eat her way through 00:39:22:18 - 00:39:48:02 the bag of sugar as a way of kind of energizing her mind. I had an oxygen canister like something out of Blue Velvet and would inhale from it, believing that this was somehow, I think I had the sense that it would sort of, clarify my thinking. 00:39:49:09 - 00:40:10:00 We were a weird bunch, and yet it was, you know, I only think of that time incredibly fondly and we would agree that we would all go out to to, you know, get a drink or or, you know, even just take a walk around the Radcliffe camera together every so often. 00:40:10:00 - 00:40:25:24 And it was, it was, it was our trenches! We were we were in there and it was it was brilliant because there was a definite sense of sort of spurring each other on and and competition, but it was also collaboration. 00:40:27:12 - 00:40:48:20 And I went back into the library when I was up there, I guess. Was it a Gaudy? I can't remember, but I was up there not that long ago, and just the smell of the place was, I mean, it was just a total rush of nostalgia and of happy, happy memories and of the sense of 00:40:49:03 - 00:41:12:08 a mind kind of shaping itself. And just one final thing, you know, I think like everyone, at the start, I felt a degree of, you know, imposter syndrome and of maybe not quite being in the right place and certainly not being bright enough to be there. 00:41:12:24 - 00:41:33:01 And I remember, I think it was my first trip into the library and I sort of was sitting there and I just sort of picked a book randomly off a shelf and I remember there were two girls in the air above, I think Sophie Everest and Helen something? Helen Folder! Are you listening, Helen? 00:41:33:12 - 00:41:51:13 And they came and they just and they talked to me and they sort of showed me around the library and it was just this feeling that I was, and they were so lovely, and I did felt, yeah, I felt like, Oh, okay, maybe this is all going to be alright. 00:41:51:14 - 00:42:12:15 So it was the place in which slowly I began to feel that maybe I could, I could do okay there! Alex, that's lovely. It's been so really wonderful. Really, really wonderful talking to you. Thank you so much for being on our literary podcast and in the next episode, which is in fact, the final episode of 00:42:12:15 - 00:42:27:08 this series. I'll be actually picking up what Alex was saying about debut novelists and talking to Shahnaz Ahsan. So do tune in for that one. Thanks so much to Alex Preston and to Hannah Bironzo, who produces the podcast for the Development Office. 00:42:36:03 - 00:42:36:13 Because.