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Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who

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have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they

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got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.

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How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,

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and most importantly, find joy.

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I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.

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New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.

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Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.

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You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.

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Welcome back to Live Free Ride Free,
where we talk to people who lead lives

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of self-determination and fulfillment,
and we find out how they got there.

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and as you know, the way in which we
define this fulfillment, this live

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free, ride free can be many things.

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It can be money, it can be art, it
can be simply doing what you love.

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It can be all of the above.

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It can simply also be life
as an art form in itself.

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What is fulfillment?

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What is the nature of living
life on your own terms with this

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degree of self-determination
that we all have as our ideal?

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So today I've got the amazing
John Mitchinson,  John Mitchinson.

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It might be someone who's known to you
without you knowing that he's known to

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you because he's one of these shadowy
behind the scenes sort of chaps,

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unless you happen to meet him in a bar.

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And then, he's, not
behind the scenes at all.

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he'll be,  very jolly and probably
buying you lots of drinks.

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John I first met in the early
nineties,  when he was my publisher,

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and we became great friends.

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And he was then working for a small
boutique publisher in London called

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Harville, which produced really, really
good,  additions of books that sort

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of other people didn't really publish.

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And,  I would say that most of the
books that I consider, the best books

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I've read since I became an adult were
recommended to me by John Mitchinson.

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So we're gonna go into
this a little bit today.

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And he then became publisher
in larger companies.

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Larger companies, larger companies.

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And then he did something rather unusual.

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Which he's gonna tell us about.

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He took a side step and began
to pursue his interests.

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And one of those interests.

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Many of you may know the TV show on
both sides of the Atlantic called Qi.

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Quite interesting,
presented by Stephen Fry.

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Well, that's a, a John Mitchinson idea.

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And,  there's other things as well,
including his, his current,  mo in the

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publishing world,  which is Unbound,
a return to subscription publishing,

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which has been wildly successful.

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John, however, is not an ostentatious
guy who walks around saying, look at me.

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I'm so successful.

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If you were to meet him in his home
village in the pub at Great two in

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Oxfordshire, you would simply be
overwhelmed by his warmth, charm,

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and just all round sweetness.

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Yet he's one of the most effective
human beings I have ever met.

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Not to mention one of the
kindest and most intelligent.

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So that's the intro, John.

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You've gotta live up to it now.

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I

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John Mitchinson: was gonna say,
it's gonna be downhill from here

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for your listeners, I'm afraid.

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Rupert Isaacson: Well, you know,
at least we're not in the pub.

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John Mitchinson: Very, very, very nice,
very kind of you to, to introduce me.

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So,

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Rupert Isaacson: well,
it's only the truth, John.

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so I want you to tell us who
you are, where you came from.

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Where were you born and how did you
get on the road to where you are now?

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John Mitchinson: Ah, okay.

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Well, I think most people, I dunno.

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I, I guess there are people who have
a life plan and kind of, latch onto

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something very early and,  and end up
doing, end up doing the thing that they

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feel that they were destined to do.

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I'm not sure my life's
ever been quite like that.

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In fact, there's only one thing that
I would say that's really been a, a,

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a kind of a a through line through
all the activity,  that I've,  engaged

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in and what we have to now as I
about, I'm about to turn 60, you kind

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of have to call it your life now.

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You know, it's beginning to have
it, it, it certainly had a beginning

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and it certainly had a medal.

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And at some point, increasingly, one
gets the sense that it will have an end.

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So,  so the, the through line for me
has always been, I guess primarily

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reading and as a consequence of reading.

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Then books that kind of a,
a a from a very early age.

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I grew up born, well, it's an,
here's an interesting story.

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My, I suppose that my origins are
slightly complicated in that my, my

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parents had been teaching in India.

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And came back into,  my dad was worried.

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My mom f fell pregnant.

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They'd had an amazing 18 months out there.

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But my dad, who is now 87, told me just
a few weeks ago, he's, he's,  he's kind

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of, he is definitely very close to the end
of his life and is, I think,  suffering

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from, he's suffering from dementia.

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So his short-term memory is, is, is,
is pretty poor, but his, it means he

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spends more time talking about the past.

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And he told me that that 18 months
with my mother in India had been

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the central event of his life.

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And, but he, my dad's got a very,  has
a long record of sometimes of making

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perhaps on one level brave, but
sometimes perhaps other people would

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think strange or even foolish decisions
because he gets, he was such a stress,

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stressful person, very anxious person.

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and again, in his own way, very
inspiring and, and, and, and interesting

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man, but he decided he couldn't
have my mom having a baby in India.

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So they came back.

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so that the first thing was that they
came back into really grim winter.

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Then the winter of 19 63, 0,
62, 63 was Oh, the historic one?

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Yeah.

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Was it historically poor winter?

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They were living in a very.

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In a very kind of rundown little,
house in Chingford teaching.

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And I think you get, get the sense that
the, the dream that they had shared in

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India, living in this extraordinary hill
station teaching, this teaching in this

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wonderful school, suddenly they were back.

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Kind of the reality
principal had kicked in

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,  it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very
interesting thing to go back to your,

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your origins like that cuz it, I realized
that my, my life began at a very low

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moment in, for, for my parents and my, the
story goes, which I haven't, I, I can't

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really now test out, I suppose I can ask
my mother, which would be interesting.

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So my, my grandparents came and rescued
them and invited them up to come and live

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in their tiny little council house in
Sunland, which they did for almost a year.

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And the reason I give you that this
origin story is I, I think it is

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always interesting the emotional,
the emotional kind of, sort of tom

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of the life that you are born into.

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Mm-hmm.

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Which I think for my parents was, was,
as I say, was, was not massively happy.

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The good thing for me was when
I as basically yeah, anxiety

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and then when and, and financial
anxiety and professional anxiety.

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And I'm, in many ways, I'm
not sure their marriage.

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They, they separated 30 years later,
but I'm not sure their marriage entirely

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recovered from it, from this incredible
hal kind of golden period in India.

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And my dad's been back
several times to India.

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My mom hasn't.

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But,  two things.

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It left me with a, with a, with a
fascination, which I've, one of my

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major fascinations, which I've still
never managed to fulfill, which

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is to go back to, to find a place.

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I was always, you know, I was that
kind of precocious kid who used to

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tell all my, all ge visitors to the
house that I'd been conceived in the

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Foote foothills of the Himalayas.

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True.

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But I've, I've never been to
actually see, as it were, the

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Rupert Isaacson: place, there
are many things you have in co

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in, in common with the Buddha as,
as the lessons are gonna find.

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So it, it's no surprise I
didn't know this, that you

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and Prince,  CDATA had a fact

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been born in the, the qma.

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Yeah.

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Perfect.

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Well, there you go.

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John Mitchinson: I think, I'm not
sure where, where, where, where

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the, whether the comparisons
hold much further into my life.

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But the thing that living with my
grandparents gave to me was,  my

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grandfather who'd, who I think was
just at that moment in his fifties

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when he was,  I was just a, a, you
know, he became fascinated and, and

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re formed a bond,  which I maintained
throughout his life until he died,

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sort of about 20, 23 years ago.

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But he was the, he was my sort
of mentor, my, I think for.

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What did he do?

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Well, he, he was a, he was a, it's
an, again, an interesting story.

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I'm, I'm, he was a highly intelligent,
now would've gone to university

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and probably studied maths.

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He, he taught me, he taught me sort
of, he showed me logarithmic tables

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when I was in about six years old.

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And he was a motor mechanic, but
his,  you know, a working class

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family, northeastern family.

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But he, his, his family had had
a little bit more money than my

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grandmothers who were very poor.

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And my great-grandmother was Irish,
and my great-grandfather was one of

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22 children,  which is extraordinary.

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And the nice thing about it is, I,
I, there is now a, a Goodrich, he

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was a, his nose was Charlie Goodrich.

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And there's, there are now
regular family reunions up there.

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So I've met a whole load of people
I might otherwise not have met.

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Anyway, he, we now are pretty
sure got my grandmother pregnant

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when she was a teenager.

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And they ha because they never
celebrated their wedding anniversary.

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my grandmother always, always was
extremely negative about the Virgin

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Mary, which for people who were quite
religious, I mean, they were, they were,

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they were stalwarts of their local church.

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Although in Starwars, in a very,  In
a very kind of independent way.

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They were very, they, they, they,
they were not,  they weren't

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sort of lovey dovey Christians.

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My grandfather was, was, was pretty
critical of, of, of most of the,

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the Vickers that came and weirdly
into this in my, my dad had left

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home at 16 to become a monk.

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He'd gone, joined a, a religious order.

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So there's all of that going.

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Anyway, I bond, I bonded with my father
and my grandfather, and that was, and

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he was, , as I say, he was a, he was a
source of calmness and, validation for me

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during really right through my, my kind of
early childhood and into my teams in a way

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that I suppose my father never had been.

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Really, my dad was, was my dad
was always out and doing stuff.

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And also my dad was a vicker, became
weirdly a vicker and he was standing up

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being, you know, telling people how they
live to live their lives when, let's

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be honest, probably his own personal
life was, was, was, was in a, was in a.

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Terrible mess.

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I mean, I said a terrible mess.

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He was serially unfaithful to my mother,
which is not generally considered

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the, the, the, the, the path for
a, for a, for a man of the cloth.

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So, so the northeast, that culture,
working class northeast was where that's,

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if people say to you, where are you from?

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That's where I always think
that's, that's where I was formed.

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and there was much about
that, that I loved.

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The Town of Sunland is a, was a, you know,
a former ship building and mining town.

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I mean, the ship building, it produced
more tonnage than any other British port.

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Not, and didn't build the
big ships, but a lot of the

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merchant ships were built there.

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And that really, I watched that
from the sixties, from my being

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born in early sixties through the
seventies, watched all that disappear.

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ended up, of course becoming a fan
of their, their,  football team.

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But that, that's the, that was the
crucible into which I was born.

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And then when I was eight years old,
something happened, which I think has

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probably been the most, the thing that's
probably most influenced me, which was

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we moved down  to Banbury, and by that
stage I, I was already reading my.

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Reading, kind of, you know, sort of
ferociously going to the library.

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I remember early reading, reading
all of Arthur Ransom and desperately

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wanting to be in the late district
sailing a dinghy or bird watching

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became the thing I was obsessed with.

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I was glad used to go off now, I
mean, where we were living in the

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Northeast as a, as a little place
called he Earth, which is near felling.

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It was not massively, you know, it was,
it was pretty built up and it was late

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sixties, so it's pretty depressed still.

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Lots of,  that area was Bob fairly
heavily bombed in the war, but there

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were these scrubby bits of waste ground.

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And I remember one amazing
winter, there was an invasion

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of wax swings from Scandinavia.

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And I, I still have the little project.

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My mom was very much, you know, go
out and thought, make a nature table.

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My mom was a very good teacher
and,  remains a very,  a very

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important person in my life.

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But,  she was traumatized, I think
by how the, the, the how poor and

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difficult and depressed the, the,
the area that we were living in was.

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And the school was.

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But she made, she made
all the other stuff fun.

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So I, I kind of grew up
reading and fascinated by

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nature, particularly by birds.

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and, and then you moved down
to Rural Ox Oxfordshire.

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Yeah.

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So then we moved down to Ox Oxfordshire.

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Well, bamb Bamb was definitely.

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Banbury was definitely, we weren't,
we weren't, well, it was more

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rural than North, the Northeast.

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And every weekend we would go off
and dis discover new villages.

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And as my brother and I got older, we
would go off and explore and on our

00:14:10.147 --> 00:14:14.372
bikes and, and it was definitely deep
it, but from there I felt it was deep

00:14:14.642 --> 00:14:16.112
immersion in the English countryside.

00:14:16.112 --> 00:14:20.042
And I, I, I formed a, a strange
obsession with a village called

00:14:20.042 --> 00:14:24.152
Great J, which I visited for the
first time, I think in about 1972,

00:14:24.662 --> 00:14:26.492
so whatever that is, 50 years ago.

00:14:26.492 --> 00:14:26.732
Right.

00:14:27.212 --> 00:14:29.162
Which is pretty remarkable of itself.

00:14:30.212 --> 00:14:35.252
the reason I formed a, a, i, I guess two
reasons why it was so important to me.

00:14:35.252 --> 00:14:40.832
One, I'd been reading, talking,
and, and then I discovered what I

00:14:40.832 --> 00:14:42.062
really wanted to do was to live.

00:14:42.062 --> 00:14:45.932
I felt that I really ought to have
been born in the 12th century and.

00:14:46.412 --> 00:14:47.057
You wanted to live in the

00:14:47.057 --> 00:14:47.987
Rupert Isaacson: Shire, basically.

00:14:48.077 --> 00:14:48.497
Yeah.

00:14:48.597 --> 00:14:48.887
John Mitchinson: Yeah.

00:14:49.067 --> 00:14:50.957
And then I suddenly found
myself in the Shire.

00:14:50.957 --> 00:14:53.717
I mean,  great chew, you
can attest to this is yeah.

00:14:53.747 --> 00:14:54.737
A remarkable place.

00:14:54.737 --> 00:14:56.747
And it was even more,
in some ways remarkable.

00:14:56.752 --> 00:14:58.997
It's always been remarkable, but
in the early seventies, it was

00:14:59.002 --> 00:15:00.497
pretty, it was semi derelict.

00:15:00.677 --> 00:15:00.767
Mm-hmm.

00:15:01.187 --> 00:15:04.337
There is no welcome to
great chew sign on the road.

00:15:04.337 --> 00:15:06.437
There are no road markings,
there are no street lights.

00:15:07.127 --> 00:15:08.507
It's, it's thatched.

00:15:08.507 --> 00:15:11.717
In the early seventies, the, that
was all kind of falling apart.

00:15:11.777 --> 00:15:14.927
It felt like a, a village that
was sinking back into the earth.

00:15:15.197 --> 00:15:15.407
Mm-hmm.

00:15:15.747 --> 00:15:19.537
and I remember going there and indeed
going there with my grandfather,  who

00:15:19.537 --> 00:15:24.067
came to visit once and sitting in the
church there next to him and being

00:15:24.067 --> 00:15:27.427
amazed that the, the, the church is
an incredibly beautiful building.

00:15:27.817 --> 00:15:33.547
Amazing,  12th century wall
painting and a, and surrounded

00:15:33.547 --> 00:15:35.377
by trees surrounded by greenery.

00:15:35.382 --> 00:15:42.577
So the idea of a sort of green church,
kind of seemed to me to be that pagan,

00:15:42.577 --> 00:15:45.427
to bring together, to bring together
everything that I was interested in.

00:15:45.427 --> 00:15:48.587
A kind of sense of history,
closeness to nature.

00:15:48.587 --> 00:15:51.887
I l I mean, we l later discovered,
obviously the church was a, a much

00:15:51.892 --> 00:15:53.477
older site than a Christian site.

00:15:53.537 --> 00:15:57.547
It's a, it's a dedicated Saint
Michael, which usually means there

00:15:57.767 --> 00:16:03.497
was a, a kind of a, a some form of
Saxon or earlier, holy place there.

00:16:03.557 --> 00:16:07.797
So, that sort of deep connection
with a kind of English.

00:16:08.262 --> 00:16:11.052
Landscape and countryside
was, was forged there.

00:16:11.862 --> 00:16:17.352
And I, I think, you know, that when one
remembers one's childhood, those years

00:16:17.352 --> 00:16:21.642
between eight and 12 for me were, those
were the kind of the magic years and,

00:16:21.822 --> 00:16:27.012
and again, fired by my reading, but
fired also by exploring the countryside.

00:16:27.012 --> 00:16:32.567
I got given an ordinance survey
map, which was, I, I still remember

00:16:33.347 --> 00:16:35.507
and may even still have it, it
was one of the old pink ones.

00:16:35.837 --> 00:16:41.027
So, for banbury in the area, just
the obsessive detail I'd go through

00:16:41.032 --> 00:16:45.027
every trying to work out and find on
the map every little bit of, yeah.

00:16:45.467 --> 00:16:51.737
You know, every, every old tubuli or
disused bit of railway line or that, that

00:16:51.737 --> 00:16:57.227
idea that there was some order that you
could find as a kind of a way through

00:16:57.232 --> 00:17:01.457
this that was, that was a massively
important,  the patterns of the story.

00:17:01.457 --> 00:17:02.148
The patterns of the past.

00:17:02.337 --> 00:17:02.627
Yeah.

00:17:02.727 --> 00:17:06.497
So then my dad, , made one of his, you
know, the decisions that I've, I've,

00:17:06.547 --> 00:17:08.077
I've referred to earlier, I think.

00:17:08.827 --> 00:17:09.907
Try always.

00:17:09.907 --> 00:17:12.997
I think he's been trying to
escape from things, and this

00:17:12.997 --> 00:17:14.077
was the biggest one of all.

00:17:14.077 --> 00:17:16.747
He decided, he announced that we
were going to move to New Zealand.

00:17:16.752 --> 00:17:21.217
He'd got been offered a job,  in
New Zealand working,  with a, a,

00:17:21.337 --> 00:17:26.377
a, a couple of priests in a team
ministry in Rour, friends of his who.

00:17:27.517 --> 00:17:33.067
And suddenly at the age of 12,
I found myself translated to the

00:17:33.397 --> 00:17:38.507
other side of the world, completely
different, completely different place.

00:17:38.817 --> 00:17:44.957
and I have to say very, at first I found
very difficult, but gradually, came

00:17:44.957 --> 00:17:48.857
to, came to, I made my peace with it.

00:17:48.857 --> 00:17:55.187
And it's after, I suppose rural
Oxfordshire, the kind of New Zealand,

00:17:55.187 --> 00:17:58.187
but feels like the other place
that I, and, and the Northeast,

00:17:58.192 --> 00:18:01.487
it's, feels like the other place
would, that's, that's determined

00:18:02.087 --> 00:18:03.677
all sorts of outcomes for my life.

00:18:03.677 --> 00:18:07.067
My, I married, my first
wife was a New Zealander.

00:18:07.777 --> 00:18:11.437
I went, did a year, did a
year of university out there

00:18:11.437 --> 00:18:12.787
before I came back here.

00:18:13.357 --> 00:18:18.697
My brother lives there and my mother
lives there, my daughter lives there,

00:18:18.697 --> 00:18:23.237
so it's, but when I arrived as a 12 year
old, it was like everything was different.

00:18:23.237 --> 00:18:29.087
And some of that was exciting,
but some of it was also so, It

00:18:29.087 --> 00:18:33.077
created in me a fairly profound
nostalgia for what I'd left behind.

00:18:34.097 --> 00:18:37.357
And, great Chew in
particular played a role in.

00:18:38.047 --> 00:18:42.247
So, you know, that thing when I said
people who, who have a plan for their

00:18:42.247 --> 00:18:45.817
lives, I've never had a professional
plan for my life, but I'd always

00:18:45.822 --> 00:18:50.107
thought that at one point or other
I would maybe live in Great Chew.

00:18:50.227 --> 00:18:54.007
And I've now lived there for 26 years.

00:18:54.067 --> 00:18:55.417
So sometimes

00:18:57.007 --> 00:18:59.617
Rupert Isaacson: what's interesting to
me that, that leaps out from that I can

00:18:59.617 --> 00:19:04.317
indeed aest, to the listeners, if you're
looking for the Shire, it is great chew.

00:19:04.317 --> 00:19:06.357
It is that area of Oxfordshire.

00:19:06.897 --> 00:19:09.417
It is that thatch village,
which hasn't really changed much

00:19:09.417 --> 00:19:11.247
outwardly since the 17th century.

00:19:11.787 --> 00:19:13.047
And it has a real magic to it.

00:19:13.047 --> 00:19:16.407
But what's ironic to me that leaps
out is that there you were looking

00:19:16.407 --> 00:19:21.892
for the Shire, you find it of course
in England, and then, yes, you get

00:19:21.892 --> 00:19:25.672
thrown to the place that years later
Hollywood decides is the Shire.

00:19:26.212 --> 00:19:29.712
But it doesn't appear to you as
the Shire at all when you go there.

00:19:30.172 --> 00:19:30.392
No.

00:19:30.392 --> 00:19:32.182
Gives you any nostalgic for your Shire?

00:19:33.022 --> 00:19:33.142
No.

00:19:33.147 --> 00:19:35.692
Maybe, maybe that's what we're all
doing is looking for that shire.

00:19:36.322 --> 00:19:36.592
Yeah,

00:19:36.802 --> 00:19:38.772
John Mitchinson: well I think
there is a kind of, there is

00:19:39.152 --> 00:19:41.222
the, the interest isn't there.

00:19:41.232 --> 00:19:45.962
If we're all of us to try and find
a mode of, a mode of living where

00:19:45.962 --> 00:19:50.902
we feel,  you know, that we, I, I
remember once saying to Rachel, my wife,

00:19:50.902 --> 00:19:52.702
that, you know, we'd put down roots.

00:19:53.752 --> 00:19:56.242
In two because I'd never had any.

00:19:57.352 --> 00:20:00.112
And she said, well, I'm not
sure I want to have roots.

00:20:00.712 --> 00:20:05.602
And I think we've both subsequently
realized that ha, because we had,  my

00:20:06.082 --> 00:20:09.592
daughter Stella was, was, was born
in London, but my three boys were

00:20:09.597 --> 00:20:13.132
born in, in, in, well, they were
born in the hospital Nazi, but they

00:20:13.132 --> 00:20:14.332
were all born into the village.

00:20:15.322 --> 00:20:23.182
There is that sense of, there, there is
a, some, something fulfilling comes out

00:20:23.182 --> 00:20:27.322
of that sense of being in a place for
the, for, for an extended period of time.

00:20:27.322 --> 00:20:30.652
And I would say that it's
not necessarily always easy.

00:20:31.362 --> 00:20:35.562
I think great chew is superficially
the people who see only the, the

00:20:35.562 --> 00:20:40.662
picturesque really don't understand
the history of what these small

00:20:41.232 --> 00:20:43.262
villages in England,  have to offer.

00:20:43.262 --> 00:20:51.032
The, they're almost always the records
of some sort of, of, of, of, of, of,

00:20:51.242 --> 00:20:57.182
of periods of massive investment,  of
people, particularly people who've

00:20:57.182 --> 00:21:01.602
made a lot of money elsewhere in the
world, trying to, trying to realize

00:21:01.602 --> 00:21:03.792
their dreams for bero for worse.

00:21:04.532 --> 00:21:06.722
I've always said that although two
is tiny, you know, there's only

00:21:06.722 --> 00:21:08.522
150 people on the electoral role.

00:21:08.522 --> 00:21:13.682
It's, it's had a small but important
part of the, of the three great.

00:21:14.257 --> 00:21:17.017
What we might call the three great
moments in British history, the

00:21:17.017 --> 00:21:20.857
Norman Conquest, the Civil War, or
the Three War of The Three Nations,

00:21:20.857 --> 00:21:22.147
and the Industrial Revolution.

00:21:22.837 --> 00:21:27.977
It also, like all English villages, we
begin to see has definitely got,  you

00:21:27.977 --> 00:21:32.507
know, one of the people who owned the
estate was a East India company, NAI Bob.

00:21:32.747 --> 00:21:36.827
So there's the link with Empire Matthew
Bolton obviously was, was, you know,

00:21:36.832 --> 00:21:39.917
the, the, the, the architect of the
Industrial Revolution, like the, the

00:21:39.917 --> 00:21:42.437
Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk of his day.

00:21:42.437 --> 00:21:43.067
I don't think many

00:21:43.067 --> 00:21:44.117
Rupert Isaacson:
listeners would know that.

00:21:44.122 --> 00:21:45.317
Talk, talk to us about that.

00:21:45.317 --> 00:21:47.477
So let me just give a
little background here.

00:21:47.477 --> 00:21:51.617
So this Village of Great two that
John lives in,  which does indeed look

00:21:51.617 --> 00:21:54.177
like the Shire,  is an estate village.

00:21:54.207 --> 00:21:57.717
And one of the reasons it, it, it,
it has this very picturesque look is

00:21:57.717 --> 00:22:01.287
that it's still owned by effectively
a feudal estate, which limits the

00:22:01.287 --> 00:22:04.557
development, which keeps the look
of the landscape and so forth.

00:22:05.007 --> 00:22:10.197
But this,  great house that
is there,  what changed hands?

00:22:10.507 --> 00:22:13.197
The, the, the, the theen years
of the estate had changed hands.

00:22:13.197 --> 00:22:18.207
And this chap Bolton, you say he
was an architect of the industrial

00:22:18.207 --> 00:22:21.807
revolution, which of course is not
the le look of that landscape at all.

00:22:21.927 --> 00:22:22.977
Tell us about this man.

00:22:22.977 --> 00:22:23.997
And, and, and how so, so

00:22:24.777 --> 00:22:27.028
John Mitchinson: the worldview math,
Matthew, Matthew Bolton, I mean, it was

00:22:27.177 --> 00:22:32.082
in fact his son who, who, who bought
the estate, but they were, Matthew

00:22:32.082 --> 00:22:36.387
Bolton was James Watts's business
partner, James Watt invented the,

00:22:36.392 --> 00:22:38.337
the, the, the steam engine, which was.

00:22:38.727 --> 00:22:43.967
The kind of the, the bit of technology
that unlocked, massive profits of cotton,

00:22:44.807 --> 00:22:46.547
the massive pro profits of cotton.

00:22:47.237 --> 00:22:51.677
As we now know, were also deeply
implicated in the slave trade, so

00:22:51.677 --> 00:22:56.337
that the cotton that was being grown,
the, the in, in,  in the, the south

00:22:56.337 --> 00:23:01.037
of America was, was, was, was the
product of slavery and that was

00:23:01.037 --> 00:23:02.887
being shipped back to,  to the uk.

00:23:02.887 --> 00:23:09.722
But the, the, the, the technology that
enabled the building of mills, in, in,

00:23:09.722 --> 00:23:15.622
in, in the north of England was, very
largely because of the business prowess.

00:23:16.432 --> 00:23:18.292
James Wat was the Scottish engineer.

00:23:18.712 --> 00:23:20.032
Bolton was the businessman.

00:23:20.037 --> 00:23:24.832
And the Soho Foundry in Birmingham,
which was his home, was, is generally

00:23:25.132 --> 00:23:28.582
felt to be one of the, one of the key
sites of the industrial revolution.

00:23:28.582 --> 00:23:34.792
Certainly the, the kind of the monetizing
of the inventions, you know, there

00:23:34.792 --> 00:23:39.232
are lots of people get hung up about
who was it, who invented what, when,

00:23:39.802 --> 00:23:42.832
but you know, it's a, it's a little
bit like once the technology's there,

00:23:42.832 --> 00:23:47.062
who's the smart person who can turn
it into, into a, into a, a business?

00:23:47.062 --> 00:23:48.172
And that was what Bolton did.

00:23:48.742 --> 00:23:55.962
And his son bought, bought Chu Park
as it was then in the 1820s and turned

00:23:55.962 --> 00:23:59.372
it into a extremely, successful farm.

00:24:00.052 --> 00:24:03.172
and that passed down
through his, through his.

00:24:03.457 --> 00:24:05.407
Two son and grandson.

00:24:05.467 --> 00:24:09.727
And then, and the line failed
in the early 20th century.

00:24:09.727 --> 00:24:13.747
And there were two, there were
two basically old Dows that Miss

00:24:13.747 --> 00:24:15.217
Robs who lived in the Bain house.

00:24:15.217 --> 00:24:20.227
And the, the, the chooses decline, the
re when I found it in, you know, 70 years

00:24:20.227 --> 00:24:24.757
later, really began at the turn of the
20th century when it was administered

00:24:24.757 --> 00:24:28.327
by the public trustee on behalf of the
Miss Boltons who lived in the big house.

00:24:29.107 --> 00:24:32.737
And at that point, lots of the
tenant farmers, I think just started

00:24:32.737 --> 00:24:36.067
to say they were making no money,
as is the want for tenant farmers.

00:24:36.067 --> 00:24:37.807
And there was little investment.

00:24:37.807 --> 00:24:42.977
And then in the 1950s, when the Miss
Boltons died,  a, a really extraordinary

00:24:42.977 --> 00:24:48.827
man called Major eus Rob, who was a
member of the Bolton family and not

00:24:48.827 --> 00:24:50.507
direct descendant of, of Matthew.

00:24:50.512 --> 00:24:54.447
But, he took the estate on
with very little capital.

00:24:54.797 --> 00:24:59.327
He, in fact, had been, he'd been in the
Army, but before that he'd been one of the

00:24:59.327 --> 00:25:05.847
early producers for Log Bear at the, very
early B b C, the, the turn, the, the, the,

00:25:07.077 --> 00:25:10.587
I mean, one, some of the very earliest TV
programs ever made were produced by him.

00:25:11.277 --> 00:25:14.967
And then in, I guess in his sixties,
he decided he wanted to sink into.

00:25:15.882 --> 00:25:17.172
Into sort of retirement.

00:25:17.262 --> 00:25:18.282
He'd always loved chew.

00:25:18.287 --> 00:25:21.492
He'd, he'd visited his, his
aunts there when he was a child.

00:25:22.412 --> 00:25:25.482
he was gay, , although that
probably wasn't, the word he

00:25:25.482 --> 00:25:26.742
would've, they would've used then.

00:25:27.522 --> 00:25:30.042
And he lived and sort of presided over.

00:25:30.042 --> 00:25:33.442
He didn't, he wanted to retain that
quality of an estate village village.

00:25:34.542 --> 00:25:39.922
and then in the 1960s, he, there was
the government decided they wanted to

00:25:39.922 --> 00:25:44.662
try some open cast iron ore mining on
Cow Hill, which you'll know ru where

00:25:44.662 --> 00:25:46.552
we, we, we love to walk Cow Hill.

00:25:46.612 --> 00:25:47.032
It's one of the

00:25:47.037 --> 00:25:48.602
Rupert Isaacson: most
beautiful hills in England.

00:25:49.142 --> 00:25:51.957
John Mitchinson: He, employed a
London lawyer called James Johnston

00:25:51.957 --> 00:25:53.157
to come and help him fight the case.

00:25:53.157 --> 00:25:53.697
And they won.

00:25:54.027 --> 00:25:59.727
And then he invited James to stay on,
to be the, to stop them from mining it.

00:25:59.732 --> 00:26:00.537
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:00.537 --> 00:26:01.197
To stop 'em from mining.

00:26:01.197 --> 00:26:05.697
So they won and he invited James to stay
on and be, help, help him run the estate.

00:26:05.817 --> 00:26:09.667
And from that moment, small bits
of, of, of,  development were made.

00:26:09.667 --> 00:26:13.567
There was a new sewage system put
in, and some of the cottages were

00:26:13.572 --> 00:26:17.917
restored, but many of them had fallen
into such bad disrepair that they

00:26:17.917 --> 00:26:22.589
were, they were sort of,  compulsory,
occupied rather than a estate owned.

00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:27.629
Although still, it's roughly
about 75% owned by single estate.

00:26:27.634 --> 00:26:30.329
And the, that estate has
been a single estate.

00:26:31.079 --> 00:26:32.819
It's not been broken up since.

00:26:33.194 --> 00:26:38.204
The time of the Doomsday book, the
sort of Norman Conquest, which from Odo

00:26:38.209 --> 00:26:39.884
Bayer, that's a thousand years chap.

00:26:39.889 --> 00:26:40.134
Yeah.

00:26:40.244 --> 00:26:41.234
That, yeah.

00:26:41.239 --> 00:26:46.514
So Odo, Bayer, William, the con
half brother, was given the estate

00:26:46.514 --> 00:26:50.234
of Great j back at the time of
the, the, the big deal doling out.

00:26:51.034 --> 00:26:54.874
and as I say, it's had various
owners since then, but remains now.

00:26:55.624 --> 00:26:57.604
The major left it to James Johnston.

00:26:58.484 --> 00:27:02.334
and it's now Nicholas Johnston,
who is, who runs the estate

00:27:02.664 --> 00:27:07.324
incredibly successfully, and who
was absolutely there on Saturday

00:27:07.324 --> 00:27:08.604
when we had our Coronation party.

00:27:09.464 --> 00:27:13.774
and I would say that what's if,
if, if,  if Chu has this strange

00:27:13.779 --> 00:27:19.604
kind of zeig like ability to, to
appear at,  at various moments of

00:27:19.604 --> 00:27:22.364
English history, having something
interesting to say about those things.

00:27:22.454 --> 00:27:26.324
So, you know, as I said, civil War, when
I should say in the Civil War that there

00:27:26.324 --> 00:27:30.484
was an amazing, group of intellectuals
and artists who gathered around great

00:27:30.489 --> 00:27:31.984
ju and knows the great Jew circle.

00:27:32.854 --> 00:27:37.694
Lucius Carey, who was Charles, the
first Secretary of State, kind of had

00:27:37.694 --> 00:27:41.414
an open house come sort of almost like
a sort of open air university he ran.

00:27:41.894 --> 00:27:43.634
and a lot of the thinking.

00:27:44.069 --> 00:27:47.909
I mean, they didn't manage to, they,
they weren't able to prevent civil war.

00:27:47.909 --> 00:27:54.289
But when the 1688 Constitution was,
was, finally, in, in place with the,

00:27:55.069 --> 00:28:00.399
the,  the restoration, the monarchy being
restored, and then in 1688, we invited

00:28:00.399 --> 00:28:02.289
the Dutch to come over and run the show.

00:28:03.549 --> 00:28:05.889
the establishment of the
parliamentary democracy that we

00:28:05.889 --> 00:28:08.289
know today happened really in 1688.

00:28:08.289 --> 00:28:12.459
And a lot of those ideas came from
peop members of the two circle, like,

00:28:12.739 --> 00:28:14.959
Edward Hyde Law, Claredon, and so on.

00:28:14.959 --> 00:28:16.639
So, again, bizarre.

00:28:16.909 --> 00:28:21.899
And now, our small village seems
to be the epicenter of what you

00:28:21.899 --> 00:28:23.369
might call celebrity culture.

00:28:24.179 --> 00:28:28.679
We have the Beckhams at one end, Claudia
Winkelman down in the valley, and,

00:28:28.729 --> 00:28:34.079
up on the hill, Simon Cal, and Soho
Farmhouse is, is in great two parish.

00:28:34.349 --> 00:28:41.544
which, so the Village now massively seems
to be, I mean, it's, it still retains.

00:28:41.544 --> 00:28:44.064
Its, its kind of, it, its core character.

00:28:44.694 --> 00:28:48.564
But again, there are people who
obviously you can imagine, loathe this.

00:28:49.494 --> 00:28:52.374
But I try and take the long
view on these things and think,

00:28:52.374 --> 00:28:53.424
well, it's just chew doing.

00:28:53.424 --> 00:28:54.144
Whatchu does?

00:28:54.144 --> 00:28:57.024
It always seems to find a
way to be relevant there.

00:28:57.204 --> 00:28:57.384
Indeed.

00:28:58.614 --> 00:29:01.044
Lots of, of really dull
villages out there in England.

00:29:01.224 --> 00:29:05.009
And, you know, where people are just
sort of wildling away their lives

00:29:05.014 --> 00:29:08.669
and, and, and, and, and not saying btu
a goose chews never been like that.

00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:09.389
Yeah.

00:29:09.389 --> 00:29:09.809
And the

00:29:09.809 --> 00:29:13.699
Rupert Isaacson: England now is,
there's, it's having this, Renaissance

00:29:13.704 --> 00:29:15.469
as, as a sort of a media hub.

00:29:15.979 --> 00:29:16.219
Yeah.

00:29:16.309 --> 00:29:21.259
And so, and, and, and so it seems to
make sense that where you live in this

00:29:21.264 --> 00:29:26.419
village that looks like the sh but is
in fact, as you say, has this relevant,

00:29:26.419 --> 00:29:32.209
the story of, of relevance who pops up
now at this latest stage of, of what

00:29:32.419 --> 00:29:36.049
Britain is, is, is exporting, which
is the story, which is its story.

00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:40.399
And you, you've told us this
story of a little bit of

00:29:40.399 --> 00:29:42.229
yourself and the place you live.

00:29:42.519 --> 00:29:45.109
What stands out here is, is, is John.

00:29:45.109 --> 00:29:50.509
It's, it's, it's your love and ability
to connect with and relate stories.

00:29:50.559 --> 00:29:50.779
Yes.

00:29:50.869 --> 00:29:55.489
And this of course is how you
have made your way in the world.

00:29:56.059 --> 00:30:01.699
Tell us how you've been telling
stories and enabling other people

00:30:01.699 --> 00:30:06.019
to tell stories in a way that has
brought you to where you are now.

00:30:06.349 --> 00:30:07.639
John Mitchinson: That's,
that's a good question.

00:30:08.089 --> 00:30:15.179
I think I am,  I think I'm a, I, I,
I think I've, I vacillate between.

00:30:15.614 --> 00:30:21.104
And continue to vacillate between being
a storyteller and a story enabler.

00:30:21.854 --> 00:30:25.304
in that I am both a
writer and a publisher.

00:30:26.084 --> 00:30:30.584
And while there are times when I have
been more of a writer than I am a

00:30:30.584 --> 00:30:34.244
publisher and more of a publisher than
I'm a writer, I don't think there's ever

00:30:34.244 --> 00:30:36.254
been a time when I haven't done either.

00:30:36.784 --> 00:30:41.194
I suppose there was a time when I was
a, but when I started my very first

00:30:42.334 --> 00:30:48.424
job, I mean, very briefly, my very
first job, I worked as a barman in a

00:30:48.424 --> 00:30:53.704
very busy, quite famous restaurant in
Oxford, most of my undergraduate years

00:30:53.704 --> 00:30:56.884
when I was, I read English language
and literature at Merton College

00:30:56.884 --> 00:30:58.264
and why did I go to Merton College?

00:30:58.684 --> 00:31:02.314
Because that was Tol Kings
College  and it was, it's whatever

00:31:02.314 --> 00:31:03.634
any of the other colleges say.

00:31:03.634 --> 00:31:06.964
It's the oldest, it's certainly
the oldest has the oldest physical

00:31:06.964 --> 00:31:08.584
buildings in Oxford, I think.

00:31:09.304 --> 00:31:14.264
And,  I loved that Mob Quad, which is
the, the, the central Quad triangle was

00:31:14.504 --> 00:31:16.244
so old it didn't even have chimneys.

00:31:16.334 --> 00:31:17.635
So,  I, that was my.

00:31:18.669 --> 00:31:21.084
That was where I went to college
and I worked in a bar there,

00:31:21.964 --> 00:31:22.984
called Browns, a restaurant.

00:31:23.164 --> 00:31:23.764
Browns.

00:31:23.764 --> 00:31:28.744
So when I came out of there, I, my first
job was working in a nightclub in Oxford

00:31:28.749 --> 00:31:30.634
called in,  London, called Legends.

00:31:31.594 --> 00:31:36.844
and the plan had been, the plan
had been to, to, to open a club.

00:31:36.849 --> 00:31:38.704
Were were you a male dancer
or what were you doing?

00:31:38.704 --> 00:31:39.784
I wasn't, no, I was just working.

00:31:39.784 --> 00:31:41.734
I was head barman, so I was mixing.

00:31:41.734 --> 00:31:44.284
I've always liked, I've, I've
always liked making drinks.

00:31:45.244 --> 00:31:45.784
I had noticed.

00:31:45.884 --> 00:31:46.184
yeah.

00:31:46.394 --> 00:31:50.644
So, and it was very, those days, I
mean, guys, nothing like the kind of

00:31:50.644 --> 00:31:54.904
extraordinary baroque mixology you have
today, but we were making, it was the

00:31:54.904 --> 00:31:59.044
eighties and we thought we were making
great classic drinks, but nobody came.

00:31:59.254 --> 00:32:03.994
And the maitre d and I, a lovely man
called men, Mel Palmer, had found

00:32:03.999 --> 00:32:06.484
a site in, in, beak Street in soho.

00:32:06.484 --> 00:32:09.844
And we thought we were gonna open a,
something that would've been halfway

00:32:09.844 --> 00:32:14.524
between a nightclub, a English pub,
and a, and a and a, and a kind of the

00:32:14.524 --> 00:32:16.534
kind of bar you find in Spain or Italy.

00:32:17.404 --> 00:32:19.564
And we'd even managed to raise money.

00:32:19.624 --> 00:32:25.784
And, but,  this was 1987, which was
the first of the several financial

00:32:25.789 --> 00:32:27.944
crises, which my life, life has, has.

00:32:28.274 --> 00:32:30.854
I never,  the person who was gonna
put money in got wiped out and

00:32:30.854 --> 00:32:32.144
said, sorry boys, I can't do it.

00:32:32.144 --> 00:32:37.124
So at that point, I had been, I just
got a job, a friend of mine from

00:32:37.124 --> 00:32:39.224
college that said, Hey, you should
come and work in this bookshop.

00:32:39.224 --> 00:32:39.734
It's great.

00:32:40.274 --> 00:32:41.474
It's called Waterstones and.

00:32:42.224 --> 00:32:44.954
You know, it's, it's really,
it's really nice work.

00:32:44.984 --> 00:32:46.934
You know, you don't have to stay
up till four in the morning.

00:32:47.144 --> 00:32:50.685
Nobody tries to pick fights with
you or you don't have to, to, to, to

00:32:50.690 --> 00:32:53.534
try and haul them, haul them out of
the toilets for, for taking drugs.

00:32:54.404 --> 00:32:57.884
So I started work on
an insanely low salary.

00:32:58.004 --> 00:33:01.934
I mean, it was like under five grand
a year working in a bookshop, and then

00:33:01.934 --> 00:33:03.644
suddenly I'd from, and was Waterstones

00:33:03.644 --> 00:33:05.564
Rupert Isaacson: Waterstones, by the
way, for those listeners who don't know,

00:33:05.564 --> 00:33:10.554
is, is a major, major chain of books,
book sellers in the UK at this stage.

00:33:10.559 --> 00:33:11.754
John, was it just one store?

00:33:11.964 --> 00:33:13.494
John Mitchinson: No, there were,
there were, I think by that

00:33:13.494 --> 00:33:14.964
stage there were 10 stores.

00:33:14.969 --> 00:33:15.164
Okay.

00:33:15.954 --> 00:33:20.694
So this was in 1987
and they started in 82.

00:33:21.534 --> 00:33:25.044
And then extraordinary series
of coincidences really.

00:33:25.044 --> 00:33:29.094
I, I was working and I have to say,
although it was terrible pay and

00:33:29.099 --> 00:33:34.659
I was living in a, a very small
studio, flat in, in, with my now

00:33:34.659 --> 00:33:37.219
wife, Simone, in, in, Finsbury Park.

00:33:38.119 --> 00:33:42.379
I absolutely loved the work and, and I,
things that I loved about it were that

00:33:42.619 --> 00:33:45.529
you could more or less take any book
you wanted to read home, which I did.

00:33:46.429 --> 00:33:48.439
And getting proof copies.

00:33:48.439 --> 00:33:49.609
I remember the first proof.

00:33:50.974 --> 00:33:56.824
Copy was from the Gal Glance rep, and it
was Mort by Terry ett, and I just was,

00:33:56.854 --> 00:34:00.004
I was so intrigued by this idea that
you were get, you were getting to read

00:34:00.004 --> 00:34:01.924
a book before it was even published.

00:34:02.284 --> 00:34:06.184
I still remember it with a sort
of blue cover and I read it and

00:34:06.184 --> 00:34:08.014
was incredibly enthusiastic.

00:34:08.014 --> 00:34:11.494
I think he, I think the rep was rather
touched that, that somebody was so

00:34:11.494 --> 00:34:15.664
excited to be given one, so he gave me
loads and so I was, I was buying SCI

00:34:15.814 --> 00:34:20.704
for sci, the science fiction section in
the fantasy section about which I knew.

00:34:21.169 --> 00:34:24.019
A bit, but not, not masses,
but soon got to know.

00:34:24.499 --> 00:34:25.159
But you had more,

00:34:25.159 --> 00:34:27.199
Rupert Isaacson: been an
early, an early token reader.

00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:27.949
You did have a

00:34:28.219 --> 00:34:28.699
John Mitchinson: Oh yeah.

00:34:28.699 --> 00:34:33.139
And, and also I just, I remember there
was some exciting Clive Barkers Hell

00:34:33.139 --> 00:34:35.179
Raiser came out at that that time.

00:34:35.209 --> 00:34:39.259
And I remember there was a, there was
a, there's a guy called Piers Antony

00:34:39.589 --> 00:34:41.359
who wrote these space opera books.

00:34:42.019 --> 00:34:46.379
And I think maybe even,  yeah, I, it was,
it was fun and perhaps it was beginning

00:34:46.379 --> 00:34:48.299
to become really, really successful.

00:34:48.989 --> 00:34:51.719
but it was, it, like all these
things, it was just fascinating.

00:34:51.724 --> 00:34:55.619
The, the Waterstone's way was to very much
throw you in at the deep end, and you had

00:34:55.619 --> 00:34:59.609
to figure out what to buy and what not
to buy and what to subs all the buy, you

00:34:59.609 --> 00:35:04.349
know, we did all our buying in the store
and even someone as inexperienced as me

00:35:04.349 --> 00:35:05.849
within a few months was buying books.

00:35:05.849 --> 00:35:09.329
So the excitement of buying 10
copies of something and then selling

00:35:09.329 --> 00:35:14.879
them is that's, I think that's
been part of my d n A as well.

00:35:14.909 --> 00:35:17.999
I, that's something I
find still thrilling.

00:35:18.229 --> 00:35:22.739
I, I love being in bookshops and I love
selling, I love selling things to people.

00:35:22.739 --> 00:35:26.159
What now gets called hand  hand selling,
you know, it's just that thing of

00:35:26.159 --> 00:35:29.999
getting somebody enthused, saying, try
and let me know and come back, and I've

00:35:30.004 --> 00:35:31.709
got plenty more where that came from.

00:35:32.179 --> 00:35:34.709
So it was a, about, that
was a bit of a revelation.

00:35:34.949 --> 00:35:36.989
It was, as I say, appallingly paid.

00:35:37.649 --> 00:35:38.909
This is a bit of a theme of my life.

00:35:38.909 --> 00:35:41.189
Appallingly paid, but
massively satisfying.

00:35:42.809 --> 00:35:46.649
and then, and then I met someone in the
street who I'd, I'd known from college,

00:35:46.649 --> 00:35:47.639
and she said, what are you doing?

00:35:47.639 --> 00:35:48.899
I said, I'm working at Waterstones.

00:35:48.899 --> 00:35:52.289
I said, oh my God, I'm just a head office
at Waterstones and we are looking for

00:35:52.289 --> 00:35:54.059
somebody to edit our literary diary.

00:35:54.269 --> 00:35:55.139
Would you be interested?

00:35:55.159 --> 00:35:56.639
And I said, well, what does it involve?

00:35:56.639 --> 00:35:58.409
She said, well, I dunno, six weeks work.

00:35:58.409 --> 00:36:00.509
You have to go and sit in the
British library and find out

00:36:00.509 --> 00:36:01.859
interesting literary facts.

00:36:02.609 --> 00:36:08.579
So I like to think that that moment, which
of course I said yes, and I was paid a, I

00:36:08.579 --> 00:36:13.219
remember a one-off bonus of 1500 pounds,
which just like, that just seemed like

00:36:13.499 --> 00:36:17.849
the most staggering amount of money at
the time you could actually afford to eat.

00:36:17.999 --> 00:36:18.419
Incredible.

00:36:18.424 --> 00:36:21.929
And then, and then, yeah, week and
then it got to, to sit in the British

00:36:21.929 --> 00:36:26.989
Library every day in that amazing reading
room, that where Marks had worked, and,

00:36:27.729 --> 00:36:32.509
and, and ordered up amazing old books
and found, lit out literary facts.

00:36:32.609 --> 00:36:36.019
And, and it was commissioned essays.

00:36:36.109 --> 00:36:41.269
It was, it was really, it was commissioned
some poetry for, from people that was,

00:36:41.839 --> 00:36:44.719
you know, it was quite a, there was a
desk diary and then a little pocket diary.

00:36:44.779 --> 00:36:49.220
So, and what happened was I then got
kind of sucked into, a thing called

00:36:49.399 --> 00:36:50.659
the Waterstones Guide to Books.

00:36:50.664 --> 00:36:55.159
We were trying to do what I once
described as a paper Amazon, which

00:36:55.159 --> 00:36:59.869
was 60,000 annotation, annotated
blurbs to 60,000 books in print.

00:37:00.799 --> 00:37:04.754
And that was, That was really
my first, kind of exposure to

00:37:04.759 --> 00:37:07.574
the world of books and authors.

00:37:07.574 --> 00:37:13.184
And, and we, although we, we made
a, we made an astonishing 1500 page

00:37:13.184 --> 00:37:17.144
book that was significantly too
large as a mail order catalog to

00:37:17.144 --> 00:37:18.285
go through anybody's letter box.

00:37:18.674 --> 00:37:22.184
So it ended up being a bit of
a white elephant, a sort of

00:37:22.184 --> 00:37:23.354
magnificent white elephant.

00:37:24.224 --> 00:37:30.374
And at the end of the, that year,
I was asked to take over running

00:37:31.244 --> 00:37:34.544
the public, what was then the,
the, the publications department.

00:37:35.274 --> 00:37:39.324
and then a year after that,
Waterstones did a deal with WX Smith.

00:37:40.284 --> 00:37:43.254
And by that stage I'd become quite good
friends with Tim Waterstone, the owner.

00:37:43.884 --> 00:37:47.994
And he asked me to be his marketing
director at the age of, of 26.

00:37:49.374 --> 00:37:53.604
and I still remember he sent, he, he
wrote, he, he, he, Tim was a very early

00:37:53.604 --> 00:37:57.144
adopter of the post-it note, and he
always wrote in pencil and he sent me,

00:37:57.144 --> 00:37:58.764
said that, that's what I'm gonna pay you.

00:37:59.664 --> 00:38:03.234
And he'd written 30 pounds on
a, on a, and I remember looking

00:38:03.234 --> 00:38:05.994
puzzled and he that got a problem.

00:38:06.444 --> 00:38:09.564
I said, is it, well, just one off
or, and he'd looked it back and

00:38:09.564 --> 00:38:10.794
then put a K on the end of it.

00:38:10.854 --> 00:38:16.284
So in 19, What, what
year would it have been?

00:38:16.374 --> 00:38:16.914
My god.

00:38:17.994 --> 00:38:18.234
Yeah.

00:38:18.234 --> 00:38:24.324
I mean, it was, it was
19 87, 88, 89, 19 89.

00:38:24.329 --> 00:38:27.774
To suddenly being be, I mean,
30,000 pounds a year was a

00:38:27.774 --> 00:38:28.614
lot of money in those days.

00:38:28.619 --> 00:38:29.244
It was back then.

00:38:29.334 --> 00:38:29.544
Yeah.

00:38:30.034 --> 00:38:36.269
And that was, that was my entry, I
suppose, into pretty extraordinary period.

00:38:36.269 --> 00:38:41.609
I did, I was marketing director until,
for five years, nearly six years.

00:38:42.029 --> 00:38:45.609
And,  Wolf Stones expanded massively.

00:38:46.119 --> 00:38:48.609
I mean, they had already
been jammed together.

00:38:48.609 --> 00:38:53.619
We went from, we opened 14 shops
in 1988, and then in 1989 we

00:38:53.679 --> 00:38:55.989
merged with the Shean Hughes.

00:38:55.989 --> 00:38:57.129
They all became Waterstones.

00:38:57.129 --> 00:39:02.959
So suddenly Waterstones had, you
know, 80 bookstores, and, and

00:39:02.959 --> 00:39:07.309
became the biggest, the biggest book
specialist book retailer in the uk.

00:39:07.759 --> 00:39:11.029
And I was in charge of their marketing,
knowing nothing about marketing.

00:39:11.389 --> 00:39:14.839
So, but that was, yeah.

00:39:15.019 --> 00:39:17.869
As say you kind of, you kind
of learn on the job and, and

00:39:17.869 --> 00:39:19.879
Rupert Isaacson: I guess what is
marketing, but telling stories

00:39:19.884 --> 00:39:21.259
and what had you been doing since

00:39:21.519 --> 00:39:23.159
John Mitchinson: you were
Well, discovery story?

00:39:23.159 --> 00:39:24.439
Well, I, yeah, you're completely right.

00:39:24.439 --> 00:39:27.589
And what I'd been doing was
helping Tim write speeches.

00:39:27.679 --> 00:39:32.329
We basically, Tim and I sort of
invent, invented, a, a way of

00:39:32.329 --> 00:39:33.949
describing the Waterstones brand.

00:39:35.074 --> 00:39:39.334
Which you had to do because we had to
tell a lot of people who were being

00:39:39.339 --> 00:39:44.074
told that their shots were being turned
into Waterstones, what that meant, and

00:39:44.224 --> 00:39:49.474
right where, whereas Tim had sort of had
the idea of these large stockholding,

00:39:49.474 --> 00:39:52.294
but he'd owned, been to America and
been to the Strand bookstore, and he,

00:39:52.544 --> 00:39:56.284
what he basically wanted was, could
you take a big American bookshop of

00:39:56.289 --> 00:40:00.154
Barnes and Noble and a and, and a and
a brilliant bookshop like John Sando

00:40:00.154 --> 00:40:01.954
and Chelsea, and turn it into a chain.

00:40:03.004 --> 00:40:05.494
And he'd been a, his, his
background was w h Smith.

00:40:06.014 --> 00:40:09.764
and I think they'd fired him, which
was why he, when he finally sold the

00:40:09.769 --> 00:40:13.334
business back to them for a huge amount
of money, it was particularly satisfying.

00:40:14.224 --> 00:40:14.974
that was his story.

00:40:15.214 --> 00:40:18.874
So we were absolute Marketing
is absolutely storytelling.

00:40:19.024 --> 00:40:20.464
And it's storytelling.

00:40:20.974 --> 00:40:25.084
What I like about it is it's storytelling
that can often have a measurable result.

00:40:25.504 --> 00:40:28.594
, of, you know, rapture applause.

00:40:28.594 --> 00:40:33.724
A live gig or just, you know, your kid
saying, can you read it to me again?

00:40:34.084 --> 00:40:34.684
I love that.

00:40:34.684 --> 00:40:35.644
Can you read it to me again?

00:40:35.644 --> 00:40:39.184
Which, so, That was.

00:40:39.634 --> 00:40:44.494
And then from there, I suppose the
next move was to go into publishing

00:40:44.704 --> 00:40:49.594
where I went, ended up at Harville, I'd
fallen in love with the Harville list.

00:40:49.924 --> 00:40:50.884
Now that's a question

00:40:50.889 --> 00:40:53.434
Rupert Isaacson: because, so you went
from something majorly commercial?

00:40:54.004 --> 00:40:54.574
Waterstones.

00:40:54.604 --> 00:40:54.994
Okay.

00:40:54.999 --> 00:41:01.294
Admittedly, relatively high highbrow,
but, Harville, which published

00:41:01.294 --> 00:41:05.074
me back in the day as well a
bit, was anything but commercial.

00:41:05.074 --> 00:41:10.214
It was, so what, why, yeah,
and how, tell us that.

00:41:10.219 --> 00:41:10.254
Well,

00:41:11.234 --> 00:41:14.264
John Mitchinson: I suppose we thought
it, I suppose it's part of me that

00:41:14.264 --> 00:41:21.644
is, you know, maybe my life is a is,
is, is thinking about drawing themes.

00:41:23.294 --> 00:41:28.874
I've always believed in quality,
that ultimately what lasts is, is, is

00:41:28.874 --> 00:41:34.154
something that the, the, the higher,
the richer, the more complex, the more,

00:41:34.724 --> 00:41:39.724
the more,  challenging something is
the, the, the, the, the more likely it

00:41:39.724 --> 00:41:41.884
is to last to stand the test of time.

00:41:42.844 --> 00:41:47.074
And I think what I could see with the
har list was something that had been,

00:41:47.954 --> 00:41:53.264
we would now u say curated, but we were
probably in back in the nineties, just

00:41:53.264 --> 00:41:59.534
have said, you know, kind of built or
chosen with such care and intelligence

00:41:59.534 --> 00:42:02.564
that, that actually the people who.

00:42:03.254 --> 00:42:08.924
Who, you know, love reading and love
literature and love the, the, the, the,

00:42:09.354 --> 00:42:14.904
the, the transforming effect that, that
reading something can make in your life.

00:42:15.954 --> 00:42:21.379
I think for, for those people that
those kind of lists were,  were and

00:42:21.379 --> 00:42:23.509
are incredibly important, the case.

00:42:23.509 --> 00:42:23.599
Did

00:42:23.599 --> 00:42:26.149
Rupert Isaacson: you know this about
Harville before you went to work for them?

00:42:26.149 --> 00:42:27.139
Or did you discover this?

00:42:27.139 --> 00:42:29.539
John Mitchinson: Yeah, no, I, I did,
I, what I loved about them was they

00:42:29.544 --> 00:42:33.799
had a, they had a famous list of
trade paperbacks with the, with the

00:42:33.799 --> 00:42:35.989
Collins Harville leopard on them.

00:42:36.589 --> 00:42:36.769
Mm-hmm.

00:42:36.919 --> 00:42:41.454
And they were, they were kind of,  they
were always really beautifully type set,

00:42:41.484 --> 00:42:45.354
and they were kind of, they were, they
were bigger than the average paperback

00:42:45.354 --> 00:42:46.824
and they were often in spinners.

00:42:47.694 --> 00:42:50.064
And at the beginning, what.

00:42:50.454 --> 00:42:53.754
Spinner is a, is a sort of big
plastic thing, which, which

00:42:53.754 --> 00:42:57.684
sit stands in bookshops and por
often used to come in spinners.

00:42:57.684 --> 00:42:58.134
Ah, right.

00:42:58.164 --> 00:43:00.834
They're much, they're much,
they're much sort of standard.

00:43:00.924 --> 00:43:04.464
They're not, not really welcoming
bookshops anymore, but they were,

00:43:04.614 --> 00:43:06.114
they were a good way of branding.

00:43:06.144 --> 00:43:08.604
Cuz you know, here's a publisher
I like and Collins Har was

00:43:08.604 --> 00:43:09.744
definitely a strong brand.

00:43:10.224 --> 00:43:11.814
I think that's the thing for me, really.

00:43:13.164 --> 00:43:16.134
I realize that, you know, having
spent so much time trying to define

00:43:16.134 --> 00:43:20.604
what made Waterstone special, that
idea of a strong brand is still

00:43:20.609 --> 00:43:22.554
the thing that I, I go back to.

00:43:22.554 --> 00:43:25.614
That's as far as my
marketing expertise goes.

00:43:26.094 --> 00:43:30.984
It's being able to articulate
and communicate some what makes a

00:43:30.984 --> 00:43:35.454
particular brand special and important
and, and worthy of attention.

00:43:36.384 --> 00:43:39.234
Rupert Isaacson: So it's interesting
too, just for the, for the, for the

00:43:39.239 --> 00:43:43.584
listeners, I would say that two of the
most, the best books I've ever read,

00:43:43.584 --> 00:43:50.694
which is the Master Margarita Bov,
and by Night Under the Stone Bridge by

00:43:50.694 --> 00:43:54.244
Leo Pertz, were both harville,  books.

00:43:54.694 --> 00:44:00.214
So yes, when you talk about this
quality, I, I remember just those two

00:44:00.214 --> 00:44:03.034
books alone were life changes for me.

00:44:03.324 --> 00:44:06.634
So I Was that what you saw?

00:44:06.684 --> 00:44:09.264
John Mitchinson: yeah, and it, I
mean, just a bit of the history it

00:44:09.264 --> 00:44:14.084
was, it was Harville, was, was, Was
the invention of two extraordinary

00:44:14.084 --> 00:44:20.004
women, after the war, mana Harari and
Marjorie Villa, which is Hart and Vil.

00:44:20.544 --> 00:44:27.144
And they were determined, I suppose,
to that literature could prevent war.

00:44:27.174 --> 00:44:32.394
You know, it was a kind of,  it was
a classic sort of war 19, late 1940s.

00:44:33.084 --> 00:44:36.444
And they were responsible for
publishing the first English

00:44:36.444 --> 00:44:38.454
language version of Paac.

00:44:39.424 --> 00:44:42.844
Feltrinelli had published it in Italy,
and they got the English translation done.

00:44:42.849 --> 00:44:46.829
So it started with this idea
that,  we, you know, if we read the

00:44:47.019 --> 00:44:50.439
literature of other countries, were
less likely to end up invading them.

00:44:51.279 --> 00:44:53.169
I mean, I, and it's very crude.

00:44:53.759 --> 00:44:58.499
So that, and that had been developed
through the, the, the sixties and into the

00:44:58.499 --> 00:45:01.619
seventies when really, truly remarkable.

00:45:01.719 --> 00:45:02.789
Publisher called.

00:45:03.164 --> 00:45:08.864
Christopher Mcz had had taken it over
as, and he'd added other writers, George,

00:45:09.054 --> 00:45:11.214
McDonald Fraser, great storyteller.

00:45:11.219 --> 00:45:14.514
And some of them were quite commercial
writers like Gerald Seymour, but

00:45:14.514 --> 00:45:18.534
also Richard Ford, the great American
novelist, Raymond Carver, great

00:45:18.594 --> 00:45:20.484
short story writer, Peter Matheson.

00:45:21.054 --> 00:45:24.954
So, there was an amazing combination
of both English language writers and

00:45:24.954 --> 00:45:29.634
writers, and, I mean, and it is, it,
I think until relatively recently,

00:45:29.634 --> 00:45:34.314
it was the absolute best list of,
of great writing and translation and

00:45:34.314 --> 00:45:36.534
as well as Pastor Na and Bob Garko.

00:45:36.684 --> 00:45:39.444
It also had vastly
Grossman's life and fate.

00:45:39.564 --> 00:45:43.104
P probably, I would say the great
novel of the of, of the, of the Second

00:45:43.104 --> 00:45:44.214
World War, one of the great novels.

00:45:44.219 --> 00:45:44.904
Tell us, tell us again what

00:45:44.904 --> 00:45:45.624
Rupert Isaacson: that is for those

00:45:45.624 --> 00:45:46.924
John Mitchinson: of us who
want to write, that's Vly.

00:45:46.929 --> 00:45:48.534
Grossman's, life and Fate,

00:45:49.074 --> 00:45:50.514
Rupert Isaacson: VLY
Grossman's Life and Fate.

00:45:50.514 --> 00:45:51.534
This is one we should all read.

00:45:51.879 --> 00:45:53.019
John Mitchinson: Ab Yeah.

00:45:53.139 --> 00:45:56.859
and interesting more recently that a,
a new, a new book called Stalingrad,

00:45:56.859 --> 00:46:00.099
his book on Stalin, his novel on
Stalingrad has finally been translated.

00:46:00.429 --> 00:46:05.469
But life and Fate is, is I think
generally considered to be pa perhaps

00:46:05.474 --> 00:46:10.119
the greatest novel of the, of, of,
of the, of the Second World War.

00:46:10.859 --> 00:46:13.109
and Soja Nisson was also
on the Harvard list.

00:46:13.109 --> 00:46:14.789
It's an amazing list of writers.

00:46:15.419 --> 00:46:19.249
And, you know, more recently
Christopher had discovered Peter,

00:46:19.249 --> 00:46:24.439
her, who Miss Miller's feeling for
Snow, pretty much started the, what

00:46:24.439 --> 00:46:29.729
you might call the Nordic Noir, genre
of, of Scandinavian crime fiction.

00:46:30.059 --> 00:46:34.349
Henning Mankell was on the Harvard list,
another great scan, Scandinavian crime.

00:46:34.959 --> 00:46:37.269
so great joyous.

00:46:37.379 --> 00:46:43.349
and when I was there, I got to publish,
I would say certainly three, four writers

00:46:43.349 --> 00:46:45.359
that have remained important to me.

00:46:45.359 --> 00:46:51.029
One was Haruki Murakami, who is
now, we, we, we published, he'd been

00:46:51.029 --> 00:46:56.069
published once before in the uk, but
we published the Windup Bird Chronicle,

00:46:56.219 --> 00:46:58.049
which was the breakout novel for him.

00:46:58.199 --> 00:46:59.249
And then give us the name again.

00:46:59.649 --> 00:47:02.309
The Windup Bird Chronicle
the Wind Up by Mira.

00:47:03.449 --> 00:47:06.329
Often he's, you know,
generally considered one of.

00:47:07.154 --> 00:47:10.004
Perhaps Japan's greatest modern novelist.

00:47:10.214 --> 00:47:14.144
And that book, again, is another,
another World War II book in lots

00:47:14.144 --> 00:47:19.914
of ways, although it's, it's like a
mashup between a, a kind of, world

00:47:19.914 --> 00:47:23.034
War II movie and a studio Ghibli film.

00:47:24.464 --> 00:47:25.884
He's the most, he is.

00:47:25.884 --> 00:47:28.584
If you've not read Burak, you should,
you should read, and that's, and I would

00:47:28.584 --> 00:47:30.564
say, what's, what's a Studio Ghibli film?

00:47:30.834 --> 00:47:38.214
So Studio Ghibli is, spirited away,
the great, Miyazaki Hi Zaki, who makes

00:47:38.214 --> 00:47:42.864
the most extraordinary,  animated
films, ah, of which, spirited it away.

00:47:42.864 --> 00:47:45.114
Hows, hows Moving Castle?

00:47:45.634 --> 00:47:47.254
my neighbor Totoro.

00:47:47.494 --> 00:47:47.734
Yes.

00:47:47.834 --> 00:47:52.574
they are most fabulous,
imaginative, kind of, and.

00:47:53.969 --> 00:47:58.499
Also seemed somehow to be universal
in a way, while also being extremely

00:47:58.499 --> 00:48:00.239
Japanese, certainly spirited away.

00:48:00.244 --> 00:48:01.579
So you got to publish this guy.

00:48:01.799 --> 00:48:06.479
And so Mukai has, has, has,
has that kind of energy.

00:48:06.989 --> 00:48:09.989
But also he's also a gr a,
I think, a great storyteller

00:48:09.994 --> 00:48:11.339
and, and, and loves jazz.

00:48:11.339 --> 00:48:16.769
He's very, so I published him and I
published, what subsequently become

00:48:16.769 --> 00:48:20.994
one of my gr probably my, one of my
great literary heroes, which is William

00:48:20.994 --> 00:48:25.149
Maxwell, who was fiction editor at
the, at the New Yorker for 40 years.

00:48:25.149 --> 00:48:29.859
So maybe I respond to Maxwell
because he was a, he was an enabler

00:48:29.859 --> 00:48:34.539
of stories as well as writer of,
of incredibly beautiful stories.

00:48:34.869 --> 00:48:36.999
What, what book by Maxwell should we read?

00:48:37.059 --> 00:48:41.379
You should read, you should read, so
Long C Tomorrow, which was his late,

00:48:41.949 --> 00:48:44.109
it's his last novel published in 1980.

00:48:44.909 --> 00:48:47.639
and was, it didn't get in amazingly.

00:48:47.639 --> 00:48:50.279
Wasn't published in English
until we did it in 1996.

00:48:52.559 --> 00:48:58.809
But Maxwell also wrote, the beginning
of his life, a book called, they Came

00:48:58.814 --> 00:49:04.029
like swallows, which is one of the very
small number of, of books that deals with

00:49:04.029 --> 00:49:08.049
the impact in his case, direct impact.

00:49:08.049 --> 00:49:11.139
His mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

00:49:12.339 --> 00:49:16.119
But I got to meet Maxwell in New York in.

00:49:16.694 --> 00:49:22.064
96 the year before he died, and
that was one of my great moments.

00:49:22.064 --> 00:49:28.874
But Maxwell was, it was Maxwell's
porch in Connecticut that Salinger,

00:49:28.874 --> 00:49:35.074
JD Salinger drove out to and read in
one sitting the whole of,  the story

00:49:35.074 --> 00:49:36.714
that became Catcher and the Rye.

00:49:37.314 --> 00:49:44.354
So Maxwell had published, you know, the
great heroic period, Updyke Chi,  Frank

00:49:44.354 --> 00:49:49.864
O'Connor of New Yorker fiction writers,
and then was a writer to himself.

00:49:49.864 --> 00:49:53.854
So it was just a extraordinary
quirk of fate that for some reason

00:49:53.854 --> 00:49:56.314
he'd never really been published
properly in the UK before.

00:49:56.764 --> 00:49:57.524
So you, you and

00:49:57.524 --> 00:50:00.334
Rupert Isaacson: then, and you were a
story enabler and you, you talk about

00:50:00.339 --> 00:50:07.644
this joy, this great joy, joyous time
publishing these ex extraordinary people.

00:50:08.554 --> 00:50:08.844
John Mitchinson: Yeah.

00:50:09.304 --> 00:50:10.205
I mean, why don't you stay there forever?

00:50:11.704 --> 00:50:12.034
Okay.

00:50:14.764 --> 00:50:15.154
Yeah.

00:50:15.154 --> 00:50:16.054
That's a good question.

00:50:16.354 --> 00:50:17.734
Why don't we stay there forever?

00:50:18.444 --> 00:50:23.904
I think I had got,  Christopher and I
had a very good working relationship,

00:50:24.804 --> 00:50:31.404
but I think I was beginning to feel
that, that the business wouldn't

00:50:31.404 --> 00:50:35.994
work as a business if, if we
didn't do some things differently.

00:50:35.999 --> 00:50:37.614
I'd launched a paperback list.

00:50:38.634 --> 00:50:40.344
Christopher was very much the publisher.

00:50:40.349 --> 00:50:43.954
It is very much his, his,  It
was very much his baby.

00:50:44.004 --> 00:50:47.314
And he'd employed me and
then,  Rachel to, to help him.

00:50:47.319 --> 00:50:48.274
And, and I think we did.

00:50:48.274 --> 00:50:51.964
We, we, we made, we took it, we
bought it out of Harper Collins.

00:50:51.964 --> 00:50:53.674
We made it successful and independent.

00:50:54.334 --> 00:50:57.694
I know, I think I was just at that
point, I was at my, in my early

00:50:57.694 --> 00:50:59.464
thirties and he was in his late fifties.

00:50:59.464 --> 00:51:03.874
I can see now that's that, that, that what
you want from life is slightly different.

00:51:05.074 --> 00:51:11.614
and we were not able to buy,  you know,
Christopher was very un unhappy about

00:51:12.364 --> 00:51:16.684
dealing with literary agents, which again,
I completely now understand and see why.

00:51:18.154 --> 00:51:23.444
so I just, yeah, I think it was just, I
started to get frustrated and I, I was,

00:51:23.444 --> 00:51:25.154
made an offer that I couldn't refuse.

00:51:26.684 --> 00:51:32.299
And,  to go and be marketing director and
deputy group publisher at the Orion Group,

00:51:32.299 --> 00:51:36.139
which is about that stage, about the fifth
or sixth largest publisher in the uk.

00:51:37.069 --> 00:51:40.639
it was a, at a time, you
know, we had young children.

00:51:40.669 --> 00:51:42.589
It was quite a big hike in salary.

00:51:43.039 --> 00:51:48.739
We just moved, we moved to the
country in 1997 and I Great.

00:51:48.739 --> 00:51:53.929
So by the end of 1998, it seemed like a
really perfect moment for, for me to, to

00:51:53.934 --> 00:52:00.634
do something new and then, That's what
I, I did, we went and I went and did

00:52:00.634 --> 00:52:04.984
a year as marketing director, and then
I realized that I really, I, I didn't

00:52:04.984 --> 00:52:09.124
really want to be marketing directors
despite I was doing you, I was doing

00:52:09.124 --> 00:52:15.184
campaigns for very commercial stuff like
May Bin and Penny Chene and David Seaman.

00:52:15.624 --> 00:52:17.034
you know, he was the England goalkeeper.

00:52:17.724 --> 00:52:22.584
And apart from, apart from sort of
refining my, I, I learned a lot of stuff.

00:52:22.584 --> 00:52:27.024
I suppose I learned how big
branded published authors were,

00:52:27.054 --> 00:52:29.244
were kind of how they worked.

00:52:29.604 --> 00:52:33.804
But the first possibility to run
something directly myself came up and

00:52:33.804 --> 00:52:38.184
they, Orion bought a company called
Castle, which were a large baggy,

00:52:39.084 --> 00:52:42.294
company that did lots of illustrated
books, practical illustrated books.

00:52:42.504 --> 00:52:46.704
Rachel used to say they appear to publish
five different books on corn dollies.

00:52:47.274 --> 00:52:48.594
And I said, yeah, that's true.

00:52:48.594 --> 00:52:49.614
A huge back list.

00:52:49.794 --> 00:52:50.934
Most of it, not very good.

00:52:51.504 --> 00:52:54.414
They had a reference company, but
most of the language dictionaries had

00:52:54.414 --> 00:52:59.154
been in the deal had been taken off to
another bit, part, part of the business.

00:52:59.154 --> 00:53:02.634
So I was left with some strange
reference books, including the

00:53:02.639 --> 00:53:04.914
amazing,  brewers phrase and Fable.

00:53:05.274 --> 00:53:08.634
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, that's for the,
again, for those listeners who do not

00:53:08.634 --> 00:53:15.054
know this, go out now and order a copy of
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

00:53:15.264 --> 00:53:18.294
All the stuff you've ever
wondered where it comes from.

00:53:18.299 --> 00:53:18.744
It's in there.

00:53:19.494 --> 00:53:19.844
Sorry,

00:53:19.904 --> 00:53:20.204
John Mitchinson: go ahead.

00:53:20.724 --> 00:53:25.054
Written by an extraordinary, retired
clergyman, like many of the, the

00:53:25.054 --> 00:53:28.144
reference books of the 19th century
were called Ebenezer Carbon Brewer.

00:53:29.044 --> 00:53:32.854
And it is, it's a, it's an
absolute treasure tro It is so,

00:53:33.064 --> 00:53:34.774
and a military history list.

00:53:35.134 --> 00:53:40.624
And I was sort of basically given the
job of trying to make sense of all this,

00:53:41.014 --> 00:53:48.114
which was,  so I, I, I, I, again, that
was, we did a complete look at the brand

00:53:48.114 --> 00:53:52.314
and what it represented, and I got very
excited in the history of, of Castle.

00:53:52.344 --> 00:53:57.414
Castle had been, John Castle had been a
temperance campaigner from Manchester.

00:53:58.164 --> 00:54:02.249
And he'd started with,  he'd
started with,  tea and coffee.

00:54:02.909 --> 00:54:07.079
So the idea I think was let's keep
the, let's keep the working man's

00:54:07.079 --> 00:54:09.299
hands full of anything other than beer.

00:54:10.479 --> 00:54:13.684
and then he'd gone into newspapers
and magazines, and then he gone

00:54:13.684 --> 00:54:17.214
into book publishing and in
fact, the castle's,  library was.

00:54:17.386 --> 00:54:20.536
Early prototype for what
became, would've become Penguin.

00:54:20.866 --> 00:54:25.756
You know, the idea of doing
classics cheaply for working people.

00:54:26.026 --> 00:54:31.156
And, and, and so I got quite interested
in this, the, the deeper story of Castle,

00:54:31.156 --> 00:54:32.986
which had been lost over the years.

00:54:32.986 --> 00:54:35.056
And within Castle they had Mrs.

00:54:35.196 --> 00:54:38.896
Beaton and they had Ward Lock, they had
other old publishing companies that,

00:54:39.436 --> 00:54:44.806
so it again, that kind of historical
digging deep into history to find

00:54:44.806 --> 00:54:46.636
stories that illuminate the present.

00:54:46.756 --> 00:54:48.946
It was a very exciting time.

00:54:48.946 --> 00:54:52.996
And we, I was fortunate in that
I, the Weinfeld and Nicholson,

00:54:53.001 --> 00:54:56.356
another distinguished English
Publisher's illustrated list,

00:54:56.361 --> 00:54:58.216
had been thrown in with mine.

00:54:58.216 --> 00:55:05.356
So we, in, I inherited a, a, some great
editors and a couple of amazing projects.

00:55:05.916 --> 00:55:12.756
we had, I think acquired two books by
Triny and Susanna,  who were, doing

00:55:12.756 --> 00:55:16.206
a column call about telling people,
telling women what to wear, basically.

00:55:16.211 --> 00:55:20.956
Very kind of a, and despite the
skepticism about that,  I remember them.

00:55:20.956 --> 00:55:23.506
Yeah, there were some, when I, when
I, when I met them, I thought, one day

00:55:23.506 --> 00:55:26.896
you'll make television and you'll make,
you're gonna be, you are gonna be huge.

00:55:26.926 --> 00:55:28.216
Which is more or less what happened.

00:55:28.221 --> 00:55:28.436
Yeah.

00:55:28.736 --> 00:55:33.286
And then also we had the lovely
Michael Palin, and he had come to

00:55:33.291 --> 00:55:37.846
us from the b BBC because we had
undertaken to do his book on Hemingway.

00:55:38.686 --> 00:55:42.736
Which he really was a passion
project for him, and he had

00:55:42.736 --> 00:55:44.356
enjoyed that experience so much.

00:55:44.416 --> 00:55:48.646
We got to do the next, the next
two big books with him, which were,

00:55:49.446 --> 00:55:52.416
Sahara and Himalaya and Sahara.

00:55:52.926 --> 00:55:55.581
I'd, I'd left Castle by the
time, Himalaya came out.

00:55:55.581 --> 00:56:01.101
But Sahara was the only time I've ever
paid a million pounds for a, for a,

00:56:01.161 --> 00:56:02.421
but it was, I think they earned it.

00:56:02.421 --> 00:56:04.161
I mean, it was earned
back almost immediately.

00:56:04.581 --> 00:56:10.791
But also that my other, my kind of, in
terms of ones publishing excitement,

00:56:10.941 --> 00:56:13.942
that was the first Frankfurt I went to.

00:56:14.751 --> 00:56:17.001
Castle, I should say, was
losing quite a lot of money.

00:56:17.001 --> 00:56:17.511
Frank Festival.

00:56:17.691 --> 00:56:17.841
Yeah.

00:56:17.901 --> 00:56:20.811
So Frankfurt is a, is, is a,
is a book fair where you, we

00:56:20.811 --> 00:56:22.281
go to buy and sell rights.

00:56:22.281 --> 00:56:26.181
Really, it's not a place for the,
it's not a place for the uninitiated.

00:56:26.181 --> 00:56:28.431
It's not a place for readers
or for writers to be honest.

00:56:29.121 --> 00:56:32.511
It's where publishers go and try
and do business and is amazing.

00:56:32.511 --> 00:56:37.011
And we're set up by George Weidenfeld
again in that after war period thinking,

00:56:37.491 --> 00:56:40.311
you know, we need, we books are what
we need to bring the world together.

00:56:40.311 --> 00:56:42.326
And  some part of that
spirit still remained.

00:56:42.836 --> 00:56:46.436
But I knew that we had lost a lot
of castles, losing a lot of money.

00:56:46.436 --> 00:56:49.196
I'd had to, I'd had to restructure,
I'd had to make, to make quite a few

00:56:49.196 --> 00:56:53.666
redundancies, but I knew that we needed
a big book and that was when I was.

00:56:54.086 --> 00:56:55.436
Just by happenstance.

00:56:55.976 --> 00:57:01.466
founder, an American publisher called
Chronicle, who had been given the rights

00:57:01.466 --> 00:57:05.036
to publish the Beatles anthology, and
were looking for a British partner.

00:57:05.966 --> 00:57:10.046
and I had assumed that they would
much more likely go to, to a, a

00:57:10.046 --> 00:57:12.266
much bigger house than than we were.

00:57:13.326 --> 00:57:19.716
but in fact, I think such was my passion
for the book and possibly my desperation.

00:57:21.086 --> 00:57:25.536
but,  that was, we did offer quite a
bit of, we offered up 300,000 pounds,

00:57:25.536 --> 00:57:30.816
but it was, you know, people forget
it was a 35 pound book back in 2000,

00:57:30.876 --> 00:57:34.116
and it was, it went to number one
and we sold half a million copies.

00:57:34.896 --> 00:57:35.856
Pretty extraordinary.

00:57:36.376 --> 00:57:41.776
and that, that was, that gave us,
that bought us a bit of time to do

00:57:41.776 --> 00:57:45.287
other things and to it, you know, to
bring the, the, the Michael Palins on.

00:57:45.586 --> 00:57:50.526
And, we, we started an amazing, under
the mentorship of Antony Cheatham,

00:57:50.526 --> 00:57:55.146
who with Christopher is an, these,
these are two extraordinary publishers

00:57:55.146 --> 00:57:56.706
that I've learned massively from.

00:57:57.456 --> 00:58:00.726
But we reinvented the reference list.

00:58:01.146 --> 00:58:05.376
I mean, the idea was to do reference,
I would now call it alt reference.

00:58:05.466 --> 00:58:08.826
It's the idea of reference list
that's sort of written by human

00:58:08.826 --> 00:58:12.066
beings rather than by faceless
panels of academics, which is where

00:58:12.066 --> 00:58:13.926
reference publishing had come.

00:58:13.931 --> 00:58:15.456
So there was.

00:58:15.771 --> 00:58:18.051
The amazing dolling, kindly visual thing.

00:58:18.051 --> 00:58:20.541
But I was trying to find people.

00:58:20.541 --> 00:58:25.401
So I got, you know, we, we
were, we did Bri, we did a,

00:58:25.461 --> 00:58:27.321
we'd expanded the Brewers Range.

00:58:27.326 --> 00:58:31.131
We did Brewers Place names, we did
Brewers, which was sort of Bri,

00:58:31.191 --> 00:58:32.271
British and Irish Place names.

00:58:33.571 --> 00:58:37.671
And we did books of reference,
books of adventures.

00:58:37.701 --> 00:58:42.911
We did,  amazing kind of,  people's,
places, nations, you know, the idea

00:58:42.911 --> 00:58:47.771
of nobody knows which tribes live
where, you know, who, who are all these

00:58:47.771 --> 00:58:48.642
people being mentioned in the Bible.

00:58:49.201 --> 00:58:51.671
And we commissioned quite a
lot of very, very good people.

00:58:51.671 --> 00:58:54.965
We did amazing timelines of British
history with, with, with a lot of

00:58:54.965 --> 00:58:57.995
very, very good, great editorial team.

00:58:58.595 --> 00:59:03.425
And that was, yeah, that was
a, I also did, I published,

00:59:04.475 --> 00:59:07.985
Jonathan Green, the Great Slang
Lexicographer we had inherited.

00:59:08.625 --> 00:59:13.930
And we did a book called The Big, the
Big Book of Filth, which was, you know,

00:59:13.930 --> 00:59:15.190
you'd Love, which is just massive.

00:59:15.610 --> 00:59:19.600
All the synonyms for various
parts of the human body.

00:59:20.050 --> 00:59:20.890
Rupert Isaacson: Do you have a favorite?

00:59:21.600 --> 00:59:25.260
John Mitchinson: That's too,
yeah, that's too, I mean, I think.

00:59:27.095 --> 00:59:27.945
You say what you like.

00:59:28.215 --> 00:59:32.565
Yeah, no, I think, I think it was,
there's something, I think the, the,

00:59:32.565 --> 00:59:37.095
the, the idea of kidney brush for penis
was, was particularly kidney brush.

00:59:39.465 --> 00:59:39.975
Exactly.

00:59:40.905 --> 00:59:42.855
It's that moment of
incomprehension before.

00:59:42.855 --> 00:59:42.975
Yeah.

00:59:43.725 --> 00:59:45.255
Then the penny horribly drops.

00:59:45.915 --> 00:59:46.095
Yeah.

00:59:46.095 --> 00:59:49.675
It was, it what was as fascinating as
we discovered there were as many, oh,

00:59:49.675 --> 00:59:51.235
you came up with that one as genius.

00:59:51.465 --> 00:59:52.965
I mean, it was just, it was historical.

00:59:52.965 --> 00:59:55.875
That's the thing that, and the, so
the idea was it was taking, it was

00:59:55.875 --> 01:00:00.525
taking all the rude bits of, of this
extraordinary amazing work of reference.

01:00:00.735 --> 01:00:02.866
I mean, one of the great reference
works of the 20th century.

01:00:03.165 --> 01:00:07.665
If, if I was, if anybody was gonna
say, you know, surely one non person

01:00:07.665 --> 01:00:13.015
now can't, can't actually run a, run
a, a serious,  academic reference, but

01:00:13.020 --> 01:00:15.865
then green's dictionary of, of slang.

01:00:15.985 --> 01:00:20.395
It is one of the, it's one of the great
works and it's still available and I

01:00:20.395 --> 01:00:24.565
think you can, you, you know, it's now
a huge three volume set, but I think

01:00:24.565 --> 01:00:28.135
you can still get that maybe the, a
version of the Castle Slim Down version.

01:00:28.735 --> 01:00:30.595
I don't think the big
book of filth lasted.

01:00:31.115 --> 01:00:32.735
I think we're not gonna
run out and get it.

01:00:32.765 --> 01:00:37.175
Well, we sold, I think we sold, we
sold, I made Jonathan Money, which his,

01:00:37.235 --> 01:00:39.636
his actual academic stuff never did.

01:00:39.785 --> 01:00:41.345
He made quite a bit of money in that.

01:00:41.405 --> 01:00:43.115
So, We had a lot of fun.

01:00:43.925 --> 01:00:46.595
And then you're gonna ask,
why did I stop doing that?

01:00:46.985 --> 01:00:49.385
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you could have
played among the kidney brushes forever.

01:00:49.385 --> 01:00:49.685
Yes.

01:00:49.685 --> 01:00:50.405
What, why not?

01:00:50.645 --> 01:00:50.885
What,

01:00:50.890 --> 01:00:55.115
John Mitchinson: what happened was,
as is the want in publishing is Castle

01:00:55.205 --> 01:01:01.835
and Orion were bought by Hash Hash,
this extraordinarily large business

01:01:01.835 --> 01:01:08.355
owned by,  which owns as well as
publishing, I think Laga own Hash

01:01:08.805 --> 01:01:11.925
and own l and also make exo missiles.

01:01:11.930 --> 01:01:15.825
It's the only, the French could come
up with this insane combination.

01:01:15.825 --> 01:01:18.040
Rupert Isaacson: Hash actually
published me as well, that the

01:01:18.040 --> 01:01:19.300
Horse Boys published by Hasher.

01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:21.640
So one of their many subsidiaries.

01:01:21.640 --> 01:01:21.850
John Mitchinson: Yeah.

01:01:22.240 --> 01:01:29.180
So we had, castle was, , not yet
quite outta the woods, although

01:01:29.180 --> 01:01:32.180
it would become very much outta
the woods the year after I left.

01:01:32.180 --> 01:01:38.030
But it was on its way there and they
decided that they were acquiring as part

01:01:38.030 --> 01:01:42.470
of,  the, they were gonna quite octopus
publishing, which were a specialist.

01:01:42.500 --> 01:01:43.400
Very, very good.

01:01:44.190 --> 01:01:48.420
illustrated reference publisher, Mitchell
Beasley and various bits and pieces that,

01:01:50.280 --> 01:01:51.540
so there was a bit of a clash there.

01:01:51.900 --> 01:01:56.960
And they decided that what they were going
to do was,  merge Octopus and Castle.

01:01:57.320 --> 01:02:01.940
So Castle would become a kind
of an imprint of octopus and

01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:04.970
the denfeld bits of the castle.

01:02:04.970 --> 01:02:10.340
Were gonna go back to Weidenfeld Thelist,
which was, I mean, I, it was three, I

01:02:10.345 --> 01:02:14.810
felt it was three years of work that
was now being brutally torn apart.

01:02:15.740 --> 01:02:18.230
And I went and had lunch.

01:02:18.290 --> 01:02:21.500
Anton and I used to have lunch at a
marvelous restaurant called Luigi's.

01:02:21.505 --> 01:02:26.360
We'd have the same on a Thursday
and we'd have Ossa Buco, which was

01:02:26.360 --> 01:02:30.350
very good, and a bottle of Hannah
now, which is a Sardinian wine.

01:02:31.310 --> 01:02:34.190
And then we would go through all
the week's business together.

01:02:34.280 --> 01:02:38.870
So we had one of these lunches and he's,
I said, this is, he said, well, look, you

01:02:38.870 --> 01:02:42.200
can go and run Castle down in  Heron Keys.

01:02:42.200 --> 01:02:46.280
Which was like really long way
down the can, sort of Canary Wharf

01:02:47.030 --> 01:02:50.120
down in the London and doesn't
know I live, I live in great shoe.

01:02:50.210 --> 01:02:50.500
Yeah.

01:02:51.500 --> 01:02:54.540
Rupert Isaacson: Which would've
been,  adopt three hour,

01:02:54.630 --> 01:02:56.220
three hour commute or so.

01:02:56.220 --> 01:02:58.290
John Mitchinson: So, or he
said, you can go and be deputy

01:02:58.290 --> 01:03:00.870
publisher of, of, of Denfeld.

01:03:02.430 --> 01:03:02.640
Yeah.

01:03:02.670 --> 01:03:06.810
So I said, well, deputy publisher
of anything sounds like a terrible

01:03:06.810 --> 01:03:09.540
idea because you, if you remember
Anthony, you made me deputy group

01:03:09.540 --> 01:03:13.320
publisher of the Orion group, but then
failed to tell any of my colleagues

01:03:13.320 --> 01:03:17.760
is that, that that's what the job
you'd given me was so classic Chitum.

01:03:18.450 --> 01:03:20.490
So we laughed and I decided no.

01:03:20.700 --> 01:03:22.350
I said, what would I,
what, what if I left?

01:03:22.350 --> 01:03:23.190
What, what could you get me?

01:03:23.190 --> 01:03:25.410
I said, well, I could probably
get you a, I make you redundant,

01:03:25.530 --> 01:03:26.550
give you a year's salary.

01:03:27.540 --> 01:03:30.720
So I suddenly thought, you know what?

01:03:32.280 --> 01:03:33.630
That doesn't sound like a bad idea.

01:03:34.830 --> 01:03:38.250
I thought, I'm sure I'd
get a job very quickly.

01:03:38.255 --> 01:03:40.420
And indeed, I was offered
very, very quickly.

01:03:40.540 --> 01:03:45.990
I, I told the, the,  the, the Uber
agent, ed Victor, that I was leaving,

01:03:46.830 --> 01:03:49.470
and he just said Ed had done a, he
was very impressed with a couple of

01:03:49.470 --> 01:03:51.030
the books that we were publishing.

01:03:51.510 --> 01:03:55.680
We did a big, beautiful science,
it was called the Science Book.

01:03:55.685 --> 01:03:59.070
And it was a timeline of the
most important things that had

01:03:59.070 --> 01:04:01.920
happened in science with a really
big, beautiful illustrations.

01:04:01.920 --> 01:04:06.670
And we, we were sort of, you know,
selling that for 25, 30 quid, I think.

01:04:07.510 --> 01:04:08.590
And he'd loved this.

01:04:09.720 --> 01:04:15.750
so he rang Victoria Barnsley, who
was then head of Harper Collins, and

01:04:15.750 --> 01:04:21.086
I got called in for, an interview
and it, that turned out that they,

01:04:21.236 --> 01:04:22.846
they offered me a, a big job.

01:04:23.596 --> 01:04:24.686
What was the job they offered you?

01:04:25.126 --> 01:04:27.466
They offered me the job of, they
were gonna start a new literary

01:04:27.471 --> 01:04:28.756
division called Harper Press.

01:04:30.116 --> 01:04:33.146
and they asked me if they,
if, if I wanted to do it.

01:04:33.756 --> 01:04:34.886
Rupert Isaacson: And you said,

01:04:35.246 --> 01:04:37.316
John Mitchinson: and I, I
said, yeah, sounds great.

01:04:38.846 --> 01:04:45.011
And then, What happened was, I, by this
stage was, was obviously living in great

01:04:45.011 --> 01:04:47.501
chew and enjoying the joys of that.

01:04:47.921 --> 01:04:51.881
And, and this legendary character who
had lived in Great Chew, got married in

01:04:51.881 --> 01:04:54.461
great ch and had not, but had not lived
there for a while, had suddenly moved

01:04:54.461 --> 01:04:59.181
back into the village as man called
John Lloyd, who was famous as the early

01:04:59.471 --> 01:05:03.621
collaborator with Douglas Adams, the
man who'd produced, not the nine o'clock

01:05:03.621 --> 01:05:08.731
News and,  black Adda and written one
of my favorite little books, which is

01:05:08.731 --> 01:05:10.561
the meaning of Lift Lift Douglas Adams.

01:05:10.741 --> 01:05:12.151
Rupert Isaacson: I just wanna
pause there for a second.

01:05:12.151 --> 01:05:16.441
For anyone who's listening in the usa
a lot of you might know Black adda.

01:05:16.611 --> 01:05:19.351
but if you don't know blackout,
you should go watch Black adda.

01:05:19.501 --> 01:05:23.341
It's a TV series, but if you never knew,
not the nine o'clock News, which was

01:05:23.341 --> 01:05:30.481
a classic British comedy inheritor of
Monty Python,  from the eighties, go

01:05:30.481 --> 01:05:34.051
look at that on YouTube too, because
it, it is a work of genius and only

01:05:34.051 --> 01:05:36.321
Brits of a certain, generation now.

01:05:36.321 --> 01:05:37.341
All right, back to you, John.

01:05:37.341 --> 01:05:41.261
So you meet John Lloyd in the
pub, probably in,  great two.

01:05:41.261 --> 01:05:43.726
John Mitchinson: Yeah, well,  John
and I got on very well, and that was,

01:05:45.286 --> 01:05:51.171
and he kept telling me that he had
had this extraordinary idea,  and

01:05:51.411 --> 01:05:54.381
then wouldn't tell me what the idea
was, but said it was life changing.

01:05:55.361 --> 01:06:01.271
and then we, I told him that I
was leaving Castle and that I was

01:06:01.271 --> 01:06:05.201
gonna go to Harper Collins and
he said, I'm about to go skiing.

01:06:05.201 --> 01:06:07.181
Please don't accept the
job until I get back.

01:06:07.181 --> 01:06:10.961
Cause I think he said I might have got
money to do this thing that I'm doing.

01:06:11.681 --> 01:06:14.711
So I said, well, okay, when are
you about two away for a week.

01:06:14.711 --> 01:06:17.501
Anyway, we, when he got back, we
went and we did have a, in, in fact

01:06:17.501 --> 01:06:19.391
a very, very long session in the pub.

01:06:20.381 --> 01:06:25.661
And that was when he told me he wanted to
set, start a company that was dedicated

01:06:25.661 --> 01:06:27.281
to Interestingness in all its forms.

01:06:27.881 --> 01:06:30.191
So I said, okay, but
define Interestingness.

01:06:31.271 --> 01:06:36.401
So he told me three stories,  one of
which I'm sure, I'm sure I've told you

01:06:36.401 --> 01:06:40.351
all of them in the one of which was
that when his son Harry was born, he

01:06:40.351 --> 01:06:43.661
decided he was gonna read the whole
of Encyclopedia Botanica so that

01:06:43.661 --> 01:06:45.341
he would be the best informed dad.

01:06:46.721 --> 01:06:50.351
And he said it was so boring, so tedious.

01:06:50.411 --> 01:06:55.721
He got to the fairly early on
to the, the thing on basketball.

01:06:55.721 --> 01:06:59.491
And he said it was like, it was,
it was almost like the article

01:06:59.711 --> 01:07:02.891
on basketball was constructed
to not make you want to read it.

01:07:03.971 --> 01:07:06.491
And he said right in the
middle of all these, you know,

01:07:06.521 --> 01:07:08.441
court dimensions and rules.

01:07:08.441 --> 01:07:13.061
And there was this extraordinary story,
which was that, it had been invented

01:07:13.061 --> 01:07:19.651
by a Canadian and called I think James
Naysmith, who was entering a competition

01:07:19.651 --> 01:07:21.481
for a new sport for American high schools.

01:07:22.441 --> 01:07:26.341
And he had, you know, been
sketching things out, ideas and was.

01:07:27.151 --> 01:07:30.961
Scratching up bits of paper and
throwing them and, and, and, and,

01:07:31.831 --> 01:07:34.411
you know, one of them went into the
basket and he suddenly had the eureka

01:07:34.411 --> 01:07:38.311
moment, went out and nailed a couple
of peach baskets into the gymnasium.

01:07:39.181 --> 01:07:40.701
And, basketball was born.

01:07:42.021 --> 01:07:45.231
But that isn't the, that
isn't the qi bit of the story.

01:07:45.251 --> 01:07:49.821
The qi bit of the story is that for
the first 21 years of basket's, woo's

01:07:49.821 --> 01:07:53.437
existence, it never occurred to anybody
to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket.

01:07:53.947 --> 01:07:56.407
So every time a basket was
scored, you had to get on a step

01:07:56.407 --> 01:07:57.427
ladder and get the ball out.

01:08:00.997 --> 01:08:01.267
So that

01:08:01.667 --> 01:08:02.947
also as a stately

01:08:02.947 --> 01:08:04.147
game, a stately program.

01:08:04.147 --> 01:08:05.277
That was one story.

01:08:05.497 --> 01:08:08.317
The other, other was,
ok, who have did the,

01:08:08.317 --> 01:08:11.857
Rupert Isaacson: did the, did the
players have to carry ladders over

01:08:11.857 --> 01:08:12.967
their shoulders as they dribbled?

01:08:12.972 --> 01:08:13.177
Is that

01:08:13.177 --> 01:08:13.717
John Mitchinson: what you dribble?

01:08:14.227 --> 01:08:14.797
Okay, go ahead.

01:08:14.797 --> 01:08:15.097
Sorry.

01:08:16.327 --> 01:08:17.137
It's a kangaroo halve.

01:08:17.167 --> 01:08:18.517
So I said, I don't know one.

01:08:18.637 --> 01:08:19.687
No, it's three.

01:08:20.467 --> 01:08:23.527
And he said, you know, how many, how many
David Attenborough documentaries, how

01:08:23.527 --> 01:08:27.097
many natural world documentaries have
you watched where this extraordinary

01:08:27.102 --> 01:08:28.657
fact is never even mentioned?

01:08:29.567 --> 01:08:31.097
and it, it does turn out to be true.

01:08:31.097 --> 01:08:33.527
And then the third one was, he said,
do you know what a tardigrade is?

01:08:34.577 --> 01:08:40.412
And tardigrades are now big on the
internet, but back in 2000 and one, the,

01:08:40.412 --> 01:08:45.762
the idea of these tiny little,  water
bears, moss, bears these little six legged

01:08:45.942 --> 01:08:50.202
creatures that are somewhere between
ana lids and insects that live on every

01:08:50.202 --> 01:08:53.922
environment on earth and are able, the
extraordinary thing about them is that

01:08:53.922 --> 01:08:59.382
they, if you dehydrate a tardigrade, it
can live in a state of suspended animation

01:08:59.382 --> 01:09:03.102
for as long as a century and come back
to life with a single drop of water.

01:09:03.732 --> 01:09:09.942
So they are, so anyway, I was kind of,
you can sort of see that this was already

01:09:09.942 --> 01:09:14.742
chiming with the kind of reference books
that I was trying to do reference, you

01:09:14.742 --> 01:09:19.722
know, the idea that that good, but good
communication, good storytelling is about

01:09:19.812 --> 01:09:23.892
getting people's attention and telling
them things that they didn't know and

01:09:23.892 --> 01:09:28.572
making the world feel, you know, like
a more interesting and wonderful place

01:09:28.572 --> 01:09:33.172
because it is, if you look at anything
however dull,  so one of the early, I

01:09:33.172 --> 01:09:37.372
remember one of the early QI challenges
we used to get was, give me a name of

01:09:37.372 --> 01:09:40.512
Your town, if you think it's the most
boring town in England, and we'll come

01:09:40.512 --> 01:09:42.312
back with interesting things about it.

01:09:42.312 --> 01:09:47.172
And I think somebody sent us
Chelmsford and we ended up doing,

01:09:47.177 --> 01:09:50.682
you know, 20 pages of deep research
into Chelmsford, which made it sound

01:09:50.687 --> 01:09:52.152
like, you know, frankly Venice.

01:09:52.782 --> 01:09:57.372
So,  yeah, that was, that was, and I'm
afraid, I remember going home and telling

01:09:57.372 --> 01:10:00.012
Rachel, my wife, that I was going to.

01:10:00.867 --> 01:10:03.357
I was gonna start a new business
with John Lloyd, and she said, but

01:10:03.477 --> 01:10:05.217
how will you get anything done?

01:10:05.457 --> 01:10:06.897
You'll just spend all day talking.

01:10:07.857 --> 01:10:09.687
And I thought, yeah, I don't know.

01:10:09.747 --> 01:10:17.907
But we, anyway, we did, and I think
there, the Qi TV show now is on,

01:10:18.477 --> 01:10:23.457
it's somewhere past p it's on its
way to, to, to ending the alphabet.

01:10:23.457 --> 01:10:28.737
And we did, I wrote and co-wrote
10, 10 qi books with John.

01:10:29.067 --> 01:10:29.937
The first one.

01:10:31.827 --> 01:10:35.187
The first one was sold over 2
million copies, was number one

01:10:35.187 --> 01:10:39.387
on Amazon for six weeks and sold
in 30 languages across the world.

01:10:40.587 --> 01:10:45.057
so yeah, so I then, that was my stint
as a, as a, as a brighter, and then,

01:10:45.447 --> 01:10:46.409
well, hold on, hold on, hold on.

01:10:46.497 --> 01:10:46.827
No, no.

01:10:46.827 --> 01:10:47.907
Director of research.

01:10:48.627 --> 01:10:50.997
Rupert Isaacson: So you, you,
you're about to take the big

01:10:50.997 --> 01:10:53.067
paying job that's going to Yeah.

01:10:53.277 --> 01:10:55.677
Also, you know, pay for your
kids education and feed them.

01:10:55.682 --> 01:10:58.827
Then you go home and tell your
wife, sorry, I'm not gonna do that.

01:10:59.067 --> 01:11:04.127
gonna,  sit in the pub and talk to this
friend of mine who admittedly does do

01:11:04.132 --> 01:11:09.137
interesting TV shows about interesting
stuff and hope to publish and make

01:11:09.137 --> 01:11:10.067
TV shows about interesting stuff.

01:11:10.477 --> 01:11:15.517
can you show us, I can see you
on Zoom, but our listeners can't,

01:11:15.517 --> 01:11:17.857
but I can't see the dent in
your head where the frying pan.

01:11:18.412 --> 01:11:19.282
Must have landed.

01:11:19.972 --> 01:11:22.152
is it, have you, is it discreetly
on the back of your edit?

01:11:22.152 --> 01:11:22.612
You still, you

01:11:22.612 --> 01:11:25.522
John Mitchinson: still had, you still
had fax machines back in those days?

01:11:26.302 --> 01:11:31.667
And I know,  Rachel did actually
cry actual tears when that fact I

01:11:31.672 --> 01:11:35.927
sent that fax through to Victoria
Parsley, and it is, it is sort of

01:11:35.927 --> 01:11:39.887
true that I would've been earning
back in 2001 more than I'm still,

01:11:40.067 --> 01:11:42.107
than I'm still managing to earn today.

01:11:42.137 --> 01:11:46.667
So, but hey, we did, we made a, we
did make a bit, we made a bit of, we

01:11:46.672 --> 01:11:50.387
had a nice, there was a nice period
where the book royalties more than

01:11:50.392 --> 01:11:53.117
made up for my,  that that was that.

01:11:53.397 --> 01:11:56.877
And that did coincide with a period
when we were having, it was nice.

01:11:56.877 --> 01:12:00.177
We were able to go three times with
the boys to New Zealand when they

01:12:00.177 --> 01:12:01.467
were young enough to really enjoy it.

01:12:02.517 --> 01:12:06.057
but yeah, I mean, I would broadly say
that for any of your listeners who are

01:12:06.062 --> 01:12:09.777
thinking about a career in, in books
and publishing, i, I, if, if money

01:12:09.837 --> 01:12:13.017
is your number one priority, it's
probably not the right industry for you.

01:12:13.317 --> 01:12:13.767
So let me

01:12:13.767 --> 01:12:16.887
Rupert Isaacson: ask you a question here,
because people will be listening to it

01:12:16.947 --> 01:12:18.647
and,  when you say things work well.

01:12:18.677 --> 01:12:23.487
Well, I paid this million pound,
price for Michael Palin's book

01:12:23.877 --> 01:12:26.547
back in the days when a million was
worth a lot more than it is now.

01:12:27.087 --> 01:12:32.237
And there you are making a TV
show, called qi, which is still

01:12:32.237 --> 01:12:34.637
running,  hosted by Steven Fry.

01:12:34.637 --> 01:12:38.207
It's a big machine internationally.

01:12:38.267 --> 01:12:40.307
Everybody knows that
television is well paid.

01:12:40.667 --> 01:12:42.137
Everyone thinks about royalties and so on.

01:12:42.137 --> 01:12:45.902
So, Now you're gonna burst our bubble.

01:12:46.862 --> 01:12:51.872
If you are, if you are,  paying these
million pound,  book advances and

01:12:51.872 --> 01:12:57.152
you are helping to get a amazing TV
machine and publishing machine like Qi

01:12:58.022 --> 01:13:04.882
going and,  you are not sitting there
now as a privately wealthy English

01:13:04.882 --> 01:13:08.452
Square multimillionaire from, why not?

01:13:08.482 --> 01:13:09.322
Why the fuck not?

01:13:09.382 --> 01:13:09.982
What happened?

01:13:09.982 --> 01:13:14.182
Why, why it This is, this is cuz
we want to live free, ride free.

01:13:14.187 --> 01:13:15.322
So Sure.

01:13:15.712 --> 01:13:17.392
Why does that money not go to you?

01:13:17.662 --> 01:13:19.232
John Mitchinson: well
some, so what bits of it?

01:13:19.332 --> 01:13:20.352
But yeah, some of it does.

01:13:21.062 --> 01:13:25.322
I possibly, I mean, I think there was
a, I mean there were specific reasons.

01:13:26.312 --> 01:13:31.802
I think this, I think with Qi, I had
come to the, I mean, I still, you know,

01:13:31.952 --> 01:13:35.292
John and I still very good friends
and,  the books, as I say, still make

01:13:35.292 --> 01:13:36.672
small amounts of royalty for the books.

01:13:36.672 --> 01:13:40.872
But I think there must be, there
must be something in me that

01:13:40.872 --> 01:13:42.972
requires a degree of freedom.

01:13:43.362 --> 01:13:48.852
I mean, I'm, I now, I mean, 10 years
ago, 12 years ago, started Unbound on

01:13:48.852 --> 01:13:52.692
the, I I hadn't really wanted to start
it, but two friends of mine had said

01:13:52.952 --> 01:13:54.682
something has to happen about publishing.

01:13:54.682 --> 01:13:55.573
And I'd said, you're right.

01:13:55.642 --> 01:13:59.522
I, I left publishing actually by this,
the time I left publishing, I was, I,

01:13:59.682 --> 01:14:04.742
I was fed up with it, fed up with all
the,  The, the, the the, as I think I,

01:14:04.902 --> 01:14:08.562
I once said, it sort of has bad karma
publishing a lot of people saying no to

01:14:08.562 --> 01:14:10.152
each other all the time about everything.

01:14:10.572 --> 01:14:15.432
but so the idea of using, I'd become
aware in that period, which was I

01:14:15.432 --> 01:14:21.522
suppose 2008, 2007, 2008, it'd been
hanging around with a lot of the

01:14:21.522 --> 01:14:23.532
Web two zero people in, in London.

01:14:24.162 --> 01:14:27.642
And I've become just aware of the launch
of a thing called Kickstarter, which was

01:14:28.122 --> 01:14:32.682
seemed to me quite interesting, which
was to get, go directly to, to people

01:14:32.682 --> 01:14:34.782
to fund interesting creative projects.

01:14:35.772 --> 01:14:40.422
And it seemed to me, I knew somebody
who'd got a book, a terrible book

01:14:40.427 --> 01:14:42.372
by the way, funded on Kickstarter.

01:14:42.372 --> 01:14:45.132
And he was ringing me up saying, can you
tell me where I could get it printed?

01:14:45.162 --> 01:14:47.142
Cuz obviously the thing with
Kickstarter is you have to do

01:14:47.142 --> 01:14:48.072
all the fulfillment yourself.

01:14:48.072 --> 01:14:49.692
I thought this is stupid.

01:14:49.692 --> 01:14:53.172
What, what we really need is you,
you want to, you know, you want

01:14:53.172 --> 01:14:56.742
to set up a publishing house that
uses crowdfunding, but that also

01:14:56.742 --> 01:14:58.002
offers all the other services.

01:14:58.002 --> 01:15:02.322
You know, editorial marketing, sales
gets books into bookshops cuz that's

01:15:02.322 --> 01:15:03.672
in the end where they will sell.

01:15:04.692 --> 01:15:06.492
So that's how Unbound started.

01:15:06.492 --> 01:15:09.942
And I, as I said, I was slightly
reluctant to, you know, I was at that

01:15:09.942 --> 01:15:12.162
stage, QI was ticking along quite nicely.

01:15:12.162 --> 01:15:16.522
I was writing on the shows, the books
were still, I still working on the

01:15:16.522 --> 01:15:23.992
books, but suddenly this new idea
presented itself and it was obvious

01:15:23.992 --> 01:15:27.502
to me that my experience was pretty
essential if it was gonna work.

01:15:27.982 --> 01:15:30.757
So, Spent two years not
getting really paid.

01:15:31.387 --> 01:15:37.087
And then at a certain point I was able
to pay myself a small salary and I've

01:15:37.087 --> 01:15:39.967
been mostly doing Unbound ever since.

01:15:40.327 --> 01:15:40.897
Rupert Isaacson: And now on.

01:15:41.427 --> 01:15:44.877
Okay, so This's, you didn't
answer our question earlier.

01:15:45.097 --> 01:15:46.087
No, I'm coming back.

01:15:46.087 --> 01:15:47.137
Why you, okay.

01:15:47.137 --> 01:15:52.897
So why, why are you, are you, why are
you not the you is the, is the wider

01:15:52.897 --> 01:15:54.217
people within the publishing world?

01:15:54.217 --> 01:15:57.517
Well, I mean, why the publishers and
the people working in publishing, not

01:15:57.517 --> 01:16:01.747
making the sort of money that you would
expect them to if they're paying million

01:16:01.747 --> 01:16:03.577
pound book advances here and there.

01:16:03.607 --> 01:16:03.817
Oh, I

01:16:03.817 --> 01:16:05.767
John Mitchinson: think, I think
I would be making a lot, if I'd

01:16:05.767 --> 01:16:09.967
stayed in tradi in, in traditional
publishing, I'd be making a, I'd be on

01:16:09.967 --> 01:16:11.227
a, but you know, I'd be on a salary.

01:16:11.227 --> 01:16:11.857
Mm-hmm.

01:16:12.157 --> 01:16:13.297
I'd be on a good salary.

01:16:13.387 --> 01:16:17.407
I'd be on a big bonus probably, but
I would've ultimately not be free.

01:16:17.917 --> 01:16:23.017
I would be having to publish the kind
of books that, and I, I think I'd

01:16:23.017 --> 01:16:25.957
already demonstrated that I didn't
really, I wasn't very good at that.

01:16:26.887 --> 01:16:30.937
I was always interested in
trying to, to find stuff.

01:16:30.942 --> 01:16:34.057
I was always really, I cared
more about literary quality

01:16:34.057 --> 01:16:35.827
than, than commercial success.

01:16:36.457 --> 01:16:40.567
Sometimes when I, when I, you know,
when I, when I, you know, like The

01:16:40.567 --> 01:16:44.737
Beatles or with, with some of the
other, or with the, well, like, well,

01:16:44.767 --> 01:16:47.107
my own book, you know, with the,
with a book of general ignorance.

01:16:47.977 --> 01:16:51.157
I think I've got, it's not that I don't
think I have good commercial instincts.

01:16:51.157 --> 01:16:53.827
I just think I have a very,
very low boredom threshold.

01:16:54.637 --> 01:16:57.427
So I want the books to be both.

01:16:57.937 --> 01:17:00.007
Good and commercially successful.

01:17:00.607 --> 01:17:04.507
And if they're good and not commercially
successful, I can live with that

01:17:04.537 --> 01:17:09.457
more easily than just working in a
sausage factory churning out big name

01:17:09.457 --> 01:17:10.837
thriller after big name thriller.

01:17:11.377 --> 01:17:19.177
So it's my own particular reasons for
why I'm not more in independently wealthy

01:17:19.237 --> 01:17:23.617
are probably to do with, that's probably
more, that's probably a longer show to

01:17:23.617 --> 01:17:28.297
do with who I am and where I come from
and how I never really grew up with

01:17:28.297 --> 01:17:30.157
anybody who had ever had any money.

01:17:30.157 --> 01:17:31.117
So I've never really indeed, but

01:17:31.277 --> 01:17:32.617
Rupert Isaacson: I But it's not just you.

01:17:32.617 --> 01:17:36.007
I mean, I think, I think No, as you
said, people in general in publishing

01:17:36.012 --> 01:17:39.637
don't, do not get paid that well,
despite the fact that it's an industry

01:17:39.677 --> 01:17:41.107
that generates a lot of money.

01:17:41.107 --> 01:17:44.707
John Mitchinson: The senior people,
the people of my generation who

01:17:44.707 --> 01:17:48.877
stayed in big jobs in pub, if I'd
stayed in Harper Collins and assumed,

01:17:48.937 --> 01:17:51.937
let's assume I hadn't gone mad.

01:17:52.057 --> 01:17:57.127
If I, I, I would be now earning, I'd be
earning a, you know, perfectly comfortable

01:17:57.907 --> 01:18:03.477
salary to, to me know, I would own my own
house and I would be, I'd be living a,

01:18:03.907 --> 01:18:05.947
I'd probably be contemplating retirement.

01:18:06.907 --> 01:18:13.207
but I'm not, and I, you know, I think
that, I think independent publishers,

01:18:14.102 --> 01:18:15.362
it's much more of a struggle.

01:18:15.422 --> 01:18:18.662
It is just much more of a struggle
cuz you're trying to, you know,

01:18:18.667 --> 01:18:22.442
you're, by definition, unless you
get an amazing hit, which, you know,

01:18:22.442 --> 01:18:27.422
luckily with Unbound, I've had enough
amazing hits over the last 12 years to

01:18:27.422 --> 01:18:30.842
mean that we not only have survived,
but thrive and now make a profit.

01:18:30.902 --> 01:18:31.252
Rupert Isaacson: Right.

01:18:31.252 --> 01:18:34.442
So, and I still, you may
contemplate retirement.

01:18:34.922 --> 01:18:35.252
Sorry.

01:18:35.522 --> 01:18:37.442
You may yet contemplate retirement.

01:18:38.222 --> 01:18:41.552
John Mitchinson: Well, the only, if
I, if you're gonna ask me, do I, you

01:18:41.552 --> 01:18:45.182
know, which you haven't, but let's
assume that you would what for us?

01:18:45.632 --> 01:18:49.232
What, what is the, what other things
that you feel that you haven't done?

01:18:49.322 --> 01:18:53.342
I mean, the, the only thing I think
now, which I said to you in the pub the

01:18:53.342 --> 01:18:57.602
other day, which I feel I have got to,
it's the one thing I need to fulfill.

01:18:58.382 --> 01:19:03.212
Um, and I can, I can rest easy is
I've never, I've never published a

01:19:03.212 --> 01:19:09.573
book of my own under my own names
and I'm a good, I know, I think that

01:19:09.722 --> 01:19:11.282
is because I am good collaborator.

01:19:11.342 --> 01:19:15.092
I mean, I enjoy, you know, I love the,
the other thing that I've done in the

01:19:15.092 --> 01:19:20.732
last six, seven years is to, is to launch
a, the back listed podcast, which is,

01:19:20.972 --> 01:19:22.982
it brought me a huge amount of joy.

01:19:23.282 --> 01:19:23.462
So

01:19:23.462 --> 01:19:25.922
Rupert Isaacson: please tell us about
that because, so you've done the

01:19:25.922 --> 01:19:28.172
last 10 years of this unbound Yeah.

01:19:28.272 --> 01:19:28.812
Uh, crowd.

01:19:29.192 --> 01:19:29.852
John Mitchinson: I've
published some amazing

01:19:29.852 --> 01:19:32.072
Rupert Isaacson: books and we've
watched some of the books that you've

01:19:32.072 --> 01:19:33.362
done and they're extraordinary.

01:19:33.602 --> 01:19:36.242
For the listeners, go and
check out Unbound Publishing.

01:19:36.662 --> 01:19:37.112
It's.

01:19:37.727 --> 01:19:40.877
Full of phenomenal stuff that wouldn't
have gotten published anywhere else.

01:19:41.177 --> 01:19:45.797
John has published these books and
then absolutely caucus, but okay,

01:19:45.802 --> 01:19:50.297
so, but then you, you've started
this podcast called Backlist, which

01:19:50.302 --> 01:19:52.037
has taken life of his back listed

01:19:52.037 --> 01:19:55.787
John Mitchinson: is, is,  an idea I
had with a, an old waterstones friend,

01:19:55.787 --> 01:19:59.917
Andy Miller, who had written, I'd seen
him do a sh a a great, he has a book

01:19:59.917 --> 01:20:04.627
called The Year of Reading Dangerously
where he, he set himself a, a task of

01:20:04.627 --> 01:20:09.127
reading 50 great novels in a year, as he
says, 50 great novels and two bad ones.

01:20:09.127 --> 01:20:12.667
One of the bad ones was
Dan Browns Ta Vinci Coat.

01:20:13.417 --> 01:20:17.347
But,  it's very, very
funny, but also very clever.

01:20:17.347 --> 01:20:24.277
Very, and I had, I had had
independently the idea that why

01:20:24.282 --> 01:20:26.437
was the no John Peel for books?

01:20:26.887 --> 01:20:27.937
Why was the nobody

01:20:28.507 --> 01:20:30.777
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us again,
not everyone knows John Peel

01:20:30.777 --> 01:20:34.267
John Mitchinson: because John was, John
Peel was legend, legendary English dj.

01:20:34.267 --> 01:20:37.897
He used to play late night, kind
of two hours late night most nights

01:20:38.497 --> 01:20:43.867
and many of the most interesting
bands of the last 30, 40 years Yeah.

01:20:44.137 --> 01:20:47.737
Were 50 years even were
discovered on his show.

01:20:48.607 --> 01:20:55.302
So he was a kind of,  taste maker and it
seemed to me that, that most of what was.

01:20:56.097 --> 01:20:59.457
Wrong with publishing was that there
were very few places that you could

01:20:59.457 --> 01:21:04.557
go cuz literary, literary reviews
were getting smaller in newspapers.

01:21:04.557 --> 01:21:10.287
And it just seemed to me that there was
scope to do something where you had really

01:21:10.292 --> 01:21:12.087
intelligent conversation about books.

01:21:12.627 --> 01:21:17.787
But that the trick would be not
cuz nobody is really, really, yeah.

01:21:17.787 --> 01:21:21.957
People like, sort of, people do like
to talk about what I've discovered

01:21:22.257 --> 01:21:26.337
interviewing authors over the years is
if you talk to an author about their own

01:21:26.337 --> 01:21:30.357
work, they're often quite re reticent
or sometimes just not very interesting.

01:21:31.047 --> 01:21:35.517
If you talk to them about other people,
other contemporaries work, they're

01:21:35.517 --> 01:21:41.097
usually not very forthcoming because
they either haven't read it or don't want

01:21:41.097 --> 01:21:42.867
to, don't even want to contemplate it.

01:21:43.587 --> 01:21:47.157
But you ask them to talk about a book that
meant something to them when they were,

01:21:47.847 --> 01:21:51.567
when they were growing up, or that they
were, that that's, that that's been a

01:21:51.567 --> 01:21:53.667
load stone for them in their own writing.

01:21:54.267 --> 01:21:57.297
And you get an extra, you know,
you barely have to do anything.

01:21:57.297 --> 01:22:03.147
You just get an extraordinary hour
of, of the kind of intense, engaged,

01:22:03.267 --> 01:22:09.057
intelligent conversation, which I think
we all enjoy having late night over

01:22:09.057 --> 01:22:13.107
a bottle of whiskey or you know, when
we're, when we're meeting old friends

01:22:13.107 --> 01:22:14.577
again who haven't seen for ages.

01:22:15.087 --> 01:22:19.167
So that was the idea and seeing
Andy doing his little talk, which

01:22:19.167 --> 01:22:20.667
was called Read Yourself Fitter.

01:22:21.127 --> 01:22:24.277
I said, do you fancy doing
a pilot for a podcast?

01:22:24.277 --> 01:22:26.167
I've had this idea and we, so we did it.

01:22:26.167 --> 01:22:32.287
And then again with the first book we did
was a beautiful book by JL Car called A

01:22:32.287 --> 01:22:36.897
Month in the Country, which is as close to
perfection, I think as a small novel gets,

01:22:37.167 --> 01:22:44.697
and we had more or less the formula from
day one and we've now done 188 episodes.

01:22:45.497 --> 01:22:48.942
and , we've been on sabbatical since
Christmas, so the new bat listed episode

01:22:48.947 --> 01:22:51.317
on Graham Green, there are no guests.

01:22:51.322 --> 01:22:54.977
We normally invite guests and we
get guests to choose the books, but

01:22:55.277 --> 01:23:00.737
we have had over nearly seven years
of doing the podcast, Graham Green

01:23:00.737 --> 01:23:04.277
has probably been the writer that's
been most requested by listeners.

01:23:04.997 --> 01:23:07.757
and we are both Graham Green
fans, Andy in particular.

01:23:08.237 --> 01:23:10.967
So we decided, we just did
it with our producer, Nikki.

01:23:11.787 --> 01:23:15.747
but that's the first of a new series and
we, they come out fortnightly and we ask,

01:23:15.747 --> 01:23:21.497
as I say, we get interesting guests on
to choose a book that they love, and.

01:23:22.412 --> 01:23:24.422
It's, it's, it's, it's that simple.

01:23:24.422 --> 01:23:27.752
But it's, it's, yeah, we
get, we get big audience now.

01:23:27.752 --> 01:23:30.272
We have a Patreon, which
actually is starting to make

01:23:30.272 --> 01:23:32.372
us quite nice money each month.

01:23:32.372 --> 01:23:36.122
So it's also, you know what podcasting's
like, it's, it's just fun to do.

01:23:36.482 --> 01:23:37.772
Fun to do and easy to do.

01:23:38.472 --> 01:23:41.262
it's a lot of preparation doing,
cuz we have to do a lot of reading.

01:23:41.472 --> 01:23:43.902
I mean, we thought blithely
when we started it.

01:23:43.902 --> 01:23:44.772
Hey, we are well-read.

01:23:45.522 --> 01:23:47.022
Most of the books will have read already.

01:23:47.022 --> 01:23:51.222
I would say about one in
seven we've read already.

01:23:51.402 --> 01:23:52.632
I mean the, what people choose.

01:23:52.632 --> 01:23:55.962
But it just means that we've been in
the most incredible reading journal.

01:23:55.962 --> 01:23:57.882
I've read all sorts of things
I would never have read.

01:23:58.762 --> 01:24:00.102
and it what stands out?

01:24:00.252 --> 01:24:01.692
Rupert Isaacson: What stands
out as one that you would

01:24:01.692 --> 01:24:03.822
never have read that has been

01:24:03.822 --> 01:24:04.422
John Mitchinson: Revelator?

01:24:04.692 --> 01:24:04.962
Okay.

01:24:04.962 --> 01:24:06.812
There's, ones that I
would never have read.

01:24:07.082 --> 01:24:11.972
I pr I'm, I'm not sure I would've,
I would've read the English novelist

01:24:12.032 --> 01:24:16.712
Elizabeth Taylor, published by Vago
or the Elizabeth Jenkins, the Tortoise

01:24:16.712 --> 01:24:20.312
in the Hair that Carmen Khalil,
the great founder of vgo, came on

01:24:20.312 --> 01:24:21.632
as our guest to talk to me about.

01:24:22.532 --> 01:24:27.932
And the, the, the, the Soul of Kindness
by Elizabeth Taylor and the, the Tortoise

01:24:27.932 --> 01:24:31.442
in the Hair by Elizabeth Jenkins,
both novels of the 1950s written by

01:24:31.447 --> 01:24:37.292
women because of the ridiculous way in
which literature is taught, those are

01:24:37.297 --> 01:24:42.302
books that men of my generation might
easily not have, not not have read.

01:24:42.842 --> 01:24:45.572
and there indeed there are a
lot we do have done a lot of.

01:24:45.572 --> 01:24:47.822
Are these, are these books we
should, we should all have read?

01:24:47.852 --> 01:24:48.092
Yeah.

01:24:48.097 --> 01:24:49.912
I mean if you're, if you interested,
ask quickly about those two.

01:24:51.362 --> 01:24:55.712
I mean, they're both, they're both,
they're both basically, portrait,

01:24:55.862 --> 01:24:58.672
it may sound like both one of
them are set in a small town.

01:24:59.132 --> 01:25:04.112
Elizabeth Taylor, one set in, in,
in a, in a village, outside London.

01:25:04.262 --> 01:25:10.382
And, and both set in the 1950s,
both with, complicated emotional

01:25:10.532 --> 01:25:13.292
relationships at their heart.

01:25:14.012 --> 01:25:19.262
And they are just immaculately
beautifully written.

01:25:19.922 --> 01:25:22.412
It's the, the small detail.

01:25:22.832 --> 01:25:27.332
It's the, the, the, the surprising
kind of character interactions.

01:25:27.332 --> 01:25:27.632
I reme.

01:25:27.692 --> 01:25:27.812
Yeah.

01:25:27.812 --> 01:25:29.312
There's, there are other writers.

01:25:29.317 --> 01:25:34.912
Barbara Cummins, amazing writer, the vet's
daughter, lolly Willows by Sylvia Warner.

01:25:35.452 --> 01:25:41.512
A lot of the, I I now see 20th century
literature as being very different cuz

01:25:41.517 --> 01:25:43.672
I've ended up reading Muriel Spark.

01:25:43.922 --> 01:25:47.602
I, I, in fact, I had to slow down on
Muriel Spark cuz her books are so good.

01:25:47.602 --> 01:25:48.652
I don't want to run outta them.

01:25:48.657 --> 01:25:49.252
Anita Brook.

01:25:49.252 --> 01:25:51.322
Now another amazing that.

01:25:51.327 --> 01:25:58.252
So at the same time doing Alan Garner
and Susan Cooper and doing, Both of whom

01:25:58.252 --> 01:25:59.062
Rupert Isaacson: are, are, are sort of

01:25:59.062 --> 01:26:00.202
John Mitchinson: classic, yeah.

01:26:00.352 --> 01:26:02.392
I mean, fantasy English, fantasy English

01:26:02.392 --> 01:26:03.262
Rupert Isaacson: mythology

01:26:03.267 --> 01:26:04.342
John Mitchinson: writers for children.

01:26:04.342 --> 01:26:04.402
Yeah.

01:26:04.407 --> 01:26:08.152
I mean, as, as the stuff which I would
feel as, and, and, and obviously I've

01:26:08.152 --> 01:26:11.362
mentioned before, will the work of
William Maxwell doing those books, all

01:26:11.362 --> 01:26:16.762
of those books that you would, I would
naturally have seen as, as, as part of

01:26:16.762 --> 01:26:19.222
the, the stuff that I read and enjoy.

01:26:20.882 --> 01:26:25.232
I've, I, there's a lot of other stuff
that I've, I've encountered,  that,

01:26:25.232 --> 01:26:30.092
that, that I, and I, I would say that
the absolute moment for me with back

01:26:30.092 --> 01:26:35.492
listed that that is, it's not always
obscure books or relatively obscure books.

01:26:35.492 --> 01:26:39.692
We did great expectations and one of the
reasons I wanted to do that was because

01:26:39.692 --> 01:26:45.392
I'd, I'd read it last as a child, you
know, as an 18, 19 year old for my degree.

01:26:45.812 --> 01:26:48.782
And I've, I'd always loved
that book and been terrified

01:26:48.842 --> 01:26:51.212
by the film a David Lean film.

01:26:52.562 --> 01:26:56.462
And then I read it in my early fifties
and I suddenly realized, oh my God,

01:26:56.462 --> 01:26:59.222
this is a book about disappointment.

01:27:00.332 --> 01:27:04.562
the clues in the title, it's about your
life not turning out how you expect it to.

01:27:05.452 --> 01:27:08.452
And no young person is gonna
understand what Dickins was

01:27:08.452 --> 01:27:09.532
trying to do with that book.

01:27:10.102 --> 01:27:10.282
Yeah.

01:27:10.402 --> 01:27:11.782
So it's, it's, it's that.

01:27:12.457 --> 01:27:15.847
That thing of how great books live
with you and you, you know, you go

01:27:15.847 --> 01:27:19.627
back to them and re-read them and
find more in them each time you go

01:27:19.627 --> 01:27:22.867
back to them, which is a sort of
definition of what literature is for me.

01:27:23.057 --> 01:27:23.277
Mm.

01:27:23.587 --> 01:27:26.437
A book that's that you get more
out of the fourth time you read it.

01:27:27.377 --> 01:27:27.797
Mm-hmm.

01:27:27.797 --> 01:27:28.197
Mm-hmm.

01:27:28.357 --> 01:27:30.787
I would say that about Lord of the
Rings as well, by the way, just

01:27:30.792 --> 01:27:32.397
keeping my talking theme going.

01:27:33.547 --> 01:27:34.207
And the Shire

01:27:34.237 --> 01:27:36.517
Rupert Isaacson: where you are now
sitting telling us about these books.

01:27:36.547 --> 01:27:37.807
John Mitchinson: I'm not,
I'm in Pembrokeshire.

01:27:38.197 --> 01:27:38.497
Oh, you

01:27:38.497 --> 01:27:38.767
Rupert Isaacson: are?

01:27:38.767 --> 01:27:39.277
Okay.

01:27:39.427 --> 01:27:42.237
Ah, you're, that's another
version of the Shire that Sure.

01:27:42.697 --> 01:27:42.877
John Mitchinson: Yeah.

01:27:42.907 --> 01:27:44.707
It's, it's the Shire by the Sea.

01:27:44.712 --> 01:27:45.037
Exactly.

01:27:45.367 --> 01:27:45.547
Yeah.

01:27:45.547 --> 01:27:46.237
Rupert Isaacson: Shire on Sea.

01:27:47.317 --> 01:27:52.547
So with back listed, you've got
really a coming together Yeah.

01:27:52.957 --> 01:27:56.407
Of this whole story where you,
you've been gathering and enabling

01:27:57.577 --> 01:28:02.707
stories your whole life and including
living in the place of story.

01:28:03.347 --> 01:28:07.067
And now here you are both
enabling and creating story.

01:28:07.757 --> 01:28:12.857
You've done Qi the book of general
ignorance, by the way, for everyone

01:28:12.857 --> 01:28:15.077
who's listening, you should go
and, and read it should sit in

01:28:15.077 --> 01:28:17.247
everyone's toilet,  sits in my toilet.

01:28:17.557 --> 01:28:21.277
It's the thing that you sit down,
you open it at random and it's

01:28:21.277 --> 01:28:22.627
gonna be really, really interesting.

01:28:22.627 --> 01:28:24.337
Are you gonna actually people

01:28:24.337 --> 01:28:25.147
John Mitchinson: banging on the door?

01:28:25.237 --> 01:28:28.062
And also, can I say, if you, if the
one of those books  if you're reading

01:28:28.062 --> 01:28:31.633
the, the Book of the Dead, it's
probably not the best title, but the,

01:28:31.638 --> 01:28:35.622
the, the, the Qi Book of the Dead,
which is 69 lives thematically linked.

01:28:36.312 --> 01:28:38.352
There's a, there's a chapter
in there about people who

01:28:38.352 --> 01:28:39.672
kept monkeys, for example.

01:28:40.252 --> 01:28:43.862
But you know, the first chapter
is about,  about people who had

01:28:44.372 --> 01:28:47.372
either absent or complicated
relationships with their fathers.

01:28:47.882 --> 01:28:51.812
But it, I think that's probably the most
ambitious of the Qi books that we did.

01:28:51.812 --> 01:28:55.892
The animal book is very good, but yeah,
but I mean, the, the first, the first

01:28:55.892 --> 01:28:59.482
one always has a sort of,  an affection,
not least because it's so, it was so

01:28:59.482 --> 01:29:05.112
successful, but it's, it's, it's very,
it's very amusing now when I interview

01:29:05.117 --> 01:29:10.872
people for jobs who are in their twenties
or thirties and they kind of all grew up.

01:29:11.742 --> 01:29:13.992
It's like my own children, you
know, they all grew up with Qi.

01:29:14.512 --> 01:29:15.942
Qi is now part of the culture.

01:29:15.942 --> 01:29:19.722
It's part of the, it's part of the
cultural furniture of a lot of, a lot

01:29:19.722 --> 01:29:24.152
of,  younger people, which, you know,
in the long run, if one's looking back

01:29:24.152 --> 01:29:27.782
on one's life, that's, that's a, that's
a really exciting and happy thing

01:29:27.782 --> 01:29:29.792
to have been able to, to, to create.

01:29:30.902 --> 01:29:35.012
and it, you know, the, the, the, the
little me that used to sit at in the

01:29:35.012 --> 01:29:41.222
Northeast reading children's Britanica
kind of finding out interesting facts

01:29:41.222 --> 01:29:45.702
about birds, it's been wonderful to be
able to turn that into something that's.

01:29:46.002 --> 01:29:51.882
That's both been successful also, but
I think culture we've made often people

01:29:51.882 --> 01:29:53.982
say to me, you made being a geek cool.

01:29:54.582 --> 01:29:58.932
You know, QI helped make, make
people who were intelligent and

01:30:00.312 --> 01:30:04.752
interested in things,  kind of, and
not feel like they were weirdos.

01:30:05.082 --> 01:30:08.352
So that's, that's, that's
a nice thing to think.

01:30:09.762 --> 01:30:10.692
So now you

01:30:10.692 --> 01:30:12.192
Rupert Isaacson: are,
you are looking ahead.

01:30:12.312 --> 01:30:16.422
this is, this is, this is livery
ripe, and, and you don't have the,

01:30:16.872 --> 01:30:21.822
either the personality type nor
the luxury of saying, well, now I'm

01:30:21.822 --> 01:30:23.262
contemplating with my retirement.

01:30:23.532 --> 01:30:25.782
But also what would you do
in your retirement other than

01:30:25.782 --> 01:30:26.832
do exactly what you're doing?

01:30:27.132 --> 01:30:27.462
I,

01:30:27.462 --> 01:30:29.832
John Mitchinson: I, and more, I have no, I
have no use for the concept of retirement.

01:30:29.892 --> 01:30:30.012
I

01:30:30.017 --> 01:30:31.422
Rupert Isaacson: can't
understand it myself.

01:30:31.427 --> 01:30:34.332
John Mitchinson: No more time, more
time for, more time for reading.

01:30:34.812 --> 01:30:39.313
And I, I feel I've gathered together
so much of, so many stories about

01:30:39.522 --> 01:30:43.212
the village, and I would love to
try and weave all of that into

01:30:43.212 --> 01:30:45.722
something, that would be meaningful.

01:30:45.722 --> 01:30:50.822
So, I mean, I, I feel that's my, if
people say what's, what's what, what,

01:30:50.822 --> 01:30:52.682
what unfinished business do you have?

01:30:52.712 --> 01:30:56.312
That's definitely, that definitely
feels like unfinished business.

01:30:56.317 --> 01:30:58.122
And how, a bit more time John Mitchinson.

01:31:00.212 --> 01:31:02.372
Rupert Isaacson: I can see it,
I can see the series, I can see

01:31:02.372 --> 01:31:07.292
the, the Downton Abbey,  natural
inheritance of,  but over generations

01:31:07.292 --> 01:31:09.392
and generations in different eons.

01:31:09.767 --> 01:31:10.967
Perhaps starting Cree.

01:31:11.267 --> 01:31:11.507
No.

01:31:11.687 --> 01:31:16.457
This we have not touched on, by the
way, is your, is your deep knowledge of

01:31:17.567 --> 01:31:22.157
the LA English landscape, its history
and its mythology and its pre-history.

01:31:22.757 --> 01:31:27.627
John Mitchinson: Yeah, I think that's,
that's the stuff that really, I, I,

01:31:27.632 --> 01:31:31.377
when we was talking about the authors
that I published at Harville, Rachel

01:31:31.407 --> 01:31:36.387
and I were really thrilled one day
we were kind of, an email came around

01:31:36.387 --> 01:31:40.227
saying, would you, would anybody in
from this is in Christopher's voice?

01:31:40.227 --> 01:31:44.127
Would anybody be interested in reading
the adult, an adult novel by Alan Garner?

01:31:44.127 --> 01:31:46.887
And I think Rachel's reply minor, right?

01:31:46.887 --> 01:31:49.197
Almost simultaneously
with kind of like, yes.

01:31:49.707 --> 01:31:54.607
And, that started a, a relationship
that we both had with Alan and his

01:31:54.607 --> 01:31:57.427
wife Zelda, which has been, and
now with his daughter Elizabeth.

01:31:58.177 --> 01:32:02.437
And that's been one of the most
nourishing and happy, publishing stories.

01:32:02.437 --> 01:32:05.807
We, we published Alan's book, strand
Lo, Oprah, and then Thurs Bitch.

01:32:06.937 --> 01:32:11.767
And he is, if you are, I mean, he's
a very, very tough model because

01:32:11.887 --> 01:32:13.447
what he does is so remarkable.

01:32:13.447 --> 01:32:19.657
And he's lived in the, literally in the
same place for 60 odd years and cataloged

01:32:19.657 --> 01:32:25.687
every pot shirt, every kind of, every
find, every, every, everything that's

01:32:25.687 --> 01:32:28.897
come out of the, the ground on that
extraordinary site up in Cheshire for.

01:32:29.872 --> 01:32:35.602
And his way of distilling all
that down into something that is

01:32:35.602 --> 01:32:38.062
beautiful and, and meaningful.

01:32:38.067 --> 01:32:45.592
And again, like I say, like a
almost impossible to work out

01:32:45.592 --> 01:32:49.162
how so much has been compressed
into so little, so few words.

01:32:49.162 --> 01:32:53.032
His, his late latest book, by the way, Ru,
you've Not Read Trickle Walker, which was,

01:32:53.642 --> 01:32:55.142
shortlisted for the Booker Prize loss.

01:32:55.142 --> 01:32:58.232
He's the oldest person at 88 to
be shortlisted for the Booker

01:32:58.232 --> 01:33:02.942
Prize, but that might be, well,
I think it is his masterpiece.

01:33:03.512 --> 01:33:05.162
Oh, trickle Walker, which is Alan Garner.

01:33:05.252 --> 01:33:05.402
Yeah.

01:33:05.792 --> 01:33:05.852
Okay.

01:33:06.122 --> 01:33:07.802
It's pretty, pretty extraordinary.

01:33:07.802 --> 01:33:12.932
There is a whole bat listed on it if
you want some background, but he, yeah,

01:33:13.022 --> 01:33:16.382
I mean, I think for Rocha and I, that
was, that was, that remains one of the

01:33:16.382 --> 01:33:21.182
great, and it's, it was, he was very
instrumental at the time we moved to

01:33:21.182 --> 01:33:27.812
Chew and in kind of, in kind of making
that sea seem like the right thing for

01:33:27.812 --> 01:33:32.162
us to do, which it undoubtedly has been,
I mean, as a, I think we've said it's

01:33:32.792 --> 01:33:36.902
living in one place f for a long time
isn't, is, will always have, its, its.

01:33:37.862 --> 01:33:41.582
It's, it's issues, but it's, and you
know, the village as well as anybody.

01:33:43.822 --> 01:33:48.842
It's not, it's not quite as
relaxing and, and, and quaint

01:33:48.932 --> 01:33:50.322
and, as people might think.

01:33:50.327 --> 01:33:52.572
It's, it's, there's a
ferocity about it as well.

01:33:52.577 --> 01:33:52.782
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.

01:33:53.052 --> 01:33:56.277
As a quick aside, for the, for
those listeners, if you ever go

01:33:56.277 --> 01:34:01.497
to visit Great two in the uk, it
is possibly the most picturesque.

01:34:02.457 --> 01:34:04.977
If it's not the most picturesque,
it's up there in the top 10,

01:34:05.667 --> 01:34:07.557
however, and it has a legendary pub.

01:34:07.917 --> 01:34:12.607
And this pub is called the Falkland
Arms, which hasn't really changed inside

01:34:12.607 --> 01:34:14.577
and that much since the 17th century.

01:34:14.577 --> 01:34:18.087
And you can still get a clay pipe
stuffed with tobacco over the

01:34:18.087 --> 01:34:22.887
counter, and yet, yes, and it's
full of bonami and good cheer.

01:34:23.787 --> 01:34:27.447
And as John says, it's, well,
how would you, how would you

01:34:27.447 --> 01:34:29.517
describe as you said this

01:34:29.517 --> 01:34:30.177
John Mitchinson: ferocity?

01:34:30.177 --> 01:34:30.627
This?

01:34:32.697 --> 01:34:32.877
Yeah.

01:34:32.877 --> 01:34:33.917
I think it's, I don't know.

01:34:33.917 --> 01:34:38.987
I think I, I think some places, some
places have a, the, the membrane

01:34:39.167 --> 01:34:43.247
is thin and chew is one of those
places, and I think there is, there's

01:34:43.252 --> 01:34:44.837
something occult almost about it.

01:34:44.837 --> 01:34:45.737
There is, yeah.

01:34:45.827 --> 01:34:50.387
And you know, it's ha there's there
the, the, that energy can, can, can draw

01:34:50.387 --> 01:34:54.947
people into addictive behavior and, and
you know, there's, there are, there are,

01:34:55.037 --> 01:34:58.817
there are lots of, there are lots of
bad two stories as well as good ones.

01:34:59.357 --> 01:34:59.567
Mm-hmm.

01:34:59.937 --> 01:35:03.052
and, and people who've come
and who's who've, who've not

01:35:03.057 --> 01:35:04.012
been able to cope with it.

01:35:04.012 --> 01:35:04.192
And.

01:35:05.257 --> 01:35:08.767
But you know, it all, all of that makes
only just make, for me at least, it

01:35:08.767 --> 01:35:10.207
makes it more interesting, I suppose.

01:35:10.567 --> 01:35:10.987
Yes.

01:35:10.987 --> 01:35:11.407
Human,

01:35:12.007 --> 01:35:15.037
Rupert Isaacson: human and yet
sort of pre-human and superhuman.

01:35:15.387 --> 01:35:20.467
There's, there's a, there's a scan to
your work, John, too, which is always at

01:35:20.472 --> 01:35:25.797
the supernatural, is floating around the
edges and sometimes running through, a

01:35:25.797 --> 01:35:27.687
lot of the books you've recommended to me.

01:35:28.297 --> 01:35:31.537
a lot of the, you know, we talked about
the Master of Margarita and mm-hmm.

01:35:32.167 --> 01:35:36.867
One of the greatest works of magical
realism and obviously by night under the

01:35:36.867 --> 01:35:45.477
Stone Bridge, but some of my most treasure
of memories are walking with you over the

01:35:45.597 --> 01:35:47.787
Oxfordshire landscape to the roll, right.

01:35:47.877 --> 01:35:53.607
Standing Stones and some of the other
megaliths, and listening to you explain

01:35:54.447 --> 01:35:59.607
and recount the stories of those
places in the myths of those places.

01:36:00.387 --> 01:36:10.637
I do feel that we would all be richer,
if you would put together a book

01:36:11.357 --> 01:36:13.847
that takes us through that landscape.

01:36:14.627 --> 01:36:22.127
and yeah, because you have delved into
it so deeply while remaining so involved

01:36:22.127 --> 01:36:23.747
in the, in the world in general, but.

01:36:24.092 --> 01:36:27.902
Always bring it back to this, this one
landscape in this heart of England.

01:36:28.602 --> 01:36:29.832
when are you gonna do that?

01:36:29.832 --> 01:36:29.982
When

01:36:29.982 --> 01:36:30.762
John Mitchinson: do we get to read it?

01:36:32.082 --> 01:36:32.922
it's a good question.

01:36:32.922 --> 01:36:37.442
I mean, I mean I've, I've, I've, I've
probably, I've probably got to,  I've

01:36:37.442 --> 01:36:39.392
got to assign some, some time to it.

01:36:39.392 --> 01:36:43.832
I think the, the interesting thing for me
is that you are, what you you're saying is

01:36:43.832 --> 01:36:47.372
right, that the, I'm fascinated by places.

01:36:47.552 --> 01:36:51.362
And two is one of the most fascinating
that, that, like I say, they just seem

01:36:51.362 --> 01:36:55.142
to have that liminal quality where
you feel that you are on a boundary

01:36:55.147 --> 01:36:56.582
between one thing and another thing.

01:36:56.587 --> 01:37:00.092
And that, that, as I say that,
that that, that the membrane

01:37:00.092 --> 01:37:01.562
seems particularly thin there.

01:37:02.012 --> 01:37:06.692
and trying to, trying to capture that
in words and trying to make sense

01:37:06.692 --> 01:37:12.272
of that, trying to make sense of the
fact that, which again, a so brilliant

01:37:12.482 --> 01:37:18.152
called Walker that time is, is, I'm
not saying it's exactly an illusion,

01:37:18.452 --> 01:37:19.982
but it isn't what we think it is.

01:37:20.012 --> 01:37:25.472
It isn't a, that, that, that the idea
of the present past and and future are

01:37:25.472 --> 01:37:33.422
so intimately connected that the, you
know, the, the past is, as Fama famously

01:37:33.422 --> 01:37:39.032
said, is not even past, you know, it's,
it's, it's, it's, it's still there.

01:37:39.752 --> 01:37:40.982
The stuff is still there.

01:37:42.062 --> 01:37:46.412
I mean, corporally and physically in the
form that we are, we may not be able to.

01:37:46.982 --> 01:37:52.562
You know, it's not like we can shake
hands with Lucy's Carey, but the, the

01:37:52.562 --> 01:37:57.242
extraordinary fact that the, the every
spring, you know, we just in spring in

01:37:57.242 --> 01:38:01.322
England and it's, it's that feeling of
how is it that this happens every year?

01:38:02.072 --> 01:38:05.762
This renewal happens every year
and has happened every year for,

01:38:05.767 --> 01:38:07.532
for a, for a very, very long time.

01:38:08.402 --> 01:38:08.762
You know?

01:38:08.972 --> 01:38:13.592
it's, it's trying, trying to, trying to
find a way of, of capturing that, I think.

01:38:14.222 --> 01:38:16.712
And as you say, preserving
some of those stories.

01:38:16.717 --> 01:38:20.852
Cuz I think some of the stories, both,
you know, the very old ones, but also

01:38:20.857 --> 01:38:26.972
the ones that have come, come up in
the last 50 ye or a hundred years of

01:38:26.972 --> 01:38:32.822
people who lived and worked the land
and gone mad or, you know, there's an

01:38:32.822 --> 01:38:38.012
extraordinary sequence of stories about
her, about, a vicar and great shoe

01:38:38.012 --> 01:38:40.652
went insane, or they say went insane.

01:38:40.982 --> 01:38:45.032
I'm not, again, I think that's, those
are always interesting when people

01:38:45.032 --> 01:38:50.732
have described as being in insane, it's
probably not what we think of as, you

01:38:50.732 --> 01:38:55.922
know, being carted off in a straight
jacket, it probably just massively

01:38:55.927 --> 01:39:00.422
eccentric or maybe in touch with something
deeper or maybe in touch with something,

01:39:00.422 --> 01:39:05.042
you know, that was, was terrifying
and made him, or maybe just depressed.

01:39:05.712 --> 01:39:08.052
maybe just, you know,
very, very, very depressed.

01:39:08.592 --> 01:39:13.242
So all of those, it's interesting
to me that, that, that, that, that.

01:39:13.617 --> 01:39:19.167
These places that appear insignificant
if you just, or, or you know, that thing

01:39:19.167 --> 01:39:23.697
when you're, when you're traveling and
you are, you are aware that a place has an

01:39:23.697 --> 01:39:28.767
atmosphere, but it's incredibly difficult
to pin down what that is and why that is.

01:39:29.367 --> 01:39:32.447
And I don't know, you know, I've come to
the conclusion it doesn't really matter

01:39:32.447 --> 01:39:37.347
whether there is something imminent
in the land, that sentient landscape

01:39:37.347 --> 01:39:42.237
idea, or whether it's your projections
between the two, something is happening.

01:39:43.377 --> 01:39:49.157
and I guess that's one of the things as
I get older, I feel, I feel it's, it's,

01:39:49.547 --> 01:39:56.157
it's realizing that they're not being
explicit is almost as important as being

01:39:56.217 --> 01:39:58.077
able to try and define things precisely.

01:39:58.082 --> 01:40:01.757
That, that, yeah, the sort of end, endless
potentiality of the human imagination.

01:40:01.757 --> 01:40:05.487
Great literature, the great literature
doesn't contain a series of messages

01:40:05.492 --> 01:40:06.867
on how you should live your life.

01:40:07.617 --> 01:40:09.837
It just gives you a
sense of the complexity.

01:40:10.407 --> 01:40:16.377
And I dunno, I think it, it's, it's
that latent negative capability, as

01:40:16.377 --> 01:40:18.447
Keith used to call it, is so important.

01:40:18.717 --> 01:40:22.047
And that's, that's kind of what
keeps us going back to things, the

01:40:22.047 --> 01:40:23.997
non-res resolved as aspects of it.

01:40:24.447 --> 01:40:24.717
Mm-hmm.

01:40:25.287 --> 01:40:28.357
I'm, I think I'm, I think as I get
older, I'm, I'm less interested.

01:40:28.797 --> 01:40:31.857
I think there was a period where
I was quite arrogant about, oh,

01:40:31.857 --> 01:40:33.477
I've, I've sorted my stuff out.

01:40:34.497 --> 01:40:36.057
and I think, yeah, well be careful.

01:40:36.147 --> 01:40:38.307
Be careful of boasting about that.

01:40:38.307 --> 01:40:38.487
Right?

01:40:38.937 --> 01:40:39.147
Sure.

01:40:40.047 --> 01:40:40.377
Yeah.

01:40:40.557 --> 01:40:40.857
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.

01:40:40.887 --> 01:40:44.712
Well, Presumably as long as we are
breathing, there's always stuff,

01:40:45.642 --> 01:40:48.822
John Mitchinson: as the, as the,
the proverb that I think is, I can't

01:40:48.822 --> 01:40:52.782
remember what it's maybe Persian
proverb that we have as the, as the

01:40:52.782 --> 01:40:56.532
main proverb at the beginning of the
Book of the Dead is he was not dead.

01:40:56.537 --> 01:40:57.312
Still has a chance.

01:40:59.752 --> 01:41:04.312
And I, I'm, I'm really happy
to have that, have that as my,

01:41:04.432 --> 01:41:06.172
as above my door as it were.

01:41:07.072 --> 01:41:09.622
Rupert Isaacson: although maybe the
dead will say actually no chaps,

01:41:09.622 --> 01:41:10.762
it's just much better over here.

01:41:10.762 --> 01:41:11.032
Yeah.

01:41:11.032 --> 01:41:12.812
You, you, that was alling up.

01:41:13.012 --> 01:41:16.372
John Mitchinson: Yeah, I think, I
think, I think the other great thing

01:41:16.372 --> 01:41:20.942
that was always one of my favorites
at Qi was,  and this is from Neil's

01:41:21.392 --> 01:41:23.972
ball, the great Danish physicist.

01:41:24.662 --> 01:41:28.622
He said The opposite of a
trivial truth is a falsehood.

01:41:29.372 --> 01:41:33.362
But he said the opposite of
a great truth is also true.

01:41:34.442 --> 01:41:41.237
And I think that thing of that
possibility of two true things, Sims

01:41:41.357 --> 01:41:46.907
happening simultaneously feels to me
like how whatever the universe is spun

01:41:46.907 --> 01:41:48.587
out of, that's what it's spun out of.

01:41:48.592 --> 01:41:49.047
Paradox.

01:41:49.277 --> 01:41:50.087
It isn't spun out.

01:41:50.267 --> 01:41:53.027
It isn't spun out of digital zero one.

01:41:53.427 --> 01:41:54.707
No, true false.

01:41:54.767 --> 01:41:59.287
It's spun out of the coexistence
of two, of two true things.

01:42:00.157 --> 01:42:01.367
It's very true.

01:42:01.372 --> 01:42:03.767
All, all not to exist in
the same space, but do

01:42:04.127 --> 01:42:04.997
Rupert Isaacson: ambivalence.

01:42:05.002 --> 01:42:07.247
Everything is the, is
the opposite of itself.

01:42:08.147 --> 01:42:10.307
John Mitchinson: Well, he used to
say, I mean, he has, there's a story

01:42:10.312 --> 01:42:14.927
about him, but a boar is that he had
a horseshoe on his,  on his wall.

01:42:15.947 --> 01:42:21.137
And a student said, but professor
bor as a, as a man of science,

01:42:21.137 --> 01:42:23.737
surely you,  you don't believe in it.

01:42:23.917 --> 01:42:26.947
And he says, no, but I understand it
brings you luck whether you do or not.

01:42:29.617 --> 01:42:31.627
That's kind of, that's,
that's my kind of story.

01:42:32.887 --> 01:42:33.427
Ah, well,

01:42:33.427 --> 01:42:37.537
Rupert Isaacson: John, long may you
continue to live free and ride free and

01:42:37.897 --> 01:42:42.657
long May the,  rest of us benefit from it.

01:42:42.777 --> 01:42:47.637
for those of us who've ever bought a book
at Waterstones, for those of us who've

01:42:47.637 --> 01:42:53.817
ever read one of those books that you
published at Harvard, for any of us who

01:42:55.017 --> 01:43:01.657
looked at Michael Palin's stuff as he was
traveling, or any of us who,  enjoyed.

01:43:02.197 --> 01:43:10.087
Reading the Qi books,  and watching
the TV show for any of us now, , that

01:43:10.147 --> 01:43:14.847
are reading the books that you are
publishing in Unbound,  which are

01:43:14.847 --> 01:43:21.647
extraordinary to any of us that are
listening to the back listed podcast.

01:43:23.937 --> 01:43:29.217
You are one of those people
I feel, who, what is it?

01:43:29.217 --> 01:43:30.837
It's, you know, the Marcus Aurelius.

01:43:30.837 --> 01:43:31.557
I can never remember.

01:43:31.557 --> 01:43:35.157
It's Marcus Aurelius quote, or Epic
Titus, either of those Great stokes

01:43:35.157 --> 01:43:37.107
you said you must be as the vine.

01:43:37.112 --> 01:43:40.457
You know, that you, you, you
produce the fruit and the people

01:43:40.637 --> 01:43:42.147
and the animals pluck it off.

01:43:42.152 --> 01:43:45.507
And it doesn't matter whether
they cut you or burn you or you

01:43:45.507 --> 01:43:46.767
thrive, you are as the vine.

01:43:46.767 --> 01:43:49.597
You just keep producing,
what nourishes everybody.

01:43:49.597 --> 01:43:50.017
And that's

01:43:50.017 --> 01:43:50.647
John Mitchinson: you, John.

01:43:52.717 --> 01:43:53.957
Well, I, we, I dunno.

01:43:54.377 --> 01:43:56.417
I that's very, very
nice of you to say that.

01:43:56.417 --> 01:44:04.007
I mean, I, I think the, I think the, if
there is any kind of theme through these

01:44:04.007 --> 01:44:09.647
ramblings, it is in the end that I'm,
I'm, again, another quote that I love

01:44:09.647 --> 01:44:17.267
is that EB White, the great,  author
of,  Charlotte's Web and also wit one

01:44:17.267 --> 01:44:21.437
of the, sort of the Algonquin round
table wits or said, he said, I wake

01:44:21.437 --> 01:44:23.477
up every day with two things in mind.

01:44:24.227 --> 01:44:27.497
He said, I wanna change the world and
I want to have a hell of a good time.

01:44:27.497 --> 01:44:30.287
He said, sometimes that makes
planning my day quite difficult.

01:44:32.537 --> 01:44:37.307
I think that, you know, the, as I said
earlier, that maybe the low boredom

01:44:37.307 --> 01:44:42.347
threshold it might have that might
have interfered at times with the, the,

01:44:42.747 --> 01:44:45.647
the getting and gathering of wealth,
which is a very important thing.

01:44:45.647 --> 01:44:48.347
You know, it's important
to be, it's important to be

01:44:48.347 --> 01:44:52.367
able to, to, to live without,
without,  without fear if you can.

01:44:53.087 --> 01:44:58.367
At the same time,  you know, again,
reaching for the, for the athe jar,

01:44:58.427 --> 01:45:01.427
you know, I don't think you achieve
much within your comfort zone.

01:45:02.477 --> 01:45:06.227
I think generally when people are,  are
trying to push themselves and to do,

01:45:06.407 --> 01:45:11.597
to do different and challenging things,
they, they, they do, you know, they

01:45:11.597 --> 01:45:14.087
do, they do achieve remarkable things.

01:45:14.092 --> 01:45:19.157
And I, the things I've done, I suppose
I, part, part of the thing I like to,

01:45:19.157 --> 01:45:23.087
to do is to have, as you know, I like,
like people around me to be happy.

01:45:24.077 --> 01:45:30.687
sometimes my, my behavior makes
that less, less,  less likely than

01:45:30.692 --> 01:45:35.277
it, it probably ought to, but in
general, I think it's, it's, yeah.

01:45:35.277 --> 01:45:37.767
When you, when you go through the
things that I suppose I've worked

01:45:37.767 --> 01:45:40.017
on, it does seem like a, yeah.

01:45:40.507 --> 01:45:45.407
I'm, I'm, I'm very proud of what I've
managed to achieve, and I'm still restless

01:45:45.917 --> 01:45:47.507
and still want to do other things.

01:45:47.627 --> 01:45:48.047
Mm-hmm.

01:45:48.257 --> 01:45:50.747
There are still, I'm, I was saying,
I think I was saying to you the other

01:45:50.747 --> 01:45:53.747
day, I'm still, I get those things
that cities I've not visited who,

01:45:53.807 --> 01:45:57.437
which I was thought I would, and just
when you get into the age that you're,

01:45:57.644 --> 01:46:01.184
I'm gonna have to make a plan and go
to the foothills of the Himalayas.

01:46:01.184 --> 01:46:04.274
I'm gonna, I need to see ess before I die.

01:46:05.904 --> 01:46:06.174
well,

01:46:06.174 --> 01:46:06.414
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.

01:46:06.419 --> 01:46:08.274
What is, what is, what is the bucket list?

01:46:10.284 --> 01:46:10.434
S I

01:46:10.434 --> 01:46:13.734
John Mitchinson: mean, to be honest,
I'm, I, you know what, I'm, I'm trying

01:46:13.734 --> 01:46:17.424
to, I, I feel baffled that I've never
managed to go, as somebody who has

01:46:17.424 --> 01:46:21.174
always felt that when I was a kid, I
used to stand at the end of Roe and

01:46:21.174 --> 01:46:22.734
look across and think of the fields.

01:46:23.664 --> 01:46:25.734
I'm amazed I've never been to Scandinavia.

01:46:26.064 --> 01:46:28.424
It turns out that there weren't
fields at the other side of,

01:46:28.564 --> 01:46:30.234
of, of the, of the North Sea.

01:46:30.234 --> 01:46:33.304
They were just sort of
Danish sandbank, but Yeah.

01:46:33.304 --> 01:46:34.184
Right on, on

01:46:34.184 --> 01:46:34.264
Rupert Isaacson: their,

01:46:34.324 --> 01:46:35.264
John Mitchinson: on
your way to the fields.

01:46:35.294 --> 01:46:35.584
Yeah.

01:46:35.874 --> 01:46:36.144
Yeah.

01:46:36.384 --> 01:46:38.994
we've, Rachel and I have attempted
to go to Venice at least three

01:46:38.999 --> 01:46:41.934
times, and we've always been foiled,
so we ought to, ought to do that

01:46:41.934 --> 01:46:43.884
before we, the u the usual stuff.

01:46:44.964 --> 01:46:46.284
we often have that.

01:46:46.764 --> 01:46:49.824
Rachel often says if she went to
sub-Saharan Africa, she'd never leave.

01:46:50.664 --> 01:46:53.124
she sort of terrifies her that
she'd fall in love with it so much.

01:46:53.124 --> 01:46:56.364
She, she should never be able
to leave it, but we'll see.

01:46:57.099 --> 01:46:59.739
We've, I've, you know, have spent
an inordinate amount of time in

01:47:00.219 --> 01:47:03.309
New Zealand and by extension in
the, in,  we love going to Roton,

01:47:03.639 --> 01:47:05.199
the Cook Islands, as you know.

01:47:05.199 --> 01:47:08.379
So I've seen a lot of places, but the

01:47:08.379 --> 01:47:10.359
Rupert Isaacson: world, the listeners,
John is the only man I know who's

01:47:10.359 --> 01:47:15.739
actually stood on a stone fish
and, and did indeed almost die.

01:47:16.539 --> 01:47:17.819
And,  only ajo.

01:47:17.849 --> 01:47:22.139
You guys also dunno, John physically
John is a mountain,  which makes

01:47:22.139 --> 01:47:24.269
him very difficult to keep up with
when you're drinking with him.

01:47:24.629 --> 01:47:28.889
but he has an, a physical resilience,
that I don't know if anyone

01:47:28.889 --> 01:47:30.149
else had stood on a stone fish.

01:47:30.149 --> 01:47:32.939
John,  how long were you
in hospital after that?

01:47:33.449 --> 01:47:35.189
John Mitchinson: It was, it
was,  to be honest, it wasn't.

01:47:35.194 --> 01:47:37.949
I was, it was only,  half
a day in, in the hospital.

01:47:37.949 --> 01:47:42.479
The problem was, it was the, the, the
wound got infected and I had to, by the

01:47:42.479 --> 01:47:45.869
time we got back to New Zealand, I had
to have a massive dose of antibiotics.

01:47:45.869 --> 01:47:49.479
But,  yeah, were, they were
talking about revenge, right?

01:47:49.629 --> 01:47:53.499
We, I took the boys, we, we, we were
flying back from, from New Zealand.

01:47:54.369 --> 01:47:56.589
It was the stone fish was
Roro Toma in the Cook Islands.

01:47:56.589 --> 01:47:59.839
And then we were flying back to,  through
Hong Kong and we found a restaurant

01:47:59.839 --> 01:48:01.369
that specialized in stone fish.

01:48:01.969 --> 01:48:05.539
So we had stone fish three ways, which
the boys were, they just thought this

01:48:05.539 --> 01:48:07.039
was the best bit of revenge ever.

01:48:08.689 --> 01:48:10.159
So they

01:48:10.159 --> 01:48:11.509
Rupert Isaacson: sometimes
when is mitigated

01:48:13.579 --> 01:48:14.029
John Mitchinson: or, yes.

01:48:14.059 --> 01:48:17.209
Well this has been very, thank you so
much, Rupert, for this chance to, to.

01:48:18.559 --> 01:48:20.239
To meander through my life.

01:48:20.439 --> 01:48:22.989
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's
been an absolute delight.

01:48:23.169 --> 01:48:28.809
and what I want to come across from this
is that really the listeners, if you,

01:48:29.259 --> 01:48:33.609
if you have a chance to touch any of
these, touch any of these parts of John,

01:48:33.999 --> 01:48:40.099
if you, if you get a chance to, to touch
charge on in these ways,  check out this

01:48:40.099 --> 01:48:48.899
legacy that he has of Qi  the books,
the show currently with,  Unbound and

01:48:48.899 --> 01:48:51.659
check out back listed the,  the podcast.

01:48:52.759 --> 01:48:55.009
Because what all will happen is
this, in the, is you will, you

01:48:55.009 --> 01:48:59.299
will, you'll just discover, treat
after treat after treat after treat.

01:48:59.819 --> 01:49:02.279
fulfilling experience after
fulfilling experience.

01:49:02.284 --> 01:49:02.579
Great.

01:49:02.579 --> 01:49:03.389
Read after Great.

01:49:03.394 --> 01:49:05.999
Read Belly laugh after belly laugh.

01:49:06.559 --> 01:49:07.849
pleasure upon pleasure.

01:49:08.439 --> 01:49:10.579
so John, , thank you so much.

01:49:10.579 --> 01:49:15.109
Is there any parting word that you
would like to give or are there

01:49:15.109 --> 01:49:16.699
also links that we should know?

01:49:17.489 --> 01:49:21.539
, 
John Mitchinson: no, I think I would
say, I would say that the do, I mean

01:49:21.629 --> 01:49:26.099
blacklisted in, in many ways has,
has the best of me and there are

01:49:26.099 --> 01:49:28.079
many, many hours of, of, of that.

01:49:28.399 --> 01:49:32.929
,  by means do subscribe to to bat listed
cuz that I think probably has the best of

01:49:32.929 --> 01:49:35.899
me and lots and hundreds of hours of it.

01:49:36.499 --> 01:49:42.429
And  also Pat on our patron, you can,
if you subscribe, you get a two extra

01:49:42.429 --> 01:49:47.379
podcast a month, which we call lock listed
cuz we started them to cheer ourselves

01:49:47.379 --> 01:49:51.789
up as in, in lockdown where we talk
about books and films and music as well.

01:49:53.109 --> 01:49:54.199
Stuff that we've enjoyed in last year.

01:49:54.459 --> 01:49:57.279
It sets, me and Andy are my
co-host and Nikki are producer.

01:49:58.079 --> 01:49:58.799
that's different.

01:49:58.799 --> 01:50:02.639
And we play, we get, because
it's not, it's not public.

01:50:02.729 --> 01:50:03.599
We get to play.

01:50:03.779 --> 01:50:05.519
We get to choose music
on there, which is fun.

01:50:06.089 --> 01:50:06.899
And how do they find

01:50:06.899 --> 01:50:07.409
Rupert Isaacson: lock listed?

01:50:07.414 --> 01:50:07.589
What

01:50:07.589 --> 01:50:08.069
John Mitchinson: do they need to do?

01:50:08.074 --> 01:50:16.534
Uh, you just go on  ww.patron.com/back
listed and you'll find Yeah you

01:50:16.534 --> 01:50:18.154
can subscribe at various levels.

01:50:18.159 --> 01:50:18.214
Do

01:50:19.194 --> 01:50:22.924
Rupert Isaacson: www.patreon.com/back

01:50:22.924 --> 01:50:23.404
John Mitchinson: listed?

01:50:23.714 --> 01:50:23.934
Yep.

01:50:24.484 --> 01:50:24.774
Okay.

01:50:25.954 --> 01:50:26.194
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.

01:50:26.194 --> 01:50:26.724
You heard it everybody.

01:50:27.734 --> 01:50:32.194
go enjoy yourselves cuz  you have an
enormous amount of fun waiting for you.

01:50:32.914 --> 01:50:34.984
and that seems to me to be the hope.

01:50:36.544 --> 01:50:37.954
Purpose really of the whole thing.

01:50:38.764 --> 01:50:44.374
I, I've always thought that fun is
the great underestimated human virtue.

01:50:44.884 --> 01:50:47.104
John Mitchinson: That is Absolutely.

01:50:48.314 --> 01:50:53.114
you know, I think you are, I've, I,
it's funny, I just, I just gr found

01:50:53.114 --> 01:50:58.374
that great, , mark, it's Marcus Aurelius
b like a vine that produces grapes

01:50:58.374 --> 01:51:00.054
without looking for anything in return.

01:51:00.144 --> 01:51:04.974
And I was gonna say, that's my, if,
if I had anything to live under,

01:51:04.974 --> 01:51:08.424
that's probably, that probably Is
it actually ru It's just, yeah.

01:51:08.424 --> 01:51:11.364
Well that's, you keep, keep,
keep making those grapes people.

01:51:12.324 --> 01:51:12.464
All right.

01:51:14.094 --> 01:51:16.224
Rupert Isaacson: I'm off to,
I'm off to squish the VA with my

01:51:16.224 --> 01:51:18.054
bare feet and enjoy the process.

01:51:19.164 --> 01:51:20.064
Till next time, John.

01:51:20.244 --> 01:51:20.334
Okay.

01:51:20.334 --> 01:51:21.384
Can we have you on again?

01:51:21.534 --> 01:51:21.824
Yeah.

01:51:22.074 --> 01:51:22.464
Lets So things,

01:51:22.614 --> 01:51:23.574
John Mitchinson: we'd love to talk more.

01:51:23.574 --> 01:51:24.564
We can pick up other stuff.

01:51:24.569 --> 01:51:25.044
Yeah, for sure.

01:51:25.044 --> 01:51:25.224
Yeah.

01:51:25.314 --> 01:51:25.764
Books,

01:51:25.764 --> 01:51:26.394
Rupert Isaacson: mythology.

01:51:26.934 --> 01:51:27.084
Yeah.

01:51:27.174 --> 01:51:27.534
All of it.

01:51:27.534 --> 01:51:29.244
Alright then.

01:51:29.249 --> 01:51:30.624
Till next time, lots of love.

01:51:30.624 --> 01:51:30.824
And enjoy.

01:51:30.894 --> 01:51:31.384
John Mitchinson: Bye-bye.

01:51:31.484 --> 01:51:31.944
Bye bye.

01:51:32.307 --> 01:51:33.417
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.

01:51:33.447 --> 01:51:35.277
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.

01:51:35.516 --> 01:51:40.556
Join our website, new trails
learning.com, to  check out our online

01:51:40.556 --> 01:51:45.746
courses and live workshops in Horse Boy
Method, movement Method, and Athena.

01:51:46.453 --> 01:51:51.101
These evidence-based programs have
helped children, veterans, and people

01:51:51.101 --> 01:51:53.111
dealing with trauma around the world.

01:51:53.439 --> 01:51:57.189
We also offer a horse training
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01:51:57.189 --> 01:52:00.429
for riders on long ride home.com.

01:52:00.727 --> 01:52:04.777
These include easy to do online
courses and tutorials that

01:52:04.777 --> 01:52:06.697
bring you and your horse joy.

01:52:07.234 --> 01:52:11.794
For an overview of all shows and
programs, go to rupert isaacson.com.

01:52:12.124 --> 01:52:13.054
See you on the next show.

01:52:13.466 --> 01:52:16.156
And please remember to
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