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ET26.9 May Week Special · The Downing Arts Podcast

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Welcome to the Downing Arts Podcast May Week Special.
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It's been a busy May week with some lovely music and drama performances to celebrate
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the end of term, including the Chapel Choir's concert last Thursday, an organ recital for
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Donors Day and the Dramatic Society's hilarious production of the Merry Wives of Windsor.
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I'm delighted to have here in the studio for this special episode.
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Leigh Turner, Downing alumnus and former ambassador. Welcome. Lee.
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Hi Louisa, thank you so much for joining us.
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This feature length episode. I know we're going to have a lot of interesting things
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to talk about, but perhaps we could start at Downing 1976.
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You came up as an undergraduate. What did you read? Well,
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I read geography, which had always been the subject I was most interested in,
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and I had three great years studying that. In those days geography
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was regarded as rather an easy subject and arguably I didn't
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do as much work as I should have done. I spent most of the first
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year playing risk with various friends of mine and trying to meet
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people of the opposite gender. Back in those days that was what we used to
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do. And back in those days there weren't very many mixed colleges or
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colleges with women in them. So social setup was
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very weird and we did our best to
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try and overcome that. But after three years I realized that geography
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wasn't a great subject. I thought there was a subject in
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the finals called Geographical Thought. And after studying for three years I suddenly
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thought, well, geography isn't really a subject at all. And I thought, I wonder
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if I can write that in my final exam of Geographical Thought or whether that'll
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get me failed. And I thought I must go and see my tutor. And I
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ran round to see my tutor to see what he thought of this and he
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wasn't in. So I never wrote that in my exam. Maybe I should have
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done. Gosh. And what else did you get
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up to in college? I mean, what was it like in those days? Well,
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I think compared with today, back in
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the 70s, there was a pretty strong anti academic corpus
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amongst the students. You know, there were a lot of people for whom it was
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a matter of pride to appear to do as little work as possible.
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Perhaps a kind of legacy of the 1960s still there
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in the 1970s. And when I used to go back in the 80s, I was
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astonished to find the libraries were full of studying students and so on.
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But you know, I enjoyed very much studying
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and I went to all the lectures in the geography department, which of
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course is right next to Downing, so that was very handy.
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I remember on one occasion I'd Been spending
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the night outside Downing, and I was very tired
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when I came to a lecture with a guy called Augustus Caesar.
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Augustus. Augustus Caesar, his father was actually called Julius Caesar, who was
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a very distinguished and very nice geography professor. And I came
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into his lecture at the last moment and rushed in and sat in
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the middle at the front, because nobody wanted to sit there, of course. And halfway
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through the lecture, he said to me, are you tired? He was kind
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of addressing me in the middle of 150 or 200 students, and I
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said no. And I realized I'd been yawning my head off and he thought I
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was being supercilious, whereas, of course, in fact, I was
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just exhausted. And I assured him that, no, I thought his lectures were great and
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I was so sorry and he was mollified. But,
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yeah, it was a very different atmosphere. And also, Downing was
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bottom of the river. This was like a couple of years before
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Downing admitted women. And when Downing admitted women,
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the fortunes of the college soared.
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They went up to the top of the river, their academic performance improved
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out of all recognition. It was a really good move and it changed everything.
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And unfortunately for me, perhaps I was right
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at the end of a relatively quiescent period in Downing's
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history when it was neither academically nor sportingly,
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so to speak, at its peak. What about
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the creative arts? I mean, now we have so much stuff going on all the
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time, but was there much opportunity to get involved in things? It's a
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fantastic thing that Downing is doing now with the creative arts. I've been to a
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couple of English events or
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writing and literature events, being a writer myself, and I think
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they're really pushing things forward. And with the new Hoang Gallery
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as well. That's wonderful. We mostly
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did the creative arts ourselves. I remember I was in
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a group that used to get together to read Shakespeare plays
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on the back lawn, and that was really lovely in the
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summer with a glass of wine and there was quite a lot of students
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making things happen. In terms of arts and culture, I remember
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we had a poetry reading event in a punt once going
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up to Manchester that was highly satisfactory. But in
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terms of the college encouraging that kind of thing, I wouldn't say there
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was much going on back in 1976-79.
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Wow, how times have changed. And what about the wider university?
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I mean, was there much to get involved in?
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Yeah, the wider university was then,
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as now, as always, arguably a hive of activity of all kinds.
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I was very much into punting and I
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remember there was a religious societies punt race. I Took part in Once Up
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To Grantchester, which was a very aggressive and brutal affair, of course,
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and, you know, jumping the bridges and all that sort of thing we
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used to do then. But there was just so much to
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do. College film societies, college drama societies,
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everybody was putting things on all the time. I remember
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I had some friends who formed a band while I
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was in Downing. They weren't in Downing, they were in John's, in fact, but I
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was like their manager and I lent them money to
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get their band going. Roger and the Bannisters, his name was. Great, great. Oh,
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wow. Where are they now? Actually, I know where they are now. But anyway,
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that was great fun. And Roger and the Banisters came and played the main hall
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in Downing on one occasion, as well as playing all
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over the rest of the university. So there was just a feast of
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social and artistic activity going on all
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over the place. But I don't sense that the individual colleges were supporting it so
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much in those days. And when you left Downing 1979, you went straight
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into the world of work. Could you just tell us a little bit about how
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your career started and then how it developed and so on? Because I know you've
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had a really fascinating time. Absolutely. It was a classic
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story of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. In fact, when I applied
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to the diplomatic service in January 1979
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and took the Civil Service exams, and then I went to
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the Civil Service Selection Board and then I went to the Final Selection Board,
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which was a meeting in London, and I
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was 21 and not enormously experienced. I was living in Cambridge,
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in Downing, in fact, and in Lensfield Road, and I
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needed to go down to this Final Selection Board interview and I didn't know what
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it was. I asked all my friends, there was no Internet, of course. I said,
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what is the Final Selection Board? And they all said, don't worry about the Final
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Selection Board, it'll be fine. Just be yourself by the time you've got through
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the exams. And the Civil Service Selection Board, which is a kind of assessment and
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development centre, by the time you've got through those two phases, you're as good
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as in. Just be yourself, be natural. This was really crap advice.
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I went down, I put on a suit which I never wore.
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I put on my new black shoes I bought for the occasion, walked down to
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the station from Lensfield Road. When I got off the station at Liverpool street
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or King's Cross, whichever it was, the backs of my heels were so blistered
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from these new shoes that I couldn't walk. I Remember stuffing bits of the Financial
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Times I'd been reading in the back of my shoes. And then
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I staggered across London to Admiralty Arch where the
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interview was taking place. And I walked in into
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the interview room and there were five grim faced men sitting
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there and I was so nervous. I remember I sat
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down and the first question they asked me was,
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supposing that Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime
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Minister in May and you are sent across from the Foreign
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office to number 10 Downing street to brief her on Britain's foreign policy priorities.
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What are you going to say? Which was a perfectly reasonable question
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to ask somebody who's trying to join the Foreign Office. But I was so
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unprepared for it. I gave such a bad answer that I've blanked it from my
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mind and as a result I didn't get
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into the Foreign Office. I actually joined the Home Civil Service, went to the Department
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of the Environment and Transport and had four really interesting years
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there working in different government departments. Department of Transport,
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Department of the Environment, the Property Services Agency in Germany. And then
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finally I went to the treasury for a year. And I often tell student
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audiences those four jobs were some of the most interesting jobs I
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ever did. A lot of parliamentary work, very political, a real
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feeling that what you were going to do would change people's lives. I was in
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charge, for example, of legislation on the Rent Acts,
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introducing the assured tenancy which millions of people use today.
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Or I was in charge of policy on houseboats and mobile homes,
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all sorts of really interesting things. Driving around France in a truck when I was
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dealing with freight transport. Really great way to find out about things.
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And then after four years, a very
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lovely friend of mine said, why don't you apply again? And I
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explored and found it was possible this time. I was
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four years older, much more experienced, a few rough edges had been taken
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off. Arguably I was used to wearing a suit. My shoes weren't being worn for
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the first time. Still pretty nervous. And I went along and
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I thought I'd prepared to answer any question
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on foreign relations. I was absolutely prepared,
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up to the hilt. I always say to students who are going for job interviews,
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prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare. And I sat down.
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Another grim faced all male panel. The first
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question they asked me was, what do you think are
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the implications of the Welsh Independence movement
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for the UK constitution? And a
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question I couldn't possibly have foreseen. But as it happened
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the night before, I'd been discussing Welsh independence in the pub with a friend of
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mine who was a passionate Welsh nationalist. I actually am a bit of a Welsh
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nationalist myself, from the dim and distant past. And so I had the
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best possible answer on the tip of my tongue to this very difficult question.
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And probably in the first 25 seconds of that second interview, I got into the
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Foreign Office and then I went off around the world to a variety of
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interesting postings for the next 40, 40 odd
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years. Wow. I know. Some of them included
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Austria and Germany and even Russia.
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It must have been exhilarating and perhaps terrifying in equal measure.
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Well, I remember before I went off on my first ambassadorial posting,
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which was to Kyiv in 2008, I had a meeting with the Permanent Undersecretary
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of the Foreign Office, a very nice guy called Peter Ricketts. He called in all
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new ambassadors and we had a little chat and he said in a rather avuncular
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way, how do you feel about going off to be ambassador in Kyiv?
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And I said, well, it's a bit daunting, to be honest. And his
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face fell and this was clearly the wrong answer.
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He said, don't feel daunted, feel excited about it. And of course, I was excited
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about it as well. But the responsibility can feel immense when you're going to do
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those jobs. I was lucky. I went off.
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I spoke German already when I joined the Foreign Office, and my first posting
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was, as you say, in Vienna. Then later I went to Moscow.
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Interestingly, I had always been a total language duffer at
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school. There was this famous occasion when I had to take the
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German O level back in 1973 or
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so, and we had three exams before the O
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level. And in the first exam there was a
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grammar section where you had to Write to translate 10 sentences
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from English into German. And if you made more than three mistakes in any sentence,
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you got nothing for that sentence. So the maximum was 30 points you could
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get for this grammar section. And in the first of these three exams, I got
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00 out of 30 for grammar. And then I went on a German
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exchange. I worked very hard and in the second of the exams I
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again got 0 out of 30 in the grammar section. And then I
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went to Germany again. I really worked hard. And then there was the
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mock O level just before. This was like the GCSE back in those days,
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the mock O level was taking place. And again, I really worked
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hard. I did. This grammar bit seemed to go relatively well. And afterwards
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the teacher came to me and he said, lee, well done. He said, if you'd
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made a few fewer mistakes, you would have got a mark.
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So not a great start to my. Or not a great evidence of my
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linguistic abilities. But when
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I joined the Foreign Office, I took a thing called the Modern Language Aptitude Test,
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which was designed to check if you could learn languages. And again, I got the
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bottom mark. It was in Kurdish, you know, and I was told,
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you'll never learn a difficult language. But as it happened, I married
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somebody who was a diplomat and she was a very brilliant linguist and
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already spoke Chinese and Russian. And we got a joint posting
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to Moscow. So the Foreign Office had to teach me Russian, even though I had
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this terrible score in my language aptitude test. And I found that
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I could actually learn it by immersion and watching
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lots of movies and reading lots of newspapers. And I got my C1
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at the end of the nine month course and then C2 as soon as I
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arrived in Moscow. And I always say to people that
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if you think lifelong learning sounds
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dull, you're not doing it right. Because one of the greatest pleasures of being a
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diplomat is learning about new stuff all, all the time. And that
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includes very often learning new languages. And I,
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I got my C2 in German, I got my C2 in
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Russian, I speak reasonably good French, I speak reasonably good
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Turkish and Dutch and Spanish and various
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other languages. You know, I forget them after I've learned them. But,
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but I say to people, if it's not working for
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you, one way of learning a language, try a different way of learning it and
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you'll probably get on with it. And I had postings in Vienna,
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then in Moscow, then in Berlin, then in Kiev as ambassador, then in
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Istanbul as Consul General in Istanbul, and then finally
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as ambassador in Austria in Vienna, and UK permanent
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representative to the international organizations in Vienna, which includes the
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UN during the Brexit negotiations. So I was like
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the Brexit ambassador. And so it was
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quite a reasonable career, as it turned out.
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Even though I never went to any of the places I wanted to go,
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I always wanted to go to Africa or South America, and I never got a
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posting there. I was just stuck in Europe. My father
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was a university professor who specialized in
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adult and higher education. And we went off, or they went off,
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he and my. My mother, who also actually
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has a PhD. She and he
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went off to Nigeria in the early 1950s when
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they got married. And I was conceived in Nigeria in 1957
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and born in the UK in 1958 and spent the
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first three years of my life there. And then later they were posted to Lesotho
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in southern Africa. And I spent six years there and at school in
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Eswatini, what is now Eswatini, in what was then Swaziland at
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Waterford School, which was a terrific experience. And really,
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I guess the roots of wanting a job that involves traveling
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and living overseas were thrust down into the fertile
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soil of Lesotho and Nigeria when I was there. Fantastic.
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Now, I know you've written this fantastic book about being
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a diplomat. Do you want to just explain a little bit about how it came
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about and what it's about? Sure.
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It's called Lessons in Diplomacy, Politics, Power and Parties.
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And interestingly, it was first published in German. It was the
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idea of an Austrian publisher called Cennin
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Verlag, and they published it in 2023 under the title the Hitchhiker's
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Guide to Diplomacy, which I thought was pretty cool. And then
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we were lucky enough to sell the rights in the UK and it came out
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in 2024 with that title, Lessons in Diplomacy, Politics,
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Power and Parties. And its basic thesis is that diplomatic
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practice and the way diplomats live their lives and the way diplomats
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work has a lot of interesting lessons in it
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for everybody, whether you're a diplomat or not. And there's
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quite a bit that you can learn by reading about how diplomats do things.
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So, for example, the first chapter in the book, all the chapters
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are called how to Do Something. So the
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first one's called how to Survive a Crisis. And it's got three
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really simple lessons in it about things you can do for a crisis.
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And I illustrate that with some of the crises I had. And one of them
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was when I was coming back from a weekend in Istanbul,
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coming over the Bosphorus Bridge, and the sun was gleaming
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on the waves. The sun was just setting, and it was all very calm and
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peaceful. And I got a phone call from a colleague in Ankara
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saying, a huge bomb has just gone off in the center of Ankara.
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What are we going to do? And I knew the ambassador was away, so I
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was kind of in charge of this crisis. And I felt an immense sense of
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calm descend on me. And I said to him, look,
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we'll have a crisis meeting in 35 minutes. When I've got
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back to the consulate, please can you call together the following people?
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And I gave him a list of names. I said, please, can somebody call
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London immediately and tell them that we're declaring a crisis?
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Please can you also get somebody else on the phones to call hospitals
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to find out whether there are any British citizens have been killed or injured in
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this terrible attack and so on. And why
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did I feel so calm? The reason was twofold. Firstly,
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it's when there's a crisis, everything else stops. You're just going to focus on that.
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The second thing was that we'd rehearsed and practiced for
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crises. We'd been in many crises in Turkey and in previous posts,
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and we all knew exactly what to do. We had our roles
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all set up and everything ran as smooth as clockwork when
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this terrible thing happened. And that's one of my three lessons,
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is that if you are in a situation where you might ever face a crisis,
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and that can just include being a parent in a family, for heaven's sake,
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we have enough crises in families. Number one lesson
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is practice, practice, practice. Think what you're going to do, exactly what you're going to
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do if that crisis comes about. The second thing
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is that you should always put your own mask
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on first, which means that you should, like on
19:58
an airplane, if you're going to help somebody else, you should look after them.
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You should look after yourself before you have to look after your child. Because if
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you put your child's oxygen mask on first, that's not
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going to help very much. And these
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lessons can be widely applied to all sorts of things.
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I. I have lessons called how to Know People, for example,
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or how to Learn from Diplomatic Tradecraft, or How to Drink Wine and
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Know Things. Very useful lessons.
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And then there are also chapters about Brexit and Russia, Ukraine War
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and things like that. So it's quite a fun book, actually.
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Brilliant. And you sound like you enjoyed writing it. Oh,
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yes, yes. Going through a thousand old letters
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and diaries and so on was its own reward.
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I know you've also written several very successful novels. How did
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you sort of make that sideways move into writing novels?
20:57
So writing novels is something that sometimes
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feels as if everybody in the United Kingdom is doing. And there's
21:06
a nice saying amongst authors, everybody has a book inside them, and in most
21:10
cases that's where it should stay at the same time,
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when I was in Vienna, actually, back in 1987,
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the embassy got its first computer.
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And it was literally like a keyboard with a screen. And then the printer
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was on the other side of the room. And after the embassy had
21:31
closed, this room with a computer in it was still accessible. So I used
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to go there and it seemed to me I must write a novel. This computer
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makes it so possible because you can change the words around before they're printed.
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This was a great novelty back in 1987. And so I wrote my first novel,
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novel there. And I wrote several subsequent novels while I was still
21:50
working as a diplomat, just as my hobby, as it were.
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And then when I retired in 2021.
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I suddenly had quite a bit more time and arguably the quality
22:00
of my writing improved and I was able to be
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published by a U.S. publisher, and I published some other things
22:09
myself. And I'm still actively trying to write fiction and
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I really enjoy it. I mean, most of my novels are set in places where
22:17
I've worked. So there's a Berlin thriller called Blood Summit that's about
22:21
my bestseller. There's an Istanbul thriller called Palladium,
22:26
which does quite well. And then there's a collection of hotel short
22:30
stories which are inspired by
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the fact that my partner is a hotel general manager,
22:37
and she tells me extraordinary stories about what goes on in hotels.
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And they inspire me to.
22:44
To write these stories, most of which are about men behaving
22:48
badly in hotels and how the woman general
22:52
manager of these hotels will not put up with men behaving badly. So they are
22:56
usually punished in a variety of imaginative ways. Is there
23:01
a touch of Fawlty Towers about it? It's.
23:04
It's a little bit more serious than Fawlty Towers, but it's designed to
23:09
be a kind of dark comedy, I would say. But, yeah,
23:12
who doesn't like Fawlty Towers? Of course a Downing alum in
23:16
John Cleese. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a. There's a number of famous Downing
23:21
alumni in the creative space. There's also Robert Thorogood,
23:25
who is the author of Death in Paradise, who was at Downing.
23:29
So it's a really strong community when you're writing novels. I mean, I know you've
23:34
had a sort of long and interesting career, putting it mildly,
23:38
but where do you get the ideas from? I mean, how does it sort of
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happen? One of the greatest tips I ever heard from
23:45
somebody back in before mobile phones was always carry a notebook with
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you, and when you have an idea, write it down before you forget it.
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Because all my best ideas come when I'm just walking around.
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And I remember going on a very good writing course once.
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When people talk to me about wanting to become a writer,
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I always encourage them to do two things before they do anything else. One is
24:08
to join a writing group, because that's really helpful to support
24:12
you, and you can read your work to other people and hear other people's work,
24:16
and it's great for giving you a sense of how good your writing is.
24:19
That's one thing, joining a writing group. And the other is to go on writing
24:22
courses which are really, really good as a way of
24:26
meeting people and learning about basic
24:30
techniques of writing, which are very important. In fact, I'm teaching a writing
24:33
course in Lesbos in Greece this September, if anybody's interested in.
24:38
And I once went on a writing course in Skyros with a
24:42
very excellent tutor. And at one point she said, I want everybody to lie
24:46
on their backs on the ground and think of an idea for a story.
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And when I lay on my back on the ground, I couldn't think of anything.
24:53
My mind went totally blank. And, in fact, it's.
24:57
When you're doing other things, you often have the best ideas. So just
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stuff popping into your mind is one thing. Reading a lot is another.
25:05
All authors should read a lot. And the third thing which
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I find invaluable is people.
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People say, am I in this book? And of course, they're never in this book,
25:16
but elements of them are definitely in this book. Elements of everybody
25:20
you've ever met are in every book because all your characters are
25:24
composite characters with traits of people you've met or,
25:27
you know, maybe come across somewhere. And I
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think those three things are where most ideas come
25:35
from. Do you have a sort of favorite place that you've been? I mean,
25:39
you say that your novels are set in places that you've. You've lived and worked.
25:42
Do you have a favorite place? Yeah, well, there's a. There's a chapter
25:46
in my book which is called When Diplomats Dissemble. So when Diplomats
25:51
Are Lying. And. And I say that as a diplomat, you are always asked,
25:55
what's your favorite posting? Which one was the best?
25:58
And what everybody always wants to hear is, it's right here
26:02
where we are now. So if you're in Vienna, they want to hear that Vienna
26:05
was your best posting. They don't want to hear Moscow was your best posting.
26:08
And if you're in Istanbul, they don't want to hear that Kyiv was your best
26:11
posting, and so on. So you always lie. You always
26:14
say, well, you know, this. Austria is absolutely fantastic, or Moscow is
26:19
absolutely fantastic, and all diplomats do the same.
26:22
Having said all that, I can truthfully say that
26:26
all of my postings overseas were absolutely fantastic
26:31
in different ways, either like Russia and Moscow, they were just.
26:35
After the collapse of communism, we were often the first Western diplomats to arrive
26:39
in places for 50 years. Really fascinating.
26:43
Ukraine, obviously, a country between east and West.
26:46
That's even back in before the first
26:49
Russian invasion of 2014, was clearly a
26:53
fulcrum of the relationship between the former Soviet Union and Western
26:57
Europe. Turkey, clearly a country between east and west as
27:01
well, between the Islamic world and the Western
27:05
European world. And then Vienna, you can say the same Thing between
27:09
East and west and Germany, of course, a country I know very well and love.
27:13
But one of my favorite places, I'd named two, actually.
27:16
One is Lundy island,
27:20
which is a little tiny island off the coast of North Devon,
27:23
which is one of the most peaceful and wonderful places
27:27
I know. I often go. I've been there more than 20 times, both for
27:31
family holidays and for smaller groups.
27:35
It's three miles long, half mile wide, surrounded by cliffs,
27:39
full of wildlife, one excellent pub, no mobile
27:43
phone signal, no way of getting off the island after the boat has left.
27:47
It's absolutely perfect for a quiet break. And the other one
27:51
I'd mention is a place called Sehlabatebe, which is
27:54
a national park in the remote mountains of Lesotho,
27:58
where I went, where I once went
28:01
with my brother in 2011. And that is,
28:05
again, a completely remote, quiet mountain region.
28:09
They're surrounded by rugged peaks and
28:12
full of beautiful wildflowers and wildlife. And I
28:17
would say those two places are amongst my favorites. So lots of nature and
28:21
space and time to think. Definitely, definitely. I mean, it's great visiting
28:25
cities as well, but, you know, you need a bit of. Bit of everything.
28:29
Am I right in that? Was it 2006 to 2008 you were director of Overseas
28:33
Territories, is that right? That's right. I was indeed. What exactly does that mean?
28:37
So not many people in the UK really focus on
28:42
the fact, or many of them don't even know, that the United
28:46
Kingdom still has a series of overseas
28:50
territories. I think there are 14 at the moment. And these
28:55
are basically those remnants of the former British
28:58
Empire which were or are either
29:03
too small to become independent, or else
29:08
their population is too small to become independent, or else
29:12
they are exceptionally remote and they just couldn't make a go of it being independent,
29:16
or else there is a territorial dispute over them, so they
29:20
can't become independent. And some of them, like the Falklands, are all three
29:24
or four of those things. And so there's
29:28
five in the Caribbean, places like Montserrat and Anguilla,
29:32
Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands.
29:36
There's Bermuda in the Atlantic. There is the Falklands,
29:40
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory,
29:44
Gibraltar sovereign base areas of Cyprus,
29:48
the British Indian Ocean territory where Diego Garcia
29:51
is, and Pitcairn in the South Pacific. And policy on these overseas
29:57
territories is decided by negotiation between the
30:01
British government in Whitehall and the governments of all these overseas
30:05
territories, where some of them have very sophisticated governments and some of them,
30:09
like Bitcan, which has a population of only 46 or so that
30:15
don't have quite such sophisticated institutions, but we need to look after their interests
30:19
too. And deciding policy on those, those overseas
30:23
territories is the main responsibility of the Director of Overseas
30:27
Territories. And of course, I made a big effort to visit
30:31
all of them. I visited most of them. And it's
30:35
one of the most fascinating areas of policy you can imagine.
30:38
Gosh, I suppose yet more remote places that are full
30:42
of nature, perhaps. Yes, indeed. I mean, one of my favorites was Ascension Island.
30:46
I must say, that's extraordinary place. It's a world for itself,
30:50
the overseas territories. And one of
30:54
the lessons in my book is to understand something, it's worth
30:59
trying to see it yourself. This is truer than ever in
31:03
this era of social media manipulation and misinformation that
31:07
it's difficult to know how to form your opinions, what's true and what isn't
31:11
true. And I've consistently found that seeing it yourself,
31:15
whether it's, as I said earlier, getting into the cab of a truck and
31:19
living in that cab for a week as we drive around France in order
31:23
to understand what the lives of truck drivers are like, which I did in my
31:27
very first job back in 1979, or in the overseas territories,
31:31
making an effort to go to St. Helena, for example,
31:35
to try and find out what that was like, or to go to the remotest
31:39
corners of the British Indian Ocean territory,
31:43
the Salomon Islands, for example, or Perobanyos, to see if
31:47
it was really feasible for people to be resettled there. These are really
31:51
important things and unless you've been there, it's sometimes very hard
31:55
to form a good opinion or a valid opinion on
32:00
an issue. Yeah, I can well see how that's the case.
32:03
Well, thank you so much for chatting to us today. Yeah,
32:08
really, really fascinating conversation and yeah, I hope you enj
32:12
continuing to write novels and all the things that you're doing. I have one book
32:16
that's already come out this year which is called Seven More Hotel Stories. So I
32:20
published a book a few years ago called Seven Hotel Stories,
32:23
and this year a new volume came out called seven more hotel
32:27
stories. So there are 14 altogether now so far and I
32:32
will be writing more and more, I'm sure. Excellent. Well, thank you very much.
32:43
That's it for this series. I'll be back with the Freshers Special on Thursday 1st
32:47
October. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken part this term and thank you
32:51
to our listeners in the uk, usa, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain,
32:54
Finland, France, India, the Netherlands, Russia and elsewhere too I'm sure.
32:58
Also, a quick shout out to Abe from North Wales, who's been to
33:02
a few events at Downing and likes to keep up with our creative arts.
33:05
If you'd like to come on the show next time and chat about a creative
33:09
project you're involved in, or a favourite book or film or show, or perhaps
33:12
you enjoy cooking or crafting, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a line
33:16
on artspodcastao.cam.ac.uk have
33:20
a great summer and thanks for listening.