Kellyanne Bradley (4:24)

Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be here and to break some genres over the knee.

Tracy Thomas (4:29)

Yes, we're going to naughty genres. We're going to take care of them. Will you sort of in like 30 seconds or so, tell folks what your book is about?

Kellyanne Bradley (4:39)

Absolutely. So the Ministry of Time is about a government experiment with time travel. The British government have time travel, but they haven't started using it yet. They need to check whether or not it works. So they start dragging people from the past. They call these people the expats. And the book opens with the expat, Graham Gore, a Victorian Polar explorer being dragged from the Arctic and dumped in a government laboratory where he's told, welcome to the future. Everyone you've ever known and loved is dead. The British Empire has collapsed. We just need you to live in 21st century Britain and prove that assimilation is possible by A not dying and B, demonstrating you can be a 21st century citizen. And to help him do that, he's assigned this person called a bridge, who is a civil servant who lives with him for a year. And she has to monitor him, she has to assists him, but she's also reporting on him for the ministry.

Tracy Thomas (5:31)

And she is our unnamed narrator.

Kellyanne Bradley (5:35)

She is indeed our unnamed narrator at the beginning of the book. She also doesn't really know what's going on. She's been put through these interviews for this very high paying job that she wants because it pays very highly. She doesn't know what she's going to be doing until the moment she starts doing it.

Tracy Thomas (5:50)

Did you think about her as sort of being our bridge, like for the reader? Because I sort of felt like she was my bridge a little bit.

Kellyanne Bradley (5:58)

I'm really glad to hear that. Well, actually, when I first started writing this book, I was writing it for a group of friends basically who are all very into polar exploration. So the original version of the bridge was almost a stand in for all of us. She didn't really have a complete personality at that point. I hadn't given her her background or her family or her, you know, her, her sense of self. She was very much a kind of way for the reader to enter the text. Almost quite literally it was written in second person. So yeah, very much. She's, she's also our bridge.

Tracy Thomas (6:33)

I love that. Okay, I've read some interviews. I've heard, I've heard like sort of the origin story of this book, but I don't know if my audience has. So my understanding is that during pandemic times you, like the rest of us, got obsessed with the thing. In this case it was Arctic exploration. And then you discovered Graham Gore who is a real life person and you got obsessed with him. Does that feel accurate? That's how I've read it. But I couldn't tell if that's just like pithy or if like that's really what happened.

Kellyanne Bradley (7:06)

It's. I mean, yes, it's very, that's very accurate. There are some like steps along the way, but the skeleton is. Got very obsessed with polar exploration. Found Graham Gore pretty much by accident just because I was obsessed with polar exploration and this particular expedition. Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to the Arctic and the rest is history. In fact, although your listeners can't see this, I'm going to move slightly to one side and you can see that Graham Gore is behind us here.

Tracy Thomas (7:35)

Wow. Framed photo of the, of the like sole picture of Graham Gore. Right. I need to know why polar exploration, what was it? Because, like, I am a person who for sure goes down these rabbit holes generally for me, I'm going to take you to like a cult related place. Like I will give you years of research on like Waco or like Jonestown. Like that is my bread and butter. Ocean cold, long ago, not so much my thing. But I'm wondering how you were like doo to do Wikipedia, like Franklin's expedition, like, how did we get here?

Kellyanne Bradley (8:18)

Okay, firstly, huge respect for the Jonestown knowledge. That's like, I can feel in my brain that if I go too far, if I go too deep down, it's gonna, I'm never gonna be able to get out.

Tracy Thomas (8:27)

Book two. Book two, here we go.

Kellyanne Bradley (8:30)

Interestingly, I don't like being cold. I was never before this interested in polar exploration or the British Navy, which to me was just, you know, part of the military industrial complex and in the case of the Victorian Navy, part of the Imperial Project. What actually happened is in a very 21st century way. I watched a TV series called the Terror, which is based on a book called the Terror, which is a kind of fantastical reimagining of what might have happened on this lost expedition. Because on this expedition, you know, everyone vanished. They never came back. 129 men, two ships, the most highly equipped ships of the British Navy at the time sailed off to the Arctic and they were just never seen by Europeans again. They were seen by the Inuit who were like, what are these idiots doing here? Really uncomfortable clothing, not like not being able to speak to any of us. But they all vanished. And this TV series was immensely compelling. It's a great work of art. It's very emotional, it's very complex. There are so many named characters in it. They all have their own background stories going on which unfold throughout the course of these 10 episodes. But they are almost entirely white men with mutton chops wearing duffle coats. So they were quite difficult to tell apart. So when I was watching it, you know, it was lockdown. I had lockdown, cheese brain. I thought I better just check on Wikipedia or something just to make sure that what has happened in this episode is what I think has actually happened. So I actually found a fan wiki of the first episode and was reading through that. And that's how I found the name Graham Gore, which is how I found the Wikipedia page of Graham Gore, which led me to this very sexy photo. In fact, it's his fault, because otherwise I don't think I would have gone there because I became so interested in this guy and the story of the Franklin expedition and the kind of hubris around it and the hubris of polar exploration. British polar exploration, by the way, is mostly a history of extreme failure, which we've tried to like, reframe as noble failure. But also there's something kind of fascinating and tragic about the way these men died, often for just no reason. There was no reason for them to be in these places. Particularly in Inuit homelands, there is a kind of lasting fascination with that sense of hubris, of stupidity, of bravery, of wanting to reach out towards the ends of the earth. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. Once it got a hold of me, I couldn't let it go.

Tracy Thomas (11:07)

Right. I'm curious, like, sort of, I mean, all of those things you're talking about, bravery, hubris, stupidity, this, like, reaching out, all of that is definitely, like, present in the Ministry of Time as well. I mean, I think it's like a pretty assuming, purposeful, apt metaphor of like, the exploration of the unknown and like, who do. Should we. Why are we doing this? Seems kind of cool. Also seems like really a waste of time and resources. So was that, like, was the idea of this book born out of the expeditions themselves, or did you ever consider just like writing, you know, your own version of Arctic exploration novel? Like, how did this story come out of that obsession?

Kellyanne Bradley (11:54)

You know, I think it was the. There's a, there's a certain amount of friction that comes about. If you are a 21st century person, 20th century person, who is interested in British Victorian polar expression, particularly, you know, as I am.

Tracy Thomas (12:09)

So if you're you, if you one.

Kellyanne Bradley (12:12)

Of one, particularly if, like me, like some of the other people who were, who, who I made friends with, who were interested in this expedition. If you come from a country or you have heritage, your family comes from a country that was colonized by one of the European powers, there is a very kind of complex sense of how do, how do I relate to these, these men, because I find them almost romantic in this tragedy and this stupidity, and I find there's something quite escapist and dramatic and beautiful about what they were doing. But also these people would have been so awful to me, like the, the racist Aggression that I would have experienced from these men would have been, you know, mind blowing. And so I was interested in that friction and wondering how I would actually cope with being confronted with the reality of one of these men, the reality of these men and their beliefs and the belief system that shaped them, which in many ways has shaped the Britain I live in. So I was mainly deep in that. And the only way I. I thought it would be fun both to write this kind of fun game for my friends. Like, what would it be like if your favorite poet, explorer lived in your house? But really, what would it be like? Right. If a white supremacist Victorian actually lived in your house? Like, what's he gonna think about your life?

Tracy Thomas (13:35)

You just said, what would it be like if your favorite Victorian explorer lived in your house? Did all of your friends, do they all have different favorites or was it like Graham Gore, a one?

Kellyanne Bradley (13:44)

Oh, absolutely different favourites. I mean, Graham Gore is a very unusual choice, actually, because he is such a minor figure in history. There's not very much about him, which is one of the reasons why writing the book was so freeing. I could make so much stuff up and I really. There's just so many gaps. There's so much I could fill in and say. Functionally, the character in the book is a fictional character, of course, whereas there are some very well known figures in Victorian Arctic exploration and later Edwardian Arctic exploration, where people, you know, have been writing books about them and thinking about them and dreaming about them for generations at this point.

Tracy Thomas (14:19)

Right, right. Have you read this book? The Wide Wide Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fatal Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.

Kellyanne Bradley (14:30)

Oh, my God, it's Cook.

Tracy Thomas (14:32)

Yes. Okay. Okay. So this book came out last year by Hampton Sides and it was on like all of the year end lists, including the New York Times top 10 books of the year. It was one of their five fiction nonfiction picks. And I had kept seeing it and I love nonfiction. And I was like, I'm not, I'm not fudgeing reading this. Like, I, I can. I don't do both. Like, this is like, there's like this, this thing. Not for me. I started it. I was so bored out of my mind. But then I started your book like a few weeks later and I was like, oh, my God, I wonder if this is the same people. I don't believe that it is. But I was like, I wonder if Kellyanne has read this book. Like, I feel like this is for you because it's the same. Same kind of shit, right? They like got Lost at sea.

Kellyanne Bradley (15:23)

They got lost. In fact, the interesting thing is this. James Cook is in Captain Cook, who was rightfully murdered in Hawaii.

Tracy Thomas (15:31)

I think so, yes. I think this is him. I don't know. I think that's the fateful voyage. But he predates Graham gore. He's like 1776.

Kellyanne Bradley (15:40)

Yes. So I think I'm right in saying he does predate Graham Gore. And the reason I know for sure that he predates Graham Gore is that one of his lieutenants was Graham Gore's grandfather.

Tracy Thomas (15:50)

Oh, see? Connected. All of our great colonialists are connected.

Kellyanne Bradley (16:00)

In hell.

Tracy Thomas (16:03)

Okay, I have to ask you this sort of hypothetical question, which I'm sure you have an answer to. If Covid never happens and you never go arctic historically exploring, if you will, what was your book going to be? What were you working on? What did you think you would write about? Because you were a writer, you're an editor, you had stories like you were writing other things. And I have to assume that this obvious you by surprise. So what did you think you were going to do?

Kellyanne Bradley (16:30)

Oh, my God. The version of me that never met.

Tracy Thomas (16:33)

The time travel version of you. Take us Back to like June 2019.

Kellyanne Bradley (16:40)

We're swimming back in time. So the book I was writing at the time was what I thought was going to be my first novel and what I thought was going to be a serious first novel. I think. I personally think the Ministry of Time is a serious book. Just because it is a funny book, it does not mean I don't take it seriously.

Tracy Thomas (16:56)

Right.

Kellyanne Bradley (16:56)

But I was writing a serious book about Cambodia. My mother's Cambodian, half my family are Cambodian. And I thought that I had an obligation, in fact, to write about Cambodia, to write about the Khmer Rouge, about Pol Pot's genocide, about the refugees from Cambodia, and about the Cambodian British diaspora. So I was working on a book about a family, part of whom escaped the genocide, some of whom don't, and whether they're going to be reunited or not. It was told from the point of view of a mixed race British Cambodian academic. And when I was reworking ministry and I wanted to make the bridge more of a person, I thought, you know what? I think that character might work very well in the place of this narrator. Instead of an academic, she's now a civil servant. But she had the same complicated relationship with her heritage and with power structures. In the original case with academia, in this case with the literal British government. I don't know if I'm actually a good enough writer to write that book yet, but I.

Tracy Thomas (18:03)

We Love the self deprecation around here.

Kellyanne Bradley (18:06)

But I really tried and I read. I really thought that would be the first one. I'm sort of glad I didn't because I'm not sure I would have done the story justice. But you know, I'll see again in 15 years.

Tracy Thomas (18:19)

Yeah. Well, I'm curious about the word you use that you should write that book. Where do you feel like that pressure came from? Or why do you feel like it was a should versus like I really wanted to tell this story?

Kellyanne Bradley (18:31)

Part of it I think is the sense that the. Maybe the generation directly above me were not able to finish telling stories. And given that I am alive and I am the child of a survivor, maybe it's my duty almost to people who have gone before me to say something which is ridiculous. Of course. No one has any obligation to say anything. That's just not how either historical record or creative practice or community holding works. That's not how it works. But that's what preoccupied me maybe because I worked in publishing and so there was only really one thing that I was looking at, which is what people were publishing and writing about and what they were trying to say through books. So maybe it just seemed like the obvious, the obvious outlet for me. And you know, I think for anyone who comes from a marginalized identity, I think there's sometimes the sense that this is the thing that I think about so much and this is a thing that has shaped my life so profoundly and it shaped the way I think and the way I live in the world. Surely it's the only thing, surely it's the only thing that I can, that I can express. Again, untrue. It's self pigeonholing.

Tracy Thomas (19:47)

So interesting to think about because I think like the, the word should jumps out at me only because I interview so many authors and it's not a word that I hear people talk about when they talk about their work. And I wonder if. If that distinction between should and want is the thing that actually propels you to like make the thing. Like if you still feel like it's in a should place, it's like not quite ready yet. But then when it's like in the. Like, I mean especially like thinking about how you've been talking about the Ministry of Time that just felt like such a thing. Like I want to write these stories for my friends, I want to tell, you know, and like I'm just thinking about the difference between those two words as a creative person and like for the practice of creativity.

Kellyanne Bradley (20:29)

Absolutely. I think the important thing for any creative person to remember is that no one is begging you to create. Right.

Tracy Thomas (20:39)

Right.

Kellyanne Bradley (20:39)

No one begging you to write a novel. If I'd never written a novel, the world would have been fine. The reason that ministry happened and worked and I hope has brought people some joy, the same kind of joy it's brought me is because it was just. It was a pleasure to do. It was something I wanted to do with my human brain. I wanted to. I wanted to share and communicate in that way. And I wanted to express a kind of joy, encode joy in a story that could then be decoded by a reader. I think that's the important thing in creativity, the sense that you do want to be sharing and not the sense that you have to be handing in homework.

Tracy Thomas (21:15)

Yes. No homework. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Hey, y'all. Happy New Year. Same bookish you, I hope. I wanted to quickly tell you about what's going on and how you can support the work of this show. As you may know, I have a Patreon. It's called the stacks pack@patreon.com the stacks. And it's a bookish community complete with a very active discord where you get monthly bonus episodes, a virtual book club meetup, and right now we have some special offers going on all month through the end of January. When you join the Stacks Pack, you get our reading tracker, you get to vote in the Stacky Awards, and you get a shout out on this show. That perk is going to be no longer starting February 1st. So now's the time you get all of that for just $5 a month at patreon.com the stacks. If that doesn't sound like you, I also have a newsletter called Unstacked over@tracy thomas.substack.com where I tell you about all the books I'm reading. I give you personal hot takes about pop culture. I even rank every book I read each month. And In December of 2024, I actually ranked every single book I read from least to most favorites. You can find so much more over @tracy thomas substack.com if you love this show and you want to make sure that you hear it every single week, those are two incredible ways to support my work and I really appreciate it. It's the start of the new year and there's just something about January that feels like a blank page for me. And you know how much I love a blank page. It's full of possibility. It's exciting, it's fresh. And maybe you've been sitting on a business idea for a while, something you've dreamed about turning into reality but haven't taken the leap. I get it. I know how hard it can be to start something new. It's frankly quite overwhelming. But there's no better time than right now to start anything. And Shopify is a tool that makes things possible. They make it all possible. Shopify makes it easy to bring your idea to life. With easy to use templates, you can have your store up and running in no time, no coding or tech expertise needed. Plus, Shopify helps you reach your customers wherever they are, whether it's social media or through your website, while taking care of the logistics like payments and shipping. There's no better time to start your business than right now with Shopify. Your first sale is closer than you think. Established in 2025. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com the stacks all lowercase go to shopify.com the stacks to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com the stacks foreign we're back. Graham Gore is not our only time traveler in this book. This is not a spoiler. There are other people who are expats that come at the same time to the 21st century, and I'm curious about those people. There's. Are they all real people as well? Are they figments of your imagination? And they come from different time periods, so how did you pick when they would come from? How did you decide who. Who these people would be? Feels like such an important choice to me. Like, it feels like something that my brain could spend, like years thinking about. So I'm curious how you, how you came to those people.

Kellyanne Bradley (24:45)

So the other expats, as they're called, the other people who've been dragged through time, are all fictional. Graham Gore is the only one who's based on a real character. But they are based on periods of British history that are very studied in the British school curriculum. So they are all from different periods which loom very large in our cultural imagination, where we might feel familiar with their type, almost from literature, from studying history, from, you know, just the world around us. So there is Arthur Reginald Smythe, who is dragged out of the First World War, Margaret Kemble, who's pulled from the Great Plague of London, Thomas Cardingham, who's pulled from the English Civil War, and Anne Spencer, who's pulled from the French Revolution. That was by the Way that was me. Like, can I remember all my characters?

Tracy Thomas (25:34)

Who are these people? I don't remember them.

Kellyanne Bradley (25:37)

Who is this woman? So especially for Arthur and Margaret, the plague, the First World War, those loom enormously large in the British cultural imagination. First World War, there's this great sense of like, oh, we were so heroic, the tragic dead, etc, etc, the plague again, just looms very large, particularly the plague as it was in London. I grew up in London. We still have kind of architectural legacy of the plague here. For the other two, again, the English Civil War was quite a profound moment in the way that the religious structure of the UK was set up. And the French Revolution, again, the UK did not behead the royalty. So it's a very different, it's a kind of way of distinguishing ourselves from parts of Europe. But the point I was hoping to make with these characters is they all come from the past. They all come with 21st century preconceived ideas of how they might be. And then they're not like that, they're not like that. They are all individuals, they're all their own person. And I really hope that Arthur, for example, resists what we might imagine from a stiff upper lip Edwardian man, that Margaret resists what we might think of as a kind of traditional Jacobean woman. So I wanted again this tension between the received narrative of history and the actual fact of living people.

Tracy Thomas (27:00)

Interesting. And how did you name these people?

Kellyanne Bradley (27:04)

Do you know, they, they are completely made up names and each time I thought this name feels appropriate for the era. Like Reginald Smythe. I think I actually got that from a Monty Python sketch, Smith by Smith. But I have subsequent. Very stupidly, I didn't Google the names, I was just like making them up. There is a Margaret Kempel. There isn't Reginald Smythe. I'm pretty sure there's an Anne Spencer. I don't know if that's a Thomas Cardigan, but it definitely like it's a name that was around at the time. So these, the names existed, regrettably.

Tracy Thomas (27:35)

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. In the same time periods, like approximately.

Kellyanne Bradley (27:39)

The same time periods.

Tracy Thomas (27:40)

Yeah. That's so interesting. That's so interesting. Will you talk a little bit? I mean, I'm American so you know, I see history through different lens, obviously. But I'm curious about how the First World War and the Second World War loom in the British sort of historical record. Because when I went to London, like I did the whole the Churchill war rooms, like I was up in there because that's really. World War II is really my sweet spot of history. Like, I really love. I'll read a lot about World War II. World War I is not for me, but I'm curious about. I just. I know, like, the poppies come from the World War I, right? That's right. So I'd love if you would. And I've been to that statue that's from World War I. I like, you know, I've done. I'll do any war stuff anywhere I go to. So I'm just curious if you could talk about that because I'd never really thought about those two wars and how they loom in the culture.

Kellyanne Bradley (28:30)

So World War I played a great role. I don't really go into this that much in the book, but it kind of shattered the class system because working men be drafted into the wars and they were often had to rise to positions of command just because people were dying in droves and absolute droves. The idea of British heroism and the British soldier, I think has been shaped and reshaped by trench warfare and by what we know of what people suffered in the trenches. So there is a kind. And there's, you know, we've now memorialized it with poppies. I don't know how much you know about, like, the politics of the poppy. I don't. It's. So now in. In the UK during. Around Armistice Day, you wear the poppy to remember the. The fallen soldiers. But it's become quite an intense political thing. So if you are a politician, for example, and you're on TV and you're not wearing a poppy around the time, it's considered very disrespectful and it will impact the way the public sees you. You can wear a red poppy. There's also the option of wearing a white poppy, which is a way of indicating that you feel that you want to mourn the dead, but you also don't believe in this kind of lionizing of the military. So it's a kind of. And again, that's. That can be very provocative. People get very funny about seeing people wearing white poppies. There's like a whole. It's really very intense.

Tracy Thomas (29:51)

It's my next rabbit hole.

Kellyanne Bradley (29:53)

Yeah.

Tracy Thomas (29:54)

Lookout World. I've got a novel on the white poppy coming your.

Kellyanne Bradley (29:58)

But it's almost become a kind of. I don't know if I'm going to get to trouble for saying this. Almost like a nationalist symbol, I think the sense of like the flower of British youth being cut down before its time. The great tragedy of the war has become this very politicized thing. If you don't show that you're grateful, you're somehow not being properly British. And then there's an equivalent thing with the Second World War, as you probably know quite a lot of the Blitz and the idea of spirit and the idea that you. You sometimes hear in, you know, rhetorically in newspapers, people saying almost as jokes, you know, back when we, back in the old days, we won a war on Blitz spirit, on pulling together, on, you know, not feeling like we needed to be pandered to. It's these stupid talking points that mean nothing because everyone, at every point in history has complained, wish things were better.

Tracy Thomas (30:51)

Right.

Kellyanne Bradley (30:52)

But again, it's this idea of like, the stiff upper lip, British stoicism. They were dropping bombs on us and we were fine. They weren't fine. You can. You can read accounts at the time, they weren't fine. They were having a horrible time in the book because all these people come from the First World War or earlier. They just discovering that there was a Second World War just really shocks them, you know, First World War, that's. That's a bad phrase. Why did you have to come back for seconds? That is wild.

Tracy Thomas (31:21)

Right, right. Did you, when you were picking the travelers, did you consider at all having any travelers that weren't white?

Kellyanne Bradley (31:29)

No. And actually it was important to me that they. That that was like, nakedly, what the Ministry was doing was only bringing back white people. Only bringing back white people who could. Who could, quote, unquote, be British, that there would never be any. How can I put this? The institution of the Ministry has certain ideas about who will assimilate more easily to 21st century British culture and the idea that there is a single unbroken lineage from the. The England, in fact, it would have been of Thomas Cardingham's time, to the United Kingdom of the bridges. Time carries with it this preconceived idea of whiteness. So when. So only two of the expats are assigned bridges who are people of colour. They are both the two most recent bridges. The two most recent expats, they are Graham Gore, a Victorian Arthur Reginald Smythe and Edwardian. And again, there's a kind of a racist supposition that the closer to the present day these people are, the easier they will handle talking to a person of colour as if people of color were only just invented. Like, again, this is like an issue that you get when people stage period dramas and there's a person of color in the period drama and they say, what's this woke nonsense. What's this person of color doing on my screen? Like they existed. They were in the uk. It's like it's, it's not right.

Tracy Thomas (32:58)

So interesting. One of the things that our narrator deals with is as you mentioned, she is British, Cambodian and she sort of is grappling and I don't believe this is a spoiler, but she's grappling with, you know, her own family's legacy from Cambodia and also like this time travel and you know, these, I mean, quite literally. Graham is an explorer, colonizer type person and so she's sort of dealing with these two things. What was interesting for you about bringing that aspect into the book? What was, what was that doing for you as a writer or as a storyteller? I think more so I was.

Kellyanne Bradley (33:39)

The thing I was most interested in, the bridge, was the, the person who believes that they can join a position of power from a position of perceived weakness, that they perceive what the inheritance of their life is, a position of weakness. And that they can conform enough with power to get into power functionally. Again, I try, try not to do too many spoilers here, but at the very beginning of the book, our narrator is a translator in the Ministry of Defence. She has made her heritage language a speciality for the Ministry of Defense, but she has repeatedly just plateaued. She's not getting promoted at all. And so there's a sense that maybe she has made the wrong choice and she has exploited her talents in a, in a way that has not been useful for her because she just, she just can't get promoted. So when this job comes up, she really jumps at the chance to it. Partly because it's, it's much more highly paid than what she's doing, but also because she wants to be closer to this kind of nexus of power. This mysterious Ministry seems like it's going to be, you know, a step upwards. And I'm interested in when you're actually faced with someone who wasn't nexus of power, who was at the head of, you know, very old fashioned supremacist ideology, like how do you handle the fact that you, you don't conform to that as much as you thought you would. No matter how much she wants to be promoted through the ranks of the Ministry, and no matter how much she wants to be in a position of power over Graham Gorse, she's still a woman of color. She's still a woman A, of color B, in front of this Victorian man. And so for her, I was trying to explore what it would Be like to. I sometimes describe the Bridges narrative arc as being a continued failure of solidarity. So she is offered numerous points in the book to show solidarity with someone else and to think of the journey she's on and the way she relates to people, not just as a way of making herself feel safe and trying to get to this place of control, but of being vulnerable, of being vulnerable to someone else, of being vulnerable to the world around her, which might put her in a more precarious position, but also enables her to be in a position where she is showing solidarity to someone else. But she repeatedly turns her back on that option and repeatedly moves towards what she perceives as greater safety.

Tracy Thomas (36:02)

Okay, we sort of started here. Genre. How do you think about genre? What do you make of people saying that you're a genre breaking? Do you care? Were you using any tropes of genre on purpose or not? Like what? What is your relationship to genre in writing this book?

Kellyanne Bradley (36:21)

So because I wrote this for my friends, just for fun, no sense of what genre it was at all, wasn't writing for a genre market, wasn't writing with a particular genre in mind, Just having a lot of fun, flailing around, enjoying myself. As I was refining the book, I kept on picking up threads of different genres. So there's, you know, we sometimes talk about it as like a romance, sci fi, spy thriller, workplace comedy. It's like. It's like a whole bunch of things. But I think the important thing for me was the use of genre as a kind of snakescream. So I like the romance. I like the romance. I think it is a romantic comedy. I think it is a romance. But I also think if you are only reading it as a romance and you're following all those tropes, you will be seduced. A reader will be seduced into missing the parts of the book that are maybe sinister, the sinister spy thriller stuff. Or if you're. If you come to it as a sci fi reader and you're interested in the government experiment, then the kind of. The crunchy difficulty of all these characters who I try to make as psychologically realistic as a Victorian pona explorer in the 21st century could be, will maybe be quite surprising because I also was thinking about the way the trauma impacts people's decisions and the ways they relate to each other, which impacts some of the decisions they make in the end game of the book especially. So I love the idea of like, genre as a kind of seduction, a way to seduce the reader into following one thing. When you're trying to Hide something else. But of course, you know, readers are intelligent. They're able to pick different things.

Tracy Thomas (38:04)

Right. You are British, I am American. This book is out in Britain and American or in America. Have you noticed a difference in reception from these audiences?

Kellyanne Bradley (38:17)

Oh, that's such a, that's such a good question. I haven't had as much of a chance to meet the American audience because, you know, I didn't have long to tour there and I, I have a full time job, but I, I tour. I told the UK quite a bit. What a good question. I suspect, is this even true? I feel like though, I got a lot of support from maybe romance readers in the US and every time I spoke to someone who came from the romance genre, they've been so generous and so intelligent about the book and the way they responded to it and I've really, really enjoyed it. Gosh, what is the main difference? I'm not sure. Sorry, that's not very satisfying.

Tracy Thomas (39:03)

No, it's okay. I just was curious if you had had time to connect with readers in both places. I mean, famously, one of the most famous Americans read your book, Barack Obama, and put you on one of his reading lists. And I thought that after I hadn't read the book when that happened, and then after reading the book, I was like, you know, sort of a weird choice for president of the Empire, right? Like, I was like, yeah, did he enjoy that? And I'm like, and he's also not a romance reader. We know that because he never puts romances on his list or anything like that. I definitely, like, after I finished the book was I was like, I wish I knew him because I'd love to talk to him about what, what it was for him particularly that I'm just so, you know, like, did you, did you feel that too when you saw it on Melissa? You like, like, why am I here?

Kellyanne Bradley (39:53)

Yeah.

Tracy Thomas (39:54)

How did I get here?

Kellyanne Bradley (39:55)

Why did this. Like, it's about a. Sorry. No, that's a spoiler.

Tracy Thomas (39:59)

Well, it's about the government.

Kellyanne Bradley (40:01)

Like, what are they up to? Are they up to anything good? Let's find out. That was. Yeah, that was quite. That was quite strange. I kept on thinking, did he think Graham Gore was sexy? Barack Obama, did you find Graham Gore sexy? Baffling. Question mark. Question mark. Did you talk to Michelle about Graham Gore?

Tracy Thomas (40:20)

Who can say, do you think Michelle read it or like the girls? I'm so, I've. I. This is another fan fiction novel we could write.

Kellyanne Bradley (40:28)

I really, really want to know. They also don't warn you that you're going to be on that list. No, about it was I got a text from a friend like, oh, my God, have you seen what Barack Obama has done? And I thought, surely not running for president. Surely illegal.

Tracy Thomas (40:41)

Yeah.

Kellyanne Bradley (40:41)

He's like, oh, my God, what am I. That's crazy. What am I doing there? That's crazy. What am I doing there? God. Blue Brackenbaum's read my book. I think he has an independent bookstore that he trusts because I noted there were a couple of other very good debuts on that. That list. So there was Caviar, Basmata, and there was Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle. Bullwinkle, right. And I thought that was, like, I was impressed and surprised that he was reading these, like, what I think are great literary debuts. But, yeah, not, not what I would have thought the obvious choice for him. Maybe that's unfair.

Tracy Thomas (41:18)

Well, he does these lists every year, usually two a year, like a summer, kind of like halfway, whatever. And then he does, like the end of the year and usually the end of the year and the like, he carries over. But this year he did totally separate listening year. It's very controversial. But I, I. People talk about this all the time. They're like, he must have people who do this for him. But here's my thing. If I was Barack Obama and I was no longer the president, and this is super not a thing that is on the job description of the president. It's not like the president of the United States is like, okay, it's June 10th. Like, gotta put out my, my reading list for the summer. So I just can't imagine saying that you read and liked something so publicly that you didn't read. And like, because people probably come up to him and are like, oh, my God, I saw the Ministry of Time on your list. Like, what did you think of xyz? And it just feels like a really big unforced error if it's not true to him in some way. I do think people put books in front of him and are like, I think you would like this. But I have to believe he actually reads the books and actually likes them, because why would you stake your reputation in any way on a thing that, like, just someone was like, put this on your list.

Kellyanne Bradley (42:26)

You know, I was thinking about this with, with Marta, especially Kavia Akbar's book, because that's about the United States Navy shooting down a. Yes. It was like, you might. You must have read that, because otherwise, people, if someone came up to you and was like, all right, you know what this is about. You'd be so embarrassed.

Tracy Thomas (42:44)

That's what I think. I mean, I just can't. People always are like, I don't think he reads the books. I'm like, I just can't imagine setting yourself up for that situation, you know, Like, I don't know, it seems. It doesn't seem as well, that idea doesn't seem well thought out to me in the way that the Obamas are usually, like, so prepared for every little thing. So I believe that he read it. I believe that he probably thought Graham Gore was sexy a little bit. And I believe that Malia probably read it with him. I feel like. I feel like it was like father daughter time. My own fan fiction. Something that I always talk to authors about is how they like to write, how many hours a day, how often. Music or no, in your home, out of your home, snacks or beverages, rituals. Tell us about it.

Kellyanne Bradley (43:35)

So I have to be in my house. I have to be in this room, actually that I'm in right now with.

Tracy Thomas (43:40)

The photo of Graham. With the photograph, watching over you.

Kellyanne Bradley (43:45)

I have such, like. I'm so easily distracted that a room has to be very tidy. It also has to be very plain. So I moved into this house in April with my now husband and while I was away in America actually on tour. This room used to be purple. Like a hideous purple.

Tracy Thomas (44:01)

Okay.

Kellyanne Bradley (44:02)

And my husband and two of my friends painted it white before I got back so that I could come back and work, which was just like one of the loveliest things that anyone has ever done for me. I have to have no distractions whatsoever. So like really silly things. Like I have to. I have to have gone to the toilet first because I don't want to be interrupted mid flu because I need a wee. Yes. I have to have a full glass of water next to me because I can't go downstairs to get a glass of water. Music only if it has no lyrics. Unless it's opera. I did. I've been writing a lot of book two to Wagner as one does. Like, I can't do anything else because I get too distracted and I write in so sort of 50 minutes to an hour, take a break. 50 minutes to an hour, take a break. Unless I am really intensely in the zone, which does happen. I normally can't write for more than two hours. But you know, sometimes the day. In the day. Well, no, actually late at night. I have a full time job.

Tracy Thomas (44:57)

Oh, no, but I mean, like more. No more than two hours in a given day.

Kellyanne Bradley (45:01)

In a given day.

Tracy Thomas (45:02)

Unless you're really doing your thing at some point.

Kellyanne Bradley (45:05)

Like, there were times when I was writing ministry, which is why I remember so much this joy that I, you know, I'd look up and I. My shoulders would hurt. And it had been four hours and I hadn't moved, and, like, my husband had kind of tried to leave some food outside the door. I really miss those states. Great times.

Tracy Thomas (45:23)

Yes. So no snacks and beverages besides just the water?

Kellyanne Bradley (45:26)

No, no. No distractions whatsoever. It's really. I know it sounds punishing, but so.

Tracy Thomas (45:31)

Devastating to me because I'm obsessed with snacks and beverages. And there's so much tea in the book, which I am a tea drinker. And once I went to a tea shop and they asked me what I liked, and I was like, I like black teas. Like, you know, really, whatever. That's it. I don't like anything else. And they were like, oh, you like colonizer tea? And I was like, okay, relax, pal. Like, back off. Okay? I was so offended by it. I was like, yeah, I guess that is what I like. But also, can you not insult me before I spend, like, a million dollars on black. Different black tea?

Kellyanne Bradley (46:02)

Wow. Incredible. You know, you're drinking it, you're decolonizing it. That's. That's how it works.

Tracy Thomas (46:10)

I'm like, if I'm drinking it, I'm not a colonizer, so. In your face. No, but I do. I mean, I like. I take it like a British person with, like, milk and sugar, the whole thing, which I learned. I have no idea where I learned it from, but when I went to England, I was like, now I'm. I've fucking made it. I'm in the place where this is normal, because here it's like coffee, coffee. Copy, copy, copy. So I was thrilled by all the drinking of tea in the book.

Kellyanne Bradley (46:33)

Tea and whiskey. They drink a lot of whiskey.

Tracy Thomas (46:35)

A lot of whiskey, which I don't drink. But, you know, you find I also don't smoke cigarettes, which they do a lot of, too. A lot of. Did you think of the smell at all when you were writing the book?

Kellyanne Bradley (46:45)

I was mainly thinking that I really wanted a cigarette, which is why there's so much cigarette smoking. Desperately, I wanted a cigarette the entire time. I also, you know, I. If my mother is listening, I don't smoke, but.

Tracy Thomas (46:58)

Hi, Mom.

Kellyanne Bradley (47:01)

You. I obviously couldn't smoke during the pandemic because I was terrified of what it was going to do to my lungs. Yeah. Wanted to smoke the entire time. You're absolutely right. It stinks to be in a house where Someone has been smoking a lot.

Tracy Thomas (47:12)

Yes. I mean, Graham smokes a lot.

Kellyanne Bradley (47:15)

He smokes a lot and he smokes like in every room. He smokes in his bedroom, in the bathroom, the bath.

Tracy Thomas (47:21)

I was like, this is. I was like. I. This was. That was the part I was sort of like with Graham, but the smoking. I was like, babe, we need to air it out. Not for me. The tea. Yes, the smoking. Now you've mentioned your full time job. Will you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do full time?

Kellyanne Bradley (47:40)

Sure. So I'm an editorial director at Penguin Classics, which is great. I really, really like it. You can probably see over this shoulder.

Tracy Thomas (47:49)

Yes, I can. Just a full shelf of the perfect black with a little bit of white. Penguin classic books. If you've seen a Penguin classic, you know what I'm talking about.

Kellyanne Bradley (48:00)

So my job is divided into looking after the enormous Penguin classic backlist, along with my colleagues who also work on Pygma Classics, commissioning new titles, some of which are. Many of which are in translation, actually. So I was originally hired because I used to work on contemporary fiction in translation. And to have a truly international classics list, you can't just have a load of old English white guys. That's nonsense. So that's one of the things I do. I also acquire a bit of nonfiction for an imprint called Alan Lane. But yeah, it's been kind of great to every single day be around people who care about writing, who care about books, who care about what books are doing and what they mean and the impact they have in the world. A lot of my colleagues are also writers, so, you know, they were. They're just not at all flummoxed by the fact that I'm a writer. They're not at all flummoxed by the desire to do both. And also it encourages me to think of myself as part of a link in a very long chain rather than just someone. I know that we often talk about writing being a very lonely business, but actually it wasn't for me. I had a really good time writing for friends. And then I also feel like I'm in conversation with writers who are my contemporaries and writers who are my predecessors.

Tracy Thomas (49:15)

How was it for you as an editor then? Turning around and sort of being edited and working with editors and sort of being on the other side of that table.

Kellyanne Bradley (49:25)

It was amazing. It was. So, also, like my editors, it's Margot Schickmanter in the US and Federico Andonino in the uk and the experience of being edited by them made Me think I need to be a better editor because these guys are incredible.

Tracy Thomas (49:39)

Did they work? Was it all three of you together all the time? Because sometimes it's like a book comes out in the uk, you do it with your UK editor, and then when it comes out in the us, there might be changes, but it was like a trio.

Kellyanne Bradley (49:50)

It was all three of us and it was so much fun. It was like, again, it was. I didn't feel lonely during the edits because it felt like a really collaborative joy. And they, both of them really pushed me to think about not just the plot holes that didn't work, but also, like, the characters and their motivations and the ways that their past, their trauma, their history impacts on them and how it might realistically play out. And it was just really good to have somewhat have two people for whom that is their job just talking about that book with me and my agent as well, who, like, talked about it with me endlessly. Endlessly. Just a real privilege. It was really, really fun. I really enjoy being edited, actually.

Tracy Thomas (50:28)

I love that. Okay. One of the things I always talk to people about is audience. And you very clearly had a very specific audience when you started writing this book. It was your group of Arctic explorer loving friends that you met during COVID That is about as specific as an audience as I think anyone has ever stated. However, you then decided to turn this specific piece of work for this specific audience into a thing that is broadly consumed by a broad audience. I mean, it is marketed to sci fi and romance and time travel and literary fiction and contemporary fiction and, like, this whole huge thing. So how did that, like, did it at all impact you when you decided, okay, I'm going to make this book? How did you change from this is for me and my friends to this is for people who don't know who the fuck Graham Gore is and, like, frankly don't care. Right? Some. Some of us.

Kellyanne Bradley (51:26)

So they're all between, like, draft one and draft nine, which is what Ministry is. There were quite a lot of changes. And the first six drafts were just with my agent, Chris Wobilove, and a lot of that was. There's also an extra 30,000 words between draft one and draft nine.

Tracy Thomas (51:43)

Wait, there's 30,000 that are gone?

Kellyanne Bradley (51:45)

More? No, there's more.

Tracy Thomas (51:46)

Okay, got it, got it, got it.

Kellyanne Bradley (51:47)

Because there was just so much information missing, basically because I was writing for a group of people about whom I, you know, I talked about Graean Gore with them already, and they knew all about Franklin Expedition, so there were just things That I expected them to just fill in by themselves. Also just the workings of the Ministry. I wasn't that interested in it. I was interested in the explorer. So I ended up having to that out. Do you know, I. I am so grateful that it has reached so many people. I don't think I would have expected it of the book. I mean no one ever expects any kind of success really. When I was redrafting it with my agent I thought this is never going to be picked up. No one cares about these characters except me. I care about them immensely but that doesn't mean anyone else deeply, really like dementedly care about them the whole time. Some of the, some of the revisions were quite difficult because I just kept thinking I'm putting myself through all this work but I just can't imagine that anyone is going to care. And then when it was picked up I was amazed, I was delighted. But I also maybe every, every writer has this. I thought no one's going to read this because what, what is this? No one's going to know what to make of it. No one's going to. No one's going to want to hang out with this dead guy as much as I do. Right. I'm really glad that it did. And I'm always very surprised when I meet people, readers at events who I. I wouldn't have expected to have picked up the book at all. Specifically whenever I meet a much older man and I think did you think this was going to be a polar exploration book? If so, really sorry. But then they're just really nice about it. They quite often tell me. I had one man tell me very sweetly about his wife who'd very recently passed away. They'd been together for 40 years when he was reading the book and the like the romance and the chemistry and he made and the joy. He's like. It just reminded me of my wife. I know you're like, you're nothing like her. Obviously the two characters in the book are nothing like us but that sense of joy in this relationship really reminded me of her.

Tracy Thomas (53:43)

I love that. For people who read the Ministry of Time and love it, what are a few other books you might recommend to them that are in conversation with your work?

Kellyanne Bradley (53:54)

One I would recommend is Beauty Land by Marie Helen Bettino which I think like it was one of my all time favourite books that I read last year. It's a really magnificent book and it's about a girl who. It's never clear from the book whether it's true or whether she simply believes it herself. But she has to fax all through her life reports about life on Earth, Earth to aliens. She is one of the aliens. She's been put on the. She's been born onto this planet in order to report on the Earth. And so she's got to fax them all through her life. And I think it is such a good book about. In the same way that the Ministry of Time is, you know, our society kind of viewed from the outside by people who have fallen into it. It's got that same kind of thing of society viewed from the outside by someone who feels as if she's fallen into it, but also so much about what it means to belong in a community, to belong in a group of friends, and how you make belonging when you feel like you maybe don't fit properly. It's just so. Such a beautiful book and so funny and so brilliant. I'm terrified of flying and I forgot that I was on a plane while I was finishing off because I was crying so much. It's a wonderful book.

Tracy Thomas (55:05)

Oh, I love that.

Kellyanne Bradley (55:06)

I would also. This is. This is quite a specific one, but that British fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who is my all time favorite writer, died 10 years ago this coming March. He wrote a very famous series called the Discworld series, which is set on this world called the Discworld, which is a kind of satirical parody of our world and simultaneously this kind of satirical parody of fantasy worlds. But he wrote a book called Night Watch, which I'm actually reissuing as a Penguin classic. I really feel very strongly about this book, a book called Night Watch, which is about one of the main characters of the Discworld series who is thrown back in time to his own past and kind of has to watch the histories that made him play out, not knowing whether he should change it or what kind of difference that will make to him as a. As a grown person, what kind of difference it will make to the world that he grew up in. Like, what does what history needs to take its course and at what point does his other people around him interfere? So there's like. I feel like there's a quite a strong sense of Night Watch in the Ministry of Time.

Tracy Thomas (56:09)

I love those recommendations. Okay, just two quick last questions. One is because this is our book club pick and people are listening to this, some of them who have not read the book yet. What do you hope people will keep in mind as they read the Ministry of Time?

Kellyanne Bradley (56:26)

I wanted this to fundamentally be a hopeful book. I know it sometimes goes to some dark places. And I think people have reacted differently to the ending, but I hope that they. They think about time travel as something that also works the other way. Right. Everything that we do can impact the future. And that's a really hopeful thing, not necessarily a negative thing. And I hope they. I hope they do think about, you know, the possible seduction of genre and which genre they are feeling seduced by and what it might be hiding, what might happen. Pull it off, and you look below the surface. And I also hope they keep in mind that Graham Gore is really hot.

Tracy Thomas (57:04)

Very. And the last question. If you could have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it to be?

Kellyanne Bradley (57:12)

I thought if I could have one.

Tracy Thomas (57:13)

Person dead, people always think that I have to figure out how to deliver that question better. I ask it every week, and people are always like, who do I want dead? Like, well, not everybody, but Tommy Orange famously was like, I thought you were asking me who to kill.

Kellyanne Bradley (57:29)

Well, I don't want Graham Gore to read it, I can tell you that. I don't think he'd like it. Not the historic.

Tracy Thomas (57:34)

Be a bridge between the two of you. I do.

Kellyanne Bradley (57:40)

You know what? I'd quite like to give it to Michael Palin, partly because. So he was part of this British comedy troupe who was very influential, called Monty Python.

Tracy Thomas (57:49)

Oh, okay.

Kellyanne Bradley (57:50)

They were like a huge deal for the Brits. He is a writer himself. He wrote a book called Erebus, which is about the ship Erebus, which Graham Gore sailed on. So I hardly. I hope he'll like it. Partly. I hope that it's funny because, you know, he's one of the great British comedians, one of the great British comic actors I hope he finds funny. But also because he. One of the sources he used meant that he got Graegel's age wrong in Erebus, and I would quite like for him to read it and then maybe issue a correction.

Tracy Thomas (58:19)

Yeah, I love that. So many layers to the reasoning. Well, Kellyanne, thank you so much for being here. And, yeah, thank you for doing this and talking with us. And everybody, be sure to listen on January 29th where Jay Wortham and I are going to talk about the Ministry of Time. We're going to give all the spoilers. So all the things that Kalyan and I were sort of, like, whisked kind of tiptoeing around, you'll get to be able to hear that in full and be able to think back on this conversation or re. Listen to this and sort of see what we were alluding to. Hopefully not too obviously. But Kellyanne, thank you so much for being here.

Kellyanne Bradley (58:58)

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure.

Tracy Thomas (59:01)

And everyone else, we will see you in the Stacks. All right, y'all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Kalyan Bradley for joining the show. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Alexandra Premiani and Ava Karens for helping to make this conversation possible. Don't forget the Stacks Book Club pick for January is the Ministry of Time by Kellyanne Bradley, and we will discuss that book on Wednesday, January 29th with Jay Wortham. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com the stacks and check out my substack@tracy thomas substack.com make sure you're subscribed to the Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple Podcasts, leave us a rating and a review. For more from the Stacks, follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram threads and Tick Tock and check out our website, the stacks podcast.com Today's episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Megan Caballero. Our graphic designer is Robin McBride, and our theme music is from to Girijis. The Stax is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.