Spectator Books: Geoff Dyer and his love for Where Eagles Dare

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

With Geoff Dyer, one of our most wayward and wittiest writers, about his new book Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, a frame-by-frame discussion of the classic war movie Where Eagles Dare. Learn from Geoff about the importance of squinting in Clint Eastwood’s thespian toolbox, about the joy of snow-patrol Action Man, about why he shied away from plans for "Alistair MacLean: A Critical Reappraisal", and about why on earth Geoff would follow a learned book about Tarkovsky’s Stalker with a discussion of a piece of late-60s schlock. Plus: what happens when you get on the wrong side of Julian Barnes.

Presented by Sam Leith.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to The Books Podcast with Sam Leith.
0:11.2	Hello and welcome to Spectator's Books Podcast. I'm Sam Leith, literary editor of The Spectator.
0:16.4	And this week I'm joined by Jeff Dyer, the author of very many books on all sorts of different subjects,
0:22.2	but his latest is a scholarly, scene-by-scene consideration of the film on Where Eagles Dare,
0:29.3	called Broad Sword Calling Danny Boy.
0:31.8	Jeff, why would you write a book about this sort of slightly crappy old war movie?
0:36.5	Well, I know this is meant to be a sort of cordial chat,
0:39.7	but I have to take issue with your description of it as a scholarly book.
0:44.0	It's really not.
0:45.1	It's more like the book that somebody with a hobby would write.
0:49.7	So it's a kind of, let's call it a love letter, actually.
0:52.7	Scholarly.
0:53.1	Maybe I shouldn't say scholarly, maybe erudite.
0:54.6	It hasn't got much in the word footnotes, but you bring in, you know, Martha Gellhorn
0:59.2	and various philosophers.
1:00.5	On page one, yeah.
1:01.8	Right on page one.
1:02.5	Yeah, it's a love letter and it's a celebration, but it's, you're right in that it's
1:06.3	very, very detailed. But yeah, it's just a celebration of this film, which came out in 1969 when I was about
1:15.4	10.
1:16.6	And weirdly, my love of it shows no signs of diminishing.
1:21.6	And you're right in a way.
	...

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