Deconstructed meat pie

Books I have read, and the one I have written

I am well aware that you probably signed up to this thinking it was all going to be politics and radio, and I’ve been off both ever since. Don’t worry, normal service will resume next week when I’m back in Westminster doing some piloting for the new 5 Live show (launches Monday September 2, but you know that because you’ve already put it in your diary).

Thanks to those who posted comments or emailed with suggestions for the best parliament buildings in the world. I’ll compile my definitive list when I’m not writing on my phone. Too fiddly doing all the pictures.

Instead I offer up a photo of one of the seven (SEVEN!) courses we enjoyed as part of a tasting menu at Terre Mouikis in Kefalonia, a spin-off from the Michelin starred Pied A Terre in London, and brainchild of Kefalonia’s chef Asimakis Chaniotis. The deconstructed traditional local meat pie, consisting of goat, gravy, feta and shards of pastry/crisp sticking out at all angles, was delicious but also made me realise that in this heat a tiny part of me is looking forward to returning to autumn when pies can be rather more constructed.

During my brief period of being jobless between Times Radio and the BBC I have enjoyed the sensation of not having work emails to check, for the first time since, what, 2008? 2009? I remember that back then the Western Morning News gave me a phone which had all the incessant beeping of a BlackBerry, without the functionality. The damned things have been pinging ever since, but not since I left the old job and await log-ins for the new. Bliss.

It’s meant that I’ve read a lot. A LOT. Some columns, a bit of online news, a lot of Substacks, obvs, but also books. Five books. In a fortnight. I can’t remember the last time I read five books. It could take me half a year to do that at home. But one of the real downsides of being stuck next to a pool in Greece in 35C heat is there isn’t much to do except read.

Unusually for me there has been no politics on the reading list. Last year I spent a scorching week in the Dominican Republic reading the spectacular Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions, by Francis Wheen. I cannot recommend it enough. Journalism. Politics. War. Peace. Drama. Gossip. Awful. Awfully British. Awfully good. If incongruous in the Caribbean.

Anyway this is what I’ve read this summer holiday. Your thoughts/recommendations in the comments are always appreciated. Especially as I have a couple more weeks before returning to full-time work.

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (1932)

A leaving gift from old Times Radio colleague, and bibliophile, Stig Abell. I’m always slightly fearful when a blurb declares something to be the all-time funniest book ever written in the history of the written word, tears rolled down my cheeks from the moment I read the index etc etc. Still, I really enjoyed this waspish parody of a kind of rural yarn that I don’t know well. Flora Poste decamps from high living London to live with assorted relatives in Sussex, all with daft names - Ada Doom, Starkadders, and a herd of cows called Graceless, Aimless and Feckless, one of whom accidentally misplaces a leg. Amazing to think it’s almost 100 years old - some of the waspish one-liners, particular about class and social climbers, could have been lifted from Twitter (when it was good). Mercifully short too, which I commend in all art forms - books, films, plays.

Abroad In Japan - Chris Broad (2024)

We talk endlessly about going to Japan without ever actually getting round to it. This book (a gift from my wife) has made it more likely. Unbeknownst to me, Broad is a very successful travel YouTuber, but his story begins arriving in Japan as a panicked English teacher, sent to a far flung rural town instead of the bright lights of Tokyo. The book follows him from the classroom to internet stardom, via brilliant descriptions of food, drink, faith, relationships, friendships, travel, earthquakes and culture clashes. I love the idea that whenever a groups of people, or even just two, meet for drinks EVERYONE has a beer first. No exceptions. It means there is no dawdling over menus or peering into bar fridges, so everyone gets that first drink as quickly as possible. Genius.

Death Under A Little Sky - Stig Abell (2023)

Bit awks this as he’s a friend. Luckily it’s excellent. The bearded crime fiction obsessive who doesn’t watch TV, enjoy food or have friends, and just wants to be left alone, is a bit on the nose for anyone who knows Stig, but his detective-turned-hermit Jake Jackson is a great character to drop into a small village just as some funny things are going on with bones. Lovely sense of place, capturing the sort of rural remoteness I grew up with in Somerset. And I didn’t guess who did it. Which is annoying.

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (1945)

Picked this up in Waterstones a few weeks ago thinking it was a book I ought to have read. A few pages in I became 98% convinced that I already had. But now I’m not sure. (I think we can be fairly sure Emerald Fennell, the writer of bath-bothering Saltburn definitely had.) The story of Charles’ journey from Oxford then on, repeatedly, to Brideshead, is so well known in the national zeitgeist (or what we’d now call a meme) that it’s no wonder it felt familiar. A bit too much of the musings on the nature of Catholic faith for my taste, but that’s just me. I didn’t read the Waugh introduction in my copy until the end, which is good. Because despite his admission that he’d cut out some of the more grotesquely florid passages for this edition, I couldn’t help thinking he could have gone further.

The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson (2011)

From the man who wrote about The Men Who Stare At Goats, an absolutely bonkers inquiry into madness. What makes a psychopath? Can you stop being a psychopath? And why we should be worried about the fact, as well as in prison, there seem to be rather more of them at the top of business and politics. (OK so there has been a bit of politics.) Ronson is a brilliant, funny, open writer who questions himself and his assumptions as much as those of the people he comes across. Which include a man who pretended to be mad to avoid prison and ended up in Broadmoor by mistake, and David Shayler, the former MI5 spook who later claimed the 7/7 bombings were staged, 9/11 involved no planes, and he was the second coming of Christ. Mad.

Your thoughts welcome in the comments

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Don’t judge a book by its cover

As I may have mentioned before, the paperback of my book, Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics is out in October. And now it has a cover:

The book is brilliantly illustrated by Morten Morland, who somehow captures Douglas Hurd and a baby Gladstone with the freshness of his daily cartoons in The Times, Sunday Times and Spectator. We had a lot of discussion about which one of the illustrations to use for the paperback cover, but kept coming back to the mad scene of a group of journalists chasing down the beach after a skipping Harold Wilson.

A couple of diary dates where I’ll be talking about the book, and politics more generally.

I am going back to the hometown, for the Taunton Literary Festival on Saturday October 26. Tickets here

And I am at the Barnes Literary Festival on Tuesday November 12. Tickets here

It would be lovely to see you. Or if you want to invite me to somewhere nearer to you, get in touch: matt@mattchorley.com

And if you just want to get your hands on a copy when it comes out, you can pre-order a copy now which will help with all those bestselling lists nearer the time. Thank you.