My mum’s favourites
Happy Mother’s Day - especially to my mum, Gill Hockaday, with whom I’m lucky enough to be in Northumberland today. I asked her to pick three books she loves, so here you go. Click on the link to buy a book directly from me.
Always re-reading: Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
A lively read: The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family by Mary S Lovell
In use as we speak: Mary Berry’s Baking Bible
Mum and I in Cuba before the pandemic
Bloody hell. Well that was quite the first week. Since my last day at The Economist nine days ago, I’ve launched a website, sold a bunch of book subscriptions, unpacked my first deliveries from publishers, sent out dozens of books to customers, registered with HMRC and made pilgrimages to award-winning bookshops in Bath and - more intrepid still - north of the river. I had 13 meetings, including “a breakfast” at 7am, and only just caught myself before uttering the dread phrase “sorry, I have a 4 o’clock”. Thank you so much for all of your enthusiasm and (even better!) orders.
I soon realised two things: a) I could really do with some premises at some point, and b) it would be nice to have a bit of help. So I went on a bike ride with my property guy, as you do. More on that next week. And I hired the second member of the Backstory team, Lucie McInerney. Lucie is a genius editorial and planning supremo who I worked with at the Telegraph. More than that, she is a book obsessive and a very lovely person - which I reckon should be the only criteria for future recruits.
Most exciting of all, though, is that I have booked my first event! With an author who seems lovely and a book that I think is extraordinary.
As I’ve said before, I want Backstory to be a home from home as much as a bookshop. It should be a warm and cosy hangout for book-lovers and those who would like to love books but have never quite known where to start or what to try next. So I’m very keen to organise as many events as possible. I think they should be intimate - 40 or 50 people, say - and involve wine or a good cuppa. I’m keen, too, that we host not only fantastic authors but also cutting-edge policy people, thinkers of all stripes and, God help us, the occasional journalist. I love the idea of mash-ups: a spy chatting to a writer of spy thrillers; a statistician who studies LGBTQ communities around the world talking to the author of a great gay novel.
In that spirit, then, I’m thrilled to announce that Backstory’s first-ever event will star a migration-policy expert in conversation with Sally Hayden, an Irish journalist whose debut book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route, is published next week. It will be on Zoom on 3rd May at 7pm.
As a thank-you for buying the book from Backstory before (or on) publication date (Thursday 31st March), I will send you a free ticket to the event as well as an exclusive copy of my interview with Sally about her book’s own backstory.
I’m so happy that Sally has agreed to talk to us. I started reading an advance copy of her book on a short plane journey. By the time we landed, I had composed a love letter to her publicist at 4th Estate begging to host an event.
In her book, Hayden takes us on a typical refugee’s journey from Eritrea, one of the world’s most repressive countries (ranked behind North Korea on a recent press freedom index), through Sudan and the Sahara Desert. Instead of reaching the supposed sanctuary of Europe, though, many are detained in Libya, where they are raped or beaten while their captors extort their friends and family for ransoms.
It adds up to an indictment of EU policy (and, by extension, of most of us) in bribing Libya to make the “migration crisis” of 2015 go away by clamping down on refugees fleeing Africa. It is one of the most remarkable works of journalism I can remember reading. And it vindicates the journo-school truism that the best journalism happens when the rest of the press pack has packed up and moved on.
The subject matter is the most difficult imaginable, but Hayden’s enviably-crafted prose pulls you through the story. There are moments of beauty, too:
Petros sold everything he could to join [his wife]. As he spoke, his voice wavered, yet contained a level of determination I would witness again and again in Eritreans I met. It even veered into pride. Petros wanted to tell me how beautiful his father’s orange trees were, how rich the Eritrean landscapes, how wonderful their food and musicians, and how much he would miss everything he was leaving behind.
Anyway, I highly recommend it. I’ll be donating £5 of each sale to a refugee charity chosen by Sally. And I know that she is donating a share of her royalties, too.
More next week on the mechanics of setting up a new business including – I know how to tease you - commercial property zoning and business rates! In the meantime, as always, please hit reply to send me a message.
Tom
My favourites this week
Click on the link to buy a book directly from me.
Kurkov klaxon. Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine’s best writers, is back in stock: his wry novel Death and the Penguin and his notes from 2014 covering the origins of the current war, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev
Devoured in an afternoon: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Powerful, and beautifully-written (Remember Obama?): We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates