320. Rosemary Tonks — The Bloater with Rebecca Perry
We’re honored to welcome 2026 Booker Prize finalist Rebecca Perry, author of the remarkable debut novel May We Feed The King, as a guest this week to discuss one of her favorite forgotten writers, Rosemary Tonks. A colorful figure in literary London’s Swinging Sixties, Tonks mysteriously retreated from the world after publishing two successful poetry collections and six novels. Perry joins us to discuss Tonks’s offbeat, louche and sardonic 1968 title The Bloater, and she also shares what her life has been like since being shortlisted for the Booker!
Mentioned in this episode:
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
Beauty/Beauty by Rebecca Perry
Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems and Selected Prose by Rosemary Tonks
Withnail & I 1987 film
Lucy Scholes’ Paris Review article on Rosemary Tonks
Audrey Wollen’s New Yorker article “The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books”
Michael Hofmann’s essay for Poetry on Rosemary Tonks: “The Woman Who Quit”
New York Times review of May We Feed the King by Lauren Elkin
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 296 on Josephine Tey
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Favourite 2018 film
Barry Lyndon 1975 film