‘As I was writing, I was stumbling upon new memories or a new voice track. That moment in the book where I recount my mother’s reading of Iris Murdoch… I haven’t remembered this for ages but it triggered the memory of me phoning John and Iris at their house in Oxfordshire… It was always a very strange, surreal, poignant, comical experience because every time I did it I had to wait several minutes before one of them picked up the phone. It was always a long time and there’s something about that experience of waiting for someone to answer the phone, maybe patience, maybe suspension of life, feeling a strange languidness which went with phoning that number.’

This talk takes the shape of a phone call between Nicholas Royle and Andrew Bennett. They discuss nostalgia, family, homesickness, Iris Murdoch and Raymond Chandler. Listen in here.