A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally Bayley

This week, Sally has been reflecting on her ‘orphan power’, a phrase once applied to her by Will Self, and her relationship with orphaned literary characters such as Jane Eyre. Listen for a meditation on isolation, belonging, and the communities that art can provide. The extracts performed here involving Jane Eyre and Miss Marple are from Sally’s first coming of age novel, Girl with Dove (William...

This week, we join Sally at home, on a sunny autumn day. Listen for a meditation on play, weather, and our relationships with everyday objects. The passage from David Copperfield can be found here . More from Sally on the kaleidoscope mentioned early in the episode can be found here . This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer,...

‘Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, / Yet now they fright me.’ This week, we join Sally in the early morning, after a Shakespearean dream. Listen for a meditation on the boundaries between sleeping and waking, dreams and reality, and confidence and hubris. Calpurnia’s full speech can be found here . The wonderful piano music in the opening section is ‘Tuesday’, by Paul Sebastian. This episode wa...

‘I hate walking, it seems so pointless to me…’ This week, Sally has been musing on the importance of mobility, reflecting on the increasing role of her blue scooter in her life. Listen for a meditation on the importance of transport, both physical and imaginative, via Thomas Bernhard, Agatha Christie, and Elizabeth Bishop. Miss Marple of Bourne End has previously appeared in Sally’s first novel, G...

This week, Sally offers us a series of vignettes from her travels, both past and present. Follow her on a journey around Europe, through the eyes of the child, adult, and writer. The wonderful piano music in the opening section is ‘Sunday’, by Paul Sebastian. This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus. A note o...

‘A gift, a love gift / Utterly unasked for / By a sky’ This week, Sally has been reading Sylvia Plath’s ‘Poppies in October’ (1963). Join her for this brief mediation on living generously and the restorative powers of reading poetry. The text of the poem can be found here . This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve M...

‘There’s always hope where there’s poetry…’   This week, Sally is preparing for her narrowboat, Cerian, to journey upriver for maintenance. Join her in her engine room for a discussion of Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil, meditations on kindness, and reflections on how poetry helps us to create our own rhythms in a noisy world.    More information on The Painted Veil (1925) can be found h...

‘Silence, quietness, that’s a way of living…’ This week, we join Sally in the attic room of her family home, where she has been reading Rose Tremain's first novel Sadler’s Birthday (1976). Follow her on a journey through the spaces in life where we find quietness, and the ways we make ourselves fit into them, in writing or otherwise. The piano music in the closing section is ‘Tuesday’, by Paul Seb...

‘But the darkness is a kind of blanket, and she comforts me…’ This week, we join Sally on a sleepless night, on a journey through Millet’s The Gleaners (1857), via her character Pond Man. Follow her through this meditation on voice, place, and the spaces in between events. More information on the painting can be found here. The wonderful piano music in the opening section is ‘Doubt’, by Paul Sebas...

‘London. Michaelmas Term lately over and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall…’ This week, Sally has been reading and teaching Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852). Follow her on a journey through his London, in the company of its climate, characters, and the bewildering legal bureaucracy not very far from our own…. Music used throughout includes ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Thursday’ by Paul Sebast...

‘I’m wondering what happiness sounds like, these days…’ This week, Sally has been reading Nan Shepherd’s The Weatherhouse, and reflecting on her relationship with happiness and contentment. Join her for a meditation on acceptance, simplicity, and our connections to life’s natural rhythms. The guitar music throughout is by D. Gwalia. This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special than...

This week Sally is experimenting with location and atmosphere for her character Pond Man. She asks her friend Dylan, to come and join her, as they improvise their way into Pond Man's world. This episode celebrates the value of creative collaboration and experiment.   Music by D. Gwalia. Produced by D. Gwalia.  

“She glanced up at the great broken tower-columns of the vanished nave of the Abbey Church….”  This week, Sally continues to read John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel A Glastonbury Romance, dwelling on the character of Mary Crow, whose form gives shape to the flat Glastonbury plain. Join her for reflections on visual art, our search for meaning through symbolic structure, and our deeply human need for fo...

“On this particular day the weather conditions had assumed a cloud-pattern…” This week, Sally continues to read John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel, A Glastonbury Romance, asking: how does writing produce depth and dimension? And what role do images play in our creative and emotional lives? Join her on a spring morning by the river for reflections on craft, inspiration, and literature as a visual langua...

‘There’s no life that frees anyone so completely from unhappiness as does the mystic life…’ This week, Sally has been reading John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel, A Glastonbury Romance. Join her for a meditation on attachment, possession, desire, and being with others. More information on Powys can be found here: https://www.powys-society.org/JCPowys.html The wonderful piano music in the opening section...

"What is it this material life we find ourselves captured by?"  This week Sally is developing her character, Pond Man as she considers the opening line of James Joyce's experimental epic, Ulysses, and the tradition of ritual - secular and religious - in everyday life. In the tradition of Joyce, we observe Pond Man across the length and breadth of his day as he prepares to sleep.  This episode was...

‘You see, I go and live with Pond Man when the pain becomes too much…’ This week, we join Sally at home, as she tries to live with a pain that has become familiar with the help of imagination, community and her young neighbour Maeve. Follow her as she escapes the everyday through the figure of Pond Man, an inhabitant of her latest work, seeking solace in the world of her forthcoming novel (2025),...

‘We have forgotten what it is to look at one another and to notice.’   What does it mean to really see? This week, Sally is meditating on the power of images to connect us in a busy world. Join her as she reflects on José Saramago’s novel Blindness, on empathy and attention, and how literature offers us ways of tuning in to our surroundings.    Guitar music by D. Gwalia, piano music by Paul Sebast...

A special episode this week, as we join Sally at Brasenose College in a conversation titled ‘A Reading Life, A Writing Life’, with fellow writers Aida Edemariam and Joanna Kavenna. Join them for a discussion on memory, storytelling, and the porous boundaries between reality and fiction. Aida is a writer and journalist whose debut book The Wife’s Tale received the Royal Society of Literature’s Onda...

‘If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one…’ This week, Sally has been reading José Saramago’s Blindness, and thinking about the ways we see, or don’t see, the world around us. Drawing on J.M. Barrie, join her for a reflection on seeing and writing through the dark places of the world. The wonderful piano music in the opening section is by Paul Sebastian, and the guitar music was written and perfo...

‘Where do images come from?’ This week, Sally is thinking about the importance of sound and rhythm to writing. Join her for a discussion of George Orwell’s Coming Up for Air (1939) and a reflection on how to find your writing voice.  Guitar music composed and performed by Dylan Gwalia. This episode was produced by Lucie Richter-Mahr.  Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, an...

‘Let words pass through you in a small contained space’ This week, we join Sally for a meditation on creating and inhabiting a space in which to write, and to be held, via the work of the novelist V.S. Pritchett. Follow her as she begins to lay out her meditative practice of reading and writing, drawing on the restorative power of words on the page. An account of Pritchett and his work can be foun...

‘Perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.’   This week, Sally is reading Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Insomnia’, a poem full of shifting, uncertain geographies and marvellous depths. How do we navigate the strange land of sleeplessness? Join Sally as she meditates on the power of reading closely and the solace of poetry as a place of rest.     ‘Insomnia’ is available to read here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/849353...

‘I shall be late!’ Sally has been following the White Rabbit this week, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and reflecting on the ever-increasing demands on the writer’s time. Follow her down the rabbit hole on a journey through time, lateness, and rest… This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. The wonderful piano music in the closing section was composed by Paul Clarke. Special tha...

‘How do you remember people first?’ We join Sally on New Year’s Night, staying with a relative in Chichester, a familiar city from her childhood. Join her for a meditation on embodiment, memory, and authority, via a vision of John Milton’s hell from the epic Paradise Lost. Satan’s speech, read partway through the episode, can be found here: https://poets.org/poem/paradise-lost-book-i-lines-221-270...