Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankipan.

I'm Afwa Hirsch.

And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world,

and asks if they have the reputations that

they truly deserve.

This is Ernest Hemingway, Episode 2, One True Sentence.

I love that quote, Peter, and even though I've got my critique of Hemingway, I have to say there are some real gems, not just in the books that he wrote,

obviously, but the ethos he left behind. As a writer, there are things I really do hold close to my heart. I've got to give him that. Do you know, one of the things I struggled with Hemingway is that he doesn't die an old man, and I'm so closing it on Hemingway's age. And I can't help thinking that maybe I should have, you know, tried to manage a few more things in my career in life. Because, I mean, I think he's one of these things is a bit like, a bit like when we're talking about Gertrude Stein, where the connections with the people who are changing things and doing things at that time, you know, it's sort of, it's, it all feels like it's somehow unreal. It feels like it's kind of made for screen. Hemingway is so large of the life. And like you said,

there are plenty of things in the negative column.

He's a complicated moment. it's somehow unreal. It feels like it's kind of made for screen. Hemingway is so large of the life.

And like you said, there are plenty of things in the negative column. He's a complicated, difficult man in so many different ways. But, you know, he's a he's a giant of the 20th century. You're definitely a massive underachiever, Peter. I've just got to say, you know, I can see why this makes you feel insecure.

Now, don't start me out for it.

I've got to do, I'm going to be presenting some of my most recently read books. And one of them, I can, if I'm going to do a special trail here, I got sent this one, saying I hope you're going to enjoy this. Look at that. No way. I know that book. That's the new paperback. In fact, this is probably the first time anyone's going to actually see it. So, I'm going to know, Miss Hemingway, the two authors I'm going to talk about in today's episode. So that's going to be popping up on my recommended reading with a couple of other books that were both shortly. I'm just going to say, I don't think Hemingway would have been a natural audience for that book, my book. I have a hunch that you might be right. I was going to say it would be modest, but I think, as we're going to find out, there are a few reasons why that might be the case. But let's pick back up from where we left it at the last episode. Hemingway is a serial maria, if that's the right word, a serial husband's constantly trading. I said he was a serial monogamist and you quite rightly corrected me because

Well, I just wanted to check. Well, yeah, he was not faithful to any of his wives, which definitely

is not the definition of a monogamous, but he was, as you said, a serial maria. He always had a serious

relationship on the go, but he also always had affairs and mistresses. And he tended to line the next

Mrs. Hemingway up before the last one was done. In fact, he always lined the next one up before

the last one was done. But we had Hemingway starting his career as a war reporter and then

picking that back up in the Spanish Civil War. Then when the second world war gets going, Hemingway

finds his role for himself again, partly as a journalist, partly as a writer, partly as someone

who, from his very earliest part of his career, in fact, his first editor at the Kansas City Star,

saying that Hemingway's just got a very

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