Louise Welsh
speaker
182 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Louise Welsh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, I like a lot from that period.
I mean, this is enormously funny.
I find dark humour very funny and I laugh a lot with this book.
But it also is saying some very serious things, it seems to me, about old age.
I mean, particularly about how those who are less old, middle-aged or younger, how they treat the old and how they patronise them and tend to believe that anything they say is probably not true and that their minds are wandering.
And how easily the old can be bullied or even physically bullied, as happens in one instance in this book.
Even in the best of circumstances, as you've just read, Chris, all your friends are dying.
It is not easy being old.
I mean, I think it's making quite a serious point, isn't it?
I think it really is.
I don't know if either of you was brought up as a Catholic, but I mean, Muriel Spark would have recently converted to Roman Catholicism when she wrote this book.
And it seems to me that that idea of memento mori, remember you must die, is actually apparently quite important in Roman Catholicism.
There's Godfrey and his suspender belt obsession.
Pretty well all the characters are more or less awful in this book, with the exception for me of Jean Taylor, who is in this terrible hospital ward where the nurses come in and say, how are we this morning?
Everybody is called Granny.
Granny this, Granny that, Granny Taylor.
But there is one super villain in this novel, Mrs. Pettigrew, who I doubt very much that she was ever married, but she certainly is Mrs. Pettigrew.
Who is a wonderful character.
I mean, wonderfully awful, isn't she?
Really sinister.
Showing 141–160 of 182 · page 8 of 10
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