A Countess Below Stairs with Laura Wood
Sentimental Garbage
Justice for Dumb Women
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2019
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Hold onto the precious jewel trapped in your dachshund's stomach and get ready for a whirlwind post-war fairytale that will make you hum the entire Anastasia soundtrack. We talk to YA and children's author Laura Wood about A COUNTESS BELOW STAIRS, a novel so profoundly magical that we both start crying by the end. After the Russian revolution, Countess Anna Grazinsky flees to England with her governess in an attempt to make a new life for herself and her family. She winds up working as a maid for the Westerholme family, a once great english country household that has been decimated by the First World War. We talk love stories, why eugenics has always been for losers, and Laura's forthcoming biography on the adored Ibbotson.
Artwork by Gavin Day, music by Harry Harris, produced by Caroline O'Donoghue and mixed by Hannah Varrall. Recorded at ACAST studios in London
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats. |
| 0:11.0 | So you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone else's. |
| 0:15.0 | Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. Hello and |
| 0:25.0 | welcome to another episode of sentimental garbage, the podcast where we talk about the chickliff that made us who we are. My name is |
| 0:33.7 | Karen Hedon-Hoo and I'm an author, a journalist, and a precious jewel trapped in dashing |
| 0:37.8 | stomach. Joining me is author, biographer and dispossessed Russian royalty, |
| 0:41.9 | Thor Woods. Today we're talking about Eva Ibizin's account. and dispossessed Russian royalty for once. |
| 0:43.0 | Today we're talking about Eva Ibbitsons at Countess Below Stairs. |
| 0:47.0 | Laura. |
| 0:48.0 | Yes. |
| 0:49.0 | This book, tell me why it's so special. |
| 0:51.0 | Everything about it is so special. It's just really beautiful I think it's |
| 0:56.4 | the sort of book that you can look sureate in it's such a comfort read it's like a kind of it's got such a fairy tale quality about it. And it's so |
| 1:08.5 | escapist and I just love it. I think it's a beautiful I think this book is a dual definitely it's really in a deshin stomach |
| 1:17.6 | Yes, exactly or that we refuse to operate |
| 1:26.0 | Well, I loved about this book apart from everything you just said, the fairy tale, the history, the sumptuousness of it |
| 1:29.0 | is that it's one of those few books that manages to convey a really vast world in a very small amount of pages. |
| 1:35.8 | Yeah, she's amazing. I just think she's amazing at that and I think one of the things I thought when I was re-reading it this time was about how I'm always |
| 1:46.8 | struck by how clever she is as a writer but I think her strength is in the way she |
| 1:52.4 | writes her characters because there are so many |
| 1:55.6 | characters in this book. Hundreds and hundreds of characters and each one of |
| 2:00.1 | them even if they don't take up very much space on the page, is so fully realized and you |
... |
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