Cillian Murphy on Peaky Blinders, plus Timothee Chalamet's opera backlash

You're listening to Front Row with me, Samira Ahmed. Tonight, Killian Murphy on taking his cult anti-hero Tommy Shelby to the big screen in the new Peaky Blinders film The Immortal Man. We unpack the backlash against Timothy Chalamet's comments on opera and ballet as allegedly dying art forms.

The head of London Book Fair, we explore the truth behind claims that nonfiction sales are in decline and romanticy rules, and Imperial Adventures, The Great Game, and the Race to Map Tibet. I talk to Deepa Anapara about her new novel, The Last of Us.

But first, it's thirteen years since Killian Murphy first stepped out in the peaked cap, waistcoat, and swishing coat of Tommy Shelby, the gangster boss of the Peaky Blinders. Over six series, Stephen Knight's violent and glamorous drama has become a global cult hit spawning fashion trends, tourism, and even a hit ballet currently touring China.

Killian's meanwhile career has reached even higher peaks as he won his first ever Oscar for his role in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Now he resurrects Tommy's story in a feature film, The Immortal Man. It's nineteen forty and he's called back to Birmingham Challenge his son, played by Saltman star Barry Keegan, who's in league with British fascists to help Hitler win the war. You are not ready for this work.

What weapons are you taking with you? Just myself. No weapons. And no Arthur by your side. I'll go. And I'll drive. Am I looking for trouble, Johnny? No.

You wouldn't remember, but I first interviewed you at a preview of series one, episode one at the BFI, and Stephen Knight was there, and he always had a vision of and he said, Oh, you know, Piggy Binder's gonna cover many decades in time, that's my vision. Did you think that you would be growing older with Tommy Shell? No I did not.

you know, he's brilliant at dreaming big, if you know what I mean? In his writing and I think just as a human being, you know, it was a small little show in BBC two and nobody could have anticipated this. But he always had the ambition to begin it at the end of the First World War.

and to end it at the beginning of the Second World War. And he's achieved it. Where does this film pick up then and where is Tommy now? So Tommy's kind of removed himself from the world, he's kind of isolated himself from his family and from society, really, and he's just rattling around in this big old house and all his demons and ghosts have come flooding back in. He's trying to do this sort of sort of like form of auto therapy, whatever, like writing a book

Trying to make sense of his life, I suppose. He's in the teeth of middle age. Okay. Thinking back to when you got the role originally, you really fought for the past. um, but have always been very keen to keep your distance from the character of Tommy Shelby. I wonder how it feels being so closely associated with such a brutal character. Hm. I yeah, I've never really dwelt on it. Really, it's a job and your job is to

give the director and the writer the raw materials to make the show and to do it as well as you possibly can and to if possible bring some believability and humanity to the character. But

It's important not to impose your kind of moral framework I think on the character else you'd just be very judgy. Yeah, well you'd be pretty judgy with Tom Shelby. Um Death and Duty hang over this film. And the question of how far is too far. So when the chance to do a deal with a fascist to flood Britain with counterfeit money comes up,

his son is tempted. Was this something that happened at all with the Peaky Blinders? I know Stephen often researches facts as a starting point. Well Operation Bernhard, the kind of plot that the story is hung on, did happen. So basically the Nazis made had loads of counterfeit five pound and ten pound notes made in concentration camps and their plan was to dump them in England and that it would crash the economy. That was like the crazy plan. It didn't quite succeed.

No thanks to the Peaky Blinders. But you know, what he does is he weaves their story around this kind of obscure event in history, which he's done all the way through the series in a in a very clever way. And your other son? Your gypsy son is running the Peaky Blinders like it's nineteen nineteen all over again. Worse than you and Arthur ever were. Tommy, you've gotta come back with me. Speak some words over the graves of the dead and speak to your son.

...before he gets himself hung by the law or lynched by the people. So the story becomes whether Tommy Shelby will come back to try and stop his son... ...from doing this deal with the Nazis. Did you and Stephen discuss... this story art because in the past you've said you didn't get involved in the storytelling. I was a producer from Series Three on the show, but because the writing's been so brilliant.

You know, when you're given these scripts, they're just a gift. And he writes unlike any other writer I know, and he just starts writing there's no like writer's room with pie charts and graphs and anything and where we're gonna hit beats and story beats. He's just off. It just flows in a linear way. Yeah. Interesting. It's strange that Tommy Shelby finds himself appalled by his son's violence, exploiting the chaos of the bliss.

And Barry Keegan who plays him. I gather you texted him on Father's Day about taking on the part. I've known him since I was a kid. I worked with him on Dunkirk many, many years ago. And no, he texted me and then I said, Do you wanna come and be in the film? So it was just a kind of a lovely

Kind of a bit of synchronicity that it was Father's Day, I think. Well he plays someone who's really wild and out of control and there's real anxiety about him being even more of a dunno psych psychopath than any of the other Peaky Blinders. Did you feel you're handing over a kind of legacy for him to continue? Well I mean i if you think about it in character terms, he he he is the way he is because of abandonment, you know what I mean? And because of

living in the shadow of this very violent, very domineering father and an absent mother, mother who died very young. So it's you know, it's all set up for the thing to be highly dysfunctional and for him to be traumatized. Would not be taking any sort of parenting skills from time to

There's also can I say f a really excellent, very muddy fight between father and son. Yeah. Surrounded by pigs. Yeah. How was that to shoot? Did it take a long time? That was my first day of shooting actually. Yes, it took the whole day. It was extremely

Awful. But it also looks brilliant. Well it probably looks brilliant because of course the clothes are such a big part of people's miners and they're absolutely ruined. Destroyed. And they became so heavy that it was like carrying your own body weight around on top of you with the clothes. Again it's just shows you like that their only form of communication with each other is violence.

Well you've said in previous interviews that the amount of violence in Piquy Blinders has perturbed you and you've asked Stephen sometimes, you know, is it really necessary? Is that still the case? How do you feel about it? Hmm. I think the thing about it is that Steve has always been very careful that the violence has consequences. You know what I mean? So like if somebody gets injured, they stay injured. Like there's been many

um incidents whereas Tommy is very badly injured and he's in hospital for the first two or three episodes. And you know, I think you don't see that so much with violence. But then you have to accept it is a very heightened, stylized form of storytelling we're dealing with here. It's not meant to be reality. So it's balancing that I think is the important thing.

I also felt watching this film, it's which is beautiful by the way, that the violence felt somehow toned down. We see people shot, we see the aftermath of violence. There's no lingering. Was that a conscious choice? No. I don't think so. That was the script really. But it was a brutal time, you know, and th the whole premise of the story is that these men are broken by their experiences in the First World War, that they came home shattered as human beings.

Um it was a miracle that they actually made it back and emotionally they're just collapsed. So they're kind of navigating their way through society and what Tommy does is kind of redirect it all towards like ambition and power. Obviously Berlin would much prefer it if I was talking to your father. I'm in charge now. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni'n ymwneud â ni.

Had you worked with him before? What yeah. Well I mean he's one of my acting heroes and we had worked together on a beautiful little film called Broken many years ago and we stayed in touch. And again I was lucky enough to be able to text him and say John will come and play uh played his part in Peaky and he was up for it. I mean he hadn't actually watched the show.

But he loved the script and he just absolutely nails it'cause he plays him as such a kind of everyday average working man who has a really They could be on the same side, but it's like the opposite side of it the same part. That'll make it stick. the music and how integral it was from the start and crucially how you've chosen the music for this film and what you've chosen. Yeah, it's been a massive part of the PK world since the beginning, they're so intertwined.

Anthony Genn and M Martin Slattery are composers and they also scored uh series four for us. And they worked very closely with uh Green Chatten from Fontaines D C and some of the other Fontaines members to write new r original songs for the film. And it was the decision that was made right at the beginning to put Nick Cave, you know, that Red Right Hand song at the very beginning of the show. And it just fit for whatever reason. It was totally anachronistic but it worked.

But it's very specific music that works. It's not every type of music that works. I don't know what it's some some of quality that is sort of has a danger to it, has a menace to it, has a sort of an outlaw quality, is maybe be maybe a little outside the mainstream, you know what I mean? But I can identify

The actual essence of it. But you know it when you hear it. Exactly. And y yeah. So what tell me about the music you put together for the film. Like when he rides into Birmingham on a horse and a black horse and everyone touches him like he's Yeah. Well and then that particular scene that you're talking about that was Red Right Hand re recorded by Nick Cave, a new version by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Because the old version that we have on the show just felt too kind of young and

Of hopeful and not broken and not broken enough. Yeah, and destroyed enough. So he went away and re-recorded it and it's a it's a magnificent new version. No. With a red radio. The suits, the cap, the coats have all become a fashion cult. How did you feel about the glamour of Tommy Shelby's on-screen world? Is it fun swooshing around in that great coat? Um if you're honest, come on. It does become a little bit like a suit of armour, you know, I think for the character.

And Steve will always talk about like he was told these stories by his mum and dad when he was a kid about these characters that were his dad's uncles, and he said that they had nothing. Like they were drinking beer out of jam jars, but everything they had they spent on their clothes and they always looked amazing. Steve wanted to tell it as a working class story, you know, I mythologized the working class as opposed to the aristocracy. They were hyper aware of how they presented themselves.

And how that they gr present themselves in an intimidating but incredibly stylish way, you know? Yeah. How do you feel about the cult and indeed the cultural phenomenon? That Beaky Blindess has become, you know, the fashions, the themed weddings, the ballet. It's kind of wild. I mean, all you feel really is re you feel very humbled, you feel very gr grateful for it. But you're kind of inside it.

There's this an al allure to to people who have their own code that live outside society's code. And we recognise that it's not real. Yeah. Another great creative partnership has been with Christopher Nolan from Inception in Dunkirk to your Oscar winning role in Oppenheimer. Is there something about playing men haunted by death? Uh probably if I think about if I went to therapy or something, it would probably come up

But to me it's just great writing. That's what I've always chased down is great writing. Whatever the medium, you know, you just that's what you have to look for. And then you just take that weight off as an act and you walk away? You're not haunted by bad dreams of It's heavy, yeah, it's it's definitely heavy. But you know, it's a job. Uh it's a sort of it's just dressing up really and you have to move on.

Expectations are very high for you to return in the latest twenty eight years later sequel, will you? I'd love to. I'm ready, so let's see what happens. Uh do you not know yet? These films are hard things to get over the line, you know what I mean? It's it's about availability and everything else. So I've always said that I'd love to come back. And I did come back in fact in the second in Bone Temple. So yeah, I mean I'd love to finish off that story.

Killian Murphy Peaky Blinders The Immortal Man is in Select Cinemas now Certificate fifteen and on Netflix from march twentieth. All six series of Peaky Blinders are on the BBC iPlayer, while you can hear his sixth music show, Killian Murphy's Limited Edition, and all his previous shows on BBC Sounds.

Now from a previous winner of the Best Actor Oscar to someone who said he wants to win it at the award ceremony next Sunday. Timothy Chalamet, the Marty Supreme Star, has raised a social media storm from an unexpected quarter, the world of classical music, opera and ballet. The reason? what he said in a podcast interview last week while in relaxed conversation with Matthew McConaughey about the future of cinema.

I admire people and I've done it myself to go on a talk show and go, hey, we gotta keep movie theaters alive. You know, we gotta keep this genre alive. And another part of me feels like If people want to see it like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they're gonna go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it.

And I don't wanna be working in ballet or opera or, you know, things where it's like, hey, keep this thing alive even though it's like no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. Uh I just lost fourteen cents in viewership. But um Damn. I just took shots for no reason. That's not a shot, I hear what you're saying. Yeah.

Well, the backlash came quick and fast over the weekend, and it wasn't your typical social media pylon. Prominent figures ranging from ballet star Darcy Bussell to Alistair Spaulding, artistic director of Sadler's Wells, have gone public to criticise Chalamet's comments. With me to discuss it all is Matt Hemley, editor at The Stage Magazine. Matt

Timothy Chalamet is saying he doesn't want to work in cinema if it ceases to be a dominant popular art form, as opera and ballet have in his view. So is he making a fair point here, but just in a maybe slightly clumsy and sensitive way?

I think whether or not you think he's made a valid point depends on who you speak to, but obviously I'm from the stage and the people that I've spoken to in the arts world.

And as you've pointed out, they are in uproar and it's been across the board. It's been really interesting to see people on social media coming out to like have their say on it. And it's I think he's just offended so many people because he's someone in the arts community, which I think Rydyn ni'n gwneud rhywbeth sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl.

Can you give us a sense of some of the big names? I mentioned Alistair Spaulding and Darcy Bussell. Who has stepped into the public arena to criticise him and what sorts of things have they been saying? Well I saw I saw a post. I mean they're big names in terms of I mean

We had Jamie Lee Curtis. I see she's she's joined in the debate about it as well, saying uh I I think she said she didn't agree with um what he was saying. But we've had, you know, people in the arts world like in um Scottish Ballet, they came on just before uh the show went up this weekend. to kind of talk to the audience and say, you know, thank you for being here. You know, if if Timothy wants to come, he's welcome anytime.

ac E&O, English National Opera, wedi gwneud hynny. Ond mae wedi bod wedi'n gwybod, mae pobl yn amlwg, ond wedi'i gwneud hynny'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd

ten percent off your ticket or whatever. So people have t you know, they've definitely seized the moment to get people through the door, which I think is It's quite a good spin-olet to be honest. Yeah, the Seattle Opera used a promo code Timothy and you get fourteen percent of select seats for Carmen if you're in Seattle, which obviously is picking up on the exact statistic he used. Um I thought it was it's ironic because his actual family

has a lot of ballet dancers, his grandmother, his mother and his sisters. Is that right? Yeah. Uh y yes, and that's what doesn't make any sense. And I think going back to where we started, he's just been very clumsy in it. And probably doesn't really believe what he's saying anyway. You know, y it's very easy when you're in those podcast situations to get swept up in things that you're saying and not necessarily believe it. Um but i if he was trying to make a point it it's

spectacularly backfired and like I say he's upset a lot of people. Um and I think hopefully we're expect it would be nice if he came out and and made an apology or um retracted it but so far he's kind of added to that insult because he's not said anything. Apparently it's been on social media but he's not addressed this at all. Well he can't miss it. Yeah, I mean it's interesting that even in that little clip we heard and of course it's part of a longer interview.

He's he acknowledges straight away he knows that he's saying something that's gonna get him in a bit of trouble. But it feels like he's touched a nerve in a way, because, you know, we do know that a lot of opera and ballet rely on subsidy as part of their funding package. There is a really very real debate about that. And not least because the ticket costs, despite any subsidy, are still making it perceived, you know, unfairly perhaps as elitist art forms. And maybe that's what people object to.

Well, I mean, but the opera companies would argue that they do so many initiatives to get young people through the doors and and people in affordable prices. And you know, look at what ENO does, tickets for under twenty one year olds to get them through the door. Alice Boarding was talking about how many young people they get through the doors with their ticket schemes. So it's not

Yes, there are highly priced tickets, but I think there are on the other end of the spectrum uh affordable tickets too. And I think that's what people want to try and fight, this idea that it's not for everybody. I think the tickets are there, you just have to know where to look.

We know that if you're the front runner for an acting Oscar, your every word is scrutinised during the campaign, like a political campaign. It's worth pointing out that of course the final voting with the Oscars is closed before Timothy's comments, so they won't have influence voting. In the end, do you think this has all been overblown? You imply that people are really hurt by it?

I'm only going by what I've seen, the comments I've seen on social media, the fact that so many arts organisations are prepared, like the Royal Opera House, to put out a statement. I think they have been hurt by it, and like I said at the beginning.

It's because it's someone who works in that industry. It's you don't expect to be used to people calling actors loveies and and doing stuff from the outside and watch a real job when you're not working like you know but this is someone who does the job and should really be standing up for and um in solidarity with the people that he works alongside and and also Well said, and I'm sure his sisters and his mum are giving him a tough time too. Matt Hemley, thank you so much.

Now, as London Book Fair begins tomorrow, the publishing industry is feeling cautiously buoyant with news that year on year sales of adult fiction have increased, making a record five hundred and eighty-two million pounds. However, Spending on non fiction has fallen to its lowest level since twenty fourteen, which is down five percent year on year. Not all nonfiction, though, is suffering, according to these figures released today by Nielsen QuizBooks.

and the Bible are at a record high. To discuss all these trends, I'm joined in the studio by Toby Mundy, literary agent and the director of the Bailey Gifford Prize for nonfiction, and B. Carvalho, who's head of books at Waterstones. Welcome to you both. Toby first. It has been widely reported that UK non fiction sales have fallen, you know, to their lowest figure since twenty fourteen.

What do you think is going on? What is going on? I think reports of the death of nonfiction are a bit like reports of the death of opera and ballet, a bit exaggerated. I mean I think s certain categories rise and certain categories fall, and B will know this better than me, but I I think celebrity books aren't what they used to be. Celebrity memoirs in particular? Yeah, I think so. And I think other categories of wellness and and self help and that kind of

inspirational stuff is doing incredibly well. I just think certain categories are up and certain categories are are down really. And fiction is doing incredibly well and it's always been the mainstay of general publishing. So I th I I don't share this analysis that um It's all going terribly wrong for non fiction books.

I certainly have talked to writers of non fiction, including biographies. Do you think that there's been a big decline in the number of things like biographies and serious science and history that used to be in the bestseller lists, you know, ten or twenty years ago? Well, I'm with Toby really. I mean, um, Ward Stones are having quite a good time with non fiction at the moment. Um, sh certainly don't share the same kind of gloomy outlook as um some of the trade. Um and I think to your point, um

you can't necessarily rely on those one or two absolutely huge books um to kind of deliver and make our year. But actually in terms of the general spread, the publishing is fantastic. Um and in general the areas that are working well are working really well.

Um book selling's kind of all about word of mouth and so when you get a book that booksellers should just really want to press into the hands of customers, that's what it's all about really. So what are the examples of non fiction that you think are working really well that have this word of mouth buzz?

is selling really, really well. Um, and it's just fantastic to see books like that just kind of capturing the imagination of um the kind of readers who don't necessarily read nonfiction or gravitate towards it automatically. Like you say, Toby, um fiction often is kind of seen as the mainstay um in publishing, but actually I think a lot of readers don't necessarily always differentiate between the two.

It's interesting, we had Eric Schlosser on a few weeks ago to mark the 25th anniversary of Fast Food Nation, which was a book that I think... changed the way nonfiction could read thrillers. I feel we've come to the end of a bit of a golden age in that and I've seen some writers talk about nonfiction that there's a lot more pop politics, that perhaps the quality of some of that

nonfiction writing around politics and current affairs isn't as as good as it used to be. Come on. Oh I I'd love to suggest that it was all better in the past. I think I mean the it's a slightly Boring answer, but I think some books are still very good and some books are bad. I think the smart thinking category that was exemplified by people like Malcolm Gladwell and Eric Schlosser and others, that that whole category of smart f smart so called smart thinking.

peaked and it sort of evolved into an upmarket self help category really. Uh I do think when it comes to so-called quality non-fiction that lots of publishers piled into it and the the quality did probably arguably drop off a bit. In what sorts of areas? In history and politics and current affairs, those areas were what people in publishing say were overpublished. There were too many books

published into those categories and not all of them perhaps were quite as strong as they needed to be. But that does happen a lot when and usually follows success in those categories. Well Dominic Sandbrook, who of course is a very successful podcaster, has talked about whether, you know, th this question whether podcaster yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw.

I think podcasts are a huge opportunity for us rather than competition, because I think actually the appetite and you see the, you know... hwnnw hwnnw hwnnw hwnnw hwnnw hwnnw hwnnw um interest in areas like personal development, like self help. Um and I think actually it's the same d th those listeners are also buying books.

And so rather than it being a conflict, I think it's a huge opportunity um and leaning into that kind of publishing has been very fruitful for la us. What do you think, Toby? Yeah, I I um I think some I mean Dominic is is brilliant and a and a dynamo and a very, very accomplished writer as well as broadcaster, but I think It I think there's precious little evidence that podcasts are eating the market for non fiction. I think in every So why why why are all these sales dropping off so much?

Well, because I think uh certain categories of books have stopped working so well. Well also I think it's the world outside this building is dark and scary and depressing and it's much h it's You w many people want to escape into a different kind of place, so there's a non fiction categories like this is how you can become a better, happier person, the s work on the self. That's one area.

And I think the other one is into fictional worlds where you don't have to deal with the present. But uh but that's where you see um actually like areas like travel writing and nature writing, when there's good publishing, those books can do extraordinarily well because actually you do tend to look to fiction for your escapism, but nonfiction does it just as well. Um I just think at the moment the majority of nonfiction is a bit more serious, bit more scary. But actually when you see a book like

Chris Broadd's Abroadd in Japan, or Chloe Dalton's Raising Hair. I was thinking of that one, yes. It can do it extremely well.

We think, you can correct me if I'm wrong, it's defined as high stakes magical adventures with mythical creatures and passionate love stories, often involving said mythical creatures.

How big a market share are they now for Fiction B and what do you know about the demographic of who's buying them? Oh it's enormous and it's um an area which is can bring in a whole new generation into our bookshops for which we're extremely grateful um it's really driven by social media particularly book talk um and there's a huge appetite for it um you know

ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. a few years ago we saw this huge spike in manga sales, which has since kind of remained high but plateaued. But you see those readers moving on to areas like horror and sci fi translated fiction. Um and so, you know, for what it was interesting for us is to see

Actually, how many of those readers remain in romanticy um and what the kind of overall benefit for other areas of fantasy and other people. Yes. Um and Sarah J. Mass who has just announced two new books, which is very exciting for the future of bookshops. Toby, what do you think about this? Because I was just wondering, is it partly generational? It's 20 to 40-year-old. Coming up the Harry Potter fan?

For many years the biggest category in genre fiction and by genre fiction I mean crime and thrillers and science fiction and romance and these other big categories and romance was in many ways the biggest. Mills and Boone was a very substantial part of that sector. r fantasy used to be written by men and be about politics and they were called George R. R. Martin or J. R. R. Tolkien and now these things have collided.

And you have these huge fantastical worlds that run to five or eight or even more volumes. um in which there are intensely passionate and often quite explicit relationships. Often with a an enemy who becomes a lover, which is a somehow seems to be the sort of magical formula of this thing. I think the other thing is that to connect to the point about non fiction is To be fair, that's the plot of Pride and Prejudice.

That's true. All roads lead to Pride and Prejudice in the end. There's probably fewer characters with pointy ears in Pride and Prejudice. But but I think um I think there's also to connect to the earlier point about nonfiction that these The th th the the the change in s the celebrity fiction uh the celebrity non fiction space and the rise of romantic are both in my mind indicators or indexes of a a demographic shift that there's a new, younger generation coming to the fore.

who are have different tastes, different book buying habits and the baby boomers who are still a very important, you know, alive and well in many instances and a very important part of the book buying landscape are less

influential now and the old category killers like Danielle Steele and all these others have given way to a new generation of genre writers who are gonna predominate. And just before we came on air, B was saying something incredibly interesting about Bible sales, which in Waterstones you said are being driven by younger people.

Mm. Yeah. B what are your thoughts about romantic and fiction, everything that we're just talking about? Um I mean I think it's a fantastic opportunity and it's just something which is driving kind of more and more people into our into our shops and they're spending a lot of money.

Um and young adult fiction that's also growing. And that's is that eight to twelve or is that older now? No, young adult is older. Um the interesting thing though is um a lot of those readers are adult readers and so um actually kind of making sure that um the actual teenagers have a really kind of healthy, appropriate range of new books coming through is something which really we're really looking at because a lot of those books are just getting much, much older.

That is interesting, Toby. But in my other job as a exactly Nielsen doesn't recognise Nielsen being the people who've just published the data, don't recognise audio downloads as as readily or even in many instances at all.

And so in my other job as a literary agent, I see the royalty statements and I can see that the ro the audio book downloads are huge for quality nonfiction. And the corollary of that so you've got that sort of quality nonfiction audience that is m gravitating towards audio, but then you've got in the romanticy space young readers who just love these physical objects which are beautifully produced and have got all these

frills in their production that are in make them intensely collectible. I think that's wonderful. Yeah I was gonna say it's like vinyl except that people read books rather than buy vinyl records without owning a record player. Um fascinating. Um B um Carvalho, um Toby Mundy, thank you both.

The writer Deepa Anapara began her career as a journalist in India, and her debut novel, Jin Patrol on the Purple Line, drew on that knowledge of her country's political and social tensions. It was a state of the nation novel about inner city slums, Hindu nationalism and anti Muslim ferment in contemporary India. Her follow up novel, The Last of Earth, is a thrilling adventure inspired by Rudyard Kipling's Kim, about two nineteenth century British imperial explorers travelling to Tibet.

and much of the novel is narrated from the point of view of Balram, one of the Indian surveyors. Welcome to Front Road Deepa's lovely to have you here and I really enjoyed listening uh reading your book. I've got to say you've been listening to that discussion we just had about fiction and nonfiction.

Your novel's acknowledgments credit lots of research into real travellers and Indian surveyors in nineteenth century Tibet, which suggests that perhaps you thought about writing a factual history or biography, but instead you've written a novel, and I wondered was there ever a thought about fiction or non fiction? What drove your decision? Not with the Lost of Earth. With Jinn Patrol on the Purple Line because it was based on my experiences as a journalist in many Indian cities.

That book actually started out as a piece of long form magazine journalism. Um, it's about children who are disappearing in an Indian impoverished neighborhood in an Indian city and I thought that I would write about these children and what their experiences were in such neighborhoods. But very quickly I realized that I couldn't interview children. It was unethical to do so. I couldn't ask them to speak about these traumatic experiences.

So I moved to fiction because to me it felt like a safe space for me to look into their experiences. It's so interesting. And so you're exploring a truth without actually having to um do something that would have been ethically difficult for you.

In this novel, you have two different explorers or travellers, Balram and Catherine. Can you tell us about them and their different reasons for venturing into Tibet at this time? So when I started researching expeditions into Tibet for this novel, I found that the British who were ruling India at that time. wanted geographical knowledge of Tibet, but they couldn't go in themselves because at that time Tib Tibet didn't allow Westerners to enter the country.

So what they did was they trained Indians in these very rudimentary techniques of cartography. They essen essentially taught them to use their own bodies as surveying it. So trying tying ro sort of ropes around their ankles and measuring strides of a certain length. Yeah. So they would they were taught to walk.

so that each stride would be exactly thirty-one and a half inches. So this meant that they could cover a mile in roughly two thousand paces. And this was how they measured distances between regions. And when I came across that story I really wanted to look into that and Balram is uh once its spy surveyor who is guiding an English captain in disguise through Tibet. And is also trying to rescue his friend who he's disappeared and he believes is being captured and held

um prisoner. And then Catherine is this intriguing woman who's raised as an Englishwoman by her English father, but she's got a more complicated history. Yes, when uh a number of female explorers did travel to Tibet in the nineteenth century. So she is based on real women who traveled to the country at that time. Uh but

I didn't want to write about those women for various reasons. And I also discovered that many of the female travelers had more complicated ancestries than they were willing to admit. So Catherine is a mixed race woman with an Indian mother and an English father and this was not unusual at that time. In fact, you know, just before her time this was it was seen as

something commonplace and many Englishmen did marry Indian women. But by the time this is we are in mid nineteenth century and by that time it was not seen as something which is permissible. S but Catherine's father brings her to this country and she's raised here. So she does have a complicated relationship both with India and with her own English identity. Yeah. Well we've got a a reading from the book um which gives a real sense of the drama of being

in in Tibet and how a culture that has banned Westerners. Would you read us a little of it's in Catherine's voice? Sure. On the peaks of Tibetan mountains resided gods, and in the waters of its lakes and rivers absolution could be found. This sacredness felt palpable to her, in the angular mountains that hurt the lungs to climb, in the passes where prayer flags fluttered as loud as pounding hearts. And in the monasteries where the many faces of the Buddha soothed distressed minds.

One might be tempted to mock the practitioners of Hindu and Bon religions who believed Tibet was a meeting point between the earth and the heavens. But standing on the paths right now, Catherine felt as if she had wandered into that very space suspended between the earth and the sky. Thank you so much, Deeper. Reading this book, I felt a real sense of being transported to this place that I've never been. And I know that.

Rydw i wedi'i readu Kim by Rudyard Kipling, ac mae yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna I did want to subvert the tropes of the adventure novel and um Kim was definitely one of the first places where I read about Indian spy surveyors who traveled to Tibet. He passes for Indian, he disguises himself, which is part of the joke without the English explorer.

sort of covers his face with a walnut juice to try and pass for Indian. Yeah, absolutely. And um the In the book, um I was interested in looking at those aspects through Catherine's character as well, because she's of um mixed race. Yeah, yeah. Um I wrote most of the book during the pandemic. So I wasn't seeing many people. And China had closed Tibet even after the pandemic. So they only opened the region in twenty twenty three, which was when I could travel to the country. But

by then I had a full first draft of the novel. Wow. So because you then went there because how much of the novel did you change after visiting? Because you've climbed some of these peaks. You've gone on the pilgrimage route. I had that sense of gasping for air because the atmosphere is so thin. I'm fascinated that you wrote a draft before you went. What was helpful for me were the accounts of exploration that I read, both by English explorers, a Swedish explorer and by various English women.

So I used many of the details that were there in these accounts to write the book. really helped me when I travelled to Tibet was to understand the landscape and the kind of impact it has on us. uh and the kind of relationship that Tibetans have with the landscape, which I could not have imagined because they view the natural world and the non human as very sacred. I haven't um I didn't talk to them about exile, but of course it's a very familiar sight. In many Indian cities you have Tibetan

Tibetans in exile and Tibetan refugees who have built their homes in India. And what we see today essentially are people who've grown up in India and who have actually never been to Tibet. Uh and this was something that I was embarrassed to admit to some of my friends who are Tibetan that I had been to their country but they had not been able to visit.

Much of the power of the story is, as I said, in describing this wild landscape, um, but also this this sense that people start hallucinating or feeling in communication with the dead. Rydyn ni'n gwybod pobl yn ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw.

I was interested in looking at that false dichotomy which often exists between science and logic because the English explorer is saying that cartography is a scientific modern pursuit. and there is a tendency to view rituals that the indigenous population have as something that bil doesn't belong in a civilized nation. So there is this false border that's drawn between one's faith and one's belief.

and what is seen as empirical evidence, especially in that time period. And I felt that pointing to the ghosts and the spirits, you know, the use of the uncanny would be one way. to look at what I couldn't really talk about, which is the many ways in which imperialism was exerting itself and the kind of bonds that were being broken and erased.

because of colonial powers. And I felt that the use of ghosts would be one way to hint at that and also the power that the natural world has over over the characters the idea that, you know, the conquerors or the explorers idea is that you can control the landscape. But that's not how Tibetans and Indians would have looked at the natural world. Their relationship is much more sacred and yeah, the belief in ghost points to all that.

Mae'n unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw quite a romantic feeling. There's a great mystery about him. Is he a bandit? Is he a hero? Was he based on anyone real or is he a very Kipling esque invention? No, he is based on a real person. Yes. This was one of the most fascinating discoveries that there was

someone back at that time. Um I'm giving away something here. But yeah. Well you don't have to I mean I've I've hinted at you know, we don't know who he is. Yeah. But he definitely I mean, you know he's the kind of figure who would appear in a romantic novel. Is he is he who he says he is?

Th there there was a person, I found these in the historical records, that there was a person who was um you know, he lived in the forests of Daradun, which is where the British Survey of India was based for many years. Um and he

terrorised the British in certain ways, but he was also a complete gentleman and I thought what a fascinating character. Played games with them. Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. But I've been to Deredun and I've been to some of those places where the survey records are kept and you have that real sense of the imperial record.

um thank you so much i'm really interesting to talk to you and deeper anapada her new novel the last of earth is out now and i think it's recommended one of the top 12 books recommended by the bbc for 2026 as well

Now, tomorrow, Tom talks to Howard Jacobson about his new novel Howl, but we are going to end tonight by marking the sad and premature passing of musician Dot Rotten, whose death at the age of thirty seven was announced today. Born Joseph Ellis Stevenson in South London, he was a pioneer of intelligent and thoughtful grime music in the early 2010s, with breakthrough hits like Keep It On a Low and Overload.

After working behind the microphone as a producer in recent years, he recently returned to being in front of it. So to play out, here is Dot Rotten's last single released less than two weeks ago called Psalms for Praise. DNA. Act like mentors on a cloud. And then drop you to.

Thanks for listening to Front Row. I'm Samira Ahmid and the producer was Kieran Birmingham. The production coordinator was Fiona Anderson and our studio manager was Tim Heffer. And you can catch up on lots of different programmes on the BBC Sounds app. Including an excellent all day set of programmes marking Kenneth Williams's centennial.