The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Backlisted

Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them (1948) is the subject of this episode, almost ten years since Backlisted covered the same author's classic debut Lolly Willowes (1926). Joining Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss this magnificent and inimitable historical novel - and to consider what, if anything, we have learnt during the last decade - is our friend Tanya Kirk, author, editor and the Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge; Tanya appeared on previous episodes about Winifred Holtby's South Riding and Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes. Described by one commentator as the ultimate workplace novel, if your workplace happens to be a medieval convent, The Corner That Held Them reflects Sylvia Townsend Warner's love of nuns, nouns and nonconformists. It is a story without a plot that somehow grips the reader from beginning to end; a work of fiction, according to the author, written "on the purest Marxian principles", that foregrounds the struggle of the individual within enclosed systems i.e. a hastily-constructed nunnery; and an epic novel spanning two centuries of religious persecution, plague, murder, famine and betrayal, that still locates humour in the bleakest, dampest prospect. It is a truly magical book and it was an absolute delight to return to it here, for the first time.

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