John and Andy are joined by Jonathan Wilson, sports writer and author of eleven books, including Inverting the Pyramid, a history of football tactics that was named Football Book of the Year in 2009. His most recent book is The Barcelona Legacy: Guardiola, Mourinho and the Fight for Football's Soul published by Blink in 2018 and which is appearing in paperback in April. Jonathan is also the editor of The Blizzard, a quarterly journal of football writing. He is joined by Rachael Kerr, a publisher an editor who has worked for Cape, Picador, Harvill and Unbound. Rachael has previously appeared on the Charles Sprawson and D.H. Lawrence episodes of Backlisted. She is also married to John. The book that Jonathan and Rachael are here to talk about is Utz, the last novel and penultimate book by Bruce Chatwin, first published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. The discussion also discloses Andy’s bafflement at Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat and John’s admiration for Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions.

Books mentioned:

Bruce Chatwin - Utz; The Songlines; On the Black Hill; The Viceroy of Ouidah; What Am I Doing Here; In Patagonia
Valeria Luiselli - Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions; Faces in the Crowd
Elizabeth Smart - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Jonathan Wilson - Inverting the Pyramid; The Barcelona Legacy: Guardiola, Mourinho and the Fight for Football's Soul
Nicholas Shakespeare - Bruce Chatwin
Nicholas Shakespeare & Elizabeth Chatwin (eds) - Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Susannah Clapp - With Chatwin
Jonathan Chatwin - Anywhere Out of the World: The Work of Bruce Chatwin
Penelope Fitzgerald - The Beginning of Spring
Peter Carey - Oscar & Lucinda
David Lodge - Nice Work
Marina Warner - The Lost Father

Other links:

‘Remembering Bruce Chatwin’ (BBC World Service 1991)
BBC Radio 4 Adaptation of Utz
Blake Morrison’s Guardian review of Under the Sun (2010)
Susannah Clapp remembers Chatwin in the Guardian (2017)