The Penguin Podcast: Episode 11 Winter Reads with Jeanette Winterson

Joining us this week is award-winning author Jeanette Winterson, as we explore her captivating new collection of ghost stories, Night Side of the River, and provide listeners with reading recommendations based on their winter-themed questions. Plus, we’ll stroll through the office to gather the perfect list of festive reads from our Penguin colleagues for you to enjoy this Christmas.

Click the button below to listen or continue scrolling to explore all of the books mentioned in this episode.

Click here to read the transcript of this episode

Alongside the Penguin books Jeanette Winterson also recommended:

A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe

Episode 11: Transcript

Rihanna Dhillon:

Hello, I'm Rihanna Dhillon and welcome to the Penguin Podcast and another episode of Ask Penguin. The nights are drawing in, and as the temperature drops and the fairy lights sparkle, it's the perfect opportunity to curl up under a blanket with a book all three and while away the wintery evenings to see you through Christmas and beyond. But which book do you go classical everything from a Christmas Carol to the Nutcracker, or maybe nostalgia is what you need. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper or Phillip Pullman's, His Dark Materials trilogy. I always like to go old school and return to the books of my childhood. Whether you are looking for something full of Christmas spirit for the festive season or just something beautifully written to reflect the wintery days ahead, then you're in the right place for some brilliant ideas because I'm going to be canvassing the Penguin team to ask them their favourite Christmas read to see you through the festive season.

But before that, I'll be putting your Ask Penguin questions to a very special author who's joining me in the studio. Her latest work, and indeed all her many other titles should definitely be in your winter reading pile. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit at just 25. Returning to that material in her bestselling memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Her writing covers fiction and nonfiction, short stories, children's books and screenplays, and her latest work, Nightside of the River is described as a genre bending and dazzling new collection of ghost stories. Jeanette Winterson, welcome to the Penguin Podcast.

Jeanette Winterson:

Thank you for having me. It's great to be back.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much for coming on. So as my introduction hinted, your writing is incredibly wide ranging. So what is it about ghost stories that inspired you to write this new collection?

Jeanette Winterson:

Well, it's wide ranging because I've been writing for a long time. It's going to be 40 years next year, and I'd bore myself to death, wouldn't I? If I didn't range somewhere. I have to be like a free range pig. So I'm out there truffling up things that I'm interested in, but doesn't everybody love a ghost story, and I don't mean horror here because the modern ghost story is often segued into horror, and the two have become very much intertwined because sort of supernatural forays into places that you would really rather not go. Whereas the ghost story itself I think isn't terrifying in that kind of way. I mean, even with E.R. James, the classic Victorian, early 20th century ghost story that we all know and love, they're not terrifying in the way that you're not going to be able to sleep at night. Whereas the modern stuff, I think really is, and that's Stephen King that really pulled that round. And even with Shirley Jackson, if you think about it, the haunting of Hill House particularly, it's already pulling it round from supernatural into horror, and that's a very American thing that happened, that combination.

Rihanna Dhillon:

We often think of ghost stories, I think because of Dickens or as you say, E.R. James as being these quite Victorian set stories. But I was wondering, in your intro, you talk about all the rest of the world and how influenced they are by ghosts, and that I found fascinating. I've never thought necessarily about the Chinese superstitions and ghosts and the ones that are...

Jeanette Winterson:

Or the Chinese love ghosts. They've got all these different categories of ghosts,

Rihanna Dhillon:

Which was fascinating to read about.

Jeanette Winterson:

That divide and subdivide, hungry ghost, torch mouth ghosts, your ancestors who come back to do good, your ancestors who come back to do everything else. And of course they have tomb sweeping days in China. They write letters to the dead, post them. It's a really big thing. The eastern cultures that started out being based on ancestor worship or a real sense of that connection that the living plane where we are is not the only plane, and that around us are invisible planes and we should not confuse what we can't see with what isn't there. And of course, that is the essence of the ghost story. And it's only in modern times that human beings perhaps arrogantly, perhaps foolishly, I think so, have decided to believe that this biological plane and the plane we live in at Toytown is the only thing that there is. We can't prove it and we don't know. And anybody who's had an encounter with the supernatural as I have had, you can't explain it and you can't explain it away. You just have to live with it. And of course all the people who say, oh yeah, nothing, nothing, it's never happened to them.

Rhianna Dhillon:

Yes

Jeanette Winterson:

But when you say let's roam across time, of course, because for as long as humans have been around east, west, north or south, this sense that there are other worlds and that death is a hard boundary, but one that is crossed and where the spirit world lives and that they can return, that's always been present. There isn't a place of a culture or a time that you can go to where you will not find some belief in ghosts, in spirits, in non-biological entities.

Rihanna Dhillon:

In terms of spirituality, do you think that actually that has waned or has gotten stronger in recent years?

Jeanette Winterson:

I think at the moment there's a lot of superstition around. I mean, look at the American right and the evangelicals and their belief in the second coming. I know about that. I was raised in a cult. But on the one hand there is this sense that there is an overarching deity who's directing all of this and that often has a kind of malevolence to it. The deity they love is not one that we would want to hang around, but separate to organised religion in its various forms, I think many people do wonder what happens, because death seems so absurd. Is it really the end? Because we look at ourselves and we think we're made of meat, this cannot be true. It just seems absurd. And also as you get older, which is something I know, your mind can become clearer, sharper. You have if not wisdom, a little less foolishness and you think, is this all just going to go when my body fails? Which it will. And if religion is the first disruptive startup and what it's disrupting is death, it's because of that absurdity. And even people who are resolutely secular, when faced with the death of a loved one or approaching their own death, really waver and hope beyond hope that there is something more than this.

Rihanna Dhillon:

It's clear listening to you talk that ghost stories is not a new thing for you, this is something that you have been dancing around for a very, very long time. But I was wondering in terms of your research for this particular book, was there anything new that came at you from your research or anything that surprised you or anything that you particularly loved delving into this time around?

Jeanette Winterson:

Well, the book has little sections interspersed with the stories as you know, which are my experiences,

Rihanna Dhillon:

The JW's, wonderful

Jeanette Winterson:

About things that have happened to me, which I thought readers might be interested in. And as I looked at those as a sequence, I thought, yes, all of my life I have had encounters with what appears to be things from the other side from when I was a very tiny girl onwards. And I hadn't really thought of it really as a pattern, but it is one. So that was interesting, and I wanted to write the introduction because I just wanted to give the reader a whole stretch of ghostliness in the sense of do you believe in ghosts? And this is why everybody seems to across time, and take them on a little tour. As I was reading all this, I thought, this has never gone away. It doesn't matter where we are. And now that we are coming close perhaps to creating a nonbiological artificial intelligence that is not dependent on the body, and I mean of course ai, what are we facing? I thought, well, this is very odd because we have now learned how to do what we said we didn't want, which is create a being that is smarter than us, the god that we've all tried to get rid of,

Create a being that is not subject to time an entity, let's call it not a being, but not subject to time in the way that mortals are. And there's so many stories either where mortals fall in love with supernatural creatures and it all ends badly, because we are trapped in time. And either you get dragged off by the creature or you're left behind in grief and mourning because you can't follow. And yet we are racing to make this thing, and I'm more interested in what it's going to do to our psyches than I am in terms of, oh, is this going to make me redundant or will I have a job? What is it going to do when we are living again clearly with non-biological entities that are present in our daily life?

Rihanna Dhillon:

The book, your new book is divided into places, visitations, people. So tell us about that, how that sort of helped you to organise the stories, why you decided to divide it up like that.

Jeanette Winterson:

Oh, it was a handy shape. I've never written in sequence. It's not how my mind works and no pages are numbered or until the very end and things are always shuffled around. So in this case, I was writing the stories before I thought about how I would categorise them, but then I thought, oh no, I've got, maybe I had about nine. And I thought, oh, I can see how this fits now. So I need to write some more for these categories. A lot of writing is quite simple stuff, so you just write the thing that really interests you. And that's all that really motivated me with the ghost stories. And I wanted to push the form a little bit because there are four stories in here, a two and a two, a pair and a pair, which I think offers hinge. So you can read them independently and they're satisfying, but when you read them together in the right order, they will give you a completely different perspective and a fuller vision of what I wanted to convey. And so that was a fun way of playing with what is essentially a closed form. Because as always say to my writing students, a short story has to be short.

So it doesn't suit everybody, because you have to be able to damn well stop. And it does have to deliver with a ghost story, think of anyone that you can think, anything that you've ever read, it always builds in the same way. Something starts and it's innocuous and you can brush it off. Something happens that it's really quite unsettling, but you're still not falling for it. And then something happens and you think, oh my God, get me out of here. And so you're looking for that build and then you have to deliver at the end. It can't just stop.

Rihanna Dhillon:

One thing we were talking earlier and one thing that really did give me goosebumps was having read thin air in which is one of your stories. You know what I'm going to say? So this is the story of Sandy Irvine who climbed Everest with Mallory. For those listening who've not read thin air yet, I just want to read out this one sentence: Irvine's ice axe was found on the mountain in 1933. There have been no clue since. But if they do find his body someday and perhaps with global warming, they will find him, then there'll be a camera slung around his neck and the people at Kodak say it's likely that the film can be developed. We may discover that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest. So you wrote this when?

Jeanette Winterson:

I know, I've always loved that story of Mallory and Andrew Irvine, so they've been floating around in my head for an awfully long time because it's such a strange story. And so Thin Air was well before obviously this.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So for those who might not know what we're talking about, can you just...

Jeanette Winterson:

Oh yes. Everest is now just full of climbers. It swarms with climbers it never used to be. And there were a couple of climbers up there suddenly saw this boot sticking out through the ice and they think it had only melted about a week earlier. And of course it had a sock in it and a bit of a foot and Andrew Irvin's name was on the sock. And so now what they've got to try and work out is why his foot's there. But as far as they can tell, nothing else. So he's probably been swept down in an avalanche at some point, but they will find him because Everest is melting all the time. This is a result of global warming. So what will we discover? And the ghost story I wrote really is about, it's a hotel, a real hotel where Andrew Irvin really went where he used to practise skiing. And it's a story about a woman who goes there for her usual skiing trip with some pals once a year. And of course, something very unexpected takes place. I won't spoil it for the reader, but I was really spooked by it. And that's when life suddenly pulls into the thing he'd been writing and you never expected it to.

And of course, it's tragic. He was so young and he was never to come back.

Rihanna Dhillon:

I know. Devastating but beautiful.

Jeanette Winterson:

It's a wonderful story. I mean, I don't mean mine's a wonderful story.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Is it a wonderful story.

Jeanette Winterson:

Thank you. But the whole thing about that climb of up Everest really is I think if readers will be very interested to know more about that.

Rihanna Dhillon:

You write about grief so beautifully through these stories. Does writing about grief help you to come to terms with your own grief? And do you feel like you're helping others sort of make sense of their grief through these stories?

Jeanette Winterson:

Yeah, there's a pair of hinge stories in there. One's told from the point of view of the bereaved person who's just lost his partner and the other is told from the point of view of the now ghost the dead person who says that because humans are narratives we're stories we tell to ourselves and others. And he realises he's returning to his alphabet state and is no longer a story. He can tell he's just a collection of letters and every day his capacity diminishes. And it's strange because I sometimes read the story that's from the point of view of the ghost and people cry. People have had to leave events because they have often been recently bereaved themselves. And I worry about this, but apparently it's been very cathartic and I've had a lot of letters with people just saying that it's comforted them. And I guess we are looking for that too. And of course, in the twists of the supernatural ghost horror, none of the comfort is there and only the ghastliness is there.

And I think you do need some comfort because losing a loved one is a terrible thing. And people, it doesn't matter that who knows whether it's illusion, delusion, who knows whether you are really visited by somebody, but it is very important that your own heart doesn't break. And I think some of these stories try to offer comfort. There's nothing wrong with that.

Rihanna Dhillon:

For you, how do kind of love and ghosts go hand in hand in this book?

Jeanette Winterson:

Because in the Bible, which I know very well, I have no choice, it says in the Song of Solomon that love is as strong as death. So that love is the only thing that we can set against death. It's the only thing that death cannot defeat. Death can take the body but not the heart. And love survives the death of the loved one. Love survives everything. And that is an extraordinary thing that humans have this capacity to love beyond the loss of the object, which again might be a clue into the uselessness of believing that our bodies are 3D cells or bounded condition is the truth of things. Because it seems that we do not need an object in order to love it if we've loved it once we go on loving it long after it's gone, doesn't matter. It's your pet or your mother or your partner that love survives and stays as strong, which is an extraordinary thing. It's very peculiar.

And I think it's worth dwelling on. And I think it's worth a lot of thought always as we go about our daily lives. And that's why it's so tragic when we lose sight of our loved ones who are with us. It's better to leave someone if you can no longer see them or be with them because one or the other of you might as well be dead. If you can't be in the place you're in, then are you really alive at all? And life is at present so short and so precious that I don't think we should pass it in a state of not seeing, not knowing, not hearing, not being caught in some mind game of our own and not seeing the people around us, not loving them as we should, as they deserve and as we deserve. It's very hard to be alive. It's actually easier to be partially dead. And so I wanted to bring through in these stories, the vividness that is there when we really can be present. This is your only time. And that's what the ghost story is about as well. That time is short. And whenever people do come back from the other side in these stories, they're really trying to encourage you to get on with your life, not to spend it staring at the wall. But to go back out and live. It is precious.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So on today's episode, we are talking about books that are perfect reads to get you through the winter months, which also includes the Christmas period, of course. So first of all, I wanted to know why do you think ghost stories are so synonymous with Christmas? It can't just come down to a Christmas Carol can.

Jeanette Winterson:

It could, but there is more to it than that. I love that book as you know, but it's because it's winter and in the northern hemisphere, for us, that's a time has been historically of darkness, of shadows, the twilight. When you see things that you're not quite sure that you've seen, when people come in and huddle around the fire or they did traditionally and they need to occupy themselves, to entertain themselves, we're back to this question of everybody loves a ghost story.

And that seems right. And so it speaks to that northern thing of the light going, the light fading autumn into winter. And that curious eerie sense that happens less so in cities, but certainly as soon as you're out of the city, perhaps walking on a lonely road or through a wood or it's getting late, and that's when you hear the owl hooting or you might see a bat or the fog comes in. Fog is so spooky and forms itself into shapes that you conjure with or imagine, all of that. The northern imagination is really built out of dark and cold and struggle.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And it says in the book that you live in the woods in the cotsworlds.

Jeanette Winterson:

I do live in the woods. I absolutely do live in a wood. And when there's no street lamps and people quite frightened by my house, but I have never been frightened. I know what's the matter with them? Cities are much more frightening. That's where they're going to get you.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Yeah, that's true. Do you feel ghosts in the woods, whether it's real ones or ones that you are inspired by, do you get inspired by those surroundings, especially in winter when you're walking through, like you said at the cold, no light.

Jeanette Winterson:

Yes. I love the point where in the country humans must give way to animals. Then that's when the foxes and the owls and the badges come out. So again, it's a different level arises, which we're cut off from in the cities, different level of reality. Who owns the space? And humans always want to own the space. Well, what happens when you don't? And of course that's also being in touch with non-biological entities who might be floating about in the space.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Because you talk about, you almost have conversations with them. And I can't remember now if this was one of your asides or if it was one of the stories, but about you speak to them,

Jeanette Winterson:

Yeah, I do. In my Spitalfields house, that's my house in London. I've had for a very long time. And that's an old house. It's a 1780s house and obviously many lives have been through there and some of them haven't quite gone.

But I am a liberal guardian reading lefty, and I feel I can't evict my ghost because these days, where were they going to live? I mean, if I turn them out, how are they going to get a place in London? It's nearly impossible. And they don't like modern things and they like to be in what they knew as far as I can tell. So I just think, oh, because people say, why don't you do an exorcism? And I just thought, oh, no, no, they've got to live somewhere like the rest of us. So I put up with a pair of them. There's a rather meek Governess, I think she is, who just sits in the chair and reads, she's rather doleful and she never disturbs anybody. And then there's a rather cross male who bangs the fire irons and flips the lights on and off and sometimes puts the radio on at night.

And sometimes he sits on my bed, he goes like 'thud', about the weight of a Scotty dog slamming down on your bed. And I wake up and I go mad. I just say, can you just get out of here because I have things to do in the day, you don't. And so we now have these vigorous conversations and I think that we have literally reached an accommodation in that when I leave my house, I say, now look after the place. You can have it to yourself now, but don't cause any trouble. And when I arrive as I shall later on, I say, hi, it's me.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And then they don't disturb you before 8:00 AM

Jeanette Winterson:

No.

Rihanna Dhillon:

That's the agreement.

Jeanette Winterson:

That's the agreement. And I know it's bonkers. I know. Look, part of me knows that all this is bonkers, probably. But another part of me thinks, well, what if it's not head? Hedge you bets, girls.

Rihanna Dhillon:

You've also written a collection of Christmas stories, which covers, which is 12 stories, 12 feasts for 12 days. It's really looks beautiful. The illustrations are amazing. So what was it like writing a book specifically for Christmas in comparison to some of your other work? Something so specifically seasonal.

Jeanette Winterson:

I love Christmas, and I wanted to throw in a few more modern Christmas stories that still kept the wonder and the mystery of the season because traditionally it's a time where perhaps things begin to loosen up or ease, and anybody who is on the other side can make their way into our world and talk to us, or perhaps we are more open to things. It's always been assumed that the 12 days of Christmas were a season not just a partying and festivity and people getting blind drunk, but there would also be a time where you will be alive to the mysteries of the world, not just the obviousness of the world. And it's hard for modern people to be alive to the mysteries of the world because everything is there to crush it out.

It's just so noisy and over lit. And so it's good to have a time where perhaps other things can come in. And a lot of those stories are really about that, just maybe people just talking to themselves and then this business of noticing the world around you and then noticing something which actually doesn't quite fit in the world around you. And I love that. So Christmas is very precious to me, mainly because when I was growing up as a child, it was the only time that my mother, Mrs. Winterson, could be said to be happy, because she loved Christmas. And I guess that's just lodged in my mind as something which was joyous, and safe, which mostly my life was neither of those things. And so it's a protected psychic for me and one that I go on celebrating.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So within that celebration, do you have any Christmas reading traditions?

Jeanette Winterson:

Yes. Always a Christmas carol. Because it happens over three nights, as you know, as Scrooge is visited by three spirits following the intervention of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. So I read it over three nights. I finish it on Christmas morning every year.

New Speaker:

Oh wow.

Jeanette Winterson:

So I make my own mince pies, which I like to do. And I go back up to bed on Christmas morning with a pot of coffee and a couple of my own made mince pies, and that's when I read the last part. And then I get up and I begin Christmas.

Rihanna Dhillon:

That sounds absolutely amazing. Maybe you've convinced me to give it another go then, a Christmas Carol.

Jeanette Winterson:

Give it another go, but read it in the right spirit and at the right time. Just set off about December 21st.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Jeanette, you have very kindly agreed to answer some of our Ask Penguin questions that have been sent in from our listeners. So I want to ask, first of all, this is coming from somebody what you think an underrated gothic novel is.

Jeanette Winterson:

I have no idea because I don't really care about how people rate or don't rate stuff. Just find things that interest you. I mean, one of the stories that nobody reads is possibly the earliest modern ghost story by Daniel Defoe called The Apparition of Mrs. Veal. And it's the first ghost story where the ghost is not wearing a winding sheet or clanking about, which was the general rule. Mrs. Veal just comes in her normal clothes or rather attractive silk dress to visit her friend. And it's only later as she goes away, the friend realises she's actually dead. So Daniel Defoe, the Robinson Crusoe man, you know it's a good place to start. And really it's about fishing around. I've always saying to people, don't go, it's terrible, but don't go with the recommendations. Find out for yourself. Our life is highly over curated, man.

Rihanna Dhillon:

That is literally what we're doing here, though. Are there any magical realism books that you love?

Jeanette Winterson:

I know, I know.

Rhianna Dhillon: It's going against everything you believe in.

Jeanette Winterson:

I know, but they get that.

Rhinna Dhillon:

Are there any magical realism books that you love?

Jeanette Winterson:

Well, that's a broad church as well, isn't it? I mean, I've always loved Calvino and a book that I do come back to often is his Invisible Cities, which is from the 1970s, but it precedes all micro fictions. It is a perfect thing of tiny stories, which are really all about Venice, but not in the way that you would imagine. But then I recently finished Elif shafak's, There Are Rivers in the Sky, which has got a lot of magical realism elements in it, and if anybody hasn't read it, they should because she's a terrific writer. So go there.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So what's next?

Jeanette Winterson:

Something very exciting next year, but I'm not allowed to talk about it because it hasn't been announced yet. But that'll be fun. All I can say is that next year is 40 years since I published Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. So let's say it's something to do with that.

Rihanna Dhillon:

That's a very exciting anniversary.

Jeanette Winterson:

But I can't tell you what it is. So there's that. And the thing is, I've got another book out for next year as well with you guys, and it's a hybrid book. I suddenly thought, really? What if it's the last book I ever write? I don't think it will be, but it might be. So it's a hybrid and it's really everything that I know about stories, about storytelling, about how we learn to build a self, how we navigate and negotiate the world, how we become human, and how we can prepare to stop being human when the end comes. So it's all in there and it's called One Aladdin, Two Lamps, because the Aladdin story is all about the fact that you can distinguish between the real and the counterfeit.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you think that every time you write a book or with this one in particular that it might be the last book you write?

Jeanette Winterson:

No, I've never thought it before. And it's interesting because I'm really not worried about how I'll be remembered or if I'll be remembered at all. It doesn't matter. I've had a very lucky life and a very satisfying life in that I've been able to do what I wanted to do and live as I wanted to live, and that's getting increasingly rare in this fine world of ours. So I've had the best of it and I'm aware of that, and if I stop, it'll be because I don't have anything else to say and I never wanted to go on repeat, and I'll just sit in the garden and well, I won't be sitting growing vegetables and looking after the hens and running a few sheep. I won't be bored, I can assure you, but will I go on writing? Only if I've got something worth saying and that I'm still able to say it, otherwise stop.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Jeanette, it's been so lovely to talk to you. I don't think I've ever wanted somebody else's life more than yours. Nightside of the River is available now from all good bookshops along with Jeanette's, many other titles. Thank you.

As regular listeners to the Penguin podcast, we'll already know we record everything right in the heart of the Penguin offices in London, which is very helpful for me today because I'm going to head out to chat to some of the team about their favourite books to read at Christmas, which is a lovely question to ask. I'm very excited. Let's go.

Hello, who are you and where do you work in Penguin?

Francesca:

Hi, I'm Francesca. I work in Ebury in the food comms team.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a favourite Christmas read?

Francesca:

I do. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is just such a cosy kind of, it was my first classic that I read when I was a little girl, and I am so excited to read it again this year. The movie brought it all back to life for me, so that's the one that came to mind.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much.

What's your name and where do you work in Penguin?

Steph:

My name's Steph. I am campaigns director in Ebury's food team.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a favourite Christmas read that you return to again and again?

Steph:

Yes. It's not so much of a read, but every single year, my favourite thing to do in December is get out my copy of Jamie's Christmas Cookbook. Jamie Oliver's Christmas cookbook, I should say, because every year I use his recipes to make the gravy for Christmas Day and also his Parsnips recipe is dreamy.

Rhianna Dhillon: What makes his parsnip recipe so different from anyone else's parsnip recipe.

Steph:

I mean, if you see a photo of it, it's absolutely beautiful. It looks so impressive on the table, but he actually gets a bunch of thyme and uses it as a basting thing and puts it all over the vegetables. It's amazing. Dreamy.

Jess:

My name's Jess. And I'm a commissioning editor at Century.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a favourite Christmas read that you go to again and again?

Jess:

So one of my colleagues publishes Emma Heatherington and she does our Christmas contemporary romance, and they're just really gorgeous festive romance reads, which will make you forward in love, time and time again.

Rhianna Dhillon:

That's lovely. Is there one particular title?

Jess:

So this Christmas was last year's title, which is so good. And it's like the holiday buys where they kind of have to live in the same cottage with one another over Christmas, and obviously they fall in love. And then this one is maybe next Christmas where they meet in an airport on their way home to island, and then they just start a wonderful romance from there.

Rihanna Dhillon:

There. Sounds really dreamy.

Kate McHale:

Hello, I'm Kate McHale, editorial director at Delray. That means that I work across our fantasy and science fiction list, which is absolutely brilliant.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a Christmas read that you go back to again and again?

Kate McHale:

Well, I think this is one that I will be going back to again and again. It's the Nightmare Before Kissmass, a seasonal romcom that we're publishing this year. This is actually perfect for both Halloween and Christmas, so you get a lot of the year out of it. It is the Prince of Christmas meeting the Prince of Halloween and Sparks Fly. It is so much fun. Highly recommended.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Absolutely sold. Thank you so much.

Amy Batley

So I'm Amy Batley and I am a senior commissioning editor in the fiction team at Hutchinson Heinemann, part of Cornerstone.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a favourite Christmas read that you return to again and again?

Amy Batley:

Good question. I love P.G. Wodehouse and I think that his writing is so perfect for Christmas, so kind of cosy and fun and quintessentially British. And he's actually got a collection of festive short stories called Jolly Festive, so that's my favourite go-to Christmas read definitely.

James Pulford:

Hi, I'm James Pulford. I am editorial director on the Hutchinson Heinemann list, and I edit and publish books across nonfiction.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And what is your favourite Christmas read?

James Pulford:

My favourite Christmas read, perhaps somewhat unimaginatively is a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which is published in the Penguin Classic series. I love it because it kind of reminds me of why I fell in love with reading in the first place. I think it kind of puts me back in touch with the experience of finding a story and a character and a message that you connect with in a very kind of pure and innocent way I suppose.

Rihanna Dhillon:

That's perfect. Thank you so much.

Speaker 10:

Thank you.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a Christmas read that you go to again and again every year?

Anonymous Speaker:

I do, yeah. This is actually the only book I ever read as in every year, and it's The Night Circus by Erin Morganstein and it's one of the penguin classics, and I absolutely love that book. You can just really imagine the circus coming to town and it's just so, yeah, you can just imagine it and it's just a really wonderful whimsical read. I love it.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much. That was wonderful.

Hello, who are you and what do you do at Penguin?

Dan Bunard:

I'm Dan Bunard and I'm head of nonfiction for Penguin Michael Joseph,

Rihanna Dhillon:

Do you have a favourite Christmas read?

Dan Bunard:

Yeah, well, whenever the nights start to draw in and it gets colder and I find myself irresistibly drawn towards ghost stories and they tend to be Victorian ghost stories. They tend to involve haunted mansions and cobwebs and I dunno why, but it's kind of gothic stuff. I love it and the scarier and the creepier the better. I don't have a particular author, but I'm happy to gorge on collections of obscure Victorian ghost stories, which is probably quite odd.

Rihanna Dhillon:

I don't think it's odd at all. Perfect. Thank you so much.

I really hope that some of those ideas hit the spot, whether it's a last minute Christmas gift for someone or just a bit of a treat for yourself. I mean for me it's always the latter. If you have a question about anything book related, please do get in touch and we'll try and answer it for you in a future episode. You can email the podcast at Penguin podcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk or click the link in the show description to go straight to the podcast page. And that's also where you'll find transcripts of all of the shows and information on all the books and authors that we've mentioned, this series. That is everything from me for this episode. I'm off to hunker down with a mince pie and a few of those recommended books, such a treat to such a treat. I'm really excited. Thank you so much for listening and happy reading as always.