unfinishing

My guest this week is the historian Dr Peter Edwards. From a Polish-Welsh background, Pete was born in Liverpool and grew up in Birmingham. He studied history at the university of Leeds, where he also completed his PhD research.

Pete is a brilliant teacher and has taught in a real variety of settings. These include: a secondary school in Liverpool, Wakefield College, a drop-in centre for homeless people, Greenhead Sixth form college in Huddersfield, and Wakefield Prison. At the latter, he set up the education provision on the Close Supervision Centre for the most dangerous offenders in the High Security estate.

Pete currently works in admissions at the University of Leeds Doctoral College, but the role he had just before that is the role he’s here to talk about today – and it’s also his unfinished project. Pete took voluntary severance pay to leave Greenhead College in 2015, using the funds to establish his very own company, called Roundhouse History Tours. In the process he became one of less than 100 badged guides in the International Guild of Battlefield Guides.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, Pete’s history tours took clients to an array of fascinating sites, from the European continent to Wales and northern England.

I’m in the extremely fortunate position of having had Pete as my A-level history teacher. He’s one of those special teachers who stays with you forever. You’ll be able to see why when you hear the flair and enthusiasm that he has for his subject. (And when you hear the reassurance he’s able to convey even when talking about less than uplifting topics…)

Pete tells me about the sights he takes clients to, all of which have incredibly rich and surprising layers of history; he tells me about the alternative histories he develops for his groups, and we talk about why historians should go outside more.

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If you would like to be a guest on Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished, email me on [email protected], or catch me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

Michael Farris Smith’s novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire and with NPR, among many others, and he’s also been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize and the Gold Dagger Award. His essays have appeared in the New York Times. Michael’s latest novel is called Nick, and it tells the story of Nick Carraway, narrator of the Great Gatsby, before we meet him in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work which was first published in 1925.

Michael has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row to discuss Nick, and the novel also been reviewed in the Guardian and the Times. In the US it’s been reviewed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and elsewhere.

We talk about why and how Michael approached Nick as an unfinished character – as someone who we don’t learn that much about in The Great Gatsby – and what it was like having to wait for the copyright on Gatsby to expire before Nick could be published.

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There are just a couple of episodes left in Series 1 of Unfinished/Unpublished and I’m now recruiting for Series 2. If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected]. (You can also contact me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag). So far I’ve interviewed writers, artists, musicians, historians, and gardeners – everyone’s welcome!

In this episode my guest is the author Michael Farris Smith. We talk about his most recent novel Nick, which tells the story of what happens to Nick Carraway, narrator of The Great Gatsby, before we meet him F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel. The novel Nick is both finished and published, but we talk about why Michael was compelled to flesh out (or finish!) Nick's character, and what it was like to have to wait to publish while the clock ticked down on Gatsby's copyright... 

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Listen to more episodes of Unfinished/Unpublished here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson 

You can also get in touch via email on [email protected], or via Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

Richard is a brilliant writer and director for television and the stage. His writing includes three series of Bluestone 42, the BBC sitcom about a bomb disposal unit serving in Afghanistan, which he co-wrote and created with James Cary. He co-wrote the multi-award-winning and Bafta-nominated Miranda, also for the BBC, as well as several episodes of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, which was for ITV2. On the stage, he co-wrote and directed the Olivier Award-nominated Potted Panto and Potted Potter.

Richard tells me about three projects that are either unfinished or unpublished. The first is Bluestone 42 (Richard has lots of ideas about what could happen to the characters), the second is a sitcom about an authoritarian leader that couldn’t go ahead because people were wary of being assassinated, and the third is a novel that’s completely finished but never made it into the public realm.

Richard has lots of anecdotes about the making of Bluestone 42 and Miranda (stick around until the end for the latter), including the real-life inspiration for Bluestone provided by army contacts, and the lunch habits of the Miranda team…

We also have a chat about how Richard had to change certain jokes in performances of Potted Potter and Potted Panto depending on when and where they were being performed, and about whether or not comedy and satire have any effect on politics.

You can read more about Richard’s work here: http://www.richardhurst.co.uk/biog.html

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I’m now recruiting guests for Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished, so if you have a project that has yet to be completed or that hasn’t made it out into the world, contact me via email on [email protected]. You can also reach me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

Richard Hurst has written and directed an abundance of fabulous television and drama. Highlights include Bluestone 42, the BBC sitcom about a bomb disposal unit which he co-wrote and created with James Cary, and seventeen episodes of the multi-award-winning and BAFTA nominated Miranda (BBC). On stage, Richard co-wrote and directed the Olivier Award nominated Potted Panto and Potted Potter.

Richard tells me about three of his projects that are either unfinished or unpublished: Bluestone 42 (which he'd like to carry on!), a comedy about an authoritarian leader, and a novel that's finished but has yet to shared publicly...

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I'm now recruiting guests for Series Two of Unfinished/Unpublished, so if you have an unfinished or unpublished project you'd like to talk about, email me, Emily Anderson on [email protected]. You can also contact me via Twitter. 

Maggie has the enviable job of being the Head Gardener at the beautiful Bramdean House in Hampshire.

We talk about overlaps between gardening and performance, why gardeners may not be as relaxed as you might think, and the future of historical gardens.

Maggie’s love of gardening began 10 years ago when she started community gardening. It’s led her on a path that’s taken her gardening around the world. She had a colourful career before working at Bramdean. Among other things, she was an artist doing performance and experimental theatre, worked at the Royal Pavilion Gardens in Brighton, and was an RHS/ GCA Interchange Fellow at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, USA. As Maggie explains in the interview, she is also enthusiastic about sustainability and was awarded the Prince of Wales Trophy for Sustainable Horticulture in 2016.

You can find out all about Maggie’s work via her blog, which is www.hortiventure.com. She’s also on instagram @hortiventure.

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I’m now recuiting guests for Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished. So if you have an unfinished or unpublished project that you’d like to talk about, email me, Emily Anderson at [email protected]. You can also get in touch via Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

Maggie has the enviable job of being the head gardener at the beautiful Bramdean House in Hampshire.

Her love of gardening began 10 years ago when she started community gardening. It’s led her on a path that’s taken her gardening around the world. You can find out all about Maggie’s work via her blog, which is www.hortiventure.com. She’s also on instagram @hortiventure.

Maggie has fascinating things to say about the links between gardening and art, opening up private gardens, and gardening behind the scenes.

The full interview with Maggie will be available at 9pm on Thursday 22 April across podcast platforms. You can subscribe here to listen to the interview: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson

Peter Jackson is an artist. He’s here to talk about buildings that move (Trans-Architecture), and he gives us lots of great examples of when that’s happened and why. Peter even tells me where you can spot Trans-Architecture in Newcastle.