B. Catling's guest appearances

B. Catling

HodderPod - Hodder books podcast

How To Academy Podcast

DEATH // SENTENCE

Juliet Stevenson

Clive Woodward

David Mitchell

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Matthew Syed

Eric Schmidt

Ian McEwan

David Wengrow

Sarah Gilbert

Peter Ganim

Kristin Atherton

Peter Noble

Jennifer Lim

Louise Penny

Gary Furlong

OwlTail

Alan Moore

Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one.A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generation of authors who are now household names, from Neil Gaiman to Susanna Clarke, but filmmakers, artists, and storytellers in every medium. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez quotes him online; the Occupy and Anonymous movements adopt the mask of his hero V; and Time magazine honours Watchmen as one of the 20th century’s greatest works of literature.A sculptor, poet, performance artist and professor at Oxford’s Ruskin School, Brian Catling’s creativity transcends any given form. Late in his career he turned his attention to the novel, reimagining its possibilities from the ground up to produce one of the most startling rich and strange works of fantasy ever produced: The Vorrh.Now he returns to the literary world with Hollow: the mesmerising tale of a band of mercenaries journeying through the grotesque, monstrous landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch to deliver an oracle to the monastery at the foot of the Tower of Babel.Coming together to celebrate the magic of human creativity, this unmissable conversation will restore your faith in the power of art to transform life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one.A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generation of authors who are now household names, from Neil Gaiman to Susanna Clarke, but filmmakers, artists, and storytellers in every medium. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez quotes him online; the Occupy and Anonymous movements adopt the mask of his hero V; and Time magazine honours Watchmen as one of the 20th century’s greatest works of literature.A sculptor, poet, performance artist and professor at Oxford’s Ruskin School, Brian Catling’s creativity transcends any given form. Late in his career he turned his attention to the novel, reimagining its possibilities from the ground up to produce one of the most startling rich and strange works of fantasy ever produced: The Vorrh.Now he returns to the literary world with Hollow: the mesmerising tale of a band of mercenaries journeying through the grotesque, monstrous landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch to deliver an oracle to the monastery at the foot of the Tower of Babel.Coming together to celebrate the magic of human creativity, this unmissable conversation will restore your faith in the power of art to transform life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>

Alan Moore and B. Catling - The Power of Imagination

Jonathan Keeble

From the author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to deliver a church's ultimate power, a sacred oracle, as the decadence of carnival gives way to the gravity of lent and the mystic landscape grows ravenous - all set within a Bosch painting.The history of art contains no more imaginative or mysterious paintings that the landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. Art historians ask where the weird creatures depicted there came from, and so too do the central characters of Hollow as they fight their way across these landscapes and encounter these creatures. Author B. Catling is the first novelist to engage fully with Bosch's vision and climb imaginatively into it. In this novel it emerges that Bosch gave colour and form to monsters, 'letting them in' to the real world, and that they were still infesting the landscape when it was painted by Bosch's follower Pieter Bruegel. Now a wild bunch of mercenaries with a mission to deliver an oracle made of cloth, bones and a loud voice take a dangerous journey to the monastery at the base of the Tower of Babel, where the most terrifying secret in the world is kept. As they travel through a country painted first by Bosch and then by Bruegel, they are confronted and seduced by monsters and see scenes painted by them. These include the devil playing dice, a lewd mock wedding with a dirty bride, an unholy being living inside a hollow tree and riding a giant rat, and creatures indulging in inter-species sexual play as depicted in The Garden of Earthly Delights. A local marauding woman called Mad Meg with a small army of looting women from Breugel's Dull Gret is one of this novel's stranger characters. Perhaps it is because B. Catling is himself an artist that he has been able to create a modern narrative masterpiece which brings the painterly genius of Bosch and Breugel alive.

From the author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to deliver a church's ultimate power, a sacred oracle, as the decadence of carnival gives way to the gravity of lent and the mystic landscape grows ravenous - all set within a Bosch painting. The history of art contains no more imaginative or mysterious paintings that the landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. Art historians ask where the weird creatures depicted there came from, and so too do the central characters of Hollow as they fight their way across these landscapes and encounter these creatures. Author B. Catling is the first novelist to engage fully with Bosch's vision and climb imaginatively into it. In this novel it emerges that Bosch gave colour and form to monsters, 'letting them in' to the real world, and that they were still infesting the landscape when it was painted by Bosch's follower Pieter Bruegel. Now a wild bunch of mercenaries with a mission to deliver an oracle made of cloth, bones and a loud voice take a dangerous journey to the monastery at the base of the Tower of Babel, where the most terrifying secret in the world is kept. As they travel through a country painted first by Bosch and then by Bruegel, they are confronted and seduced by monsters and see scenes painted by them. These include the devil playing dice, a lewd mock wedding with a dirty bride, an unholy being living inside a hollow tree and riding a giant rat, and creatures indulging in inter-species sexual play as depicted in The Garden of Earthly Delights. A local marauding woman called Mad Meg with a small army of looting women from Breugel's Dull Gret is one of this novel's stranger characters. Perhaps it is because B. Catling is himself an artist that he has been able to create a modern narrative masterpiece which brings the painterly genius of Bosch and Breugel alive.

HOLLOW by B. Catling, read by Jonathan Keeble - audiobook extract

Langdon and Eden tackle The Vorrh trilogy by B. Catling, a wild lysergic absinthian literary feast combining shards of magical realism, avant-garde literature, ecstatic spiritualist poetry and prose, anti-colonialism, paganism, fantasy, horror and historical fiction into one spellbinding modern masterwork. But first they must discuss how utterly fucked that coup was, which sucked mondo ass. FEATURED MUSIC: Frozen Soul - "Encased In Ice", The Botanist - "Water"

B. Catling - The Vorrh Trilogy