PODCAST · society
Behind The Spine
by inkjockey
Behind The Spine is a podcast which deconstructs genre and narrative, and finds learning opportunities for writers in the most unlikely of places.
Episodes
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S11E12 Who Wants to Live Forever: Hanna Thomas Uose on love and life without death
“This drug feels incredibly likely. There are all sorts of mad men doing trials on themselves. And they have not put any thought into the societal implications of it” ~Hanna Thomas Uose AI is enabling rapid advancements in technology and drug discovery - unlike anything we’ve seen before. And…
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S11E11 Green Ink: Stephen May on the mysterious story of Victor Grayson
“He went down for a drink, did not come back. Nobody was found, but no one even started looking for him” ~Stephen May The story of the UK Labour politician Victor Grayson is a mysterious and thrilling one. Full of holes and unknowns that have never been solved. He went missing in the 1920s...
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S11E10 Behind Women’s Football: Beatrice Rogers on sacrificing for the game
“ I’ve received death threats from people just for posting about women’s football, which is wild” ~Beatrice Rogers Public support for women’s football has skyrocketed in recent years - and yet many of the female athletes still struggle to gain the recognition of their male counterparts. So just…
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S11E9 A Tale of Wartime Morality and Courage: Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann
“ Fiction writing is trying to unearth the mystery of who we are. And it boils down to a question of who and what you care about most” ~Alice Austen An apartment block in Belgium, full of close neighbours, suddenly torn apart by the news of war. This is the story of 33 Place Brugmann - whose...
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S11E8 The Guernsey Deportees: Ollie Guillou on a little-known story of wartime resilience
“One day I heard the news that the head of the Deportees Association had died. I knew I needed to tell the story before the stories disappeared for good.” ~Ollie Guillou In 1942, on Hitler’s orders, more than a thousand islanders from Guernsey were deported to Germany, and sent to the internment...
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S11E7 A Death in Berlin: Simon Scarrow on German life under Nazi oppression
“The German guy tells this joke in the factory. It's reported by the foreman. This guy's then hauled away and executed. That's kind of the kind of regime you are living under with the Nazis.” ~Simon Scarrow What was it like to live in Berlin in 1940? We very often picture the war years from the...
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S11E6 The Three Lives of Cate Kay: Kate Fagan’s multi-layered trip into fiction
“ I put that memoir out and my mum in particular was really upset and she came to me and was like, that's not how I remember that happening.” ~Kate Fagan Writing a memoir is a tricky business - you may think writing about your own life is a straightforward process of telling fact after fact. The...
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S11E5 The Bureau: Eoin McNamee’s deep connection to corruption and violence in Northern Ireland
“ If you write about real situations, real names and real people, there's always somebody else's blood on the floor at the end of it. Well this is me and my family's blood on the floor in this book.” ~Eoin McNamee Taking place in the shadow of The Troubles, The Bureau is a story of corruption,...
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S11E4 Summer in the City: How Alex Aster wrote a 400 page book aged 12
“All my publishers, my agents, my film agents, they have all rejected me multiple times in the past - and now I work with them!” ~Alex Aster Summer in the City is the new romance novel from internationally acclaimed author Alex Aster - known for her Lightlark series and massive social media...
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S11E3 The Summer Guests: Tess Gerritsen’s town full of spies
“ That's why I write books. I want to see those characters tear their way out of the page and just come to life.” ~Tess Gerritsen The town of ‘Purity’ may be fiction, but its secrets are very much based on real life. It may be hard to believe, but in the American state of Maine, there’s a town...
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S11E2 The Place of Tides: James Rebanks ventures into pastures new
“ In my head, it's not a departure from the writer that I think I am.” ~James Rebanks You probably know him for his wildly successful books exploring his long family history farming in the Lake District - but James Rebanks has decided to turn his hand to something different this time. The Place…
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S11E1 The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103: Jonathan Lee on history, injustice and screenwriting
“ Telling a story like this, about a real event that impacted so many people, does come with a special responsibility” ~Jonathan Lee The Lockerbie bombing is the UK’s deadliest terrorist attack, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground. Despite taking place 37 years ago, what happened that...
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S10E12 Acts of Resistance: Amber Massie-Blomfield on art’s contribution to global activism
“Under the most oppressive circumstances, where the intent is to not only end their lives, but end almost any evidence of their existence or their humanity on the planet, people make art. They lean into making art.”~Amber Massie-Blomfield Art can change the world. Whether it's the work of…
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S10E11 A Concert For Christmas: Helen Hawkins’ peak Hallmark novel, with a twist
“Having the darkness makes the lighter bits… light. And when there is that happy end, you feel like they’ve earnt it. And it’s all the brighter for the trauma that they’ve been through” ~Helen Hawkins A traditional Hallmark book or film has a very clear path - a tried and true narrative loved by...
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S10E10 Bard Boy: Louise Kulup brings Hamnet Shakespeare back to life
“It's that juxtaposition of very grand figures from history and the very bog standard person. They're also two boys who are overlooked by life, and I think that connected them.” ~Louise Kulup Little is known about Hamnet Shakespeare, the son of the Bard himself, who died aged 11. But it’s thought...
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S10E9 The Unexpected: Ellen Wiles questions conventional ways to raise children
“It really caught my attention in 2016, when there was the first ever case in Canada where two platonic female friends were granted the right to be co-mothers on a birth certificate. And I thought, how astonishing is that?” ~Ellen Wiles We’ve all heard the pact two platonic friends make, that if...
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S10E8 Crash The System: The Jerky Boys star Kamal Ahmed on his thrilling new project
“We had the tapes and I was just giving them out. And by me giving the tapes out, it spread all across the country - the world!” ~Kamal Ahmed The Jerky Boys were a global phenomenon in the 90s - a comedy duo who rose to fame by prank calling unsuspecting recipients, and selling the recordings on...
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S10E7 Heart, Be At Peace: Donal Ryan on dealing with rejection, polyphonic writing and time
“Every single thing I ever wrote was rejected by myself. I burnt nearly everything I wrote throughout my twenties because I was so ashamed of how bad it was.” ~Donal Ryan Donal Ryan is an author who’s not only dealt with rejection, but has flourished despite it - winning awards, writing…
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S10E6 The Problem of Fragmentation: Peter Garrett on A New Kind of Dialogue
“If we’re not on the same page as the underlying storyline, then we have fragmentation. And that fragmentation is really, very dangerous. It’s what’s breaking apart the world.” ~Peter Garrett Humanity’s story has become fragmented and our understanding of one another disconnected. And when we no...
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S10E5 Sun Lounger Fiction: Wine expert Helen McGinn on the secrets of a prolific writer
“I saw someone with my book on holiday. I think we both ended up having a tear because it was just so lovely. That’s the goal, to see somebody out there reading your words!” ~Helen McGinn Once an author releases her fourth book in as many years, she learns a thing or two about writing a good…
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S10E4 Entitlement: Rumaan Alam on how money defines and controls us
“It felt so powerful a moment of realisation to me, that the sum of who I am may be, in some significant way, measured in dollars.” ~Rumaan Alam Money controls us all, whether we have a lot of it, or not enough. And exposure to money can force people to do questionable things - and even stray…
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S10E3 The Future of Football: Graham Sibley on the game post-covid
“It looked like the club was going to just disappear completely. And then luckily, it was rescued by a tech millionaire, basically. It sounds like something that would happen far, far higher up the food chain.” ~Graham Sibley Worldwide cancellations and small clubs on the brink of...
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S10E2 History’s Famous Figures At 18: Alice Loxton on the teenage lives of history’s greatest people
“I love finding out people’s back stories. It’s the grittier, it’s the weirder, it’s the bits where people’s lives go wrong that shines a light on their glories later on.” ~Alice Loxton History’s most famous figures are remembered only for their great deeds and achievements, but rarely for their...
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S10E1 The Silence in Between: Josie Ferguson on separation from loved ones and wartime tragedy
“I had a friend who read an early version of the book, and she just said, well, I mean, it's a bit far fetched though, isn't it? And I was like, no, no, no, this did happen.” ~Josie Ferguson Being separated from a loved one, never sure when you might be reunited again - a familiar feeling for…
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The Art That Will Change How You See Mental Illness Forever with Matt Ottley
💬 “When I’ve been really unwell, I lose the ability to understand spoken language. But what happens is I hear music with crystal clarity in my mind.” Did you know that bipolar disorder can fuel intense creativity? We often fear complex mental health issues - words like psychotic and mental are...
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S9E12 The Puzzle Wood: Rosie Andrews on gothic storytelling
“That experience of going under the ground and feeling how alienating it feels down there. That feeds very nicely into the sort of gothic ideas that we're talking about here, that sense of the past is oppressive.” – Rosie Andrews Somewhere on the border between Wales and England, Miss Catherine...
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S9E11 Life Finds a Way: Sarah Agha on authentic narratives
“Yes, there is oppression and hardship, but there’s also culture and joy and beauty and love and friendship. I think sometimes even we forget that there is life, and life always finds a way, even under occupation.” – Sarah Agha What gives you a sense of identity and makes you feel connected to…
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S9E10 One of the Good Guys: Araminta Hall on patriarchy and female fear
“I've certainly met men like Cole and you are fooled by them because they're fooling themselves. They're so dangerous and insidious for that reason, because you are actually sucked in a bit” - Araminta Hall Are you “one of the good guys”, supportive of women’s rights and equality and opposed to...
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S9E9 Death On The Thames: Alan Johnson on politics, the police and misogyny
“This senior copper said to me, Well, you have to remember we're dealing with criminals who know no restraints at all, who are just absolutely hard bastards with no emotion and no compassion. We have to have a few of them in our ranks to balance it out.” - Alan Johnson Alan Johnson is a…
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S9E8 Hard By A Great Forest: Leo Vardiashvili on lost family and a rediscovered homeland
“I didn't get to see my family or Georgia for 17 years. So when I did go back, I found it really strange, really surreal. That was very emotional for me. So I started writing it really trying to make sense of it in my own head.” -Leo Vardiashvili Inspired by his own estrangement from his…
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S9E7 Compliance in the Wild: Christian Hunt, the consumer rights vigilante
“I am probably the consumer from hell when it comes to this stuff, and I do like to believe that I’m fighting on behalf of other people. Some sort of consumer rights, compliance vigilante.” -Christian Hunt If you’ve ever spotted a road sign that makes no sense at all, or been sent round in…
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S9E6 A Sign of Her Own: Sarah Marsh on deafness and deaf history
“There are many, many ways to be a deaf person, but the important thing is to think about the ways in which you embrace it” -Sarah Marsh The word ‘deaf’ encompasses so many different lived experiences. And by its very nature it’s hard to communicate what it means - what it feels like - to be…
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S9E5 The Escape Room: L.D. Smithson on the Reality TV Show of Nightmares
“What we want is people in extreme situations. We enjoy watching people pushed to their emotional limits.” - L.D. Smithson Have you ever watched a reality TV show and thought ‘I could do that’? It’s one thing watching the events unfold on-screen. It’s another thing entirely being in the thick of...
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S9E4 The Cypress Maze: Fiona Valpy on dual-timeline fiction, a war-time heroine and shared grief
“She felt she had a duty to protect all these people. And the Villa very much became, for Iris, a refuge for everybody” - Fiona Valpy In the past, a wartime heroine shelters people from the ravages of war. In the modern era, the villa once used for refuge is up for demolition, and its…
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S9E3 A Tattoo’s Story: Joelle Taylor on the female form, queer futurism and activism
“They’re kind of flags mounted in occupied territory. That's the idea of a tattoo on the female form. Because the female form is a political space. It's a space of contention and conflict.” - Joelle Taylor A tattoo can tell the most profound story. Many have deep meanings to the people who wear...
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S9E2 A Man of Understanding: Diana Janney on poetry, philosophy and fractured souls
“What a great idea if, through this grieving process both of them could heal - could come to understand the other through the vehicle of poetry” - Diana Janney Poetry and philosophy bring together two fractured souls, 12 year old Rufus Ellerton whose parents have died, and his grandfather Horatio...
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S9E1 Murder on Lake Garda: Tom Hindle on the nature of family, memory and lies
“No one wakes up a horrible person. It's something that takes hold over time. It's about worldview, formative experiences, and what you were told growing up as a kid. And I try very hard to think about that stuff because… you can feel it.” - Tom Hindle In the idyllic setting of Italy’s largest...
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JFK Assassination, What Really Happened?: 60th Anniversary Special with Mark Taylor
“Height of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis had happened just a year before. The last thing you want is to show the world’s superpower to be so incompetent that they shot their own president. And you can understand why they would cover that up and try to hide it.” In memory of US President...
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S8E12 Wedding Drama: Kate Sawyer on ‘This Family’ - a story of the unseen
“How many weddings have you gone to where you don't really know very many other people at the wedding? And it's trying to make those connections of who is who. It was something I wanted to recreate for the reader.” Between deciding the guest-list and actually getting everyone together under one...
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S8E11 As Rich as the King: Abigail Assor’s bittersweet love-letter to Casablanca
“Loving a country is also never ceasing to be demanding. Through that book I asked my city to do something else, to change the system. I have a bittersweet relationship with the city. I love it. And at the same time, I have a little bit of anger.” Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco, is a…
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S8E10 My Men: Victoria Kielland on the most infamous serial killer you’ve never heard of
“Her love is quite possessive, wanting to become the other person, owning the man, or becoming whole and finally complete. But the thing is, she's never going to complete herself because the wound is too deep.” Between 14 and 40. That’s how many men were killed by Belle Gunness. Yet despite the...
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S8E9 Scorched Grace: Margot Douaihy on the hardboiled genre and a queer, heavily tattooed nun
“I wanted to start with a very unstable, shaky foundation in order to create a world of voltage and heat and fire. Each book in the series is its own little storm.” The hardboiled genre has received a complete makeover. Holiday is a queer, chain-smoking, heavily tattooed nun, covered completely…
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S8E8 Hokey Pokey: Kate Mascarenhas on a gothic horror in a grand hotel
“What you want from that gothic house is the sense of being overwhelmed by scale, while also having a sense of unease and claustrophobia as well. Those two things, twinned together.” The Regent Hotel in Birmingham may be grand, but beneath its opulence, cocktail parties and fine dining, lies a...
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S8E7 The Contest: Karen Hamilton on the jeopardy and dangers of a mountaintop thriller
“One person told me he got to a point where he didn't actually care whether he lived or died. He felt so ill that he had hallucinations. So it's a risk. It's a risk.” For the people who’ve climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, making it to the summit is more than a battle of fitness or of money. It’s a...
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S8E6 Outside, the Sky is Blue: Christina Patterson on the tragedy and joy of her family memoir
“I don't think anyone could have looked at the Patterson family and said, “oh, what a conventionally successful party”. But I did want to honour them. And I realised I was actually and am proud of them because they did it. They loved, they were good, they were decent, they were kind, they were...
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S8E5 Kala: Colin Walsh on terrors of the past and a town of dark secrets
“Kala is the Sinatra of the book. You have all these different perspectives on her. My hope was that having these panoramic perspectives would create spaces for the reader to create their own relationship to Kala.” A town with a series of dark secrets, upended by the reopening of a decades...
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S8E4 The Dive: Sara Ochs on the dark underbelly of an island paradise
“It's so welcoming. The people are wonderful. It's beautiful. It was really where I thought I could see myself living and building a life. And then when I found out about that murder, it did raise the hairs on the back of my neck.” How does a place you love transform into a place of fear? Can the...
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S8E3 The Girls of Summer: Katie Bishop on the fallibility of memory
“Having that realisation of looking back on a memory that they really prized and valued, and realising that it was something a little bit darker and that they were perhaps taken advantage of. It is something that's really troubling for people.” Is there a moment in your life that you look back on...
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S8E2 Go As A River: Shelley Read on the rocky path of adversity
“Her story in my mind is sort of a two steps forward, one step back kind of journey. It's not that we face one major challenge in our life and suddenly we are these wise and capable people.” In life, there isn’t one straight road out of adversity and grief. And so, when charting your characters’...
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S8E1 One Moment: Becky Hunter on the strength we find in grief
“It’s that question ‘What if?’ ‘What if I had done this differently?’ And it's something I'm really obsessed with in my own life.” The death of a main character is often a controversial and difficult moment in any work of literature - but what if it happens in the first few pages? Stirred by her...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Behind The Spine have?
Behind The Spine currently has 168 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Behind The Spine about?
Behind The Spine is a podcast which deconstructs genre and narrative, and finds learning opportunities for writers in the most unlikely of places.
How often does Behind The Spine release new episodes?
Behind The Spine publishes regularly with 168 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Behind The Spine?
You can listen to Behind The Spine on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Behind The Spine?
Behind The Spine is created and hosted by inkjockey.
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