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I'm Tom Gatti, I'm a culture editor of the New Statesman and I'm on the line with Sarah Churchwell, author, critic and professor of American literature about to take up a new post at the University of London.

Thanks very much for joining us, Sarah.

Thank you.

Sarah, you have a long piece in the current issue of the new statesman really examining the

cultural myths behind the American South. I was going to start by asking you about, gone with the wind, probably the most well-known

cultural image of the old American South, captures the idea of the faithful slave,

the southern bell, the nobility of the Confederate cause.

But presumably Margaret Mitchell didn't pluck this out of thin air.

What sort of books came before her and influenced this vision.

Yeah, I think that's really important.

In some ways, Gone With The Wind is a kind of epitome or apotheosis of a story that

had been developing for a century or more.

...