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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Welcome back to Live Free Ride Free,
where we talk to people who lead lives
of self-determination and fulfillment,
and we find out how they got there.
and as you know, the way in which we
define this fulfillment, this live
free, ride free can be many things.
It can be money, it can be art, it
can be simply doing what you love.
It can be all of the above.
It can simply also be life
as an art form in itself.
What is fulfillment?
What is the nature of living
life on your own terms with this
degree of self-determination
that we all have as our ideal?
So today I've got the amazing
John Mitchinson, John Mitchinson.
It might be someone who's known to you
without you knowing that he's known to
you because he's one of these shadowy
behind the scenes sort of chaps,
unless you happen to meet him in a bar.
And then, he's, not
behind the scenes at all.
he'll be, very jolly and probably
buying you lots of drinks.
John I first met in the early
nineties, when he was my publisher,
and we became great friends.
And he was then working for a small
boutique publisher in London called
Harville, which produced really, really
good, additions of books that sort
of other people didn't really publish.
And, I would say that most of the
books that I consider, the best books
I've read since I became an adult were
recommended to me by John Mitchinson.
So we're gonna go into
this a little bit today.
And he then became publisher
in larger companies.
Larger companies, larger companies.
And then he did something rather unusual.
Which he's gonna tell us about.
He took a side step and began
to pursue his interests.
And one of those interests.
Many of you may know the TV show on
both sides of the Atlantic called Qi.
Quite interesting,
presented by Stephen Fry.
Well, that's a, a John Mitchinson idea.
And, there's other things as well,
including his, his current, mo in the
publishing world, which is Unbound,
a return to subscription publishing,
which has been wildly successful.
John, however, is not an ostentatious
guy who walks around saying, look at me.
I'm so successful.
If you were to meet him in his home
village in the pub at Great two in
Oxfordshire, you would simply be
overwhelmed by his warmth, charm,
and just all round sweetness.
Yet he's one of the most effective
human beings I have ever met.
Not to mention one of the
kindest and most intelligent.
So that's the intro, John.
You've gotta live up to it now.
I
John Mitchinson: was gonna say,
it's gonna be downhill from here
for your listeners, I'm afraid.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you know,
at least we're not in the pub.
John Mitchinson: Very, very, very nice,
very kind of you to, to introduce me.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: well,
it's only the truth, John.
so I want you to tell us who
you are, where you came from.
Where were you born and how did you
get on the road to where you are now?
John Mitchinson: Ah, okay.
Well, I think most people, I dunno.
I, I guess there are people who have
a life plan and kind of, latch onto
something very early and, and end up
doing, end up doing the thing that they
feel that they were destined to do.
I'm not sure my life's
ever been quite like that.
In fact, there's only one thing that
I would say that's really been a, a,
a kind of a a through line through
all the activity, that I've, engaged
in and what we have to now as I
about, I'm about to turn 60, you kind
of have to call it your life now.
You know, it's beginning to have
it, it, it certainly had a beginning
and it certainly had a medal.
And at some point, increasingly, one
gets the sense that it will have an end.
So, so the, the through line for me
has always been, I guess primarily
reading and as a consequence of reading.
Then books that kind of a,
a a from a very early age.
I grew up born, well, it's an,
here's an interesting story.
My, I suppose that my origins are
slightly complicated in that my, my
parents had been teaching in India.
And came back into, my dad was worried.
My mom f fell pregnant.
They'd had an amazing 18 months out there.
But my dad, who is now 87, told me just
a few weeks ago, he's, he's, he's kind
of, he is definitely very close to the end
of his life and is, I think, suffering
from, he's suffering from dementia.
So his short-term memory is, is, is,
is pretty poor, but his, it means he
spends more time talking about the past.
And he told me that that 18 months
with my mother in India had been
the central event of his life.
And, but he, my dad's got a very, has
a long record of sometimes of making
perhaps on one level brave, but
sometimes perhaps other people would
think strange or even foolish decisions
because he gets, he was such a stress,
stressful person, very anxious person.
and again, in his own way, very
inspiring and, and, and, and interesting
man, but he decided he couldn't
have my mom having a baby in India.
So they came back.
so that the first thing was that they
came back into really grim winter.
Then the winter of 19 63, 0,
62, 63 was Oh, the historic one?
Yeah.
Was it historically poor winter?
They were living in a very.
In a very kind of rundown little,
house in Chingford teaching.
And I think you get, get the sense that
the, the dream that they had shared in
India, living in this extraordinary hill
station teaching, this teaching in this
wonderful school, suddenly they were back.
Kind of the reality
principal had kicked in
, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very
interesting thing to go back to your,
your origins like that cuz it, I realized
that my, my life began at a very low
moment in, for, for my parents and my, the
story goes, which I haven't, I, I can't
really now test out, I suppose I can ask
my mother, which would be interesting.
So my, my grandparents came and rescued
them and invited them up to come and live
in their tiny little council house in
Sunland, which they did for almost a year.
And the reason I give you that this
origin story is I, I think it is
always interesting the emotional,
the emotional kind of, sort of tom
of the life that you are born into.
Mm-hmm.
Which I think for my parents was, was,
as I say, was, was not massively happy.
The good thing for me was when
I as basically yeah, anxiety
and then when and, and financial
anxiety and professional anxiety.
And I'm, in many ways, I'm
not sure their marriage.
They, they separated 30 years later,
but I'm not sure their marriage entirely
recovered from it, from this incredible
hal kind of golden period in India.
And my dad's been back
several times to India.
My mom hasn't.
But, two things.
It left me with a, with a, with a
fascination, which I've, one of my
major fascinations, which I've still
never managed to fulfill, which
is to go back to, to find a place.
I was always, you know, I was that
kind of precocious kid who used to
tell all my, all ge visitors to the
house that I'd been conceived in the
Foote foothills of the Himalayas.
True.
But I've, I've never been to
actually see, as it were, the
Rupert Isaacson: place, there
are many things you have in co
in, in common with the Buddha as,
as the lessons are gonna find.
So it, it's no surprise I
didn't know this, that you
and Prince, CDATA had a fact
been born in the, the qma.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Well, there you go.
John Mitchinson: I think, I'm not
sure where, where, where, where
the, whether the comparisons
hold much further into my life.
But the thing that living with my
grandparents gave to me was, my
grandfather who'd, who I think was
just at that moment in his fifties
when he was, I was just a, a, you
know, he became fascinated and, and
re formed a bond, which I maintained
throughout his life until he died,
sort of about 20, 23 years ago.
But he was the, he was my sort
of mentor, my, I think for.
What did he do?
Well, he, he was a, he was a, it's
an, again, an interesting story.
I'm, I'm, he was a highly intelligent,
now would've gone to university
and probably studied maths.
He, he taught me, he taught me sort
of, he showed me logarithmic tables
when I was in about six years old.
And he was a motor mechanic, but
his, you know, a working class
family, northeastern family.
But he, his, his family had had
a little bit more money than my
grandmothers who were very poor.
And my great-grandmother was Irish,
and my great-grandfather was one of
22 children, which is extraordinary.
And the nice thing about it is, I,
I, there is now a, a Goodrich, he
was a, his nose was Charlie Goodrich.
And there's, there are now
regular family reunions up there.
So I've met a whole load of people
I might otherwise not have met.
Anyway, he, we now are pretty
sure got my grandmother pregnant
when she was a teenager.
And they ha because they never
celebrated their wedding anniversary.
my grandmother always, always was
extremely negative about the Virgin
Mary, which for people who were quite
religious, I mean, they were, they were,
they were stalwarts of their local church.
Although in Starwars, in a very, In
a very kind of independent way.
They were very, they, they, they,
they were not, they weren't
sort of lovey dovey Christians.
My grandfather was, was, was pretty
critical of, of, of most of the,
the Vickers that came and weirdly
into this in my, my dad had left
home at 16 to become a monk.
He'd gone, joined a, a religious order.
So there's all of that going.
Anyway, I bond, I bonded with my father
and my grandfather, and that was, and
he was, , as I say, he was a, he was a
source of calmness and, validation for me
during really right through my, my kind of
early childhood and into my teams in a way
that I suppose my father never had been.
Really, my dad was, was my dad
was always out and doing stuff.
And also my dad was a vicker, became
weirdly a vicker and he was standing up
being, you know, telling people how they
live to live their lives when, let's
be honest, probably his own personal
life was, was, was, was in a, was in a.
Terrible mess.
I mean, I said a terrible mess.
He was serially unfaithful to my mother,
which is not generally considered
the, the, the, the, the path for
a, for a, for a man of the cloth.
So, so the northeast, that culture,
working class northeast was where that's,
if people say to you, where are you from?
That's where I always think
that's, that's where I was formed.
and there was much about
that, that I loved.
The Town of Sunland is a, was a, you know,
a former ship building and mining town.
I mean, the ship building, it produced
more tonnage than any other British port.
Not, and didn't build the
big ships, but a lot of the
merchant ships were built there.
And that really, I watched that
from the sixties, from my being
born in early sixties through the
seventies, watched all that disappear.
ended up, of course becoming a fan
of their, their, football team.
But that, that's the, that was the
crucible into which I was born.
And then when I was eight years old,
something happened, which I think has
probably been the most, the thing that's
probably most influenced me, which was
we moved down to Banbury, and by that
stage I, I was already reading my.
Reading, kind of, you know, sort of
ferociously going to the library.
I remember early reading, reading
all of Arthur Ransom and desperately
wanting to be in the late district
sailing a dinghy or bird watching
became the thing I was obsessed with.
I was glad used to go off now, I
mean, where we were living in the
Northeast as a, as a little place
called he Earth, which is near felling.
It was not massively, you know, it was,
it was pretty built up and it was late
sixties, so it's pretty depressed still.
Lots of, that area was Bob fairly
heavily bombed in the war, but there
were these scrubby bits of waste ground.
And I remember one amazing
winter, there was an invasion
of wax swings from Scandinavia.
And I, I still have the little project.
My mom was very much, you know, go
out and thought, make a nature table.
My mom was a very good teacher
and, remains a very, a very
important person in my life.
But, she was traumatized, I think
by how the, the, the how poor and
difficult and depressed the, the,
the area that we were living in was.
And the school was.
But she made, she made
all the other stuff fun.
So I, I kind of grew up
reading and fascinated by
nature, particularly by birds.
and, and then you moved down
to Rural Ox Oxfordshire.
Yeah.
So then we moved down to Ox Oxfordshire.
Well, bamb Bamb was definitely.
Banbury was definitely, we weren't,
we weren't, well, it was more
rural than North, the Northeast.
And every weekend we would go off
and dis discover new villages.
And as my brother and I got older, we
would go off and explore and on our
bikes and, and it was definitely deep
it, but from there I felt it was deep
immersion in the English countryside.
And I, I, I formed a, a strange
obsession with a village called
Great J, which I visited for the
first time, I think in about 1972,
so whatever that is, 50 years ago.
Right.
Which is pretty remarkable of itself.
the reason I formed a, a, i, I guess two
reasons why it was so important to me.
One, I'd been reading, talking,
and, and then I discovered what I
really wanted to do was to live.
I felt that I really ought to have
been born in the 12th century and.
You wanted to live in the
Rupert Isaacson: Shire, basically.
Yeah.
John Mitchinson: Yeah.
And then I suddenly found
myself in the Shire.
I mean, great chew, you
can attest to this is yeah.
A remarkable place.
And it was even more,
in some ways remarkable.
It's always been remarkable, but
in the early seventies, it was
pretty, it was semi derelict.
Mm-hmm.
There is no welcome to
great chew sign on the road.
There are no road markings,
there are no street lights.
It's, it's thatched.
In the early seventies, the, that
was all kind of falling apart.
It felt like a, a village that
was sinking back into the earth.
Mm-hmm.
and I remember going there and indeed
going there with my grandfather, who
came to visit once and sitting in the
church there next to him and being
amazed that the, the, the church is
an incredibly beautiful building.
Amazing, 12th century wall
painting and a, and surrounded
by trees surrounded by greenery.
So the idea of a sort of green church,
kind of seemed to me to be that pagan,
to bring together, to bring together
everything that I was interested in.
A kind of sense of history,
closeness to nature.
I l I mean, we l later discovered,
obviously the church was a, a much
older site than a Christian site.
It's a, it's a dedicated Saint
Michael, which usually means there
was a, a kind of a, a some form of
Saxon or earlier, holy place there.
So, that sort of deep connection
with a kind of English.
Landscape and countryside
was, was forged there.
And I, I think, you know, that when one
remembers one's childhood, those years
between eight and 12 for me were, those
were the kind of the magic years and,
and again, fired by my reading, but
fired also by exploring the countryside.
I got given an ordinance survey
map, which was, I, I still remember
and may even still have it, it
was one of the old pink ones.
So, for banbury in the area, just
the obsessive detail I'd go through
every trying to work out and find on
the map every little bit of, yeah.
You know, every, every old tubuli or
disused bit of railway line or that, that
idea that there was some order that you
could find as a kind of a way through
this that was, that was a massively
important, the patterns of the story.
The patterns of the past.
Yeah.
So then my dad, , made one of his, you
know, the decisions that I've, I've,
I've referred to earlier, I think.
Try always.
I think he's been trying to
escape from things, and this
was the biggest one of all.
He decided, he announced that we
were going to move to New Zealand.
He'd got been offered a job, in
New Zealand working, with a, a,
a, a couple of priests in a team
ministry in Rour, friends of his who.
And suddenly at the age of 12,
I found myself translated to the
other side of the world, completely
different, completely different place.
and I have to say very, at first I found
very difficult, but gradually, came
to, came to, I made my peace with it.
And it's after, I suppose rural
Oxfordshire, the kind of New Zealand,
but feels like the other place
that I, and, and the Northeast,
it's, feels like the other place
would, that's, that's determined
all sorts of outcomes for my life.
My, I married, my first
wife was a New Zealander.
I went, did a year, did a
year of university out there
before I came back here.
My brother lives there and my mother
lives there, my daughter lives there,
so it's, but when I arrived as a 12 year
old, it was like everything was different.
And some of that was exciting,
but some of it was also so, It
created in me a fairly profound
nostalgia for what I'd left behind.
And, great Chew in
particular played a role in.
So, you know, that thing when I said
people who, who have a plan for their
lives, I've never had a professional
plan for my life, but I'd always
thought that at one point or other
I would maybe live in Great Chew.
And I've now lived there for 26 years.
So sometimes
Rupert Isaacson: what's interesting to
me that, that leaps out from that I can
indeed aest, to the listeners, if you're
looking for the Shire, it is great chew.
It is that area of Oxfordshire.
It is that thatch village,
which hasn't really changed much
outwardly since the 17th century.
And it has a real magic to it.
But what's ironic to me that leaps
out is that there you were looking
for the Shire, you find it of course
in England, and then, yes, you get
thrown to the place that years later
Hollywood decides is the Shire.
But it doesn't appear to you as
the Shire at all when you go there.
No.
Gives you any nostalgic for your Shire?
No.
Maybe, maybe that's what we're all
doing is looking for that shire.
Yeah,
John Mitchinson: well I think
there is a kind of, there is
the, the interest isn't there.
If we're all of us to try and find
a mode of, a mode of living where
we feel, you know, that we, I, I
remember once saying to Rachel, my wife,
that, you know, we'd put down roots.
In two because I'd never had any.
And she said, well, I'm not
sure I want to have roots.
And I think we've both subsequently
realized that ha, because we had, my
daughter Stella was, was, was born
in London, but my three boys were
born in, in, in, well, they were
born in the hospital Nazi, but they
were all born into the village.
There is that sense of, there, there is
a, some, something fulfilling comes out
of that sense of being in a place for
the, for, for an extended period of time.
And I would say that it's
not necessarily always easy.
I think great chew is superficially
the people who see only the, the
picturesque really don't understand
the history of what these small
villages in England, have to offer.
The, they're almost always the records
of some sort of, of, of, of, of, of,
of periods of massive investment, of
people, particularly people who've
made a lot of money elsewhere in the
world, trying to, trying to realize
their dreams for bero for worse.
I've always said that although two
is tiny, you know, there's only
150 people on the electoral role.
It's, it's had a small but important
part of the, of the three great.
What we might call the three great
moments in British history, the
Norman Conquest, the Civil War, or
the Three War of The Three Nations,
and the Industrial Revolution.
It also, like all English villages, we
begin to see has definitely got, you
know, one of the people who owned the
estate was a East India company, NAI Bob.
So there's the link with Empire Matthew
Bolton obviously was, was, you know,
the, the, the, the architect of the
Industrial Revolution, like the, the
Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk of his day.
I don't think many
Rupert Isaacson:
listeners would know that.
Talk, talk to us about that.
So let me just give a
little background here.
So this Village of Great two that
John lives in, which does indeed look
like the Shire, is an estate village.
And one of the reasons it, it, it,
it has this very picturesque look is
that it's still owned by effectively
a feudal estate, which limits the
development, which keeps the look
of the landscape and so forth.
But this, great house that
is there, what changed hands?
The, the, the, the theen years
of the estate had changed hands.
And this chap Bolton, you say he
was an architect of the industrial
revolution, which of course is not
the le look of that landscape at all.
Tell us about this man.
And, and, and how so, so
John Mitchinson: the worldview math,
Matthew, Matthew Bolton, I mean, it was
in fact his son who, who, who bought
the estate, but they were, Matthew
Bolton was James Watts's business
partner, James Watt invented the,
the, the, the steam engine, which was.
The kind of the, the bit of technology
that unlocked, massive profits of cotton,
the massive pro profits of cotton.
As we now know, were also deeply
implicated in the slave trade, so
that the cotton that was being grown,
the, the in, in, in the, the south
of America was, was, was, was the
product of slavery and that was
being shipped back to, to the uk.
But the, the, the, the technology that
enabled the building of mills, in, in,
in, in the north of England was, very
largely because of the business prowess.
James Wat was the Scottish engineer.
Bolton was the businessman.
And the Soho Foundry in Birmingham,
which was his home, was, is generally
felt to be one of the, one of the key
sites of the industrial revolution.
Certainly the, the kind of the monetizing
of the inventions, you know, there
are lots of people get hung up about
who was it, who invented what, when,
but you know, it's a, it's a little
bit like once the technology's there,
who's the smart person who can turn
it into, into a, into a, a business?
And that was what Bolton did.
And his son bought, bought Chu Park
as it was then in the 1820s and turned
it into a extremely, successful farm.
and that passed down
through his, through his.
Two son and grandson.
And then, and the line failed
in the early 20th century.
And there were two, there were
two basically old Dows that Miss
Robs who lived in the Bain house.
And the, the, the chooses decline, the
re when I found it in, you know, 70 years
later, really began at the turn of the
20th century when it was administered
by the public trustee on behalf of the
Miss Boltons who lived in the big house.
And at that point, lots of the
tenant farmers, I think just started
to say they were making no money,
as is the want for tenant farmers.
And there was little investment.
And then in the 1950s, when the Miss
Boltons died, a, a really extraordinary
man called Major eus Rob, who was a
member of the Bolton family and not
direct descendant of, of Matthew.
But, he took the estate on
with very little capital.
He, in fact, had been, he'd been in the
Army, but before that he'd been one of the
early producers for Log Bear at the, very
early B b C, the, the turn, the, the, the,
I mean, one, some of the very earliest TV
programs ever made were produced by him.
And then in, I guess in his sixties,
he decided he wanted to sink into.
Into sort of retirement.
He'd always loved chew.
He'd, he'd visited his, his
aunts there when he was a child.
he was gay, , although that
probably wasn't, the word he
would've, they would've used then.
And he lived and sort of presided over.
He didn't, he wanted to retain that
quality of an estate village village.
and then in the 1960s, he, there was
the government decided they wanted to
try some open cast iron ore mining on
Cow Hill, which you'll know ru where
we, we, we love to walk Cow Hill.
It's one of the
Rupert Isaacson: most
beautiful hills in England.
John Mitchinson: He, employed a
London lawyer called James Johnston
to come and help him fight the case.
And they won.
And then he invited James to stay on,
to be the, to stop them from mining it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
To stop 'em from mining.
So they won and he invited James to stay
on and be, help, help him run the estate.
And from that moment, small bits
of, of, of, development were made.
There was a new sewage system put
in, and some of the cottages were
restored, but many of them had fallen
into such bad disrepair that they
were, they were sort of, compulsory,
occupied rather than a estate owned.
Although still, it's roughly
about 75% owned by single estate.
And the, that estate has
been a single estate.
It's not been broken up since.
The time of the Doomsday book, the
sort of Norman Conquest, which from Odo
Bayer, that's a thousand years chap.
Yeah.
That, yeah.
So Odo, Bayer, William, the con
half brother, was given the estate
of Great j back at the time of
the, the, the big deal doling out.
and as I say, it's had various
owners since then, but remains now.
The major left it to James Johnston.
and it's now Nicholas Johnston,
who is, who runs the estate
incredibly successfully, and who
was absolutely there on Saturday
when we had our Coronation party.
and I would say that what's if,
if, if, if Chu has this strange
kind of zeig like ability to, to
appear at, at various moments of
English history, having something
interesting to say about those things.
So, you know, as I said, civil War, when
I should say in the Civil War that there
was an amazing, group of intellectuals
and artists who gathered around great
ju and knows the great Jew circle.
Lucius Carey, who was Charles, the
first Secretary of State, kind of had
an open house come sort of almost like
a sort of open air university he ran.
and a lot of the thinking.
I mean, they didn't manage to, they,
they weren't able to prevent civil war.
But when the 1688 Constitution was,
was, finally, in, in place with the,
the, the restoration, the monarchy being
restored, and then in 1688, we invited
the Dutch to come over and run the show.
the establishment of the
parliamentary democracy that we
know today happened really in 1688.
And a lot of those ideas came from
peop members of the two circle, like,
Edward Hyde Law, Claredon, and so on.
So, again, bizarre.
And now, our small village seems
to be the epicenter of what you
might call celebrity culture.
We have the Beckhams at one end, Claudia
Winkelman down in the valley, and,
up on the hill, Simon Cal, and Soho
Farmhouse is, is in great two parish.
which, so the Village now massively seems
to be, I mean, it's, it still retains.
Its, its kind of, it, its core character.
But again, there are people who
obviously you can imagine, loathe this.
But I try and take the long
view on these things and think,
well, it's just chew doing.
Whatchu does?
It always seems to find a
way to be relevant there.
Indeed.
Lots of, of really dull
villages out there in England.
And, you know, where people are just
sort of wildling away their lives
and, and, and, and, and not saying btu
a goose chews never been like that.
Yeah.
And the
Rupert Isaacson: England now is,
there's, it's having this, Renaissance
as, as a sort of a media hub.
Yeah.
And so, and, and, and so it seems to
make sense that where you live in this
village that looks like the sh but is
in fact, as you say, has this relevant,
the story of, of relevance who pops up
now at this latest stage of, of what
Britain is, is, is exporting, which
is the story, which is its story.
And you, you've told us this
story of a little bit of
yourself and the place you live.
What stands out here is, is, is John.
It's, it's, it's your love and ability
to connect with and relate stories.
Yes.
And this of course is how you
have made your way in the world.
Tell us how you've been telling
stories and enabling other people
to tell stories in a way that has
brought you to where you are now.
John Mitchinson: That's,
that's a good question.
I think I am, I think I'm a, I, I,
I think I've, I vacillate between.
And continue to vacillate between being
a storyteller and a story enabler.
in that I am both a
writer and a publisher.
And while there are times when I have
been more of a writer than I am a
publisher and more of a publisher than
I'm a writer, I don't think there's ever
been a time when I haven't done either.
I suppose there was a time when I was
a, but when I started my very first
job, I mean, very briefly, my very
first job, I worked as a barman in a
very busy, quite famous restaurant in
Oxford, most of my undergraduate years
when I was, I read English language
and literature at Merton College
and why did I go to Merton College?
Because that was Tol Kings
College and it was, it's whatever
any of the other colleges say.
It's the oldest, it's certainly
the oldest has the oldest physical
buildings in Oxford, I think.
And, I loved that Mob Quad, which is
the, the, the central Quad triangle was
so old it didn't even have chimneys.
So, I, that was my.
That was where I went to college
and I worked in a bar there,
called Browns, a restaurant.
Browns.
So when I came out of there, I, my first
job was working in a nightclub in Oxford
called in, London, called Legends.
and the plan had been, the plan
had been to, to, to open a club.
Were were you a male dancer
or what were you doing?
I wasn't, no, I was just working.
I was head barman, so I was mixing.
I've always liked, I've, I've
always liked making drinks.
I had noticed.
yeah.
So, and it was very, those days, I
mean, guys, nothing like the kind of
extraordinary baroque mixology you have
today, but we were making, it was the
eighties and we thought we were making
great classic drinks, but nobody came.
And the maitre d and I, a lovely man
called men, Mel Palmer, had found
a site in, in, beak Street in soho.
And we thought we were gonna open a,
something that would've been halfway
between a nightclub, a English pub,
and a, and a and a, and a kind of the
kind of bar you find in Spain or Italy.
And we'd even managed to raise money.
And, but, this was 1987, which was
the first of the several financial
crises, which my life, life has, has.
I never, the person who was gonna
put money in got wiped out and
said, sorry boys, I can't do it.
So at that point, I had been, I just
got a job, a friend of mine from
college that said, Hey, you should
come and work in this bookshop.
It's great.
It's called Waterstones and.
You know, it's, it's really,
it's really nice work.
You know, you don't have to stay
up till four in the morning.
Nobody tries to pick fights with
you or you don't have to, to, to, to
try and haul them, haul them out of
the toilets for, for taking drugs.
So I started work on
an insanely low salary.
I mean, it was like under five grand
a year working in a bookshop, and then
suddenly I'd from, and was Waterstones
Rupert Isaacson: Waterstones, by the
way, for those listeners who don't know,
is, is a major, major chain of books,
book sellers in the UK at this stage.
John, was it just one store?
John Mitchinson: No, there were,
there were, I think by that
stage there were 10 stores.
Okay.
So this was in 1987
and they started in 82.
And then extraordinary series
of coincidences really.
I, I was working and I have to say,
although it was terrible pay and
I was living in a, a very small
studio, flat in, in, with my now
wife, Simone, in, in, Finsbury Park.
I absolutely loved the work and, and I,
things that I loved about it were that
you could more or less take any book
you wanted to read home, which I did.
And getting proof copies.
I remember the first proof.
Copy was from the Gal Glance rep, and it
was Mort by Terry ett, and I just was,
I was so intrigued by this idea that
you were get, you were getting to read
a book before it was even published.
I still remember it with a sort
of blue cover and I read it and
was incredibly enthusiastic.
I think he, I think the rep was rather
touched that, that somebody was so
excited to be given one, so he gave me
loads and so I was, I was buying SCI
for sci, the science fiction section in
the fantasy section about which I knew.
A bit, but not, not masses,
but soon got to know.
But you had more,
Rupert Isaacson: been an
early, an early token reader.
You did have a
John Mitchinson: Oh yeah.
And, and also I just, I remember there
was some exciting Clive Barkers Hell
Raiser came out at that that time.
And I remember there was a, there was
a, there's a guy called Piers Antony
who wrote these space opera books.
And I think maybe even, yeah, I, it was,
it was fun and perhaps it was beginning
to become really, really successful.
but it was, it, like all these
things, it was just fascinating.
The, the Waterstone's way was to very much
throw you in at the deep end, and you had
to figure out what to buy and what not
to buy and what to subs all the buy, you
know, we did all our buying in the store
and even someone as inexperienced as me
within a few months was buying books.
So the excitement of buying 10
copies of something and then selling
them is that's, I think that's
been part of my d n A as well.
I, that's something I
find still thrilling.
I, I love being in bookshops and I love
selling, I love selling things to people.
What now gets called hand hand selling,
you know, it's just that thing of
getting somebody enthused, saying, try
and let me know and come back, and I've
got plenty more where that came from.
So it was a, about, that
was a bit of a revelation.
It was, as I say, appallingly paid.
This is a bit of a theme of my life.
Appallingly paid, but
massively satisfying.
and then, and then I met someone in the
street who I'd, I'd known from college,
and she said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm working at Waterstones.
I said, oh my God, I'm just a head office
at Waterstones and we are looking for
somebody to edit our literary diary.
Would you be interested?
And I said, well, what does it involve?
She said, well, I dunno, six weeks work.
You have to go and sit in the
British library and find out
interesting literary facts.
So I like to think that that moment, which
of course I said yes, and I was paid a, I
remember a one-off bonus of 1500 pounds,
which just like, that just seemed like
the most staggering amount of money at
the time you could actually afford to eat.
Incredible.
And then, and then, yeah, week and
then it got to, to sit in the British
Library every day in that amazing reading
room, that where Marks had worked, and,
and, and ordered up amazing old books
and found, lit out literary facts.
And, and it was commissioned essays.
It was, it was really, it was commissioned
some poetry for, from people that was,
you know, it was quite a, there was a
desk diary and then a little pocket diary.
So, and what happened was I then got
kind of sucked into, a thing called
the Waterstones Guide to Books.
We were trying to do what I once
described as a paper Amazon, which
was 60,000 annotation, annotated
blurbs to 60,000 books in print.
And that was, That was really
my first, kind of exposure to
the world of books and authors.
And, and we, although we, we made
a, we made an astonishing 1500 page
book that was significantly too
large as a mail order catalog to
go through anybody's letter box.
So it ended up being a bit of
a white elephant, a sort of
magnificent white elephant.
And at the end of the, that year,
I was asked to take over running
the public, what was then the,
the, the publications department.
and then a year after that,
Waterstones did a deal with WX Smith.
And by that stage I'd become quite good
friends with Tim Waterstone, the owner.
And he asked me to be his marketing
director at the age of, of 26.
and I still remember he sent, he, he
wrote, he, he, he, Tim was a very early
adopter of the post-it note, and he
always wrote in pencil and he sent me,
said that, that's what I'm gonna pay you.
And he'd written 30 pounds on
a, on a, and I remember looking
puzzled and he that got a problem.
I said, is it, well, just one off
or, and he'd looked it back and
then put a K on the end of it.
So in 19, What, what
year would it have been?
My god.
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it was
19 87, 88, 89, 19 89.
To suddenly being be, I mean,
30,000 pounds a year was a
lot of money in those days.
It was back then.
Yeah.
And that was, that was my entry, I
suppose, into pretty extraordinary period.
I did, I was marketing director until,
for five years, nearly six years.
And, Wolf Stones expanded massively.
I mean, they had already
been jammed together.
We went from, we opened 14 shops
in 1988, and then in 1989 we
merged with the Shean Hughes.
They all became Waterstones.
So suddenly Waterstones had, you
know, 80 bookstores, and, and
became the biggest, the biggest book
specialist book retailer in the uk.
And I was in charge of their marketing,
knowing nothing about marketing.
So, but that was, yeah.
As say you kind of, you kind
of learn on the job and, and
Rupert Isaacson: I guess what is
marketing, but telling stories
and what had you been doing since
John Mitchinson: you were
Well, discovery story?
Well, I, yeah, you're completely right.
And what I'd been doing was
helping Tim write speeches.
We basically, Tim and I sort of
invent, invented, a, a way of
describing the Waterstones brand.
Which you had to do because we had to
tell a lot of people who were being
told that their shots were being turned
into Waterstones, what that meant, and
right where, whereas Tim had sort of had
the idea of these large stockholding,
but he'd owned, been to America and
been to the Strand bookstore, and he,
what he basically wanted was, could
you take a big American bookshop of
Barnes and Noble and a and, and a and
a brilliant bookshop like John Sando
and Chelsea, and turn it into a chain.
And he'd been a, his, his
background was w h Smith.
and I think they'd fired him, which
was why he, when he finally sold the
business back to them for a huge amount
of money, it was particularly satisfying.
that was his story.
So we were absolute Marketing
is absolutely storytelling.
And it's storytelling.
What I like about it is it's storytelling
that can often have a measurable result.
, of, you know, rapture applause.
A live gig or just, you know, your kid
saying, can you read it to me again?
I love that.
Can you read it to me again?
Which, so, That was.
And then from there, I suppose the
next move was to go into publishing
where I went, ended up at Harville, I'd
fallen in love with the Harville list.
Now that's a question
Rupert Isaacson: because, so you went
from something majorly commercial?
Waterstones.
Okay.
Admittedly, relatively high highbrow,
but, Harville, which published
me back in the day as well a
bit, was anything but commercial.
It was, so what, why, yeah,
and how, tell us that.
Well,
John Mitchinson: I suppose we thought
it, I suppose it's part of me that
is, you know, maybe my life is a is,
is, is thinking about drawing themes.
I've always believed in quality,
that ultimately what lasts is, is, is
something that the, the, the higher,
the richer, the more complex, the more,
the more, challenging something is
the, the, the, the, the more likely it
is to last to stand the test of time.
And I think what I could see with the
har list was something that had been,
we would now u say curated, but we were
probably in back in the nineties, just
have said, you know, kind of built or
chosen with such care and intelligence
that, that actually the people who.
Who, you know, love reading and love
literature and love the, the, the, the,
the, the transforming effect that, that
reading something can make in your life.
I think for, for those people that
those kind of lists were, were and
are incredibly important, the case.
Did
Rupert Isaacson: you know this about
Harville before you went to work for them?
Or did you discover this?
John Mitchinson: Yeah, no, I, I did,
I, what I loved about them was they
had a, they had a famous list of
trade paperbacks with the, with the
Collins Harville leopard on them.
Mm-hmm.
And they were, they were kind of, they
were always really beautifully type set,
and they were kind of, they were, they
were bigger than the average paperback
and they were often in spinners.
And at the beginning, what.
Spinner is a, is a sort of big
plastic thing, which, which
sit stands in bookshops and por
often used to come in spinners.
Ah, right.
They're much, they're much,
they're much sort of standard.
They're not, not really welcoming
bookshops anymore, but they were,
they were a good way of branding.
Cuz you know, here's a publisher
I like and Collins Har was
definitely a strong brand.
I think that's the thing for me, really.
I realize that, you know, having
spent so much time trying to define
what made Waterstone special, that
idea of a strong brand is still
the thing that I, I go back to.
That's as far as my
marketing expertise goes.
It's being able to articulate
and communicate some what makes a
particular brand special and important
and, and worthy of attention.
Rupert Isaacson: So it's interesting
too, just for the, for the, for the
listeners, I would say that two of the
most, the best books I've ever read,
which is the Master Margarita Bov,
and by Night Under the Stone Bridge by
Leo Pertz, were both harville, books.
So yes, when you talk about this
quality, I, I remember just those two
books alone were life changes for me.
So I Was that what you saw?
John Mitchinson: yeah, and it, I
mean, just a bit of the history it
was, it was Harville, was, was, Was
the invention of two extraordinary
women, after the war, mana Harari and
Marjorie Villa, which is Hart and Vil.
And they were determined, I suppose,
to that literature could prevent war.
You know, it was a kind of, it was
a classic sort of war 19, late 1940s.
And they were responsible for
publishing the first English
language version of Paac.
Feltrinelli had published it in Italy,
and they got the English translation done.
So it started with this idea
that, we, you know, if we read the
literature of other countries, were
less likely to end up invading them.
I mean, I, and it's very crude.
So that, and that had been developed
through the, the, the sixties and into the
seventies when really, truly remarkable.
Publisher called.
Christopher Mcz had had taken it over
as, and he'd added other writers, George,
McDonald Fraser, great storyteller.
And some of them were quite commercial
writers like Gerald Seymour, but
also Richard Ford, the great American
novelist, Raymond Carver, great
short story writer, Peter Matheson.
So, there was an amazing combination
of both English language writers and
writers, and, I mean, and it is, it,
I think until relatively recently,
it was the absolute best list of,
of great writing and translation and
as well as Pastor Na and Bob Garko.
It also had vastly
Grossman's life and fate.
P probably, I would say the great
novel of the of, of the, of the Second
World War, one of the great novels.
Tell us, tell us again what
Rupert Isaacson: that is for those
John Mitchinson: of us who
want to write, that's Vly.
Grossman's, life and Fate,
Rupert Isaacson: VLY
Grossman's Life and Fate.
This is one we should all read.
John Mitchinson: Ab Yeah.
and interesting more recently that a,
a new, a new book called Stalingrad,
his book on Stalin, his novel on
Stalingrad has finally been translated.
But life and Fate is, is I think
generally considered to be pa perhaps
the greatest novel of the, of, of,
of the, of the Second World War.
and Soja Nisson was also
on the Harvard list.
It's an amazing list of writers.
And, you know, more recently
Christopher had discovered Peter,
her, who Miss Miller's feeling for
Snow, pretty much started the, what
you might call the Nordic Noir, genre
of, of Scandinavian crime fiction.
Henning Mankell was on the Harvard list,
another great scan, Scandinavian crime.
so great joyous.
and when I was there, I got to publish,
I would say certainly three, four writers
that have remained important to me.
One was Haruki Murakami, who is
now, we, we, we published, he'd been
published once before in the uk, but
we published the Windup Bird Chronicle,
which was the breakout novel for him.
And then give us the name again.
The Windup Bird Chronicle
the Wind Up by Mira.
Often he's, you know,
generally considered one of.
Perhaps Japan's greatest modern novelist.
And that book, again, is another,
another World War II book in lots
of ways, although it's, it's like a
mashup between a, a kind of, world
War II movie and a studio Ghibli film.
He's the most, he is.
If you've not read Burak, you should,
you should read, and that's, and I would
say, what's, what's a Studio Ghibli film?
So Studio Ghibli is, spirited away,
the great, Miyazaki Hi Zaki, who makes
the most extraordinary, animated
films, ah, of which, spirited it away.
Hows, hows Moving Castle?
my neighbor Totoro.
Yes.
they are most fabulous,
imaginative, kind of, and.
Also seemed somehow to be universal
in a way, while also being extremely
Japanese, certainly spirited away.
So you got to publish this guy.
And so Mukai has, has, has,
has that kind of energy.
But also he's also a gr a,
I think, a great storyteller
and, and, and loves jazz.
He's very, so I published him and I
published, what subsequently become
one of my gr probably my, one of my
great literary heroes, which is William
Maxwell, who was fiction editor at
the, at the New Yorker for 40 years.
So maybe I respond to Maxwell
because he was a, he was an enabler
of stories as well as writer of,
of incredibly beautiful stories.
What, what book by Maxwell should we read?
You should read, you should read, so
Long C Tomorrow, which was his late,
it's his last novel published in 1980.
and was, it didn't get in amazingly.
Wasn't published in English
until we did it in 1996.
But Maxwell also wrote, the beginning
of his life, a book called, they Came
like swallows, which is one of the very
small number of, of books that deals with
the impact in his case, direct impact.
His mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic.
But I got to meet Maxwell in New York in.
96 the year before he died, and
that was one of my great moments.
But Maxwell was, it was Maxwell's
porch in Connecticut that Salinger,
JD Salinger drove out to and read in
one sitting the whole of, the story
that became Catcher and the Rye.
So Maxwell had published, you know, the
great heroic period, Updyke Chi, Frank
O'Connor of New Yorker fiction writers,
and then was a writer to himself.
So it was just a extraordinary
quirk of fate that for some reason
he'd never really been published
properly in the UK before.
So you, you and
Rupert Isaacson: then, and you were a
story enabler and you, you talk about
this joy, this great joy, joyous time
publishing these ex extraordinary people.
John Mitchinson: Yeah.
I mean, why don't you stay there forever?
Okay.
Yeah.
That's a good question.
Why don't we stay there forever?
I think I had got, Christopher and I
had a very good working relationship,
but I think I was beginning to feel
that, that the business wouldn't
work as a business if, if we
didn't do some things differently.
I'd launched a paperback list.
Christopher was very much the publisher.
It is very much his, his, It
was very much his baby.
And he'd employed me and
then, Rachel to, to help him.
And, and I think we did.
We, we, we made, we took it, we
bought it out of Harper Collins.
We made it successful and independent.
I know, I think I was just at that
point, I was at my, in my early
thirties and he was in his late fifties.
I can see now that's that, that, that what
you want from life is slightly different.
and we were not able to buy, you know,
Christopher was very un unhappy about
dealing with literary agents, which again,
I completely now understand and see why.
so I just, yeah, I think it was just, I
started to get frustrated and I, I was,
made an offer that I couldn't refuse.
And, to go and be marketing director and
deputy group publisher at the Orion Group,
which is about that stage, about the fifth
or sixth largest publisher in the uk.
it was a, at a time, you
know, we had young children.
It was quite a big hike in salary.
We just moved, we moved to the
country in 1997 and I Great.
So by the end of 1998, it seemed like a
really perfect moment for, for me to, to
do something new and then, That's what
I, I did, we went and I went and did
a year as marketing director, and then
I realized that I really, I, I didn't
really want to be marketing directors
despite I was doing you, I was doing
campaigns for very commercial stuff like
May Bin and Penny Chene and David Seaman.
you know, he was the England goalkeeper.
And apart from, apart from sort of
refining my, I, I learned a lot of stuff.
I suppose I learned how big
branded published authors were,
were kind of how they worked.
But the first possibility to run
something directly myself came up and
they, Orion bought a company called
Castle, which were a large baggy,
company that did lots of illustrated
books, practical illustrated books.
Rachel used to say they appear to publish
five different books on corn dollies.
And I said, yeah, that's true.
A huge back list.
Most of it, not very good.
They had a reference company, but
most of the language dictionaries had
been in the deal had been taken off to
another bit, part, part of the business.
So I was left with some strange
reference books, including the
amazing, brewers phrase and Fable.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, that's for the,
again, for those listeners who do not
know this, go out now and order a copy of
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
All the stuff you've ever
wondered where it comes from.
It's in there.
Sorry,
John Mitchinson: go ahead.
Written by an extraordinary, retired
clergyman, like many of the, the
reference books of the 19th century
were called Ebenezer Carbon Brewer.
And it is, it's a, it's an
absolute treasure tro It is so,
and a military history list.
And I was sort of basically given the
job of trying to make sense of all this,
which was, so I, I, I, I, again, that
was, we did a complete look at the brand
and what it represented, and I got very
excited in the history of, of Castle.
Castle had been, John Castle had been a
temperance campaigner from Manchester.
And he'd started with, he'd
started with, tea and coffee.
So the idea I think was let's keep
the, let's keep the working man's
hands full of anything other than beer.
and then he'd gone into newspapers
and magazines, and then he gone
into book publishing and in
fact, the castle's, library was.
Early prototype for what
became, would've become Penguin.
You know, the idea of doing
classics cheaply for working people.
And, and, and so I got quite interested
in this, the, the deeper story of Castle,
which had been lost over the years.
And within Castle they had Mrs.
Beaton and they had Ward Lock, they had
other old publishing companies that,
so it again, that kind of historical
digging deep into history to find
stories that illuminate the present.
It was a very exciting time.
And we, I was fortunate in that
I, the Weinfeld and Nicholson,
another distinguished English
Publisher's illustrated list,
had been thrown in with mine.
So we, in, I inherited a, a, some great
editors and a couple of amazing projects.
we had, I think acquired two books by
Triny and Susanna, who were, doing
a column call about telling people,
telling women what to wear, basically.
Very kind of a, and despite the
skepticism about that, I remember them.
Yeah, there were some, when I, when
I, when I met them, I thought, one day
you'll make television and you'll make,
you're gonna be, you are gonna be huge.
Which is more or less what happened.
Yeah.
And then also we had the lovely
Michael Palin, and he had come to
us from the b BBC because we had
undertaken to do his book on Hemingway.
Which he really was a passion
project for him, and he had
enjoyed that experience so much.
We got to do the next, the next
two big books with him, which were,
Sahara and Himalaya and Sahara.
I'd, I'd left Castle by the
time, Himalaya came out.
But Sahara was the only time I've ever
paid a million pounds for a, for a,
but it was, I think they earned it.
I mean, it was earned
back almost immediately.
But also that my other, my kind of, in
terms of ones publishing excitement,
that was the first Frankfurt I went to.
Castle, I should say, was
losing quite a lot of money.
Frank Festival.
Yeah.
So Frankfurt is a, is, is a,
is a book fair where you, we
go to buy and sell rights.
Really, it's not a place for the,
it's not a place for the uninitiated.
It's not a place for readers
or for writers to be honest.
It's where publishers go and try
and do business and is amazing.
And we're set up by George Weidenfeld
again in that after war period thinking,
you know, we need, we books are what
we need to bring the world together.
And some part of that
spirit still remained.
But I knew that we had lost a lot
of castles, losing a lot of money.
I'd had to, I'd had to restructure,
I'd had to make, to make quite a few
redundancies, but I knew that we needed
a big book and that was when I was.
Just by happenstance.
founder, an American publisher called
Chronicle, who had been given the rights
to publish the Beatles anthology, and
were looking for a British partner.
and I had assumed that they would
much more likely go to, to a, a
much bigger house than than we were.
but in fact, I think such was my passion
for the book and possibly my desperation.
but, that was, we did offer quite a
bit of, we offered up 300,000 pounds,
but it was, you know, people forget
it was a 35 pound book back in 2000,
and it was, it went to number one
and we sold half a million copies.
Pretty extraordinary.
and that, that was, that gave us,
that bought us a bit of time to do
other things and to it, you know, to
bring the, the, the Michael Palins on.
And, we, we started an amazing, under
the mentorship of Antony Cheatham,
who with Christopher is an, these,
these are two extraordinary publishers
that I've learned massively from.
But we reinvented the reference list.
I mean, the idea was to do reference,
I would now call it alt reference.
It's the idea of reference list
that's sort of written by human
beings rather than by faceless
panels of academics, which is where
reference publishing had come.
So there was.
The amazing dolling, kindly visual thing.
But I was trying to find people.
So I got, you know, we, we
were, we did Bri, we did a,
we'd expanded the Brewers Range.
We did Brewers Place names, we did
Brewers, which was sort of Bri,
British and Irish Place names.
And we did books of reference,
books of adventures.
We did, amazing kind of, people's,
places, nations, you know, the idea
of nobody knows which tribes live
where, you know, who, who are all these
people being mentioned in the Bible.
And we commissioned quite a
lot of very, very good people.
We did amazing timelines of British
history with, with, with a lot of
very, very good, great editorial team.
And that was, yeah, that was
a, I also did, I published,
Jonathan Green, the Great Slang
Lexicographer we had inherited.
And we did a book called The Big, the
Big Book of Filth, which was, you know,
you'd Love, which is just massive.
All the synonyms for various
parts of the human body.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you have a favorite?
John Mitchinson: That's too,
yeah, that's too, I mean, I think.
You say what you like.
Yeah, no, I think, I think it was,
there's something, I think the, the,
the, the idea of kidney brush for penis
was, was particularly kidney brush.
Exactly.
It's that moment of
incomprehension before.
Yeah.
Then the penny horribly drops.
Yeah.
It was, it what was as fascinating as
we discovered there were as many, oh,
you came up with that one as genius.
I mean, it was just, it was historical.
That's the thing that, and the, so
the idea was it was taking, it was
taking all the rude bits of, of this
extraordinary amazing work of reference.
I mean, one of the great reference
works of the 20th century.
If, if I was, if anybody was gonna
say, you know, surely one non person
now can't, can't actually run a, run
a, a serious, academic reference, but
then green's dictionary of, of slang.
It is one of the, it's one of the great
works and it's still available and I
think you can, you, you know, it's now
a huge three volume set, but I think
you can still get that maybe the, a
version of the Castle Slim Down version.
I don't think the big
book of filth lasted.
I think we're not gonna
run out and get it.
Well, we sold, I think we sold, we
sold, I made Jonathan Money, which his,
his actual academic stuff never did.
He made quite a bit of money in that.
So, We had a lot of fun.
And then you're gonna ask,
why did I stop doing that?
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you could have
played among the kidney brushes forever.
Yes.
What, why not?
What,
John Mitchinson: what happened was,
as is the want in publishing is Castle
and Orion were bought by Hash Hash,
this extraordinarily large business
owned by, which owns as well as
publishing, I think Laga own Hash
and own l and also make exo missiles.
It's the only, the French could come
up with this insane combination.
Rupert Isaacson: Hash actually
published me as well, that the
Horse Boys published by Hasher.
So one of their many subsidiaries.
John Mitchinson: Yeah.
So we had, castle was, , not yet
quite outta the woods, although
it would become very much outta
the woods the year after I left.
But it was on its way there and they
decided that they were acquiring as part
of, the, they were gonna quite octopus
publishing, which were a specialist.
Very, very good.
illustrated reference publisher, Mitchell
Beasley and various bits and pieces that,
so there was a bit of a clash there.
And they decided that what they were going
to do was, merge Octopus and Castle.
So Castle would become a kind
of an imprint of octopus and
the denfeld bits of the castle.
Were gonna go back to Weidenfeld Thelist,
which was, I mean, I, it was three, I
felt it was three years of work that
was now being brutally torn apart.
And I went and had lunch.
Anton and I used to have lunch at a
marvelous restaurant called Luigi's.
We'd have the same on a Thursday
and we'd have Ossa Buco, which was
very good, and a bottle of Hannah
now, which is a Sardinian wine.
And then we would go through all
the week's business together.
So we had one of these lunches and he's,
I said, this is, he said, well, look, you
can go and run Castle down in Heron Keys.
Which was like really long way
down the can, sort of Canary Wharf
down in the London and doesn't
know I live, I live in great shoe.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Which would've
been, adopt three hour,
three hour commute or so.
John Mitchinson: So, or he
said, you can go and be deputy
publisher of, of, of Denfeld.
Yeah.
So I said, well, deputy publisher
of anything sounds like a terrible
idea because you, if you remember
Anthony, you made me deputy group
publisher of the Orion group, but then
failed to tell any of my colleagues
is that, that that's what the job
you'd given me was so classic Chitum.
So we laughed and I decided no.
I said, what would I,
what, what if I left?
What, what could you get me?
I said, well, I could probably
get you a, I make you redundant,
give you a year's salary.
So I suddenly thought, you know what?
That doesn't sound like a bad idea.
I thought, I'm sure I'd
get a job very quickly.
And indeed, I was offered
very, very quickly.
I, I told the, the, the, the Uber
agent, ed Victor, that I was leaving,
and he just said Ed had done a, he
was very impressed with a couple of
the books that we were publishing.
We did a big, beautiful science,
it was called the Science Book.
And it was a timeline of the
most important things that had
happened in science with a really
big, beautiful illustrations.
And we, we were sort of, you know,
selling that for 25, 30 quid, I think.
And he'd loved this.
so he rang Victoria Barnsley, who
was then head of Harper Collins, and
I got called in for, an interview
and it, that turned out that they,
they offered me a, a big job.
What was the job they offered you?
They offered me the job of, they
were gonna start a new literary
division called Harper Press.
and they asked me if they,
if, if I wanted to do it.
Rupert Isaacson: And you said,
John Mitchinson: and I, I
said, yeah, sounds great.
And then, What happened was, I, by this
stage was, was obviously living in great
chew and enjoying the joys of that.
And, and this legendary character who
had lived in Great Chew, got married in
great ch and had not, but had not lived
there for a while, had suddenly moved
back into the village as man called
John Lloyd, who was famous as the early
collaborator with Douglas Adams, the
man who'd produced, not the nine o'clock
News and, black Adda and written one
of my favorite little books, which is
the meaning of Lift Lift Douglas Adams.
Rupert Isaacson: I just wanna
pause there for a second.
For anyone who's listening in the usa
a lot of you might know Black adda.
but if you don't know blackout,
you should go watch Black adda.
It's a TV series, but if you never knew,
not the nine o'clock News, which was
a classic British comedy inheritor of
Monty Python, from the eighties, go
look at that on YouTube too, because
it, it is a work of genius and only
Brits of a certain, generation now.
All right, back to you, John.
So you meet John Lloyd in the
pub, probably in, great two.
John Mitchinson: Yeah, well, John
and I got on very well, and that was,
and he kept telling me that he had
had this extraordinary idea, and
then wouldn't tell me what the idea
was, but said it was life changing.
and then we, I told him that I
was leaving Castle and that I was
gonna go to Harper Collins and
he said, I'm about to go skiing.
Please don't accept the
job until I get back.
Cause I think he said I might have got
money to do this thing that I'm doing.
So I said, well, okay, when are
you about two away for a week.
Anyway, we, when he got back, we
went and we did have a, in, in fact
a very, very long session in the pub.
And that was when he told me he wanted to
set, start a company that was dedicated
to Interestingness in all its forms.
So I said, okay, but
define Interestingness.
So he told me three stories, one of
which I'm sure, I'm sure I've told you
all of them in the one of which was
that when his son Harry was born, he
decided he was gonna read the whole
of Encyclopedia Botanica so that
he would be the best informed dad.
And he said it was so boring, so tedious.
He got to the fairly early on
to the, the thing on basketball.
And he said it was like, it was,
it was almost like the article
on basketball was constructed
to not make you want to read it.
And he said right in the
middle of all these, you know,
court dimensions and rules.
And there was this extraordinary story,
which was that, it had been invented
by a Canadian and called I think James
Naysmith, who was entering a competition
for a new sport for American high schools.
And he had, you know, been
sketching things out, ideas and was.
Scratching up bits of paper and
throwing them and, and, and, and,
you know, one of them went into the
basket and he suddenly had the eureka
moment, went out and nailed a couple
of peach baskets into the gymnasium.
And, basketball was born.
But that isn't the, that
isn't the qi bit of the story.
The qi bit of the story is that for
the first 21 years of basket's, woo's
existence, it never occurred to anybody
to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket.
So every time a basket was
scored, you had to get on a step
ladder and get the ball out.
So that
also as a stately
game, a stately program.
That was one story.
The other, other was,
ok, who have did the,
Rupert Isaacson: did the, did the
players have to carry ladders over
their shoulders as they dribbled?
Is that
John Mitchinson: what you dribble?
Okay, go ahead.
Sorry.
It's a kangaroo halve.
So I said, I don't know one.
No, it's three.
And he said, you know, how many, how many
David Attenborough documentaries, how
many natural world documentaries have
you watched where this extraordinary
fact is never even mentioned?
and it, it does turn out to be true.
And then the third one was, he said,
do you know what a tardigrade is?
And tardigrades are now big on the
internet, but back in 2000 and one, the,
the idea of these tiny little, water
bears, moss, bears these little six legged
creatures that are somewhere between
ana lids and insects that live on every
environment on earth and are able, the
extraordinary thing about them is that
they, if you dehydrate a tardigrade, it
can live in a state of suspended animation
for as long as a century and come back
to life with a single drop of water.
So they are, so anyway, I was kind of,
you can sort of see that this was already
chiming with the kind of reference books
that I was trying to do reference, you
know, the idea that that good, but good
communication, good storytelling is about
getting people's attention and telling
them things that they didn't know and
making the world feel, you know, like
a more interesting and wonderful place
because it is, if you look at anything
however dull, so one of the early, I
remember one of the early QI challenges
we used to get was, give me a name of
Your town, if you think it's the most
boring town in England, and we'll come
back with interesting things about it.
And I think somebody sent us
Chelmsford and we ended up doing,
you know, 20 pages of deep research
into Chelmsford, which made it sound
like, you know, frankly Venice.
So, yeah, that was, that was, and I'm
afraid, I remember going home and telling
Rachel, my wife, that I was going to.
I was gonna start a new business
with John Lloyd, and she said, but
how will you get anything done?
You'll just spend all day talking.
And I thought, yeah, I don't know.
But we, anyway, we did, and I think
there, the Qi TV show now is on,
it's somewhere past p it's on its
way to, to, to ending the alphabet.
And we did, I wrote and co-wrote
10, 10 qi books with John.
The first one.
The first one was sold over 2
million copies, was number one
on Amazon for six weeks and sold
in 30 languages across the world.
so yeah, so I then, that was my stint
as a, as a, as a brighter, and then,
well, hold on, hold on, hold on.
No, no.
Director of research.
Rupert Isaacson: So you, you,
you're about to take the big
paying job that's going to Yeah.
Also, you know, pay for your
kids education and feed them.
Then you go home and tell your
wife, sorry, I'm not gonna do that.
gonna, sit in the pub and talk to this
friend of mine who admittedly does do
interesting TV shows about interesting
stuff and hope to publish and make
TV shows about interesting stuff.
can you show us, I can see you
on Zoom, but our listeners can't,
but I can't see the dent in
your head where the frying pan.
Must have landed.
is it, have you, is it discreetly
on the back of your edit?
You still, you
John Mitchinson: still had, you still
had fax machines back in those days?
And I know, Rachel did actually
cry actual tears when that fact I
sent that fax through to Victoria
Parsley, and it is, it is sort of
true that I would've been earning
back in 2001 more than I'm still,
than I'm still managing to earn today.
So, but hey, we did, we made a, we
did make a bit, we made a bit of, we
had a nice, there was a nice period
where the book royalties more than
made up for my, that that was that.
And that did coincide with a period
when we were having, it was nice.
We were able to go three times with
the boys to New Zealand when they
were young enough to really enjoy it.
but yeah, I mean, I would broadly say
that for any of your listeners who are
thinking about a career in, in books
and publishing, i, I, if, if money
is your number one priority, it's
probably not the right industry for you.
So let me
Rupert Isaacson: ask you a question here,
because people will be listening to it
and, when you say things work well.
Well, I paid this million pound,
price for Michael Palin's book
back in the days when a million was
worth a lot more than it is now.
And there you are making a TV
show, called qi, which is still
running, hosted by Steven Fry.
It's a big machine internationally.
Everybody knows that
television is well paid.
Everyone thinks about royalties and so on.
So, Now you're gonna burst our bubble.
If you are, if you are, paying these
million pound, book advances and
you are helping to get a amazing TV
machine and publishing machine like Qi
going and, you are not sitting there
now as a privately wealthy English
Square multimillionaire from, why not?
Why the fuck not?
What happened?
Why, why it This is, this is cuz
we want to live free, ride free.
So Sure.
Why does that money not go to you?
John Mitchinson: well
some, so what bits of it?
But yeah, some of it does.
I possibly, I mean, I think there was
a, I mean there were specific reasons.
I think this, I think with Qi, I had
come to the, I mean, I still, you know,
John and I still very good friends
and, the books, as I say, still make
small amounts of royalty for the books.
But I think there must be, there
must be something in me that
requires a degree of freedom.
I mean, I'm, I now, I mean, 10 years
ago, 12 years ago, started Unbound on
the, I I hadn't really wanted to start
it, but two friends of mine had said
something has to happen about publishing.
And I'd said, you're right.
I, I left publishing actually by this,
the time I left publishing, I was, I,
I was fed up with it, fed up with all
the, The, the, the the, as I think I,
I once said, it sort of has bad karma
publishing a lot of people saying no to
each other all the time about everything.
but so the idea of using, I'd become
aware in that period, which was I
suppose 2008, 2007, 2008, it'd been
hanging around with a lot of the
Web two zero people in, in London.
And I've become just aware of the launch
of a thing called Kickstarter, which was
seemed to me quite interesting, which
was to get, go directly to, to people
to fund interesting creative projects.
And it seemed to me, I knew somebody
who'd got a book, a terrible book
by the way, funded on Kickstarter.
And he was ringing me up saying, can you
tell me where I could get it printed?
Cuz obviously the thing with
Kickstarter is you have to do
all the fulfillment yourself.
I thought this is stupid.
What, what we really need is you,
you want to, you know, you want
to set up a publishing house that
uses crowdfunding, but that also
offers all the other services.
You know, editorial marketing, sales
gets books into bookshops cuz that's
in the end where they will sell.
So that's how Unbound started.
And I, as I said, I was slightly
reluctant to, you know, I was at that
stage, QI was ticking along quite nicely.
I was writing on the shows, the books
were still, I still working on the
books, but suddenly this new idea
presented itself and it was obvious
to me that my experience was pretty
essential if it was gonna work.
So, Spent two years not
getting really paid.
And then at a certain point I was able
to pay myself a small salary and I've
been mostly doing Unbound ever since.
Rupert Isaacson: And now on.
Okay, so This's, you didn't
answer our question earlier.
No, I'm coming back.
Why you, okay.
So why, why are you, are you, why are
you not the you is the, is the wider
people within the publishing world?
Well, I mean, why the publishers and
the people working in publishing, not
making the sort of money that you would
expect them to if they're paying million
pound book advances here and there.
Oh, I
John Mitchinson: think, I think
I would be making a lot, if I'd
stayed in tradi in, in traditional
publishing, I'd be making a, I'd be on
a, but you know, I'd be on a salary.
Mm-hmm.
I'd be on a good salary.
I'd be on a big bonus probably, but
I would've ultimately not be free.
I would be having to publish the kind
of books that, and I, I think I'd
already demonstrated that I didn't
really, I wasn't very good at that.
I was always interested in
trying to, to find stuff.
I was always really, I cared
more about literary quality
than, than commercial success.
Sometimes when I, when I, you know,
when I, when I, you know, like The
Beatles or with, with some of the
other, or with the, well, like, well,
my own book, you know, with the,
with a book of general ignorance.
I think I've got, it's not that I don't
think I have good commercial instincts.
I just think I have a very,
very low boredom threshold.
So I want the books to be both.
Good and commercially successful.
And if they're good and not commercially
successful, I can live with that
more easily than just working in a
sausage factory churning out big name
thriller after big name thriller.
So it's my own particular reasons for
why I'm not more in independently wealthy
are probably to do with, that's probably
more, that's probably a longer show to
do with who I am and where I come from
and how I never really grew up with
anybody who had ever had any money.
So I've never really indeed, but
Rupert Isaacson: I But it's not just you.
I mean, I think, I think No, as you
said, people in general in publishing
don't, do not get paid that well,
despite the fact that it's an industry
that generates a lot of money.
John Mitchinson: The senior people,
the people of my generation who
stayed in big jobs in pub, if I'd
stayed in Harper Collins and assumed,
let's assume I hadn't gone mad.
If I, I, I would be now earning, I'd be
earning a, you know, perfectly comfortable
salary to, to me know, I would own my own
house and I would be, I'd be living a,
I'd probably be contemplating retirement.
but I'm not, and I, you know, I think
that, I think independent publishers,
it's much more of a struggle.
It is just much more of a struggle
cuz you're trying to, you know,
you're, by definition, unless you
get an amazing hit, which, you know,
luckily with Unbound, I've had enough
amazing hits over the last 12 years to
mean that we not only have survived,
but thrive and now make a profit.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So, and I still, you may
contemplate retirement.
Sorry.
You may yet contemplate retirement.
John Mitchinson: Well, the only, if
I, if you're gonna ask me, do I, you
know, which you haven't, but let's
assume that you would what for us?
What, what is the, what other things
that you feel that you haven't done?
I mean, the, the only thing I think
now, which I said to you in the pub the
other day, which I feel I have got to,
it's the one thing I need to fulfill.
Um, and I can, I can rest easy is
I've never, I've never published a
book of my own under my own names
and I'm a good, I know, I think that
is because I am good collaborator.
I mean, I enjoy, you know, I love the,
the other thing that I've done in the
last six, seven years is to, is to launch
a, the back listed podcast, which is,
it brought me a huge amount of joy.
So
Rupert Isaacson: please tell us about
that because, so you've done the
last 10 years of this unbound Yeah.
Uh, crowd.
John Mitchinson: I've
published some amazing
Rupert Isaacson: books and we've
watched some of the books that you've
done and they're extraordinary.
For the listeners, go and
check out Unbound Publishing.
It's.
Full of phenomenal stuff that wouldn't
have gotten published anywhere else.
John has published these books and
then absolutely caucus, but okay,
so, but then you, you've started
this podcast called Backlist, which
has taken life of his back listed
John Mitchinson: is, is, an idea I
had with a, an old waterstones friend,
Andy Miller, who had written, I'd seen
him do a sh a a great, he has a book
called The Year of Reading Dangerously
where he, he set himself a, a task of
reading 50 great novels in a year, as he
says, 50 great novels and two bad ones.
One of the bad ones was
Dan Browns Ta Vinci Coat.
But, it's very, very
funny, but also very clever.
Very, and I had, I had had
independently the idea that why
was the no John Peel for books?
Why was the nobody
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us again,
not everyone knows John Peel
John Mitchinson: because John was, John
Peel was legend, legendary English dj.
He used to play late night, kind
of two hours late night most nights
and many of the most interesting
bands of the last 30, 40 years Yeah.
Were 50 years even were
discovered on his show.
So he was a kind of, taste maker and it
seemed to me that, that most of what was.
Wrong with publishing was that there
were very few places that you could
go cuz literary, literary reviews
were getting smaller in newspapers.
And it just seemed to me that there was
scope to do something where you had really
intelligent conversation about books.
But that the trick would be not
cuz nobody is really, really, yeah.
People like, sort of, people do like
to talk about what I've discovered
interviewing authors over the years is
if you talk to an author about their own
work, they're often quite re reticent
or sometimes just not very interesting.
If you talk to them about other people,
other contemporaries work, they're
usually not very forthcoming because
they either haven't read it or don't want
to, don't even want to contemplate it.
But you ask them to talk about a book that
meant something to them when they were,
when they were growing up, or that they
were, that that's, that that's been a
load stone for them in their own writing.
And you get an extra, you know,
you barely have to do anything.
You just get an extraordinary hour
of, of the kind of intense, engaged,
intelligent conversation, which I think
we all enjoy having late night over
a bottle of whiskey or you know, when
we're, when we're meeting old friends
again who haven't seen for ages.
So that was the idea and seeing
Andy doing his little talk, which
was called Read Yourself Fitter.
I said, do you fancy doing
a pilot for a podcast?
I've had this idea and we, so we did it.
And then again with the first book we did
was a beautiful book by JL Car called A
Month in the Country, which is as close to
perfection, I think as a small novel gets,
and we had more or less the formula from
day one and we've now done 188 episodes.
and , we've been on sabbatical since
Christmas, so the new bat listed episode
on Graham Green, there are no guests.
We normally invite guests and we
get guests to choose the books, but
we have had over nearly seven years
of doing the podcast, Graham Green
has probably been the writer that's
been most requested by listeners.
and we are both Graham Green
fans, Andy in particular.
So we decided, we just did
it with our producer, Nikki.
but that's the first of a new series and
we, they come out fortnightly and we ask,
as I say, we get interesting guests on
to choose a book that they love, and.
It's, it's, it's, it's that simple.
But it's, it's, yeah, we
get, we get big audience now.
We have a Patreon, which
actually is starting to make
us quite nice money each month.
So it's also, you know what podcasting's
like, it's, it's just fun to do.
Fun to do and easy to do.
it's a lot of preparation doing,
cuz we have to do a lot of reading.
I mean, we thought blithely
when we started it.
Hey, we are well-read.
Most of the books will have read already.
I would say about one in
seven we've read already.
I mean the, what people choose.
But it just means that we've been in
the most incredible reading journal.
I've read all sorts of things
I would never have read.
and it what stands out?
Rupert Isaacson: What stands
out as one that you would
never have read that has been
John Mitchinson: Revelator?
Okay.
There's, ones that I
would never have read.
I pr I'm, I'm not sure I would've,
I would've read the English novelist
Elizabeth Taylor, published by Vago
or the Elizabeth Jenkins, the Tortoise
in the Hair that Carmen Khalil,
the great founder of vgo, came on
as our guest to talk to me about.
And the, the, the, the Soul of Kindness
by Elizabeth Taylor and the, the Tortoise
in the Hair by Elizabeth Jenkins,
both novels of the 1950s written by
women because of the ridiculous way in
which literature is taught, those are
books that men of my generation might
easily not have, not not have read.
and there indeed there are a
lot we do have done a lot of.
Are these, are these books we
should, we should all have read?
Yeah.
I mean if you're, if you interested,
ask quickly about those two.
I mean, they're both, they're both,
they're both basically, portrait,
it may sound like both one of
them are set in a small town.
Elizabeth Taylor, one set in, in,
in a, in a village, outside London.
And, and both set in the 1950s,
both with, complicated emotional
relationships at their heart.
And they are just immaculately
beautifully written.
It's the, the small detail.
It's the, the, the, the surprising
kind of character interactions.
I reme.
Yeah.
There's, there are other writers.
Barbara Cummins, amazing writer, the vet's
daughter, lolly Willows by Sylvia Warner.
A lot of the, I I now see 20th century
literature as being very different cuz
I've ended up reading Muriel Spark.
I, I, in fact, I had to slow down on
Muriel Spark cuz her books are so good.
I don't want to run outta them.
Anita Brook.
Now another amazing that.
So at the same time doing Alan Garner
and Susan Cooper and doing, Both of whom
Rupert Isaacson: are, are, are sort of
John Mitchinson: classic, yeah.
I mean, fantasy English, fantasy English
Rupert Isaacson: mythology
John Mitchinson: writers for children.
Yeah.
I mean, as, as the stuff which I would
feel as, and, and, and obviously I've
mentioned before, will the work of
William Maxwell doing those books, all
of those books that you would, I would
naturally have seen as, as, as part of
the, the stuff that I read and enjoy.
I've, I, there's a lot of other stuff
that I've, I've encountered, that,
that, that I, and I, I would say that
the absolute moment for me with back
listed that that is, it's not always
obscure books or relatively obscure books.
We did great expectations and one of the
reasons I wanted to do that was because
I'd, I'd read it last as a child, you
know, as an 18, 19 year old for my degree.
And I've, I'd always loved
that book and been terrified
by the film a David Lean film.
And then I read it in my early fifties
and I suddenly realized, oh my God,
this is a book about disappointment.
the clues in the title, it's about your
life not turning out how you expect it to.
And no young person is gonna
understand what Dickins was
trying to do with that book.
Yeah.
So it's, it's, it's that.
That thing of how great books live
with you and you, you know, you go
back to them and re-read them and
find more in them each time you go
back to them, which is a sort of
definition of what literature is for me.
Mm.
A book that's that you get more
out of the fourth time you read it.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I would say that about Lord of the
Rings as well, by the way, just
keeping my talking theme going.
And the Shire
Rupert Isaacson: where you are now
sitting telling us about these books.
John Mitchinson: I'm not,
I'm in Pembrokeshire.
Oh, you
Rupert Isaacson: are?
Okay.
Ah, you're, that's another
version of the Shire that Sure.
John Mitchinson: Yeah.
It's, it's the Shire by the Sea.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Shire on Sea.
So with back listed, you've got
really a coming together Yeah.
Of this whole story where you,
you've been gathering and enabling
stories your whole life and including
living in the place of story.
And now here you are both
enabling and creating story.
You've done Qi the book of general
ignorance, by the way, for everyone
who's listening, you should go
and, and read it should sit in
everyone's toilet, sits in my toilet.
It's the thing that you sit down,
you open it at random and it's
gonna be really, really interesting.
Are you gonna actually people
John Mitchinson: banging on the door?
And also, can I say, if you, if the
one of those books if you're reading
the, the Book of the Dead, it's
probably not the best title, but the,
the, the, the Qi Book of the Dead,
which is 69 lives thematically linked.
There's a, there's a chapter
in there about people who
kept monkeys, for example.
But you know, the first chapter
is about, about people who had
either absent or complicated
relationships with their fathers.
But it, I think that's probably the most
ambitious of the Qi books that we did.
The animal book is very good, but yeah,
but I mean, the, the first, the first
one always has a sort of, an affection,
not least because it's so, it was so
successful, but it's, it's, it's very,
it's very amusing now when I interview
people for jobs who are in their twenties
or thirties and they kind of all grew up.
It's like my own children, you
know, they all grew up with Qi.
Qi is now part of the culture.
It's part of the, it's part of the
cultural furniture of a lot of, a lot
of, younger people, which, you know,
in the long run, if one's looking back
on one's life, that's, that's a, that's
a really exciting and happy thing
to have been able to, to, to create.
and it, you know, the, the, the, the
little me that used to sit at in the
Northeast reading children's Britanica
kind of finding out interesting facts
about birds, it's been wonderful to be
able to turn that into something that's.
That's both been successful also, but
I think culture we've made often people
say to me, you made being a geek cool.
You know, QI helped make, make
people who were intelligent and
interested in things, kind of, and
not feel like they were weirdos.
So that's, that's, that's
a nice thing to think.
So now you
Rupert Isaacson: are,
you are looking ahead.
this is, this is, this is livery
ripe, and, and you don't have the,
either the personality type nor
the luxury of saying, well, now I'm
contemplating with my retirement.
But also what would you do
in your retirement other than
do exactly what you're doing?
I,
John Mitchinson: I, and more, I have no, I
have no use for the concept of retirement.
I
Rupert Isaacson: can't
understand it myself.
John Mitchinson: No more time, more
time for, more time for reading.
And I, I feel I've gathered together
so much of, so many stories about
the village, and I would love to
try and weave all of that into
something, that would be meaningful.
So, I mean, I, I feel that's my, if
people say what's, what's what, what,
what unfinished business do you have?
That's definitely, that definitely
feels like unfinished business.
And how, a bit more time John Mitchinson.
Rupert Isaacson: I can see it,
I can see the series, I can see
the, the Downton Abbey, natural
inheritance of, but over generations
and generations in different eons.
Perhaps starting Cree.
No.
This we have not touched on, by the
way, is your, is your deep knowledge of
the LA English landscape, its history
and its mythology and its pre-history.
John Mitchinson: Yeah, I think that's,
that's the stuff that really, I, I,
when we was talking about the authors
that I published at Harville, Rachel
and I were really thrilled one day
we were kind of, an email came around
saying, would you, would anybody in
from this is in Christopher's voice?
Would anybody be interested in reading
the adult, an adult novel by Alan Garner?
And I think Rachel's reply minor, right?
Almost simultaneously
with kind of like, yes.
And, that started a, a relationship
that we both had with Alan and his
wife Zelda, which has been, and
now with his daughter Elizabeth.
And that's been one of the most
nourishing and happy, publishing stories.
We, we published Alan's book, strand
Lo, Oprah, and then Thurs Bitch.
And he is, if you are, I mean, he's
a very, very tough model because
what he does is so remarkable.
And he's lived in the, literally in the
same place for 60 odd years and cataloged
every pot shirt, every kind of, every
find, every, every, everything that's
come out of the, the ground on that
extraordinary site up in Cheshire for.
And his way of distilling all
that down into something that is
beautiful and, and meaningful.
And again, like I say, like a
almost impossible to work out
how so much has been compressed
into so little, so few words.
His, his late latest book, by the way, Ru,
you've Not Read Trickle Walker, which was,
shortlisted for the Booker Prize loss.
He's the oldest person at 88 to
be shortlisted for the Booker
Prize, but that might be, well,
I think it is his masterpiece.
Oh, trickle Walker, which is Alan Garner.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's pretty, pretty extraordinary.
There is a whole bat listed on it if
you want some background, but he, yeah,
I mean, I think for Rocha and I, that
was, that was, that remains one of the
great, and it's, it was, he was very
instrumental at the time we moved to
Chew and in kind of, in kind of making
that sea seem like the right thing for
us to do, which it undoubtedly has been,
I mean, as a, I think we've said it's
living in one place f for a long time
isn't, is, will always have, its, its.
It's, it's issues, but it's, and you
know, the village as well as anybody.
It's not, it's not quite as
relaxing and, and, and quaint
and, as people might think.
It's, it's, there's a
ferocity about it as well.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
As a quick aside, for the, for
those listeners, if you ever go
to visit Great two in the uk, it
is possibly the most picturesque.
If it's not the most picturesque,
it's up there in the top 10,
however, and it has a legendary pub.
And this pub is called the Falkland
Arms, which hasn't really changed inside
and that much since the 17th century.
And you can still get a clay pipe
stuffed with tobacco over the
counter, and yet, yes, and it's
full of bonami and good cheer.
And as John says, it's, well,
how would you, how would you
describe as you said this
John Mitchinson: ferocity?
This?
Yeah.
I think it's, I don't know.
I think I, I think some places, some
places have a, the, the membrane
is thin and chew is one of those
places, and I think there is, there's
something occult almost about it.
There is, yeah.
And you know, it's ha there's there
the, the, that energy can, can, can draw
people into addictive behavior and, and
you know, there's, there are, there are,
there are lots of, there are lots of
bad two stories as well as good ones.
Mm-hmm.
and, and people who've come
and who's who've, who've not
been able to cope with it.
And.
But you know, it all, all of that makes
only just make, for me at least, it
makes it more interesting, I suppose.
Yes.
Human,
Rupert Isaacson: human and yet
sort of pre-human and superhuman.
There's, there's a, there's a scan to
your work, John, too, which is always at
the supernatural, is floating around the
edges and sometimes running through, a
lot of the books you've recommended to me.
a lot of the, you know, we talked about
the Master of Margarita and mm-hmm.
One of the greatest works of magical
realism and obviously by night under the
Stone Bridge, but some of my most treasure
of memories are walking with you over the
Oxfordshire landscape to the roll, right.
Standing Stones and some of the other
megaliths, and listening to you explain
and recount the stories of those
places in the myths of those places.
I do feel that we would all be richer,
if you would put together a book
that takes us through that landscape.
and yeah, because you have delved into
it so deeply while remaining so involved
in the, in the world in general, but.
Always bring it back to this, this one
landscape in this heart of England.
when are you gonna do that?
When
John Mitchinson: do we get to read it?
it's a good question.
I mean, I mean I've, I've, I've, I've
probably, I've probably got to, I've
got to assign some, some time to it.
I think the, the interesting thing for me
is that you are, what you you're saying is
right, that the, I'm fascinated by places.
And two is one of the most fascinating
that, that, like I say, they just seem
to have that liminal quality where
you feel that you are on a boundary
between one thing and another thing.
And that, that, as I say that,
that that, that the membrane
seems particularly thin there.
and trying to, trying to capture that
in words and trying to make sense
of that, trying to make sense of the
fact that, which again, a so brilliant
called Walker that time is, is, I'm
not saying it's exactly an illusion,
but it isn't what we think it is.
It isn't a, that, that, that the idea
of the present past and and future are
so intimately connected that the, you
know, the, the past is, as Fama famously
said, is not even past, you know, it's,
it's, it's, it's, it's still there.
The stuff is still there.
I mean, corporally and physically in the
form that we are, we may not be able to.
You know, it's not like we can shake
hands with Lucy's Carey, but the, the
extraordinary fact that the, the every
spring, you know, we just in spring in
England and it's, it's that feeling of
how is it that this happens every year?
This renewal happens every year
and has happened every year for,
for a, for a very, very long time.
You know?
it's, it's trying, trying to, trying to
find a way of, of capturing that, I think.
And as you say, preserving
some of those stories.
Cuz I think some of the stories, both,
you know, the very old ones, but also
the ones that have come, come up in
the last 50 ye or a hundred years of
people who lived and worked the land
and gone mad or, you know, there's an
extraordinary sequence of stories about
her, about, a vicar and great shoe
went insane, or they say went insane.
I'm not, again, I think that's, those
are always interesting when people
have described as being in insane, it's
probably not what we think of as, you
know, being carted off in a straight
jacket, it probably just massively
eccentric or maybe in touch with something
deeper or maybe in touch with something,
you know, that was, was terrifying
and made him, or maybe just depressed.
maybe just, you know,
very, very, very depressed.
So all of those, it's interesting
to me that, that, that, that, that.
These places that appear insignificant
if you just, or, or you know, that thing
when you're, when you're traveling and
you are, you are aware that a place has an
atmosphere, but it's incredibly difficult
to pin down what that is and why that is.
And I don't know, you know, I've come to
the conclusion it doesn't really matter
whether there is something imminent
in the land, that sentient landscape
idea, or whether it's your projections
between the two, something is happening.
and I guess that's one of the things as
I get older, I feel, I feel it's, it's,
it's realizing that they're not being
explicit is almost as important as being
able to try and define things precisely.
That, that, yeah, the sort of end, endless
potentiality of the human imagination.
Great literature, the great literature
doesn't contain a series of messages
on how you should live your life.
It just gives you a
sense of the complexity.
And I dunno, I think it, it's, it's
that latent negative capability, as
Keith used to call it, is so important.
And that's, that's kind of what
keeps us going back to things, the
non-res resolved as aspects of it.
Mm-hmm.
I'm, I think I'm, I think as I get
older, I'm, I'm less interested.
I think there was a period where
I was quite arrogant about, oh,
I've, I've sorted my stuff out.
and I think, yeah, well be careful.
Be careful of boasting about that.
Right?
Sure.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Well, Presumably as long as we are
breathing, there's always stuff,
John Mitchinson: as the, as the,
the proverb that I think is, I can't
remember what it's maybe Persian
proverb that we have as the, as the
main proverb at the beginning of the
Book of the Dead is he was not dead.
Still has a chance.
And I, I'm, I'm really happy
to have that, have that as my,
as above my door as it were.
Rupert Isaacson: although maybe the
dead will say actually no chaps,
it's just much better over here.
Yeah.
You, you, that was alling up.
John Mitchinson: Yeah, I think, I
think, I think the other great thing
that was always one of my favorites
at Qi was, and this is from Neil's
ball, the great Danish physicist.
He said The opposite of a
trivial truth is a falsehood.
But he said the opposite of
a great truth is also true.
And I think that thing of that
possibility of two true things, Sims
happening simultaneously feels to me
like how whatever the universe is spun
out of, that's what it's spun out of.
Paradox.
It isn't spun out.
It isn't spun out of digital zero one.
No, true false.
It's spun out of the coexistence
of two, of two true things.
It's very true.
All, all not to exist in
the same space, but do
Rupert Isaacson: ambivalence.
Everything is the, is
the opposite of itself.
John Mitchinson: Well, he used to
say, I mean, he has, there's a story
about him, but a boar is that he had
a horseshoe on his, on his wall.
And a student said, but professor
bor as a, as a man of science,
surely you, you don't believe in it.
And he says, no, but I understand it
brings you luck whether you do or not.
That's kind of, that's,
that's my kind of story.
Ah, well,
Rupert Isaacson: John, long may you
continue to live free and ride free and
long May the, rest of us benefit from it.
for those of us who've ever bought a book
at Waterstones, for those of us who've
ever read one of those books that you
published at Harvard, for any of us who
looked at Michael Palin's stuff as he was
traveling, or any of us who, enjoyed.
Reading the Qi books, and watching
the TV show for any of us now, , that
are reading the books that you are
publishing in Unbound, which are
extraordinary to any of us that are
listening to the back listed podcast.
You are one of those people
I feel, who, what is it?
It's, you know, the Marcus Aurelius.
I can never remember.
It's Marcus Aurelius quote, or Epic
Titus, either of those Great stokes
you said you must be as the vine.
You know, that you, you, you
produce the fruit and the people
and the animals pluck it off.
And it doesn't matter whether
they cut you or burn you or you
thrive, you are as the vine.
You just keep producing,
what nourishes everybody.
And that's
John Mitchinson: you, John.
Well, I, we, I dunno.
I that's very, very
nice of you to say that.
I mean, I, I think the, I think the, if
there is any kind of theme through these
ramblings, it is in the end that I'm,
I'm, again, another quote that I love
is that EB White, the great, author
of, Charlotte's Web and also wit one
of the, sort of the Algonquin round
table wits or said, he said, I wake
up every day with two things in mind.
He said, I wanna change the world and
I want to have a hell of a good time.
He said, sometimes that makes
planning my day quite difficult.
I think that, you know, the, as I said
earlier, that maybe the low boredom
threshold it might have that might
have interfered at times with the, the,
the getting and gathering of wealth,
which is a very important thing.
You know, it's important
to be, it's important to be
able to, to, to live without,
without, without fear if you can.
At the same time, you know, again,
reaching for the, for the athe jar,
you know, I don't think you achieve
much within your comfort zone.
I think generally when people are, are
trying to push themselves and to do,
to do different and challenging things,
they, they, they do, you know, they
do, they do achieve remarkable things.
And I, the things I've done, I suppose
I, part, part of the thing I like to,
to do is to have, as you know, I like,
like people around me to be happy.
sometimes my, my behavior makes
that less, less, less likely than
it, it probably ought to, but in
general, I think it's, it's, yeah.
When you, when you go through the
things that I suppose I've worked
on, it does seem like a, yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm very proud of what I've
managed to achieve, and I'm still restless
and still want to do other things.
Mm-hmm.
There are still, I'm, I was saying,
I think I was saying to you the other
day, I'm still, I get those things
that cities I've not visited who,
which I was thought I would, and just
when you get into the age that you're,
I'm gonna have to make a plan and go
to the foothills of the Himalayas.
I'm gonna, I need to see ess before I die.
well,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
What is, what is, what is the bucket list?
S I
John Mitchinson: mean, to be honest,
I'm, I, you know what, I'm, I'm trying
to, I, I feel baffled that I've never
managed to go, as somebody who has
always felt that when I was a kid, I
used to stand at the end of Roe and
look across and think of the fields.
I'm amazed I've never been to Scandinavia.
It turns out that there weren't
fields at the other side of,
of, of the, of the North Sea.
They were just sort of
Danish sandbank, but Yeah.
Right on, on
Rupert Isaacson: their,
John Mitchinson: on
your way to the fields.
Yeah.
Yeah.
we've, Rachel and I have attempted
to go to Venice at least three
times, and we've always been foiled,
so we ought to, ought to do that
before we, the u the usual stuff.
we often have that.
Rachel often says if she went to
sub-Saharan Africa, she'd never leave.
she sort of terrifies her that
she'd fall in love with it so much.
She, she should never be able
to leave it, but we'll see.
We've, I've, you know, have spent
an inordinate amount of time in
New Zealand and by extension in
the, in, we love going to Roton,
the Cook Islands, as you know.
So I've seen a lot of places, but the
Rupert Isaacson: world, the listeners,
John is the only man I know who's
actually stood on a stone fish
and, and did indeed almost die.
And, only ajo.
You guys also dunno, John physically
John is a mountain, which makes
him very difficult to keep up with
when you're drinking with him.
but he has an, a physical resilience,
that I don't know if anyone
else had stood on a stone fish.
John, how long were you
in hospital after that?
John Mitchinson: It was, it
was, to be honest, it wasn't.
I was, it was only, half
a day in, in the hospital.
The problem was, it was the, the, the
wound got infected and I had to, by the
time we got back to New Zealand, I had
to have a massive dose of antibiotics.
But, yeah, were, they were
talking about revenge, right?
We, I took the boys, we, we, we were
flying back from, from New Zealand.
It was the stone fish was
Roro Toma in the Cook Islands.
And then we were flying back to, through
Hong Kong and we found a restaurant
that specialized in stone fish.
So we had stone fish three ways, which
the boys were, they just thought this
was the best bit of revenge ever.
So they
Rupert Isaacson: sometimes
when is mitigated
John Mitchinson: or, yes.
Well this has been very, thank you so
much, Rupert, for this chance to, to.
To meander through my life.
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's
been an absolute delight.
and what I want to come across from this
is that really the listeners, if you,
if you have a chance to touch any of
these, touch any of these parts of John,
if you, if you get a chance to, to touch
charge on in these ways, check out this
legacy that he has of Qi the books,
the show currently with, Unbound and
check out back listed the, the podcast.
Because what all will happen is
this, in the, is you will, you
will, you'll just discover, treat
after treat after treat after treat.
fulfilling experience after
fulfilling experience.
Great.
Read after Great.
Read Belly laugh after belly laugh.
pleasure upon pleasure.
so John, , thank you so much.
Is there any parting word that you
would like to give or are there
also links that we should know?
,
John Mitchinson: no, I think I would
say, I would say that the do, I mean
blacklisted in, in many ways has,
has the best of me and there are
many, many hours of, of, of that.
, by means do subscribe to to bat listed
cuz that I think probably has the best of
me and lots and hundreds of hours of it.
And also Pat on our patron, you can,
if you subscribe, you get a two extra
podcast a month, which we call lock listed
cuz we started them to cheer ourselves
up as in, in lockdown where we talk
about books and films and music as well.
Stuff that we've enjoyed in last year.
It sets, me and Andy are my
co-host and Nikki are producer.
that's different.
And we play, we get, because
it's not, it's not public.
We get to play.
We get to choose music
on there, which is fun.
And how do they find
Rupert Isaacson: lock listed?
What
John Mitchinson: do they need to do?
Uh, you just go on ww.patron.com/back
listed and you'll find Yeah you
can subscribe at various levels.
Do
Rupert Isaacson: www.patreon.com/back
John Mitchinson: listed?
Yep.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
You heard it everybody.
go enjoy yourselves cuz you have an
enormous amount of fun waiting for you.
and that seems to me to be the hope.
Purpose really of the whole thing.
I, I've always thought that fun is
the great underestimated human virtue.
John Mitchinson: That is Absolutely.
you know, I think you are, I've, I,
it's funny, I just, I just gr found
that great, , mark, it's Marcus Aurelius
b like a vine that produces grapes
without looking for anything in return.
And I was gonna say, that's my, if,
if I had anything to live under,
that's probably, that probably Is
it actually ru It's just, yeah.
Well that's, you keep, keep,
keep making those grapes people.
All right.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm off to,
I'm off to squish the VA with my
bare feet and enjoy the process.
Till next time, John.
Okay.
Can we have you on again?
Yeah.
Lets So things,
John Mitchinson: we'd love to talk more.
We can pick up other stuff.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Books,
Rupert Isaacson: mythology.
Yeah.
All of it.
Alright then.
Till next time, lots of love.
And enjoy.
John Mitchinson: Bye-bye.
Bye bye.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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