Alive in the Merciful Country with Author, Activist, Stand-up Comedian AL KENNEDY - Highlights
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Show Notes
"All the advice is, if you start, take a walk. Be somewhere beautiful, look at something beautiful. Be in an elevated place. Be in a place that's larger than you to make yourself and your problems go back to the right scale. I always love nature, and I love ravens. I put a lot of ravens into the novel just because they're adorable. Some places that I love are New England, London, Essex, Sark and beautiful Colonsay. I was writing mainly during lockdown and unable to go to any of the places I loved, so I went back to them."
My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is not only a celebrated novelist but also an essayist, standup comedian, dedicated environmental and anti-nuclear activist, and university lecturer. She advocates strongly for the protection of education as the foundation of a healthy democracy and is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.
Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.
(0:00) Finding Your Voice
Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:30) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country
Exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy
The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(10:26) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance
(13:59) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy
The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(17:34) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation
(28:16) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust
(33:13) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy
The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(30:03) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country
Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
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