Global News Podcast · · Transcript & summary by WhipScribe
In under half an hour it explains why Ukraine's new Patriot deal will not ease this winter and how Trump's deportations are testing his Cuban American base in Florida.
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“500 would probably be enough perhaps for a month or two.” Peter Dickinson · at 3:55 — open in the transcript →
“There are different ways to commit murder. They chose to strangle us.” Dmitry Muratov · at 7:24 — open in the transcript →
War and its pressures run through the first half of this BBC round-up. Washington has approved the sale of 500 Patriot interceptors to Ukraine for about $2.1 billion, funded by Canada, Germany and Norway, yet because the order is for newly built missiles amid a global shortage, Kyiv should not expect them soon. Analyst Peter Dickinson argues the batch would cover only a month or two of Russian ballistic attacks. Inside Russia, Novaya Gazeta, the country's leading independent paper for three decades, is closing after losing its licence, its offices and its donations, and Steve Rosenberg describes a press with ever less room for dissent. A small ceasefire in occupied Oleshky in the Kherson region lets besieged residents leave by bus.
Politics and money form a second thread. Investor nerves about the enormous sums American tech firms pour into AI data centres drove a second straight day of falling shares, with the Nasdaq on course for its worst month in over a year. In Miami, Will Grant finds Cuban American voters, 68% of whom backed Donald Trump in Florida, souring on mass deportations ahead of the midterms, which puts Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar's seat at risk. Police Scotland has opened early inquiries into Epstein and Maxwell's stays at Balmoral as guests of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who denies wrongdoing.
The closing stories turn to what screens and pages should show. Activision will strip real footage of the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush from its new Call of Duty game after bereaved families protested. Ken Russell's banned 1971 film The Devils returns to cinemas uncut in a 4K restoration helped by critic Mark Kermode. For Halloween, biographer Felix Taylor makes the case for Welsh writer Arthur Machen as a pioneer of weird fiction.
The BBC Global News Podcast reported on 31 October 2026 that the US State Department approved the sale of 500 Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine for an estimated $2.1 billion. Washington correspondent Tom Bateman said the order is understood to be for newly built missiles rather than existing stock, so there is unlikely to be any rapid delivery.
No. Peter Dickinson, editor of the blog Ukraine Alert, told the BBC that 500 Patriots would not see Ukraine through the winter and might last only a month or two. He still called the sale a major boost, because Ukraine had recently been receiving only dozens a month, which he described as below subsistence level and leaving the country defenceless.
Novaya Gazeta, Russia's most prominent independent newspaper for 30 years, closed because of what it called intolerable pressure from the authorities. Co-founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov told BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg that its websites were blocked, its print edition banned, its media licence revoked and its journalists labelled foreign agents, until it could no longer earn money. It was also evicted from its offices and blocked from receiving donations.
BBC business reporter Samira Hussain said investors are nervous about the vast sums American technology firms are spending on the data centres needed to run artificial intelligence, and whether those investments will pay off quickly enough. Hundreds of billions of dollars came off the value of Intel, Alphabet, Reddit and Amazon as shares fell for a second straight day.
BBC correspondent Will Grant reported from Miami that some are. Cuban-born immigration lawyer Ismael Labrador, among the 68% of Cubans in Florida who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, said he expected only people with criminal records to be deported and now calls himself a repentant Trump voter after his own cousin was sent back to Cuba. The backlash could hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.
The latest Call of Duty game used a few seconds of real footage from the rescue after the 2022 Itaewon Halloween crowd crush in Seoul, which killed 159 people, to depict the aftermath of a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. After the victims' families association called it highly inappropriate, Activision apologised and said the footage would be removed in a game update on 12 November.
Film critic Mark Kermode told the BBC that in 1995 Ken Russell told him the version of The Devils he had seen was incomplete. While making a documentary, Kermode described the missing sequence to Warner UK archivist Tim Everett, who later found the reel. The 1971 film, restricted by censors in the UK and US, now returns to cinemas in a 4K restoration that lets audiences see it whole for the first time in about half a century.
Felix Taylor, author of the biography Weird: A Life of Arthur Machen in Six Unearthly Books, says the Welsh writer, born in 1863, was one of the earliest authors of weird fiction, horror that unsettles our sense of our place in the world. Machen drew on the mysterious landscape of his South Wales childhood, wrote his best-known work The Great God Pan in the 1890s, and was rediscovered by American book collectors in the 1920s.
Our own transcript of the public episode, with a timestamp about every 90 seconds. Tap a timestamp or the link button on a paragraph to copy a link that opens this page there.
0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Get your free wealth protection guide from Preserve Gold by texting IHEART to 50505. And with a qualified purchase, you can get up to $15,000 in free gold or silver. Text I heart to 50505 to get your free wealth protection guide for preserved gold. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Saturday, the 31st of October, these are our main stories. The US government approves the sale
1:05of vital Patriot missiles to Ukraine. Kiev says it needs them now. We find out why that won't happen. Russia's most prominent independent paper closes after years of state persecution. Is there any truly free media left there? And shares in US technology companies fall sharply for a second day in a row on Wall Street as concerns rise over the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in AI. Also in this podcast, police in Scotland confirm that they're looking into the time the king's brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, spent with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the British royal family's Balmoral Estate in Aberdeenshire and... He makes films that absolutely involve all the arts at the same time.
1:51I don't think I can name a filmmaker today who sees cinema as such a total art form. It's a revelation. Ken Russell fans gear up to see a newly restored and uncensored classic by the acclaimed British film director. Ukraine is outmanned and outgunned in the conflict with Russia. Kiev says Moscow has stockpiled up to 700 ballistic missiles for attacks against Ukraine. These are weapons fired high into the atmosphere that then strike their targets at many times the speed of sound. The only reliable defence Kiev has against them are American Patriot missiles and Ukraine doesn't have enough of them. So the latest announcement by the Trump administration will be welcomed in Kiev. Tom Bateman in Washington has the details.
2:38The State Department says it's approved the sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine for an estimated $2.1 billion, paid for by contributions from Canada, Germany and Norway. Ukraine desperately needs the interceptors to defend itself from escalating Russian attacks, but there is a global shortage of the munitions due to their use by the US in the war with Iran. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said this week his country had been waiting almost a month for the US to sign off on critical missile supplies. He has repeatedly called on Washington to speed up deliveries ahead of winter. It's not clear what the production schedule will be for the Patriots, but it's understood the order is for new builds rather than existing missiles,
3:18meaning there is unlikely to be any kind of rapid delivery to Ukraine. Well, as you heard in Tom's report, the missiles are unlikely to reach Kyiv immediately. But when they do arrive, Peter Dickinson, editor of the blog Ukraine Alert, says they will be vital for Ukraine. Ukraine is in desperate need of these Patriot interceptor missiles. That's no secret. Everybody knows it, especially the Russians, have been taking advantage of that with really scaling up their ballistic missile bombardment of Ukraine in recent months. Zelensky has been very vocal saying we need to get those missiles as soon as possible. 500, frankly, is not going to be enough to see them through the winter. 500 would probably be enough perhaps for a month or two. They're going
3:59to want more and more, but it's better than nothing. And what we've heard recently is that Ukraine was receiving dozens per month, which is well, well below sort of even subsistence level and essentially left Ukraine defenceless against this attack. So that would be a major boost for the country as we get towards the winter season. Russian attacks on Ukraine continued on Friday. Kiev's mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said critical infrastructure there was hit. Earlier, President Zelensky said Russia had targeted oil refining infrastructure in the city of Kremenchuk with ballistic missiles. But in one small corner of the southern Kherson region, there is reason for hope. There's a ceasefire in place in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky.
4:41It was established so that hundreds of people who've been living there for months without power or running water could get out. Busloads of people have now been taken to safety. Our Ukraine correspondent Dan Johnson sent this report. The head of the Ukrainian delegation was hugged by residents when he arrived in Oleshky to lead its people to safety. He's the first Ukrainian official to set foot on Russian-occupied territory since the start of the war. Nothing will happen, he told them. You're all traveling with me. I'm checking everything personally. They've lived through four years besieged by the Russians without power or water and running low on food and medicine. Mines on their roads, drones in their skies.
5:30Mikhail Shumbasov managed to previously escape Oleshki, but he told me he's nervously awaiting news of his friends. So many people have died in the city of Oleshki because of atrocities and shelling, and simply from hunger. It had become impossible to live there. This is about survival, saving your own life. Some residents were reluctant to take these buses because the route to Ukraine is via Russia and Belarus. There's also concern they'll be used by Russia to earn credit with the White House for respecting the ceasefire that was brokered by the First Lady Melania Trump. The Kremlin described this as a one-off isolated situation. So even if it is successful in saving the people of Oleshki,
6:14it's unlikely to lead to a longer lasting, broader peace. Dan Johnson. One of Russia's best-known independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta, has been forced to shut down as a result of what it called intolerable pressure from the authorities. A co-founder said it had been targeted because of its vocal opposition to the war in Ukraine. Six journalists who worked at the paper have been assassinated over the years and many others are in prison on what are widely seen as false charges. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg was at the paper's offices in Moscow. The staff there prepared to leave. At Novaya Gazeta, they're packing up because they're shutting down. For 30 years, this has been Russia's most prominent independent newspaper,
6:59featuring investigative journalism, often fiercely critical of those in power. Now the paper is being evicted from its offices. And it says it's been blocked from receiving donations. It's accusing the Russian authorities of killing it off. Journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov helped set up the paper. There are different ways to commit murder. They chose to strangle us. First, they blocked our websites and banned the paper edition. Then they revoked our media license. Then one by one, we were declared foreign agents and our journalists were attacked. Now we can't earn any more money. In our country, there are political repressions taking place, and now they've reached us.
7:53Anna Politkovskaya, a fearless investigative reporter, was shot dead 20 years ago. In her memory, her office was preserved. It became a museum. Now everything has to be removed. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has been even keener to control the messaging. Independent Russian media have faced sustained pressure. At the newspaper kiosks, there may still be lots of different papers to choose from, but compared to a few years ago, the range of views today is far narrower. The difference between Norway Gazeta and the newspapers that you can still buy in Russia is that in these you won't find any criticism of President Putin or the war in Ukraine. In what is an increasingly controlled
8:42media environment, for independent Russian journalists, there is less and less oxygen to express dissent. Reporters in the dock, not an uncommon sight now in Russia. Oleg Roldugin from Norway Gazeta is accused of misusing personal data. And journalists Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin and Artyom Krieger were jailed on extremism charges over alleged links to the late opposition leader, Aleksey Navalny. Back at Norway Gazeta, they've pledged never to forget Anna Politkovskaya and other colleagues who were killed while doing their jobs. The end of this newspaper is very much the end of an era, and in an increasingly authoritarian Russia, a sign of the times. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.
9:35Intel, Alphabet, Reddit, Amazon, it is a roll call of tech giants, but they're all in the news for the wrong reason. Hundreds of billions of dollars were wiped off their values as share prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted on Friday. So what's been going on? Our business reporter Samira Hussain explains. It's all about artificial intelligence and most specifically the eye-watering sums of money that are being invested by American technology firms into the data centers that are needed to actually make artificial intelligence work. And now what's happening is that investors are really getting nervous about those vast sums of money and whether or not there's going to be a return on that investment quick enough.
10:25So they are selling off technology stock. The Nasdaq index is the one where most technology companies actually trade, and it is having some massive falls this month. It has had the biggest monthly fall in more than a year. And of course, so much of the American economy is being fuelled by all of these investments in artificial intelligence. But many now are starting to worry whether this boom is becoming a bust. Samira Hussain in New York. In the 2024 US presidential election, Donald Trump won the state of Florida with ease, partly because of the backing of Florida with ease, partly because of the backing of Cuban American voters. His supporters were well aware of his plans for mass deportation when they went to the ballot box. But now that the policy is actually being
11:15carried out, it's prompted a backlash amongst Cuban American voters against Republican candidates in next week's crucial midterm elections. Our correspondent Will Grant reports from Miami. Of all the videos of its kind, it's among the most harrowing. 39-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant Grace Calero and her 19-year-old daughter Juliana were driving to work in Kissimmee, central Florida when they were hit by another car. Taken to hospital in an ambulance, they were being treated for their injuries when ICE immigration agents burst in and arrested them. Captured on a relative's mobile phone, the footage of Ms Calero being dragged from her daughter is distressing to watch. But it's a scene which has been repeated outside schoolyards, bus stops, sporting events and
12:11even in courthouses at immigration hearings. The task of challenging those detentions has filled the waiting rooms and appointment books of immigration lawyers across Florida. In Miami, business is booming for Cuban-born lawyer Ismael Labrador. has filled the waiting rooms and appointment books of immigration lawyers across Florida. In Miami, business is booming for Cuban-born lawyer Ismael Labrador, but he wishes it wasn't. The way I would like to put it is if you don't have a green card in the United States, you may be a target. He has friends and relatives caught up in the dragnet of ICE detentions and was unable to prevent his own cousin from being deported back to Cuba. We have relatives who are living in fear right now.
12:47We've had relatives who have been deported back to Cuba, unfortunately. On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history. On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump openly and proudly touted his plans for mass deportations. Immigration lawyer Ismael Labrador was among the 68% of Cubans in Florida who voted for him, believing he would only deport people with criminal records. I asked him if he hadn't simply been naive about Trump's intentions. I think that we got blindsided by the administration. I mean, me personally, I voted for Trump. I wanted to get criminals out of the country. I wanted to have a safe America. So you are a repentant Trump voter in that room?
13:32Oh, for sure, for sure. If I had known this, I would have voted for him because definitely this wasn't what I voted for. Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. Ismael is far from the only person in Florida to experience buyer's remorse over President Trump. Cuban-American Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar recently released a video filmed outside the White House in which she distanced herself from his draconian deportation policy, saying it had gone too far. Her close association with Trump on immigration could potentially cost Salazar her congressional seat. Last year, President Trump revoked temporary humanitarian parole to about 300,000 Cubans. Good evening, I'm Elliot Rodriguez and I have some breaking news to tell you.
14:19It looks like we won tonight. Elliot Rodriguez, the Democratic Party's challenger to Congresswoman Salazar for Florida's 27th congressional district, used to be a television anchor with CBS News. A recognisable face to the largely Cuban-American electorate in his district, he's built a campaign on the high cost of living in Miami and opposing Trump's deportation policy. He's a real threat Will Grant. Still to come in this podcast. Characters in his stories of supernatural horror stumble upon very old things that have survived into the present day. Sinister fairies, occult conspiracies, angelic guardians and strange rituals. To celebrate Halloween, get ready to be spooked by the work of the fantasy and horror writer Arthur Macon. for making. At PNC Wealth Management, our brilliantly boring investment philosophy is
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17:54This is the Global News Podcast. Police in Scotland have confirmed that they're looking into the time that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor spent with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire. Epstein, who was a convicted sex offender, died in prison in the US in 2019. Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. The police force said its inquiries were evidence-led but were at a very early stage. Our Royal Correspondent Sean Coughlan reports. Police Scotland said it had received information and was carrying out active inquiries into the time spent by the sex offender Geoffrey Epstein and his close companion Ghislaine Maxwell at Balmoral, where they were guests of the then
18:42Prince Andrew. According to the Daily Express, the inquiry relates to claims that women were trafficked to the Royal Estate. It's known that in September 2006, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell had flown to Edinburgh on Epstein's private jet. Earlier this year, Police Scotland asked the public for information about that flight. There had been other visits by Epstein to Balmoral, including one when he was pictured with Maxwell on a shooting trip in 1999, and he had also visited Mr Mountbatten-Windsor at Windsor Castle. The former prince was arrested in February by Thames Valley Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Thames Valley was one of about nine police forces believed to be
19:26making inquiries about Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein, following information in the files released by the US Department of Justice. Mr Mountbatten-Windsor has strongly denied all wrongdoing. Sean Coughlin. The company behind the latest Call of Duty video game says it will remove footage of a Halloween crowd crush in the South Korean capital, Seoul, in 2022, in which 159 people were killed. The latest edition of the game includes real images of that deadly crush, including people being treated by emergency workers and bodies being carried away. Bereaved families said they were appalled to see the footage. Activision, which makes Call of Duty, has since apologised and confirmed the images would be removed in an update of the game next month.
20:15The BBC's Sophie Jong has been following the story. The controversy centres around this opening sequence of the latest Call of Duty video game, which was released last week globally. And the game depicts a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. And to portray the aftermath of that fictional attack, the game uses a few seconds of real footage of the rescue effort following the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush, when more than 100,000 people gathered for Halloween celebrations. And people got trapped in this narrow alleyway, causing a crowd surge, which eventually ended up killing almost 160 people. And the footage includes images of a person performing CPR, bodies lying in the street, and a victim being carried away on a stretcher.
20:59The company has been criticised for using some real footage from that terrible disaster. What's been the reaction from relatives of those people who died in that crush? The Victims Families Association has come out and said it is highly inappropriate for the company to use real scenes from such a tragedy in a video game made for entertainment. And they have demanded the company to remove all footage of the crush from the video game. So the company behind the Call of Duty series which is Activision has said that it never had any intention of evoking the Itaewon disaster or downplaying the pain caused by the tragedy. So it has apologized to the bereaved families and victims and said that it would remove all footage
21:41of the crash from the video game in its next game update, which is happening on November the 12th. And the Victims' Family Association has welcomed the decision after the announcement, but they have told me that they've never gotten a direct contact or apology from the company itself. Now, I understand this is not the only controversy surrounding this particular video game. It isn't. So when it first got released, it faced criticism because it depicts a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. And that is a highly contentious and sensitive issue because the two Koreas are technically at war. So even though the invasion of South Korea in this latest game is fictional, the unresolved conflict on the Korean peninsula is a very much real concern for South Koreans living in the
22:25country. Sophie Jong. It's described as one of the most controversial films ever made, so much so that censorship boards in the UK and the United States restricted it from being watched in its original form, until now that is. Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils is returning to cinemas so audiences can watch the entire film for the first time in half a century. But are there lines you simply can't cross on screen? Gabriel Purcell-Davis reports. The devil is a liar and the father of lies. Ken Russell's historical drama The Devils follows the 17th century French town of Loudon and its Prince Bishop Father Grandier, a debonair priest played by Oliver Reed. If you wish to destroy me then destroy me. Accuse me of exposing political chicanery and the evils of the states and I
23:15will plead guilty. When it was released in 1971 many of its scenes were considered too vulgar for audiences. The film was banned by local government councils and authorities across the UK. So how is a 4K restoration now returning to UK cinemas? He described the film for me as being a political film and it was about the politicisation of religious hysteria. Journalist and film critic Mark Kermode has been a lifelong fan of Russell's work and helped put together this restoration. In 1995, I met Ken Russell and I told him how much I loved The Devils and he said, yeah, but the version of The Devils that you've seen is damaged goods. And I was making a documentary about the film. And I was introduced to a guy, Tim Everett, at Warner UK.
23:54He was an archivist. And I described for him the sequence that Ken was looking for. And the next thing was he rang me. He said, I'm holding a reel of film and it's got on it a bunch of nuns and a really big crucifix. And I rang Ken and said Ken we found the missing sequence. But what man can face arraignments on the idiocy of youth old love letters and other pathetic objects stuffed in drawers or in the bottom of cupboards things kept for a day when he would need to be reminded that he was once loved. For decades The Devils was a holy grail for film enthusiasts, with a reputation built partly on its missing scenes and the controversy of its subject matter. But how will it play for a modern audience?
24:30My name is Dr Brian Hoyle, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Dundee. I think most modern audiences will not know what hit them. The Devils is kind of the culmination of his best period of the 60s and early 70s. He makes films that absolutely involve all the arts at the same time. It starts with a court mask, it's theatre and it's dance. The film has two composers. I don't think I can name a filmmaker today who sees cinema as such a total art form. It's a revelation. They won't see something dated. They'll see something that might pique their interest in what cinema can be. Ken Russell's daughter Vicky was eight years old when her father was working on the project. I asked her growing up how her father spoke about the film
25:10before his passing in 2011. It's similar to Van Gogh. They don't understand him, but they'll understand when I'm gone. It's redemption. We can't believe we're overwhelmed by this snowball of popularity and love for the film. I mean, I just hope they can feel it somewhere, my mum and dad. Do you think we're ready for a film like this to make a comeback? I think some will be shocked. Some will think it's blasphemous. But the people that can see the bigger picture can see that this is what's happening still. And this is just another way of expressing humanity and all its craziness. Since its release in 1971, The Devils has asked us a question. Is there a limit to what you should be allowed to depict on the screen?
25:53Now, 55 years on, Ken Russell's The Devils is finally getting another chance to make its case. That maybe sometimes a bit of theatrics and debauchery is exactly what you need to get your point across. Gabriel Purcell-Davis there. Throughout the world, revellers and partygoers will be putting on spooky costumes and disguises to mark Halloween, the annual celebration of horror and the supernatural. We're going to get into that mood now by hearing about a new book that explores the life and career of one of the most interesting writers of English fantasy and horror fiction of the late 19th and early 20th century. His name was Arthur Macken and his writing has inspired the US author Stephen King and the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro,
26:37amongst many others. The book is called Weird, a life of Arthur Macken in six unearthly books. In these reflections, its author, Felix Taylor, explains why he was drawn to the life and work of Arthur Macken. Born in Wales in 1863, Arthur Macken has been described as the last romantic, the last Victorian and the last of the London visionaries. Macken felt at home in the past and disliked the modern world for its noise and its busyness. Characters in his stories of supernatural horror stumble upon very old things that have survived into the present day. Sinister fairies, occult conspiracies, angelic guardians and strange rituals. But I wrote this new biography of Macken because I think he was also the first of many things.
27:21He looked backwards and forwards at the same time. Macken was one of the earliest writers of what we now call weird fiction, a style of horror that disconcerts us and forces us to question the very nature of our place in the world. Many of his best weird stories were written in the decadent 1890s, most famously The Great God Pan, in which to see the god Pan is to catch a terrifying glimpse of the spiritual beyond. Macken could also be very experimental in his style. Listen to this from a story called The White People, about a young girl venturing deep into a fairy world. I was in the queerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the grey rocks. It looked as if earth children had
28:03been playing there with their spades, as it was all hills and hollows and castles and walls made of earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives, round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, and then a steep mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows. It went away from under my feet so suddenly, and I ran fast down the side and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look up. There was nothing but the grey, heavy sky and the sides of the hollow. Everything else had gone away, and the hollow was the whole world, and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving shadows and pale things,
28:56when the moon shone down to the bottom at the dead of night, and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and solemn and lonely, like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. What motivated him to write in this way? As a child, Macken was awed by the sense of mystery and terror in the landscape around his home in South Wales. The names of the wild hills and rivers, Usk, Landsor, Lansor, the Holy Mountain, Tuin Barlum, the old forest of Wentwood with its Roman road running through it, were like magic spells to his ears. When he moved to London in the 1880s, he took with him this feeling of awe and began to try and render it in fiction. I find Macken so interesting not only because he wrote about some very unusual subjects,
29:45but because of how he saw himself as a writer. Popular authors like H.G. Wells or Arthur Conan Doyle just got on and wrote book after book, but for Macken the very act of writing could be agonising. Sometimes he did not even seem to care whether people bought his books. He often threw things away and once spent two years writing a romance about the Holy Grail, the cup that Christ drank from during the Last Supper, that he knew publishers would not want. But his work, originally so distasteful to reviewers, was discovered by American book collectors in the 1920s and praised as a rare and subtle art. Now, like the fairies and folklore of his weird tales, Macken's work has survived to the present day to mystify and unnerve new audiences.
30:31Felix Taylor, author of the new book Weird, a life of Arthur Macken in six unearthly books. And that is all from us for now. But if you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global News Pod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of The Global News Podcast was mixed by Graham White. The producer was Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time.
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