You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. Today we have a chapter from another new LRB audiobook,

Complicated Women by B Wilson. Read by the author, it consists of ten pieces, first published in the

LRB, looking at the lives of Lola Montes, Constance Litton, Maria Montessori, Alma, Coca-Chinell,

Clara Petachi, Hedi Lamar, Edithe Piaf, Vivian Westwood and Elizabeth Taylor,

with an introductory conversation between Bea and my colleague Malin Hay. On today's episode of this

podcast, we have B reading her chapter on Edith Piaf. To buy the full audio book, go to LRB.combe.combe

dot me forward slash audio or click on the link in the description.

You'll be able to listen to it in any of the major podcast apps.

You'll also find Jonathan Ray's becoming a philosopher there, which was released earlier this week.

And if you use the code pod 20, check out.

You'll get 20% off either book or both of them. That's POD 20% off.

On Edith Piaf

A Review of Edith Piaf, A Cultural History, by David Lusely.

In 1957, six years before her death,

Edith Piaf added a new song to her repertoire, La Fool, The Crowd.

It wasn't actually new having been composed in 1936 in Spanish by Ancal Cabral, an Argentinian,

using the form of a valse creoho, a dance

favoured by the Peruvian working class. Piaf heard it and asked one of her librettists,

Michel Rievegosh, to compose new French lyrics. It isn't hard to see why it appealed to her,

musically and thematically. She had always been good at

milking nostalgia. Chanson itself is a wistful genre, and the plaintive, rhythmic accordion and piano

introduction recalls her pre-war youth when she sang in the Paris cabarets. The song is about a woman

...