Good evening. I'm Molly Rosenberg, Director of the Royal Society of Literature and I'm so pleased to welcome you to tonight's celebration of K. Dick in a partnered event from the Royal Society of Literature, the British Library, Faber and Curtis Brown Heritage. Rediscovered after 40 years, K. Dick's radical dystopian novel, They, is a stunning meditation on art, memory and non-conformity, published, republished last week. To celebrate the timely new edition of their published by Faber editions, tonight writer Claire Louise Bennett will be joined by poet Jay Bernard and K. Dick's family friend, the actor and writer Natasha McElhorn. Their conversation will be led by literary critic and publisher Lucy Skolls, whose writing on all things books, film and art can be read in publications including The Financial Times, The Telegraph, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review. She hosts Our Shelves, a podcast from the feminist publishing house Barago writes Recovered, a monthly column for the Paris Review about out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn't be and is an editor at McNally Editions, a new series of paperbacks devoted to hidden gems that launches this month with the American reissue of K. Dick's day. Lucy, over to you. Thank you so much, Molly. I'm really thrilled to be here this evening to talk about The Brilliant Day and its equally fascinating and brilliant author K. Dick. And I'm even more delighted to welcome such an excellent panel of guests. So I'm going to start by introducing them. Claire Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book Pond was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Her fiction and essays were paired in a number of publications including The White Review, Stinging Fly, Gorse Harper's Magazine, Vogue Italia, Music and Literature and The New York Times Magazine. Her new novel, Check Out 19, was shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmith's Prize. She's joined by Jay Bernard, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Jay is the author of the pamphlets Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl, English Breakfast and the Red and Yellow Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2017. Jay was a foil young poet of the year in 2005 and a winner of the SLAM Ambassador's UK Spoken Word Championship. Their collection, Serge, was shortlisted for the RSL Ondarci Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, the TS Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2020 they won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. And last but not least we have Natasha McElhone who established herself as a leading actress when she left drama school to play the lead in her first film, Merchant Ivory's Surviving Picasso, opposite Anthony Hopkins. She quickly followed this with Peter Weir's film The Truman Show, Alan J. Pacula's The Devil's Own with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford and John Frankenheimer's action epic, Baronen, in which she co-starred with Robert De Niro. She also played Rosalind to Kenneth Branagh's Barone in his musical version of William Shakespeare's Love Slavers Lost and in the futuristic love story Solaris, she co-starred with George Clooney, directed by Stephen Soderbergh. For TV, McElhone has starred in TNT's miniseries, The Company, a Golden Globe nominated drama, NBC's Emmy Award nominated miniseries, Revelations, but is probably best known for her role as Karen in the seventh series of the cult comedy drama, Californication. Other TV credits include The First Designated Survivor, Saints Than Strangers, Thorn Sleephead, sorry, The Company and Revelations. There's just too many things for you all. We've got such a brilliant panel of guests I can't even get all their wonderful work correct. But like I say, I'm so glad they're joining us this evening because I think it's going to be a brilliant discussion. We've got people from different areas, literature, film, family, friends at K-Dick, so this is going to be great. And because we're here to celebrate K-Dick and Day, I thought we would begin at the very beginning of this reissue. Molly mentioned the beginning. This book was originally published in 1977. It's been reissued by Faber this week, very excitingly. And I first came across this book a couple of years ago now when I was doing some research for my recovery column that Molly mentioned. And I'm always on the lookout for interesting books to write about, things that have been missed. And there's plenty of books that get forgotten along the way and for various reasons. And I hope we'll be able to have a chance to discuss that later. But I came across an old obituary about K-Dick, which was pretty catty. Let's put it that way. But it made me very interested about who this author was, who published quite a lot of books, even though it seems to me that people keep saying that she really didn't publish that many, but actually there's quite a few. And that she knew some fascinating people and was the heart of the London literary scene in the middle of the 20th century. I went and came across, I found all her novels, I started reading them. I liked the early stuff. I wasn't particularly excited by it. These were novels of manners, a little bit dated, very beautifully written, but nothing to particularly get excited about. And I say that because when I read they, it was like a sort of shot of electricity running down my spine. This was something completely different, completely different to K-Dick's earlier novels and actually quite different to a lot of other novels from this era, even though there were some sort of similarities to writers like Anna Caban and maybe books like Fahrenheit 451. And then at the same time that I was coming across K-Dick and writing about her, the literary agent Becky Brown from Curtis Brown Heritage also came across a copy of They-Dick and had a very similar feeling to me, that sort of jolt of electricity knew it was something special. And what you're seeing today is the sort of end result of us both finding this book and then Becky bringing it back into print, getting in touch with the estate. And here we are today with all these wonderful new editions. And I begin with this telly discovery, I think, because it's something that Becky, myself and others have discussed on sort of multiple occasions throughout this journey, that as I said, there's plenty of books that get lost, there's plenty of authors that get forgotten. But it is really rare to find a book and an author like They and K-Dick, a book that is both brilliant in and of its own right, that sort of makes you kind of, you know, stand up and take notice. But then also a book that seems to speak to the contemporary world, to speak to kind of the current generation now 40 years after it was written in such a kind of fiercely, a sort of loud and fierce way, this is what people seem to keep going back to about this book, that it was sort of prescient, that it speaks to us now really importantly. And for the author to be someone like K-Dick, who was absolutely fascinating at the heart of the literary world, like I said, knew many important people, had some wonderful sort of achievements in her own life. And yet, for both her and her work to be as forgotten as it is. So this really is a thrilling rediscovery and something rather special. But before we get on to K-Dick and talking about her life, I really want to start with the novel itself with Day, because it is such a fascinating, strange and eerie piece of work. So I wonder, could we get started perhaps if I ask you, Jay, to tell us a little bit about what you made of this work and in what ways it spoke to you both as a reader, I presume originally, but then also maybe as a writer as well. Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me to this panel, first of all. It is really fascinating to be introduced to this text via this. I did not know K-Dick at all until I got the email saying, would you be interested? And then I saw the pronoun at the top and I was like, this could be curious. And when I read it, I my initial reaction was this book is really weird and strange and disconcerting. And I'm not sure it's happening. And I'm going to put it down now. Maybe I'll come back to it later. I didn't have, I had an immediate sense of it being, there being a psychological and an emotional undertone to the book that I found really unsettling. And then when I went back to it and when I mentioned it to other people, friends of mine who say, I'm reading this really weird book and they're like, oh, what's going on? And I was like, every time I try to critique it or to put my finger on what it is that's going on, I can't quite do it. Because it's really compelling and it does have this kind of conflicting sort of centre that's not quite there. Like it sort of kind of keeps unraveling the more I try to try to grasp it, if that makes any sense. So I had a really like push-pull relationship with it. And then the more I kind of looked into it, the more I read about her, the more it grew on me. Possibly because that there's just this sense of somebody who is very, who is grappling with something, grappling with something very large and very difficult and very dark that actually does, in its own way, speak to me. Can I just ask after that, if maybe you wonder how do you describe it to people? Because I have this problem all the time. I say like, I'm reading this pretty unbuckle, there's this book you should read. How would you, how can you sum up there in a few words? Do you think? I don't know if I can do it in a few words. I don't think I can do it justice in a few words. I think it's, I guess the words that do come to mind are sort of circular and futility comes to mind as well. And maybe like anguish. But I don't really know yet how to yeah, summarize the book immediately.  It doesn't quite fit into that category for me as well. So I don't really know. And I think that's okay. Like I'm trying not to rush into trying to put the book into a particular box. Excellent. And Claire Louise, can you sort of tell us, answer the same question, like what were your first impressions when you came to this novel? And what is it sort of, what has it said to you so far? One of the first things that I was struck by was the Englishness of it. I haven't lived in England for it's more than 20 years now. So maybe I'm just quite sort of sensitive to those sorts of things. And but I wonder in a way, if they were kind of deliberate, you know, these references to whether it's just so much sunshine in it, sunshine throughout, and big beautiful hydrangeas and picnics and boiled eggs, but like in a flight and something, it's what made me think of. And there are so many references throughout it to childhood, you know. So I did wonder if there was a sort of a deliberate evoking of those sorts of idyllic childhood landscapes and visions of, you know, the sea and how blue it is and the spray. And I found that all very, very vivid and very, very, very melancholy in a way because I suppose it's nostalgic. So that was one of the first things, I suppose, that I really noticed and really tuned into kind of then more than any other aspect in a way, more that than they really, which is kind of interesting. And I don't really think of it as a dystopian novel, particularly for me, I think it's a novel about friendship. That's how I've experienced it. Now, I think, I think I read it, well, I did read it after a novel called The Wall by Marlon Haushofer, and I read that again recently because I wrote an introduction to it. And Marlon Haushofer's book The Wall was written before there, it was written in maybe the fifties or the sixties. Some went around and I should really know actually. And sometimes that's described as a dystopian novel also. Because just briefly, the setup is that a woman goes to visit some friends in a hunting lodge in Austria, and her two friends go out to a restaurant for something to eat, and they don't come back. And in the morning, she's a bit confused and she goes out to see what's been going on. She goes for a walk and she kind of bumps her head and she realizes, she establishes, that there's this invisible wall and it goes on and on. And everything behind it has been frozen completely. So she's the last woman left. Right. So there's this kind of, again, this kind of slightly sci-fi, slightly dystopian kind of setup. But really what that is is an elaborate kind of scenario that allows Marlon Haushofer then to explore what it is to be a woman living on your own. And in a way, I think there's something kind of similar here. It's not that it's just a device. I don't, I don't mean that. But I don't think it's a, for me, I don't experience it as an allegory. And I think it's, the depth of it, for me, comes from the exploration of the need to make contact with somebody and, and, and, for friendship. And in every, in every variation, there's like, I don't know, six, seven chapters or variations on the theme. Somebody always offers their hand to somebody. There's always that phrase. And there's just this lovely thing throughout of hands being taken and hands being held. And there's a real tenderness in it that I found very, very, very moving. And just to, and we talk about, about that because I'm interested to hear some of Natasha's memories of, of her when we kind of talk about that a bit later. But that, that aspect does interest me because, of course, from what I know from her childhood, there were lots and lots of people around her as a child. It wasn't just this family unit. And there seems to be in this book an exploration of what it is to be a part of a larger network, a larger community. And this they seem to want to really instill this nuclear kind of family. And for everyone to exist within these hermetic units, which she never experienced herself. And she felt, she felt quite fortunate that in fact, growing up, she had a much more extended sense of, of care and love. And that can sometimes absolutely disappear as we get older. So those are the things really that struck me. I find this so fascinating, because I feel like every time I speak to anyone who's read they take something kind of slightly different from it. And that's one of the seems to be, for me, one of the genius elements of this, of this novel. Natasha, can I come to you now? I'd love to know what your thoughts are. I'd love to know actually, when you first read they, I know that just to give a background to our audience, you grew up pretty much next door to K-Dick, didn't you, in Brighton when you were, she was living there when you were a child. Yeah, I guess my earliest memories of her must have been around seven or something, six or seven, and until my teenage years when I then spent most of my time in London, but so I couldn't gloss touch with her then. But I think the only book I honestly remember was The Shelf, coming onto our bookshelf, literally. And it's like, neglected or sort of, yes, we'll get through it, we'll get to it. And I think I did try and read that as a teenager, and, you know, couldn't make it out of it. So I've come to this as an adult day, and I read it the other week. And I absolutely loved it. I was blown away by it. Of course, I think I was probably evidence finding and trying to sort of see all the parts of Brighton that I knew as a child that she was experiencing as she wrote it and maybe put in the book. So there's a tunnel in the book and, you know, all her descriptions of the beach. I sort of am the hydrangeas. I mean, she did have this sort of topiary, and she had an incredible guy, she was a great gardener, and she had a tiny, tiny basement with window boxes and so forth. But my God, she thought it was like day of the triplets.  And I think that was intentional. She'd sort of buried herself under hydrangeas, like a sort of garden creature. And working at her desk, and the window was just behind the hydrangeas. And if she was in a good mood and feeling social, if things were flowing, she might wave and say hello and sort of lower her glasses in if things weren't going so well. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this.  I'm very distracting, I imagine.    See what we... Continue to annoy her. Yeah, really. So she's incredibly trying because she'll always forgive eventually. But Brighton, that tunnel, the way she describes it, it's so vivid to me, the sort of the echoes and the gate at the end of all of those things are brilliantly, beautifully inhabited and described. And I think to Claire's point about that sort of not accepting the social construct that everyone else just assumes and takes for granted. And also you reading this in lockdown, it just struck me how extraordinary that must have been for you that as people are getting fined, if they leave their house at the wrong time or if they sort of have a gathering or if they're doing something they're not meant to do, there's a sort of, completely different reasons, I suppose. But nonetheless, that we're living in this very, very strange time as you read it. And the mirroring of that in the book is, it's a spooky to say the least. But I do think she didn't have a sort of, it's not that she didn't respect the family unit. I mean, she did, she really loved my parents and she was very kind to my brother and I. But on our parents, just coincidentally, I think my parents were amongst a handful of straight couples in a sort of family unit.  We had an actor next to us who was gay, but was married, and they were raising their grandchild. I mean, there was no normal in inverted commerce. Everyone had their own individual story. And I think maybe it's no accident, maybe it's an accident. I don't know, but she ended up in that street and didn't stand out as being peculiar or strange or, yeah, she absolutely inhabited her place within it. And everyone had a story and didn't quite fit into what a social construct sort of married with two kids at that time was probably more normal. Hearing, I mean, coming today, then as an adult and having known her as a child, does it, as well as recognising these sort of elements of it that you can kind of translate into your knowledge of kind of writing things like that, does it make sense to you that she would have written this type of novel, or does it kind of strike you as slightly left field and sort of a strange concoction? No. The form and this is exactly the kind of book. It makes perfect sense. It's like the last piece of the puzzle. So it's interesting hearing you say that the early books, which I haven't read, which I'm really fascinated to read now, are less, are very different or that they feel like they're from a different writer. That's really interesting because this seems absolutely completely what I would expect from her, really on point. And her sort of, again, I don't want to project here, as I said, I didn't have an adult, I'm not looking at it through an adult portal as very much as a child. But then we did, I'd go and visit her and I'd sit and she'd offer me sort of watered down Campyrean crumpets. And as you were talking about the famous five thing or the inner blighting thing is absolutely true. There was always a sort of scorn with jam on it or these sorts of things that my parents weren't particularly into that. I think, you know, my dad was sort of vegan into nut whistles at that time, but K was very much into something quite traditional. And it was Campyrean soda at five o'clock and her cigarette holder and her monocle. And I think they sound like they're affectations, but they seemed very organic to her and she just was singular.  I mean, she modeled herself on that she also wore cricket jumpers that you know, miss school colors on them and I sort of maybe a tie sometimes and this I always thought her hair was like Mr. Whippy, you know, there was a sort of here and and it was this fabulous shock of blonde hair and this monocle and electric blue eyes and very, very penetrating and sort of forensic in her analysis of people. And yeah, and she spent a lot of time alone.  And on top of that, you live alone.  And if you wasn't in a community, unless you sort it. And so that's they makes perfect sense to me that there's a sort of incredible reverence for friendship and for constructing your own family, if you like, your chosen family within your your family of origin or the one that you've made. I love that she sees and I suppose they're all creative, aren't they? There is a maybe maybe there's a sort of us and them thing around. I'm an artist and those people aren't and they don't understand. And I do recognize that as as someone who I met as a child, she definitely seemed rarefied in that way. She was very cerebral, and she didn't tolerate ignorance. She definitely didn't. And she was a snob. But but not a snob in a sense of money class, anything to do to do with status, it was all to do with curiosity and whether you could be bothered to read, actually. I'd love to talk a little bit more about the importance of friendship, I think, in this novel. As everyone sort of rightly pointed out, this seems to be quite a key thing, like love, sort of affection between people, romantic or just friendship wise is very, very important in this in this novel. And I think it's been rightly pointed out that sort of dystopia maybe takes the takes the edge off that perhaps. But I know that both Claire Louise and Jay had talked just in the green room beforehand and both mentioned that this was something that kind of struck them about the book and that and particularly about some of Kay's other work. I don't know one of you wants to jump in and tell me which which of you was talking about Ivy and Stevie remind me the yeah it was you Jay wasn't it. So can you maybe explain to our audience what Ivy and Stevie the book is and explain why we were going to talk about this? Yeah so Ivy and Stevie is a sort of it's a very thin book with two interviews and then two essays and essentially Kay had sort of taken it upon herself to interview them both and to do it in a way that was sort of not journalistic, not the way that a newspaper journalist would do it. So they sort of just sort of sit and they just talk and then she kind of edited them down and they both died and she put out this sort of book in memory of them both and then wrote these two sort of lovely little essays which sort of examined them both as people and I think I thought that was really interesting as I was reading there's a couple of things I want to say about love as well but I think it's interesting because this book to me when I read it I did not see it as something about friendship and love it's so interesting I if anything I interpreted it as almost the the opposite I saw it as a as a desire for something that isn't there and it's interesting to me because the they are kind of described as sort of imposing community on the artists and the artists are actually yearning for individuality and so on so I think there's I'm not I don't think that friendship isn't is absent from that but I think it's a very conflicted form it's a bit it's it's almost like a longing for it's a longing to relate rather than an examination of of relating do you know what I mean like I feel like there's and the fact that all of these people have different names each time the protagonist is unnamed and so on it's it it seems really conflicted to me and as I was reading Ivy Ivy and Stevie and notice that in both conversations she really does come to love like she she brings it up as something that she she wants to talk about I'll just give you like two little little sections so when she's talking to Ivy she says it seems to me that in your books love often changes a character's whole weight of morality and then when she's talking to Stevie she says I want to ask you about love and then Stevie Smith says you've asked me about love I don't know it was I just I just thought her kind of insistence on this topic was like spoke volumes actually because it to me it what it betrays is both a fascination with other people and a desire for everyone along in front of people but also a kind of a deep loneliness and perhaps fear of other people as well which is definitely the thing the thing I took away from from reading they that's really fascinating about you Claire Louise I also have been quite interested in at some of her literary interviews haven't you yeah I was um I was reading the one with Brigid Rofi and Maureen Duffy and then at the end of that collection she's written an essay an autobiographical piece called on on Friends and Friendships and she talks about well she talks about you know when she was when she was born quite good I like this bit so I just read this little bit out actually um so this was um some time before my conception my mother came to London from Cambridge where she was living with a view to going on the stage an action which alienated her from her sister's husbands her pregnancy was the final cutting of the family bond she had friends yes she had friends bohemians she called them artists actresses Demi Monde met penniless the lot of them she knew where to find them at the cafe Royal and indeed that is where my mother and I made our way after so she told me a wash and brush up in a chairing crosslainers laboratory so my first evening in the world was very mundane very gregarious small wonder that I have a taste for cafe life the bohemians did not let us down they vetted us someone must have paid for our drinks toasts and blessings were exchanged and much sound advice about the problems of the world given to my small ears by three sophisticated laders one being a famous artist's model whose red hair adorns his most lavish paintings I am sure we all had a splendid night out and that I was made much of which doubtless accounts for the trust I have in people it was to my mind an extremely fortunate first of you of the world I must early have imbibed the friendliness which exists among those whose security is not threatened by the inhibitions of status so I thought that was very interesting and as a very early experience and she talks about her babyhood you know she's lovely no one talks about their babyhood but I mean that's quite something if that's your first night in the world and it seems like throughout then that this this idea of friendship I mean no I don't suppose it was something that she was kind of you know idealistic about or what's the word a bit kind of rose tinted about it seems like it was an ongoing kind of project or a lifelong kind of thing I don't know something she was kind of conscious of and as a yeah an ongoing practice I suppose and I mean again she says my mother's simple explanations about the other people in our early life did teach me that listening and observing were rewarding occupations so there was a kind of yeah and then there's a there's a there's a piece in there somewhere where she's talking about her stepfather and there reaches a point where they're not really getting on anymore she's in a later adolescence and of course you know things start getting a bit tricky around around that stage so even though up until that point it'll been quite lovely and charming and she spent time in Switzerland after a few years in boarding school which weren't great but then there reaches a point where I think he kind of says you know at some point you're going to have to go out and earn a living and that's the moment we all kind of dread and think oh god you know what's that what's that going to involve that's just going to be kind of grim so she's kind of a bit prickly then and and they're not getting on too well and it seems they didn't get on me at all well I don't know just based on this and then she said in later life she kind of felt bad about that you know there was just this kind of gap and she wasn't at that stage very aware of what was going on in in his life so I kind of found her ability to sort of maybe look back and and maybe reassess certain attitudes that she had to people and kind of go oh actually yeah maybe I was a bit harsh there you know I mean we can all be I mean I've been quite horrendous with some people and I think that you know because you're just you especially when you're younger you're just working from a particular place or if you're spending a lot of time on your own or whatever I mean you can't always keep perspective maybe but that ability I think to look to look back and and to make that assessment and say well there was a kind of a generation gap and it's a shame and she says that really what's needed to to to to counter those gaps and to counter those misunderstandings is dialogue is conversation so it's not always necessary about getting on but at least it's about just being aware of what other people are experiencing so that you're not mean to them I suppose or not too mean to them too often yeah I can see you nodding along Jay do you have um something do you have something you wanted to add to that yeah actually um I think that phrase you just used working for a particular place really resonates um with me because what it does then is it gets up what's underneath the novel like what's what's going on underneath the story um I think the subtext of this story is is the kind of um the background and the history and the experience and the whatever that then informs one's behavior so to me reading this literally not that we have but to read it as a dystopia or as a as a sort of a literal kind of idea of the world or something like that makes less sense when you think about it as actually it's about how you relate to other people and the place that you're coming from and that place I think is why it's so strange like that like one of my favorite sections for example is um pebble of unease which even as a title is like really cool like I just love that as a title but in it it's that section where um they're walking together and then there's hordes of people coming down with all their sticks and things yeah now what is going on in that section it's definitely my favorite bit of the book I think because I just read it and it's like it's poetic in the sense of it's an image it's an image that is the effect of something else right there's something else kind of going on and examining the image alone isn't going to give you any clear answers you know I mean it's actually the kind of like patching together of all of the separate different things and kind of like looking at them from different angles that gives you a sense of the whole but on its own it's really unsettling really strange I almost feel like I'm kind of coming at friendship from a very unsettled place you're kind of coming from a kind of you know it's a good thing or whatever and that's maybe why why why why this work resonates with me because like you um you know like you play I've also had a lot of trouble with friendships and with relationships and I think this is a book on that subconscious level can really resonate I think um if I may sort of jump in just briefly I'm just thinking so much about how important reading friends of all the interviews and friends and friendship and Ivy and Stevie were to my understanding of what was going on in they that initially my first kind of response to the book was so much like this is a sort of strange dystopian tale for want of a better way of describing that kind of book that's but the more I read it the more I started thinking this is a book that is very much where it seemed to me very much about Kadik the writer in the way that she engages with people and what she loves in terms of art and spending time with people and talking with people and um that sort of love that she has for her friends which seem to not say it was always very straightforward but seem to sort of come through in those uh in those interviews that she she did and one of the things I think Claire which she made me um sorry Claire Louise it made me realize while you're talking about it just then was that how one of the wonderful things I think about those interviews is the way that she as much as she puts her subjects under the spotlight she is always referring back to herself as well she's very interested in how she has become the person she is and the friend she is right like that's something she keeps sort of referentially going back to and thinking how am I the person I mean it's very telling that she ends friends and friendship with an essay a sort of memoir essay right well yeah I suppose there is that that idea that you are um made of your interactions with other people yeah you're not just um um that's a brilliant way of putting it I mean I think that's the impression I got of her as a person is that she her interactions with other people are and particularly with her friends because they seem to be of such kind of priority in her life they're the ones that give her um at least sort of some of her sense of identity and you know self-identity are we talking don't know Natasha would you because you have some very interesting things to say about because I suppose we should maybe just briefly mention I don't know how much people are aware of this but you know and I think you'll talk about this much more eloquently Natasha but so Kay Dick had when she was living in London she was very heart of this London literary scene in Hampstead she lived with her partner Kathleen Vowell for many years and they knew um everybody you know the people she interviews are her friends um everyone you know she was friends with Meryl Stark she was friends with Richard Boffey she was friends with Ivy Condon Burnett and Stevie Smith and then she moved to Brighton and this is a very different stage in her life isn't it and you have some brilliant things to say about this Natasha I think. Well first of all can I just go back to Jay's point which is so is to you about the pebble because um there's a sort of loneliness I think in this book that you talk about a yearning I think that's the word you use to come but the pebble I absolutely agree that struck me but it brought back this shard of memory where I'd sit in her house her flat was a room it was a studio room she had the bed and she had a desk by the window as I said and sort of two chairs either side of the other window and then a mantelpiece and um on the mantelpiece were these pebbles that she collected on the beach and they were like this little row of beautiful pebbles but they were her friends and I mean I remember quite often as a kid saying can I can I borrow that one or can I take that one because there were things I used to play with and she'd say no absolutely not and I'd forgotten about the pebbles until I read the book it just this vision came back to me and she had a game of solitaire that was made out of sea glass um so they're all sort of things from the beach which again you know keeps coming up in the book her sort of attachment to um just yeah her her natural surroundings the sort of landscape I feel there's a lot of landscape in that book and it was true for her she had a dog the either Sunny or Timmy they were always Daxons and she used to sort of they would that's what would get her outside in the morning if you like because I do think she I don't know if she suffered from depression but she definitely um would yeah she she she was lonely and sad something but um in terms of your um what you were asking sorry Lucy no no that's all brilliant about um her place in our street was as I think I said it was quite an eclectic bunch of people she really didn't have any money um as far as I remember um but as I said it was always turned out immaculately that was very important to her um and I don't know am I allowed to share a couple of little notes that please do um sent to my parents that just they tickle me and also they're her words so it will uh represent her much more accurately than than I ever could so um the first one is it's just a little card um and and these were very regular by the way she would put things through the book and I think to all the neighbors I don't think it was my parents particularly that this is definitely how she you shouldn't have a television or obviously a computer just a typewriter and and books and her wall there were there was no space for paint on her wall it was just shelves and shelves and shelves of books um and to that point she would lend her books to them and they get very angry if they didn't return so one one of them is um Deer Roy um that that's my step dad Deer Roy um this card is sent to all long-term book borrowers to show them what happened to those who offend I have had an eye operation which is a nuisance I don't know if you can see the card it's of a pottery figure in the Brighton Museum of a soldier being attacked by a tiger and everyone see this really and um anyway I don't think my dad took very much notice of the card because um here's another plea um Noine and Roy I wonder if you mind returning to me my copy of British chat wins in Patagonia which you borrowed over a year of these things we keep coming back and then there's another one which um she wrote and this I think this is this says quite a lot about um what someone else was talking in reference to how she treated people or how she was constructed by um how she related to people or her actions and and um so soon after so she um she'd asked my father for some help with a reviewer had written something um unpunished about about her and he she sort of asked him to intercept and I think he'd failed because you know she sees him as being people please I'm just being nice to everyone anyway she she said um well Roy dear Noine and Tasha are correct you are a softy in some ways that's a good point meaning of course that in other ways it's not at all a good point um you should not have hesitated to tell me exactly how matters stood as far as I was concerned with the Sunday times reviewing as to my being difficult may I just make a few points I do not consider myself to be difficult and have had in the main extremely good relations with various with three editors I think if I may say so that when I do produce um I produce good work certainly I'm ever careful of fact opinions on which over the years I have improved right and to do my homework more than is probably necessary I realize that my procrastination is partly due to the fact that in some ways I want to stop reviewing i.e. small pieces easily forgotten and concentrate on producing books which is really my method lack of money urges me to go on battling on the reviewing front but I think to her point she was so thorough and assiduous and would reread if she'd sort of she could quote um most of the books that she read um and also my parents' reflection is she would read the whole of the writer or an author she would never sort of make an opinion on the basis of one book she would then visit four others so that's that's where the generosity towards other writers I think is something also I wasn't aware of as a kid but looking back and looking at various things and letters that she'd written to my parents you know she took everyone's writing very very seriously she spent an inordinate amount and perhaps you know is a form of avoidance or procrastination of actually having to put pen to paper yourself but nonetheless the byproduct of that is is that she was incredibly generous about other people's writing and contributions and endeavors um that's something that seems to come up quite a lot there were um letters sent to the guardian in defense of her after that kind of terrible obituary was published and one of the things that was talked about was her complete generosity towards particularly younger writers I think um and helping how she would help them and this is what I've heard people have told me over and over again that she was incredibly supportive of other people's work uh that she might even if she wasn't particularly you know fond of what they'd written she would kind of defend them to the hills in front of other people which is actually an incredibly kind of rare gift and she did but I imagine it's something that was honed um perhaps during her sort of editorial years I mean she spent quite a long time working as an editor beforehand something we haven't really mentioned we haven't had the time yet but she was the first female director of an English publishing house she edited yeah do you want to talk Jay? Not to interrupt you please actually no no no just a little bit but but but I I sort of get the feeling that you know it's she was queer right she was talking about queer right here talking about somebody who probably robbed people up the wrong way by by existing um right you know Natasha when you describe the the hair in the eyes and even the monocle like the monocle is such an old school classic indication of of queerness and and of a certain sort of masculine identity uh butch even identity um and I also read that obituary and thought okay it sounds like she probably did alienate people I don't actually think that you know I don't think it's a very good thing to speak so ill of the dead in the national newspaper but even if she did alienate people um and and upset them and so on well I can see why I could I can imagine that she you know you're a queer woman you're one of the first literary editors in this country even in 2001 this country was incredibly homophobic and and still is in some ways you know so it sounds to me like she was somebody who had to be had to be grating and and and and brusque sometimes do you think this is also one of the reasons sorry Natasha were you going to say something no I was only going to say just to bring it down to a really base level by having spoken so eruditely um I do remember as a kid being confused about her not sexuality but her gender I remember saying to her as a little kid um with my mum standing next to me going stone-like and squeezing my hand um until I squealed um I I said to okay okay I would always call her k-dick by the way which is also interesting it was known as you know which is is a kind of great name anyway particularly for who she was but it was never k which sounds quite sort of I don't know a little more feminine there was it was k-dick and I said k-dick k-dick I've got a question for you she said what what what and she was trying to talk to my mum and um and I said are you a man or a woman and she thought about it and she said I have the best of both worlds and which is a very elegant response and she carried on talking to my mum and then I you know pulled on her jumper again I said no no no I mean do you have a willy like mine or like my brother's your poor mother wanted to disown you immediately but yeah in there was no self-consciousness um about her she that was she was totally unapologetic um about or or defensive is really what I mean there was no she just was as she was and um I don't you know I never remember her talking about being a woman actually I I can never you know not often to a young girl an an old woman might reference you know specifically solely female experiences well even if it's down to biology or whatever she never ever did I never I never remember her being uh specific about any of that which of course is really liberating um um yeah jay you can add something it's just that um I I was sort of hunting for references to yeah to queerness to lesbianism as well and to you know women heard and all of this and in um in Ivy and Stevie I did notice that there was one single line I remember in which she says that um that I think Ivy despite being deeply conservative in many ways did approve of the Wolfenden report and that was it and the Wolfenden report of course is the report that came before the uh the decriminalized partial decriminalization of homosexuality and that was it that was the sole line and I thought there was something really interesting that the placement of that line that was so pointed and yet understated which sounds kind of like how she probably was in the world as well but also this this question where she says what I mentioned earlier it seems to me that in your books love often changes the character's whole way of morality there's a kind of a a subtext to that I sometimes feel like she's asking questions that she herself is asking you know I'm conscious that we are getting towards the end of our time but I would like to briefly in particular talk a little bit about how or whether we think this is a particularly English book I'm very interested this idea because Claire Louise you gave a lovely um quote you called this a masterwork of English pastoral horror eerie and I can't even speak today eerie and bewitching which I loved I think it captures so much about it but I'm really fascinated by this idea of the Englishness of they um and I'd love to know some of your thoughts on this everyone um I don't know Claire would you like to sorry Claire Louise would you like to start and kick us off a little yeah I mean as I said at the beginning I was struck by the Englishness of it yeah because I haven't I haven't lived there for quite a long time and like you say the seed cakes the tea there's so many kind of um signifiers of course oh it's kind of snotty I just found it and I found that all a bit kind of funny and a bit eccentric really um and I and I was doing a bit of research on Leonora Carrington again um for a theatre thing I'm I'm involved in and it sort it kind of reminded me of Leonora Carrington in a way that when she she moved away from England and she lived in Mexico for a very very long time but that um that English way of life was still part of her imagination and and she took a lot of enjoyment in depicting uh certain I suppose tropes um of English life and sort of relished them and enjoyed them in a in a kind of um I suppose almost camp kind of way to a degree um and I yeah I think there's a little bit of that going on in there definitely but then there's also I I would yeah kind of I suppose situate situate it in a sort of a tradition of um the you know English pastoral sort of there's a story I read many many years ago is it MR MR James a view from a hill and he's got some binoculars or something and they're and Jay seems to know it well they're bewitched or something and you and the guy looks through them and he sees um you know because it's all sprawling beautiful countryside the southwest of England I think and he's gone out for this walk and he looks through these binoculars and because they don't give it away don't give it away oh yeah okay um anyway it um um it kind of maybe think of that uh story that I won't talk about anymore um because the English growing up the English you know the English countryside it is it is obviously it's it's almost um unnervingly unnervingly kind of glorious and beautiful and and there's always places like I remember a place called Goa gallows hill and there was um like a wooden frame and we used to drive faster on a country lane called white lady's lane and there was a kind of a when it was the remains of a gibber stuff like that you know that you would that you would see and and lots of that land would have been I suppose battlefields or and and then also growing up where I was we were very near um RAF bases so there was a sense of I remember during the Gulf War kind of claims and so there was always that duality to it you know as well as being kind of pastoral and bucolic and and beautiful there was always this kind of secondary thing like you know yeah this the skull beneath the soil kind of kind of vibe that was going on and and and so I suppose in a sense and that's been explored by any number I'm thinking of like um well Kate Bush and with Kate Bush's songs like Experiment 4 and Cloudbusting and all that sort of thing and some of Ben Weeper's films you know um kind of explore and of course The Wrecker Man and there's always been that sort of um yeah it's suddenly making me think of folk horror in a way that I actually had yeah I suppose yeah it is I mean she talks about you know this crucifix made of seaweed in one of the part I can't remember the bit that's left on the dual step I mean a crucifix of seaweed it's kind of funny but it's supposed to be kind of like ooh yeah you don't want to find it on your dual step it's brilliant it's such a brilliant image I loved that I was like wow it sort of um yeah funny and a bit horrible as well yeah it also made me think a little bit about what you were saying J.O. and it's like some of the those sort of images like you're saying Claire Louise like they stand for so much something like that that crucifix kind of carries so much different weight with it but I'm also thinking about what you said J.O. about the writing being so poetic on some examples that you know Gay Dick was a poet as well I think the very first thing she ever published was some poetry um and we probably shouldn't forget that about her and I'd love to know from one poet to the other that is that what you notice particularly when you do you notice that in the writing did you kind of think this is particularly poetic writing and if so what did what do you mean by that? Yeah um it it is poetic what you mentioned her earlier novels and how mannered they are and I sort of had a look at them and I sort of thought yeah these these do feel like a sort of a world apart like she's doing something very different yeah they're completely kind of alien completely alien um even the sort of historical stuff I was like okay this is yeah this is maybe coming closer but um I suppose when I say that it's it's poetic I mean it's um it is operating in in the spaces um you know she is not simply saying X Y Z happened no it's a little machine that is allowing you to enter into a different space uh a different a different psychological space a different emotional space and it's always a different political space I think um you know Chloe Chloe's what we're saying about um the Englishness I would say probably the defining aspect of the Englishness for me is that is the class differential between the the artists in the enclave and the they who um I think are classed as as being working class as being sort of um uh sort of rough and and uncouth you know like you almost get that kind of sense from them but also that the English countryside is a site of of horrific um land dispossession I think we really forget that um people were forced off off the land into industrial industrial centers you know in the enclosures acts um things like that and that that was a brutal decades long over over the course of the century in a bit um campaign against humanity really and against the kind of the the rights and the the culture and the history and the dignity of the people who've been attached to that land um and I think that's part of where the horror comes from on that on that um on that uh subconscious on that subconscious level and also why I think her work is so poetic because it it touches that like I feel like that bleeds through the grass so to speak so you know she as you squelch down into this novel you're sculpting into blood but that's not it's it's implicated without that much common to put it to put it in one way I love that squelching down into the novel more novels should give you that's the kind of brilliant brilliant you know that's I think that's one of the great things about this novel is that it allows you to do that to really kind of engage with it on all these multiple levels and to kind of find something new each time as you read it considering it's such a a slight book um we've got some questions I could keep asking uh keep asking you questions of my own but what I'm going to do is shift to the audience questions now and we'll see how many of those we can get through I think if we may um so I'm just looking up my tablet over here we have one from Sarah now this is an interesting one it's very good do you think that there is a literary inheritor of they is there a recent book that you can see in they shadow I find this fascinating because I keep thinking like what other books is they like and is there anyone writing about it today um who wants to take this question we put on the spot anyone any ideas um I didn't I didn't have a recent one that was exactly the same go for it anyway I I I did think I had two sort of thoughts one was around um it was around sort of Octavia Butler not because of um not because it's sort of formally the same or because I think the writing is is particularly similar but just because of the us and them dynamic and parable of the server for example where the those in the in the kind of enclave are oh yes that's weird um those within the within the enclave are sorry I'm sorry somebody just came up in my sorry that those with the enclave is kind of where the story is kind of set and then there's the people outside of it who are the kind of um the kind of villains of the story and I felt like there was something kind of in that sort of encirclement or encampment that kind of resonated a little bit with that um but I think the book that actually like made me think about they is this book um which is by Anna Caban I don't know if you've anyone yeah cool I think it's slightly you know in the screen you can't see it's maybe white or the screens exactly which one is it it's ice ice yeah and I've got to thank Ben Rivers we've been working together and he kind of mentioned it to me and said that you know like it's probably one to read and I think it really does put the book into context especially in terms of like English science fiction and so on so yeah that was that was my kind of two cents yeah I don't know if anyone else has anything to add to that I think I agree with ice that was the first thing that I thought of and I read it and then there are obvious you know similarities between you can think of the um the they is slightly similar to the book Burning Firemen and something like Fahrenheit 451 there's those sorts of dystopian elements but I think ice is a great one in terms of the slightly strangeness of it and uh I don't know Claire Louise Natasha can you think of anything I was just thinking about strangeness and sort of um I guess yeah it's overused but you know the dystopian element has anyone read a book um by Karen Jennings called an island no um was um I think on the long long book a list I actually can't remember uh oh was it for last year yeah yes I do I haven't read it but I know the one you're talking about okay is that quite similar or got similar elements let's say it's not similar I couldn't say it was similar but there's something you don't know where it is it's um it's it's sort of extraordinary but and and you it's disquieting you feel very uncomfortable when you're reading it um and um yeah it's it's different in that it's about you know a body that gets washed up and um it's it's you know really only two characters but but they're representative of um wider populations I guess one one's um a refugee um but anyway it's yeah that's great yeah that's some good recommendations there I like that we've got a few more questions here um what uh uh so this is one for you Natasha sorry to stick with you could you single out uh Jane Henry is asking could you single out one enduring memory of K one particular memory of all of them that's a tricky question probably a tricky ask well there's an interesting out I and I don't want to be disruptive here because I noticed that in some of the retaliation about that um obituary uh there's a narrative that I think even my stepdad is partly responsible for is that she loved young people but dear for I thought um she loved animals and she loved um certain people um and but she was selective so part of her charm I think is if she did give you attention and when she did give you attention she gave you all of her attention you really felt you were the only person in the room um therefore it was very rewarding I don't think she was one of those people who just sort of you know ran up to children and toddlers and and befriended them she really didn't um she was yeah she was in her own imaginative hinterland I now realize that when I look back um she was struggling and wrestling with ideas and wanting to get them down on paper and that was a massive struggle for her um some of the time and so I think yeah so someone else said earlier on what um I think it was ukulele we thought we need to affect you know the the place that you're coming from um whether that's so so so it's it's so lovely to revisit as an adult her writing and to understand that what may have seemed like crankiness and um just rudeness and so much of the time was really just because she was in a very solitary place wrestling with her demons and you caught her mid conversation in her mind and um yeah that's deeply annoying it's like catching waking someone out of a dream right I often felt that about her you you had to be very careful it was sort of walking on eggshells you didn't quite know which k-dick you were going to meet um but that's not to say that there was anything um you know intrinsically horrible about her there wasn't at all it was um it's she's just a great example of someone who's chosen the road less travel that's supposed um and the cost you know the price of that thank you there's another question here which um I want I think Claire Louise actually I might ask you to just refer back to what you was speaking out earlier because it was so eloquent but um Philip asked what we what we can learn from k-dicks early life and I think what you were saying earlier particularly about some of her recollections of her birth and the kind of slightly strangeness of her the sort of strangeness of her upbringing perhaps what do you think um learning about that has has sort of added to your understanding of k-dicks work and particularly they um well I mean it's only it's I've only been delving into the the autobiographical aspect just very um recently but um but just that sense of as I said I suppose being um just being among people and it and it reminds it reminds us it reminds me I guess how I mean I love my solitude very very much and but it is important if one is going to be empathic um and compassionate and all of those things that are kind of important if um um if we're going to understand I suppose understand beyond ourselves and beyond the own reach of our experience um but it is necessary to to move among other people and and to remember the importance of of listening and as Natasha said that you know paying paying attention and and and it is and obviously she did struggle sometimes with balancing that as as we all do because she also said that she loved to daydream and and love that time on her own just so and it can be quite difficult sometimes because like that if you get caught in a moment and you are likely to tell someone to fuck off just not empathic or compassionate or kind of very human I think um so so from what I'm discovering of of her so far um it it's it's kind of resonates and it feels quite sort of realistic um really yeah very interesting but I'm curious as to kind of where the book came out of because as has been mentioned her previous books won't really anything like it so it is interesting to think to wonder what it was that really just sort of came together for her um because it doesn't feel contrived or forced or like she's copying anyone I mean I kind of um I suppose it does remind me not not so much of the um and a cavern I I couldn't get that power in us so much but certainly some of Anne Quinn's work just in terms of the style I suppose rather than maybe the subject matter then maybe that's what you were associating with and a cavern but I the style I think for me um so I don't know whether she was aware of her work and I know that she says in in this piece something about after Muriel Spark was was ill and she and she wrote a couple of maybe extraordinary books in a slightly different uh in a slightly different way and whether I don't know where she was she maybe ill prior to writing they or something I'm not I'm not quite sure of the of the timelines but I wonder if that I'm just curious about what what yeah something had happened I mean I think this is the sort of the speculation I think so far is that possibly um she went through a period of about 10 years where she wasn't writing fiction she was only writing those books of interviews and a non-fiction book um uh that was very different and during that time she definitely suffered some uh quite sort of considerable losses her her relationship with Kathleen Farrow who she'd been going out with for sort of 20 years broke up she moved to Brighton she also tried to kill herself at one point and she had a a lover who also committed suicide and these are things that she writes about in um that essay in Friends and Friendship and I think my reading of it was definitely coloured by that that she seemed to sort of emerge on the other side and be writing something completely different like she's shed her skin almost and is coming out and I think that's also why particularly it reminded me of Anna Kavan because she had that amazing sort of midlife move as well like she had you know she developed her heroin addiction left her husband and became this kind of emaciated bottle blonde and and wrote these incredible books that were very different to the ones that she'd first written so there seems to be something in the I don't know in the water in the air at that time of the sort of these particular there just seems to be a few women who've kind of undergone that but it obviously something in her life really changed for her during that time which I think does make it particularly intriguing for me at least as a kind of reader um I don't know if anyone else wants to add anything to that in our last few minutes dropping that in there sorry we have one I think we've got a couple of minutes left um we're going to push us right to their end we have one question here um that is asking which is interesting because in a way I started out by talking about this book because of dystopia and then you all swiftly undercut me and said that was not the point of it which is brilliant to hear in many ways um but somebody has asked they have neglected to give their name but they um have asked why are we reading dystopian works uh today in this day and age and when the world is already dystopian enough and um I think that is a kind of interesting question that one of the things about this book that does seem to be that it is talking to people now in a way that it might not have talked to people at the time I'd love to know asking you very quickly what if anyone's got any thoughts on that you know the um maybe just leave that like the New Yorker last week wrote a wonderful piece about the discovery of this book but their writer Sam Knight said it's taking global misfortune and some sliding towards the abyss for they to speak fully and to be heard there does seem to be something about now the fortuitous discovery but something about this book does seem to speak to people does anyone have any final thoughts on that I just have one really quick thought which is I think if this book was written now the presence of sort of victimhood would be much more um front and center and I think the thing about Kay Nick was for all of her paranoia or or yearnings or wanting attention that perhaps she didn't get and soliciting commissions and so forth I didn't never got a feeling from the things that she sent to my parents or my experience of her that um there was that she was a victim uh and and I I do I do think that's a difference I don't know if that's useful in any way but um I think she felt she she she did have agency um and and she could have easily fallen into a category of I mean given all the you know the prejudice that that would have existed at that time I I never ever she seemed to rise above and beyond it and just see it as irrelevant just you know she wasn't wasn't going to give it the time of day and that's quite inspiring it's incredibly inspiring I think that's does any I mean I feel like that's the perfect way to pull this to a close unless anyone has anything burning to add please do say now yeah please do Jay I I'm just going to say a quick question to me um it's a little bit a certain kind of um finger wagging kind of disapproval and I think we the book itself is about is asked the fundamental question of what does it mean to make art for no one um that's what common memory and try to says at least in the thing I think that's a really good way of kind of putting it the idea that we don't read books because we don't think that they are permissible in the current world that we're in is precisely why we need to read those books you know we need to get beyond that that mentality um that's great I think there's no better place to end it than that then thank you so much everyone I have had a wonderful discussion it's been great to talk to you all and so here's Molly back to it thank you so much Jay Claire Louise Natasha and Lucy if this evening's conversation has inspired you at home to read or rediscover they you can buy your copy from the British Library shop and I think there's a button on your screen one of these directions um so that you can buy it now or if you go to the RSL's bookshop.org page you can find books by our speakers this evening as well as your copy of they and support independent bookshops while you shop and I'd like to thank our partners at the British Library for hosting this evening and the team at Unique Media for broadcasting this conversation to so many across the world thanks too to the teams at Curtis Brown Heritage and Faber for all their work in bringing tonight's discussion together and to the RSL's Events Manager Beth Gallimore you can please join us again next Tuesday in person at the British Library or online for a special event with Gillian Anderson and Andrew O'Hagan discussing what it means to take a text from book to stage and screen. Public tickets are all completely sold out now but you can still attend with a free ticket by becoming an RSL member or digital events pass holder. Our memberships and passes start at £25 a year and anyone can join today so you can just go to RSLiterature.org to buy your membership and get one of the final tickets before they sell out. I hope I will see as many of you as possible there next week but until then I wanted to say a final huge thanks to all of our speakers for this evening I'm sure I speak for everybody watching at home when I say a big thank you to you all and good night.