What can Thomas Hardy’s tortured marriages teach us about love, obsession, and second chances? In this episode, biographer, novelist, and therapist Paula Byrne examines the intimate connections between life and literature, revealing how Hardy’s relationships with women shaped his portrayals of love and tragedy. Byrne, celebrated for her bestselling biographies of Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, and Barbara Pym, brings her unique perspective to explore the profound ways personal relationships, cultural history, and creative ambition intersect to shape some of the most enduring works in literary history.
Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf’s surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy’s ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen’s writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh’s hidden warmth, Paula’s strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more.
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Recorded November 14th, 2024.
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TYLER COWEN: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I’m talking with Paula Byrne. She has a new book out here, which I found in Daunt bookstore in London. It is called Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses. It’s about the women in the life of Thomas Hardy and in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Paula is a very well-known and best-selling biographer. She has, among other things, books on Jane Austen, which are wonderful; Evelyn Waugh; a best-selling book about JFK’s sister, based on new archival research; a bestselling biography of Barbara Pym. She has done work on 18th-century slavery, images of Jane Austen. She has written two novels. And she leads a group called ReLit, devoted to the notion of bibliotherapy.
Paula, welcome.
PAULA BYRNE: Thank you for having me.
COWEN: Simple opening question: What did Virginia Woolf think when she went to visit Thomas Hardy?
BYRNE: I loved what she said when she says his face looked like a round apple, because I always think of him with apples, partly because they made cider at home when he was a young boy. I think it’s just such a brilliant description of that little apple, slightly like an old withered apple, but still retaining some juicy flesh.
I think she did really like him. I think she liked him more than she expected to like him, which I think often happened with Hardy. People expected him to be really dour and pessimistic because, obviously, of the books. Then, when they met him, they were quite charmed. He had a very soft and gentle voice, and it was quite bewitching. It was quite mesmerizing.
I think she was very moved, obviously, because of her father, Leslie Stephen’s, relationship with Hardy. She wasn’t as acerbic as she was with quite a few people. I think she gave him quite an easy time on the whole.
COWEN: This would’ve been in the teens, right, of the 20th century that she saw him? It’s just so —
BYRNE: Sorry. I was just saying he was quite caustic about the sorts of novels that she wrote that don’t have a beginning, middle, and an end. She took it in good humor, but he was definitely feeling that the world of the novel had changed beyond recognition, which it had, and that she was a pioneer of some of that. He was still very old-fashioned about a story must have that trajectory: beginning, middle, end. But I think they got on very well.
COWEN: If one visits Wessex today, are there still traces of Hardy’s world, or is it just simply homogenized and that’s quite gone?
BYRNE: I think it is quite homogenized. The house, Max Gate, which is where I got the idea for writing the book, obviously retains that original charm. It’s very dark. It’s an ugly house, but I think the spirit is there. I vividly remember two things. One was his study at the top of the house where he wrote Tess, and just feeling the power of that room. Then the other room that really inspired the book was Emma’s attic room where she disappeared for 15 years.
I think you get a little feel of that in the house, in Max Gate, and certainly in the cottage because that is so beautiful. I’ve made many pilgrimages to Hardy’s birthplace over the years, and that feels so unspoiled. Dorchester, for example, is grim. It’s shut down. It’s just a horrible place. You don’t really get much of the sense of the real rustic flavor, but the cottage is charming still.
COWEN: Let’s say if one goes to Cornwall or Northumbria, you do feel traces of the past. Liverpool, for that matter. Why not Wessex? What went wrong there?
BYRNE: [laughs] It’s a really good question. I don’t know. Maybe Liverpool, it’s a port, and I think that’s really important that the thing about a port — I’m in Manhattan now, and I’m by the river, and it really feels like Liverpool. I feel like I’m back in Liverpool. I think there’s something about a port because it’s always changing, people are coming and going, there’s musical influences.
You’d almost think that somewhere like Wessex, it would be easier to retain some of that, and yet I felt it looks very run-down. I’m thinking really here with Dorchester, but obviously, places like the seaside, Lulworth Cove, and all these beautiful places are still incredibly gorgeous. I think that’s where you do really get a feel.
To some extent, Dorchester, where the prison was, and you look in Winchester where Tess was hanged — there are places in England where I think you can get a feel for that. If you live in the life of the imagination, like I do, I can really see it. I took my son with me, and he was like, “This is a dump. This is horrible. There’s no Hardy here.” I think from the young guys, he was just like, “This world has gone. This world has evaporated. It can never come back.”
COWEN: If we ponder, say, Jude the Obscure, what’s your implicit model of why it is, for Hardy, first marriages are so hard to break from?
BYRNE: That is a massive question. I think so much of Hardy’s life is poured into Jude. It was such a personal book for him. It would take a very, very long time to answer that question. It was also around the time, when he was writing Jude, that his marriage had by then completely ended and there was no going back.
Really interesting, it was the first book that Emma did not like, didn’t want anything to do with because there is this idea running through it is, “Why can’t you end an unsatisfactory marriage? Why can’t you just live with somebody? Why can’t you just divorce somebody?” This is a refrain. What do you do if you can’t afford divorce or it’s still frowned upon? You could sell your wife like in the The Mayor of Casterbridge, or you can do what Jude does, which is you live with the object of your desire for the second time around.
The second-marriage question was so huge for Hardy because he was so miserable. He was so miserable in his first marriage, and he just couldn’t see a way out. But he did also come from that working-class background where it’s still really frowned upon to divorce or to leave your marriage. It was so complicated with him because when she does die, he fell back in love with her, which is so typical of Hardy.
COWEN: Why write the 1913, 1914 poems to her? He’s in, what, the first year of his marriage to Florence? She can’t be crazy about that. Why is he self-destructive? Is it what he needs to do to make a second marriage work?
BYRNE: I don’t know. There was a cruel streak in him, I think. You have to be quite cold-hearted to do what he did to Florence. Because having moaned and complained about Emma and pretty much moved Florence in, then to fall back in love with his wife is a little perverse. Of course, it made Florence feel completely awful, and then she couldn’t live with — it was like Thérèse Raquin. She couldn’t live with a dead ghost.
I do also think — this is where my sympathy swings to Hardy — that when somebody does die, you tend not to think of the bad things they’ve done. You tend just to remember the good things they’ve done. I’ve noticed this over and over again; people tend to just really linger on the positives. There was so much remorse, and he just did remember that beautiful young Emma. He did want to pay tribute to that.
You’ve just got to remember, Tyler, as well, he’s a writer. He’s going to use that for copy. He knew those poems were good. It did unleash something so emotional in him. He wanted to be a poet. He didn’t want to be a novelist. I think that’s really important to remember. He did not want to be a novelist. He felt almost pushed into it. He wanted to be a poet. Then when he starts writing this amazing poetry, he knows this is good. That’s how he wanted to be remembered. I think, in that sense, he didn’t really care that it hurt Florence.
COWEN: You’re also a couples counselor. Do you still see this in couples today with first and second marriages?
BYRNE: Yes. It’s a short answer.
[laughter]
COWEN: Good answer. Why do so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles?
BYRNE: Can you say more about that?
COWEN: The story in, say, Jude the Obscure: there’s two women, there’s two men, there’s multiple marriages. The Mayor of Casterbridge, doubling is a theme. It seems very Shakespearean that there’s an ensemble of tragedy, and different stories mirror each other or they show different facets of each other.
BYRNE: I’ve never thought about it, but I think it’s a really lovely point. I think that it’s a great plot technique as well, that shadowing and that mirroring. I love his plots. It’s just so hard to get a plot right, and he does that really, really well.
Again, for me writing the book, I was always conscious of, this is a man that — those later novels — wants to get out of his marriage. He’s always looking at the alternative relationship. Like what would happen if this happens, or what happens if that wife dies? He’s always got that refrain going through in those later novels, but not in the first ones when he’s still so madly in love.
Also, with Hardy, he’s always in love with the unattainable. That’s the whole thing with him. That’s why I think The Well-Beloved is so interesting because it’s the pursuit of the well-beloved that, once you get it, you don’t want it. I see that in couples counseling a lot. It’s that once you get it — you might have an affair, and then you’ve got what you want. Then suddenly all those small, horrible things that you haven’t seen because it’s all been so romantic, like, “Oh, God, he doesn’t brush his teeth before breakfast,” or those tiny things, and the illusion is broken. Then you’re just back in the same place.
I think for me, for Hardy, almost as soon as he married Florence, he was falling in love with somebody else. That’s just what he seems to do all throughout his life, that unattainable beauty, because he’s so susceptible to female beauty.
COWEN: In your readings, what do you take to be the primary Shakespearean element in Hardy, just subjectively?
BYRNE: I think “There’s a divinity that rough-hews our ends, shape them as you will,” that sense of — I’m thinking again of Tess here as well — the idea that the gods are peevish. They’ve got a plan, and they don’t really care, and that they’re just going to move the pieces of chess on the board. I think of King Lear as well on that, on the heath. I think that sense of fatalism, that sense that almost there’s no free will . . . What could Tess do? There’s nothing she could do because the gods have got a plan. That sense of providence, that is really deeply Shakespearean in Shakespeare’s very dark period, I have to say.
COWEN: As you point out, Hardy never really stopped working until he had to. How good is the unknown Hardy? It seems to me everyone reads the same few novels. What do you recommend from the rest?
BYRNE: I really like the minor works. I am going to confess, like everybody else, before I undertook the biography, I read all the big ones. Obviously, the first thing I did was set myself to read everything, and I did it in chronological order because I think that’s really important. I always do that. I did that with Evelyn Waugh, just read everything, because you can really see the growth. I do think some of those minor novels are really, really fascinating and not Hardy-esque. Two on a Tower — it’s just so fascinating. It’s so brilliant, the telegraph and the sense of the new world and innovations.
I really like the minor works, I find them interesting, but above all, I really love the poetry. I really, really fell in love with the early poetry written when he was 25 because it’s so modern. It was so shocking. When I read some of those early sonnets, I just thought, “This sounds like somebody is writing it today.” It has the most fresh feel and voice. I would urge anybody who thinks they know Hardy to go back and read those early poems because they’re really quite astonishing. But I do really like the minor works as well.
COWEN: Now, in another book, you argued that Mary Robinson was arguably the most interesting woman of her day in 18th-century England. Why?
BYRNE: [laughs] I think because she really understood celebrity even before celebrity had been invented. She really understood how to market herself, how to fashion herself, how to reinvent herself, and how to support herself. She was really, I think, a very, very interesting writer. She understood the importance of image, really, before many, many, many people did and used it to her advantage. I think she is, for many, many reasons, so fascinating. The poetry editor of The Morning Post. She was a prolific writer and poet. She didn’t let her disability impede her.
Just more than anything, I was really frightened of her when I was writing about her. I was like, “I don’t ever want to meet this woman. [laughs] She’s really scary.” I couldn’t wait to get her out of my house when I finished writing about her. I think about her all the time. In fact, I’m writing a novel about her in a minute.
COWEN: That’s great. Who is arguably the most interesting woman in England today?
BYRNE: Hmm. That is such a good question. I don’t really find anybody interesting in England, really.
[laughter]
COWEN: Katherine Rundell? Amia Srinivasan? I would think Katherine Rundell — whether or not one agrees, she would be the obvious first pick.
BYRNE: My mind just goes — I instantly go to people like Sally Rooney, but I don’t really like her.
COWEN: That’s not England.
BYRNE: That’s Ireland, yes, not Great Britain.
COWEN: You are from Liverpool, right?
BYRNE: I am from Liverpool. Well, the other side of the water, Merseyside. So, yes.
COWEN: They have a lot in common culturally.
BYRNE: They do. I’ve been living in America for far too long. I’ve been in America for six years. I’m really not sort of aware of interesting women, much to my shame.
COWEN: Now, you’ve had a long-standing interest in Jane Austen. What’s your sense, if you think of late Georgian theater in England, which was a big influence on Austen, just how good was it? If you or I went to one of those plays, would we be bored? Would we think it’s stupid? Would we be amazed and wonder why the theater had declined? What do you think? Obviously, it’s guesswork, but you must have a sense.
BYRNE: I think they did it quite interestingly because they would do like a five-act serious play, and then there would be like a farce, and then there would be a dance. There was a little bit of something for everybody. You could go and see your Shakespeare.
I think, particularly in the Georgian era, this is the time when those really great actors, Sarah Siddons and, obviously, Garrick — coming to the end of Garrick — but Edmund Kean, George Cooke, Dora Jordan, these absolutely brilliant actors. It’s so hard because we don’t know why they were so great. Jane Austen talks about Edmund Kean in her letters and says, “He’s so natural.” We don’t know what that means.
To us, we think of method acting, don’t we? We might go to Sean Penn or we might go to the great method actors. When they say, “Oh, he’s so natural,” what does that actually mean? It can’t mean the same thing that it can mean to us. What I do know is, it wasn’t like declamation and throwing your hands and being over the top. It was tempered down. Jane Austen calls it “real hardened acting.” Good acting is real hardened acting. I think you could see some of that.
A lot of people just sometimes went for the farce, and the farces, I think, were great. She Stoops to Conquer is hilarious, The Rivals by Sheridan. People would just go and spend — they’d go halfway in and see the last bit of the main play. Then they’d see some great farce.
I think often people went to see each other. They went to look at each other. There was a lot of gazing around the room, and who’s there? What are they wearing? What are they doing? Also, it’s very noisy. People didn’t sit there in deference like they do now. They’ll be chatting and jostling and talking. It was much more sociable.
It’s a place where the classes intermingle. There aren’t many places like that in Georgian society because it’s so stratified. It’s really fascinating as a sort of social space where you might mistake a prostitute with a fine lady because she’s wearing the clothes of a fine lady because she’s bought them secondhand. You’ve got all these interesting things going on. I think it would be really good fun.
COWEN: How is the farce related to Austen?
BYRNE: She loved farce. In her letters she talks about going to see Don Juan, and it’s a farce, and she’s like — “a compound of cruelty and lust,” she calls it. There’s other farces — The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret, not very feminist, by Susanna Centlivre — and she’s laughing, and she says, “The farce really pleased me.”
I think she had quite low taste. I think she was hard to please, so she really liked the farce. Also she used to take the children and the family, so they’d like a good farce. I think she was quite eclectic in her taste. These clowns were really funny. They were really good. As I say, she wasn’t a snob. She wasn’t an intellectual snob. She did want to see Mrs. Siddons in the great Shakespearean roles, but she also loved comedy. She is a comic writer, which we all forget about, which is the most important thing to remember about Jane Austen is how funny she is.
I argued in my very first book that she could never have been such a good comic writer if she hadn’t watched all these farces, if they hadn’t performed them at home, if she hadn’t read them, because her sense of comic timing is derived from 18th-century theater. Pride and Prejudice is so much dialogue, it’s like being at a play. Then she used to read her novels aloud. That is like being at a play as well. For me, that was such a big and undervalued influence.
COWEN: How is Mansfield Park set against a background of war, total war, you could say, by the standards of the time?
BYRNE: She’s a war novelist because many of her novels are written in the background of the French wars and the Napoleonic wars. Mansfield Park is particularly — 1814 is a really interesting year. There’s some very interesting books being written in that year.
It happens to be my favorite Jane Austen novel, Mansfield Park. I know everybody hates it, [laughs] but I really love it. I find it so different to the others and so much more serious and so much more interesting. Although she’s not a war novelist, but it infiltrates. It’s so turbulent. You know that something is always happening in the shadow hinterlands.
You get that feeling with Mansfield Park of great unease, I think, that the house itself is corrupt. I’ve always felt that the Crawfords coming in and corrupting the house isn’t what’s really going on. It’s the house that’s corrupt, and the house is built on the spoils of the slave trade. I think it’s much more interestingly, politically . . . Of course, she’s got two brothers —
COWEN: The trips to Antigua, they’re to slave plantations?
BYRNE: Yes, very clearly, and she says so. Sir Thomas — the house is built — it’s a new house, Mansfield; it’s built on the spoils of the slave trade. He goes out because there’s unrest. We don’t know what that is, but there were enslaved riots happening at that time, especially in Antigua. He takes his wild son with him in the hope to get him away from wild company, which doesn’t work. I think you always get that sense of the spoils of the slave trade.
Then, of course, Fanny is the only one brave enough to ask Sir Thomas, when he comes back, she asks the question about the slave trade. Nobody else is really interested. They don’t want to talk more about it, but she does. It’s a very important moment in the novel that this shy, timid, diffident little girl is the one who says, “Tell me more about what’s happening with the slave trade.”
Again, the Lord Mansfield connection. Anybody reading Mansfield Park is going to think of Lord Mansfield and his role in the abolition of the slave trade. That’s about the nearest, I think, she does come to politics. She stays away from it, a bit like me, but it’s there.
COWEN: It all seems political to me, just the relationships between the sexes and class and who does what to get ahead. I’m not sure if she sees a relevant alternative, but it’s mostly an indictment, as I read these novels.
BYRNE: Yes, I would agree.
COWEN: She was an abolitionist, right?
BYRNE: Absolutely. She was obsessed with this really interesting man called Thomas Clarkson who wrote the first history of the slave trade. Also from Liverpool, or he went round Liverpool. He might have been from Liverpool, I can’t remember. She was obsessed with Thomas Clarkson, who was the first person to argue that, instead of slave and human traffic, if you want to trade with Africa, you could do this with goods, with beads, with clothes, with all sorts of different things. She absolutely, I think, abhorred the slave trade and everything it stood for.
COWEN: When does the opium trade pop up in her novels?
BYRNE: Does it?
COWEN: Persuasion? Maybe I’m misremembering. Anyway, we will ask ChatGPT —
BYRNE: I don’t know.
COWEN: — in our spare time when we’re done.
BYRNE: [laughs] Definitely.
COWEN: You recommend a movie, Patricia Rozema’s version of Mansfield Park, which is now in my to-watch list. Why is that more interesting and vital than most other Austen adaptations?
BYRNE: I think at the time — it was quite a while ago I saw it, and it did feel very refreshing because it really engaged with the politics. It engaged with the slave trade. I think it revealed Fanny as more spirited. It’s not a faithful adaptation, put it that way. I know it really did divide people. At the time, I was like, “It’s really fun, it’s really risqué, and it’s fresh.” But then I saw it again recently, and I was a little disappointed. I was like, “Oh, it’s not as brilliant.” You know how you go back to a film that you love and you think, “Oh, that’s so great,” and you go back and you’re like, “Eh”?
I don’t think anybody has really got Mansfield Park right, but there was something very new and fresh and vivid about the way that she filmed it as well. Filmically, it’s really interesting. I really liked her depiction of Tom Bertram, the wayward son, and his engagement with the slave trade. I really liked the way Harold Pinter — because Harold Pinter played Sir Thomas. He was a bully, which I’ve always felt that Sir Thomas is a bully.
She took lots of risks. Ultimately, she doesn’t get Fanny right. I just felt at the time, keep it fresh, keep it relevant. We don’t have to be so faithful, and we don’t have to be all frocks and smocks in big houses. Every Jane Austen adaptation, the house is way bigger than what it would have been. She’s not interested in aristocrats. She’s interested in gentility. They’ve always got it wrong.
The films I like — I love Clueless. Clueless is the best adaptation because it’s so funny. She just gets the funniness. That’s the really important thing. Clueless is so great. That has never lost its charm for me.
COWEN: Your book on Evelyn Waugh, the phrase pops up, and I quote, “naturally fastidious.” Why can it be said that so many British people are naturally fastidious?
BYRNE: Your questions are so crazy. I love it. Did I say that? [laughs]
COWEN: I think Evelyn Waugh said it, not you. It’s in the book.
BYRNE: Give me the context of that.
COWEN: Oh, I’d have to go back and look. It’s just in my memory.
BYRNE: That’s really funny. It’s a great phrase.
COWEN: We can evaluate the claim on its own terms, right?
BYRNE: Yes, we can.
COWEN: I’m not sure they are anymore. It seems maybe they once were, but the stiff-upper-lip tradition seems weaker with time.
BYRNE: The stiff upper lip. Yes, I think Evelyn Waugh would be appalled with the way England has gone. Naturally fastidious, yes, it’s different to reticent, isn’t it? Fastidious — hard to please, it means, doesn’t it? Naturally hard to please. I think that’s quite true, certainly of Evelyn Waugh because he was naturally fastidious. That literally sums him up in a phrase.
COWEN: If I go to Britain as an American, I very much have the feeling that people derive status from having negative opinions more than positive. That’s quite different from this country. Would you agree with that?
BYRNE: I would. I would agree. I think one of the things I have always loved about America was that — I know it’s such a cliche about Americans have this sense of positivity and you can do anything, but it’s true. I do find, in England, there is a real ill, dour, putting you down or putting you in your place, but I like that as well. Like with Scouse humor, it’s very much keep you in your place. Don’t get too big for your boots.
I like it because I think the opposite of that is what the phoniness of Americans is like. When you go to LA and everyone is like, “Oh, my God, you’re so beautiful. That is amazing,” and like, “Oh, my God,” and you just think, “You don’t mean a word of what’s coming out your lips.” I think the balance — New York feels like the balance is pretty right.
COWEN: When did that start in Britain? Does it exist at the peak of Victorian Britain? One doesn’t feel it in John Stuart Mill or many other writers. What’s the evolution of that? You’ve written British biographies about a number of different eras.
BYRNE: You mean the stiff upper lip?
COWEN: Well, the negativity as a means of conferring status upon yourself.
BYRNE: It’s slightly tall poppy syndrome, that you don’t want to big someone up too much because it makes you feel small, and it takes your light away from you if you are a tall poppy. I think it is tied in with something that I’ve really come to value the older I’ve got, which is English reticence and English diffidence.
Actually, the older I get, the more I’m like, “I really like that because it does feel very intrinsic to who I am as a British person,” which is — and you might say negative, I might say realistic. You might say pessimistic, I might say honest. It just depends how we define these things. I think when someone gives you a compliment, or to me, they mean it in England. They mean it because they very rarely give you one. I’m like, “Oh, you must really mean that.” That has value. I think that stiff upper lip has value.
As a therapist, it also does not have value. As a therapist, family secrets are the worst thing that you can ever do to it. I see both sides of it, if that makes sense.
In terms of the novel and in terms of the great writers, I think you are right about that. There is a such a deep pessimism, a strain that runs through. However, as with Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen, you always get that leavened with satire, with humor, with “Don’t take yourself too seriously.” I think that’s the great British sin: Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you take yourself too seriously, you’re doomed.
COWEN: Do you read Waugh as actually a snob and a misanthrope, or is that a put-on and that actually he’s very good-natured about humanity?
BYRNE: The latter. I completely think it’s put on. I argued this really strongly in my book, that everything was a joke. Everything was up for a joke. He played the part of the grumpy colonel, which he talked about himself. Deep down, he was incredibly kind to his friends. He was deeply sensitive. He wasn’t a snob. Again, he makes fun of the aristocracy in Brideshead, even though people don’t always see that. I don’t think he was any of those things.
I think he was a snob about cleverness. I think he was a bit of an intellectual snob. I think if you were really stupid, he wouldn’t have much time for you, and maybe that’s a British thing too, but he really valued wit and good conversation.
But it didn’t matter whether you were — during the war, his bagman adored him. There’s an interview where they’re trying to get this bagman to sort of say, “Oh, he’s a horrible snob, wasn’t he?” He said, “No, he is absolutely lovely.” “Did he shout at you? Was he horrible to you during the war?” “No, no, no. He couldn’t have been kinder.” He was somebody who knew him intimately during the war. He just did not have a bad word to say about him.
It’s become a bit of a parody, and he became a bit of a parody of himself. He parodied himself, but I think he played that part. For me, he certainly was not a snob.
COWEN: If I understand your life history correctly, you and your husband come from very different status bands in British society. How do you think that shapes the books and biographies you write?
BYRNE: We’re both interested in social class, but if you live in England you are, because it permeates everything. Another thing I really love about America is — and I know there is an American class system, I know that — but I’ve always felt very free in America because people don’t judge me by my accent. Whereas in England, you are instantly, or you were instantly, judged by, “Oh, you’re a Northerner. That means that you steal things,” or “You’re a Northerner. That means that you’re stupid.” I’ve never got that in America.
My husband and I have always been really fascinated — we come from different classes, different backgrounds, but the great unifying thing for us always was books and literature and art and music and all the things that we have in common. It does shape the writing because I’m interested in people who write about social class — Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh.
COWEN: Barbara Pym, yes.
BYRNE: Now, obviously, I’m drawn to those writers, and same with him.
COWEN: Do you have the sense that, in your books, you’re working through something about your own life and your own history, and that’s what you have to get out? By doing it indirectly, there’s some way you can psychologically resolve that where it won’t quite work so directly.
BYRNE: I agree, yes.
COWEN: Because I feel that way about my books, that I’m always writing about myself in some ways.
BYRNE: A hundred percent. I’ve said it many, many times, that all biographers are writing autobiographies. Even the fact that you choose to write about these certain people, it’s something that appeals to you or you may have been shaped by.
I was really fascinated — going back to the Hardy book for a moment, I was really interested in working-class women’s stories because I come from that background. The background I come from, it’s very matriarchal, it’s Catholic, it’s women had a lot of power. I could never understand middle-class women saying women have no power because I was like, “Oh my God, you’ve never been in my family,” because they were always the storytellers. They were really — the men were really not as strong as the women.
I was really fascinated by female lore in Thomas Hardy. What are these stories that go through the generations? Do we believe them, these illegitimate children? I was always interested in giving people a voice. I wouldn’t be drawn to that if I hadn’t had that background because I know that’s how women talk and speak. I think Hardy was really fascinated by working-class women and their strength of character and their stories and all those things.
I think you’re completely right. I don’t think there’s a single book I’ve written where I feel cold, where I feel like I don’t know this world or I don’t share something of myself. I think it’s just a fallacy to say, “Oh, I’m really objective. I wrote that book and I’m so objective.” I just don’t think it works like that. I think you see things that you think, “Ah, okay. That’s really fascinating.” Somebody else might say something completely different and not see it. For me, there’s always my own autobiography, and I hope it doesn’t distort it too much, but I have to be —
COWEN: No, that’s great. I love that in the books. I don’t know you at all, but I feel as if I know you just reading the biographies.
BYRNE: Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say. Thank you.
COWEN: A related question: Does Paul McCartney still have a Liverpudlian accent? Because he pretends not to. If you listen to 1963 Paul McCartney and a more recent Paul McCartney, it’s a very different way of speaking. But underneath, do you still hear that he’s from Liverpool?
BYRNE: Oh, hundred percent. See, the thing is, I just think he sounds so Scouse to this day. It’s softened because, a bit like me — I haven’t lived in Merseyside since I was 18, really. I came back for a bit and then moved away again. I really hear his accent, but I know what you’re saying. Those early — the accent’s really thick and it’s very guttural. It’s right back from the throat. And [now] it’s softened, but to me, I so hear that accent. I’m like, “Oh, my God, he’s so Scouse.”
COWEN: Could you explain to me, as an American, what you’ve called the poison pen episode? Your husband has a governance post at Oxford, and you’re there with him, and someone starts writing these nasty letters about you. Now, people write nasty comments on the internet about me every day, basically, and no one cares. In the society you’re in, this is somehow an event. There’s multiple newspaper stories about it. You end up writing a novel partly based on these events. How is it that the poison pen letters have force? It’s very puzzling to me.
BYRNE: Again, I really like this line of questioning. And I think there’s something powerful about somebody who takes the trouble to go and buy a nice sheet of paper and a first-class stamp — oh, and I’ll tell you a really funny story about that in a minute — and write this beautiful letter — care and precision have been thought about — and then you go and you take it to the post box and you post it.
Come on, Tyler. That is not like writing, “Tyler, you suck,” on a tweet. [laughs] It’s really not the same thing. I remember when it first happened — the same thing had happened to my best friend, who’s a clergyman in London. I called him up and I was like, “Oh, my God, I’ve got a poison pen letter.”
We were talking about the power of this, the question you just made, and he said, “Darling, there’s one question I have to ask you.” He said, “Did they send it first class?” It’s so British, this response, by the way. “A first-class stamp or a second-class stamp?” I said, “Well, it actually was a second-class stamp.” He said, “Oh, yes. Cheap as well as vicious.”
COWEN: [laughs] How good was the penmanship?
BYRNE: Oh, it was superb. I knew straight away it was an academic because it was so clever. I knew it was a woman because it was so clever and bitchy. Sorry, people, but there you go.
COWEN: Did you ever find out who it was?
BYRNE: I did.
COWEN: You found out factually, or you just inferred, in a Bayesian sense, who it must be?
BYRNE: No, I flushed this person out via Twitter. She eventually made a mistake. She posted a letter where there was a camera. It was by registered post, so she made a mistake. I pretended that I had camera footage, which I didn’t. I tweeted it and said, “Sorry, you’ve been caught. I know who you are. We’ve got CCTV camera. You better ’fess up,” and she ’fessed up. I sued her as well. I didn’t want it to go to court because she was clearly unwell and I didn’t want to do that, but it got very far. It did get very far and full apology.
COWEN: What do you take to be the true motive behind it? Just viciousness, or mental illness, or . . . ?
BYRNE: A little bit of viciousness, a lot of mental illness. I think it was someone whose life hadn’t really turned out the way she’d expected. There was a little bit of envy, I don’t know why, but felt like there was “it should have been me” sort of thing and really wanting to put me down. Again, that class and that British class thing, that “Who are you to be parading around Oxford as a provost’s wife?” Who knows?
Because I never had met this person. I did not know this person. It was just, “Why would you even do that?” Everything was from Twitter. Talking about Twitter, it was my Twitter novel because I figured out early, I was like, “Oh, my God, this person doesn’t know me.” I was like, “Everything that’s in these letters are things that I’ve tweeted,” and that was the case, as it happened. Little link there with our Twitter experiences, Tyler.
COWEN: How many letters were there?
BYRNE: I think there were maybe about 20 over a five-year period.
COWEN: That’s a lot of letters. That’s a lot of penmanship.
BYRNE: They were very long. That’s how I knew it was a boring academic, because they were so long and convoluted. I was like, “Oh, for God’s sake. Typical academics, never write any books and whinge and take all their long holidays” — sorry, everyone’s going to absolutely kill me for this — “and don’t actually do —
COWEN: No, I love it. They’ll love it. Keep on going.
BYRNE: “ — then don’t even do anything.” I was like, “You’re writing me these 30-page letters. Why didn’t you write a book, love? Just do something with your life.” I knew it was a female academic, and it was. It just took so much of her time. She later said alcohol had played a part. I think she would just get completely smashed and then decide to take me down and write these letters.
Honestly, they were hilarious. They were so funny that I was like, “I have to use these letters in a book. This is a waste. This is so, so funny, this stalking of me.” I was like, “It’s hilarious.” It was so bonkers. It was like Baby Reindeer before Baby Reindeer.
COWEN: Now, if I had known of this at the time, I would’ve inferred that you were a nonconformist and, in some way, some mix of quite interesting and ambitious, and wanted to meet you. Did other people in England react that way? Did you become a heroine, or did they just assume the letters were somehow some correct critique of you?
BYRNE: Oh, I don’t think I was a heroine at all. I was absolutely vilified. I think so many people were just really not happy that I went public. When I wrote the novel, I was a little bit critical of Oxford as an institution, and that really didn’t do me any favors. No, I did not get many admirers. [laughs] It wasn’t my greatest career move. However, I wanted to flush her out, and I wanted her to stop.
I was absolutely determined that something positive would come out of this horrible — because it is distressing. I know I make light of it, but it is really, really horrible. It was so nasty and vicious and cruel. Then you just think, “Who is it?” Then you start thinking, “Is it my friend, or is it so and so?” You do become quite paranoid. I really feel sorry for famous people because I’m like, they must get this all the time, and then who do you trust?
It’s hard enough in an Oxford college to trust anybody because they’re all such backstabbers. I was like, “Oh, my God, what if it’s somebody who sees me every day?” You do become a little bit paranoid. But I think writing the novel was cathartic, and it did enable me to step back from it and say, “Come on, this is actually quite funny.” I didn’t get any people saying good — just a couple of people went, “Good on you. Good on you for doing that,” but not many.
COWEN: Do you think there’s some element of jealousy? That you are Lady Bate, and that in some sense someone feels that’s not deserved, and it’s a sort of protest.
BYRNE: Hundred percent. I think they think I’m Lady Docker from Liverpool. I think they think, “Who the hell does she think she is?” Those things don’t matter anything — to me, that was Jonathan’s accolade, and he deserved it. Getting a title from that is not my title. It’s lovely for him, and I support him, and I think he deserved it. I think he’s only the second person to be knighted for services to literature. I was so proud of him, but it wasn’t mine.
I definitely think there were some people, particularly in Oxford and Cambridge, who were really, really angry about it and really thought — because I am outspoken, Tyler. I do say it as it is, and it is the Scouser in me. I don’t really put up with bullshit. I don’t think people like that. They thought that I should just shut up and put up. There was a lot of viciousness that came as a result of the title.
Really interestingly — you can’t know this, but it’s absolutely true — the first letter came a week after the knighthood was announced. I think that was the trigger. I was like, “Ah, somebody’s seen this in the papers, and this is the trigger.” I don’t know, I can’t say whether there was some sort of, not even envy, but just, “Who does she think she is?”
COWEN: Do you think you’re an outspoken Liverpudlian as a therapist?
BYRNE: Yes.
COWEN: You’ll just call BS when you hear it.
BYRNE: Completely, and you have to with couples. I love couples. I do all therapy. I do family therapy, but I love couples because you have to call it out. You’ve got to call people’s bullshit out. Of course, you’d only do that when you’ve created that bond, but I absolutely will because I will not waste people’s time or money. I will say, “You are wasting your time. You’re wasting your money. You don’t want this enough.”
I will absolutely call it out because I can’t bear people who just go into therapy for therapy’s sake and waste their money and their time. And in America, it’s expensive. It’s a lot of money to speak to me. [laughs] I’m like, “I’ve got to be worth it. I’ve got to be worth it. I want them to feel good about this.” I am outspoken, but I’m gentle too. I’ve always been a good listener, so I’ve not had any complaints.
COWEN: Now, I know it’s hard to generalize, but if you think about how American couples are different from British couples, what ideas come to mind?
BYRNE: I really think American couples are incredibly — I know this makes me sound a bit of a tosser, but they’re so sweet. I lived in Arizona for so long, and I was just like, “Oh, the relationships are so lovely. They’re so kind to each other. They’re so warm.” I was like, “British people are just so horrible to each other.” I feel like we’re always in an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel where everyone’s whispering horrible things under their breath to their husbands and their wives.
I feel like the family values in America is huge for me, but it may be the West Coast thing as well. I was like, “Wow, so much family and support.” Of course, not everybody, but just generalizing. I’m like, “Wow, there’s a real support within the family that I haven’t seen quite so much in England.”
I think it seems a little bit more fraught. Many people marry their college sweethearts. I’m like, “How does that even work? How can you still be married to someone you knew when you were 14?” It’s like, “Seriously, do you really want to stay together? You can leave.”
[laughter]
COWEN: Do you think there’s evidence of any kind of mental health crisis in the US today? Maybe only with people’s children, but I see some of these parents with teenagers or children, say, in their 20s; I hear of many more issues than I would’ve, say, 15 years ago. Maybe people just talk about it more. This, to me, is notable. Do you agree or find the same?
BYRNE: I do agree. My favorite group, apart from couples, are teenagers. They’re the population I always wanted to work with in therapy. I’m fascinated by teenagers. I love them. They’re hilarious. They are just great.
I’m shocked by how many teenagers are seriously depressed. I’m seeing 11-year-olds with depression, 12-year-olds with depression, 13-year-olds with depression, and that’s something that I think is new and just the sense in which — and I’m not going to blame social media because I think social media’s fantastic — but the pressure young women, particularly, I noticed in therapy, are under to that cult of perfection.
And also, when you’re bullied, there’s no escape. I can remember being bullied, and I was like, “At least you’d go home, and then your parents will be nice to you, and it’d be fine. Your siblings would just — you’d laugh it off,” but there’s no escape. There is no escape at all. I love that population. I think there is a huge mental health crisis. However way you cut it, there really, really is.
The sad thing is that — I’m a family therapist, so I really love families. I love getting families in a room because you can’t just take one person’s perspective. Everyone has a different perspective. Making families stronger, I think therapy is just so brilliant and important for all families in order to connect. That’s the E. M. Forster thing, isn’t it? “Only connect.” I’ve been really scared by the mental health crisis amongst young people, particularly in America. I’ve seen some pretty shocking stuff, I can tell you.
COWEN: Why do you think it’s gotten worse? Because I don’t know.
BYRNE: Again, people will blame social media, and to some extent it’s that. A lot of children are really lonely. Both parents work, and they often go home to an empty house. I’ve just heard such horrific stories about there’s no community. America’s great for community, but we don’t really have that sense of community anymore, which I think is so important. I don’t know, churches or whatever — having a sense of community is really important, and we just don’t have that anymore, and I think that’s a problem.
There are all sorts of things. I do think social media plays a part. Honestly, it’s fascinating. I think about it all the time. I’m like, “Why have we got this bad? What’s happened? Why are we in this state that we’re in?” I think it is lack of connection, a real meaningful connection.
COWEN: Now, one hears often of a human capital crisis in Northern England in particular, which, of course, is where you’re from. How would you diagnose that? Because it did not exist in earlier times. What has happened there? Is it just deindustrialization, or there’s something else in the story?
BYRNE: Again, it’s complicated, isn’t it? I was just thinking of The Full Monty when you said that, that brilliant film about the emasculation of men, when women could get jobs and it was the men pushing the prams. I can remember seeing that in the North: the shipbuilding industry, Cammell Laird’s closing, and you suddenly see more men pushing babies in the prams. It really did make me think of The Full Monty when you said that.
I think tourism — since Liverpool was capital of culture, it became really more prosperous again, and people were getting jobs, and there were the garden festivals. I’ve seen such big changes, but I’ve been away from it for so long, Tyler. I’ve been away from the North. I haven’t really been back for a long time. My sense when I’ve gone back to Liverpool is, it seems to be thriving. It feels prosperous in a way it didn’t in the ’80s when I was growing up. It wasn’t.
COWEN: It’s great. I went there during the pandemic. I loved it. It’s fantastic.
BYRNE: And people are very warm.
COWEN: Have you ever bought anything on Penny Lane?
BYRNE: [laughs] No, but I’ve been down Penny Lane many times. I love the people. The people are really warm. My children love going back because I always took them home because my parents and my family mainly still are. My kids, who were brought up in Oxford, just said — they just thought the North of England was the best place. They think that people are friendly and warm and kind and funny, and they found people in Oxford very snobby. I love seeing Liverpool through their eyes as well because they’re like, “Oh, they’re so nice. Everyone’s so kind, and people say hello on the streets.”
I really don’t know really so much about the politics because I’m so out of touch, Tyler, I’m really out of touch, and I’m so disillusioned. I’m disillusioned with Keir Starmer. I’m disillusioned with Labour. I’m disappointed and I’m saddened. I think Britain’s become, well, like America, a very divisive place. Families arguing over politics. It’s become really vicious within families.
People not speaking to someone because you voted for Donald Trump or you — I’m like, “Wow, how did it get to this?” Who cares if somebody votes differently to you? You still can love them. It’s become so divisive. The pandemic, going back to mental health — huge, huge impact on adolescents. Many of them had a very hard time during the pandemic. There’s lots of complementary and complex issues around that, really.
COWEN: What’s the most underrated Beatles song?
BYRNE: Hmm. I love The Beatles. I really like the B-sides, and I like George a lot. I’m going to go with “Yes It Is.”
COWEN: It’s a great song. Wonderful harmonies. I said “You Won’t See Me” when someone discussed this with me recently. But “Mr. Moonlight,” also, no one likes, but it’s an amazing vocal, one of John’s best vocals.
BYRNE: “You Won’t See Me” is a great song.
COWEN: Yes.
BYRNE: That is a great song.
COWEN: The melancholy in there is just incredible.
BYRNE: [sings] “When I call” — the melancholy and the harmonies. And I love “This Boy.” I love all, I think, the harmonies of just — those early harmonies are so beautiful. But I really love the B-sides and “Yes It Is.” “Yes It Is” is so gorgeous.
COWEN: Excellent choice. What’s the weirdest thing about living in Arizona?
BYRNE: Well, I don’t know.
[laughter]
BYRNE: The weirdest thing about living in Arizona — oh gosh, there’s so many. Oh, my God, I love it.
COWEN: You’re near Phoenix, right?
BYRNE: Yes, it’s sort of Scottsdale. I love the landscape. It’s incredibly beautiful. What’s the weirdest thing? Do you know what I think it is? I know this makes me sound so incredibly shallow. It’s that the restaurants are in malls, shopping malls. I’m like, “Where are the restaurants? Where are the cafes? Where are people sitting outside, people-watching?” You have to go to a mall to get a meal.
COWEN: You can’t sit outside four or five months of the year.
BYRNE: You can’t sit outside. That’s the obvious one, but it is incredibly beautiful. Northern Arizona, which I really loved and spent a lot of time, is so completely gorgeous and beautiful, and the landscape is so different to Phoenix. I really tried to explore the area when I was living there. And I’d take the kids and we’d go to Payson and all these really weird places, and Prescott, and just really get to know — Bisbee, have you been to Bisbee?
COWEN: No. What’s in Bisbee?
BYRNE: Bisbee is the coolest place. It’s a mining town, so you feel like you’re in the Alps of Switzerland. And it’s full of music and bands, and it’s cool, and it’s the best place in the world. There’s all these inns that are built on the mountainside where the mining used to take place. It’s really, really cool, Bisbee, and I’m a big, big fan. [laughs]
COWEN: Before my last question, let me just put in another plug for your books. I very much like all of them. The most recent is Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses, about Thomas Hardy and the women in his lives and in his work.
Last question, what will you do next?
BYRNE: Oh, I’ve just finished, literally today, before I spoke to you, I pressed send on another novel. It’s my third novel. It’s a historical novel, and it’s about Jane Austen’s lost secret seaside romance.
COWEN: That’s great. After that, now that that’s done, what will you do next?
BYRNE: I’m not sure I’m going to write because, honestly, I can’t afford to. There’s no money in it. Nobody reads anymore. I’m really depressed about it. I’m probably going to practice —
COWEN: I read.
BYRNE: Yay. I’m probably going to practice therapy for a while. I always say this, Tyler. I’m like, “This is it. Last book. No money. Can’t do it. Nobody’s buying books.” Then I’m always like, “Oh, my God, I got this really good idea.” Actually, I am writing a novel about Mary Robinson. You mentioned her earlier. I think the historical novel thing is just so much fun. I really like it, and I don’t have to worry about footnotes all the time. It’s quite freeing to be a creative fiction writer rather than nonfiction. Although I say this is the last one, I have been saying that for like 20 years.
COWEN: I say that too, you know?
[laughter]
COWEN: Then there’s typically one more. Paula Byrne, thank you very much. It’s been a real pleasure.
BYRNE: Thank you, Tyler.