Jeanette Winterson

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My Castaway this week is a writer. She grew up in Lancashire, the adopted daughter of evangelical parents, who looked on her as a child they could dedicate to God.

Presenter0:41

At fifteen she fell in love with another woman, left home for good, and after working in a variety of manual jobs, including a spell in a funeral parlour, got herself into Oxford.

Presenter0:52

Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, based on her childhood, was published when she was twenty five, and won the Whitbread Award. More books and more prizes followed, each one attracting criticism and acclaim in equal measure.

Presenter1:06

Her latest, Art and Lies, has been attacked with particular savagery in some quarters. She remains impervious. As long as I am still being pummelled, she says, I know I am on the right track. She is Jeanette Winterson.

Presenter1:20

You've been pummelled quite hard, Jeanette, over the past couple of years by the critics. Are you saying that you you need that, that it motivates you in some way?

Jeanette Winterson1:28

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson1:29

It doesn't motivate me, it makes me surer of what I am about.

Jeanette Winterson1:33

After I published Sexing the Cherry in 1989, I decided that I would never again read any reviews, and I have stuck to that. You can't peep round the corner. If you make that decision, you must read nothing. And so sometimes friends tell me that there has been something particularly insightful which can help me, and I read that. But the rest, it's either praise or it's blame, and they're both the same to a writer.

Presenter1:57

Do read things that are written about you. I mean, you after a particularly um devastating profile was written about you, you went round to the the writer's house and um well, gave a what for, really, didn't you?

Jeanette Winterson2:09

Yes, I was very angry about that. I didn't read it. But so many of my friends wrung up and uh were upset by it that I felt I had to do something because it was not an interview. She had never

Jeanette Winterson2:20

been to my house, she had never spoken to me

Presenter2:22

Why did you go to her house? I mean, why didn't you I'm sure there would be any number of newspapers that would have printed what you had to say in response, but she said you went by

Jeanette Winterson2:29

I didn't want to take a public platform. I felt it was a private matter. Someone I knew had let me down.

Jeanette Winterson2:37

But do you do you enjoy a fight? I mean

Presenter2:39

And are you a born scrap?

Jeanette Winterson2:41

Well, I am a scrapper. I I was brought up to stand up for myself. I had to, otherwise I would have been entirely squashed, not least by the twenty five stone of of my mother, misses Winterson.

Jeanette Winterson2:51

Um I have always stood up for myself. Um I'm a a a girl who comes from the working classes and who has had to fight to get where I am. The circumstances weren't promising.

Presenter3:01

But there's no one on a desert island that you could take on or scrap with. I mean, w could you write there? Is is your writing perhaps more important to you than people?

Jeanette Winterson3:10

Much more.

Presenter3:11

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson3:11

I court solitude, and indeed, if I don't have long tracts of it in my life, then I am not a good lover, not a good friend, not a good citizen, and not a good writer.

Presenter3:23

Is writing more important to you than being loved?

Jeanette Winterson3:26

No they're equal in my life. But I think that the writing itself creates in me the character that I am and that is able to be loved and to give love. They work together, they are combined, they are not separate in my life.

Presenter3:43

Tell me about your first rate.

Jeanette Winterson3:45

Okay.

Jeanette Winterson3:45

My first record is Kathleen Ferrier singing What is Life to Me Without Thee? And it's something I heard when I was a young child. My mother was a very good pianist and coming from Accrington, five miles away from where Ferrier was born, Ferrier was very important to us and I heard her music all through my early life and this is a particular favourite.

Speaker 24:16

What is a left defense?

Speaker 24:23

What is more?

Speaker 24:27

We want to be party.

Speaker 24:55

In my treadmill

Presenter5:06

Kathleen Ferrier singing What is Life from Glux Ofeo et Uridice

Presenter5:11

So tell me about your mother, Mrs. Winterson, as you call her, Jeannette.

Jeanette Winterson5:17

She did. She was a a a woman of of of Rabbilisian dimensions, um a woman for whom the Bible was a living, breathing, moving thing and she lived inside it, she was Old Testament, she was one of the prophets and she knew exactly what was right, exactly what was wrong, and

Jeanette Winterson5:37

For her, a rod of iron was a gentle punishment. It was quite a violent household in that respect. But

Presenter5:44

But you were physically punished.

Jeanette Winterson5:45

Yes, yes. Thrashed. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Thrashed. Um.

Jeanette Winterson5:51

And they do say that children who grow up in violent households have to deal with the violence in themselves later. And certainly I have had to do that because for us every moment was a crisis. We were always lurching from crisis to crisis.

Presenter6:04

Uh

Jeanette Winterson6:04

It might

Presenter6:04

Must have been terrible

Jeanette Winterson6:05

If

Presenter6:05

Dying for you. Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson6:06

Yeah.

Presenter6:06

There's a small

Jeanette Winterson6:06

Or did you catch Quickly learned to cope. I learned to give as good as I got. It wasn't terrifying because I think.

Presenter6:10

I love it.

Jeanette Winterson6:13

Many children, especially if they have a happy disposition, which I did and have, really believe that the the circumstances in which they are brought up are normal and that everyone else is rather odd. Uh children defend their own territory, don't they? Uh and I did, and I thought that the church and my home um were the proper place. How did your father cope with it all?

Jeanette Winterson6:33

I don't know, because he never said anything.

Jeanette Winterson6:35

Um he was really an adjunct of my mother. He wasn't a an individual in his own right.

Jeanette Winterson6:42

Uh

Presenter6:42

But life in the household, as you say, was dedicated to God. What did that mean in practical terms? Church every day?

Jeanette Winterson6:47

Yes, every evening, um, we all went to church.

Presenter6:50

And you walked.

Jeanette Winterson6:50

Yes, yes, because we were poor and we thought nothing of walking. How far? Five miles.

Presenter6:54

Her fa

Presenter6:57

But there and back?

Jeanette Winterson6:57

Yes. Five miles back and five million.

Presenter7:00

Can you walk to school?

Jeanette Winterson7:01

Yes, in the morning. How far?

Presenter7:02

How far?

Jeanette Winterson7:03

Two miles.

Presenter7:04

And also at home no books are.

Jeanette Winterson7:07

No books, no books. Well, six books of um various titles, one The Bible, one a Concordance to the Bible. Um but also, strangely, Malory's Maunt D'Artha, which in two volumes, which to me was meat and drink in those days.

Presenter7:21

But why no books? I mean, they were they were the work of the devil, were they?

Jeanette Winterson7:24

Yes, and although my mother was very clever um and self taught in many ways, she was suspicious of education. Um she thought that you should have a certain amount, and partic but particularly if you were a girl, not too much. Um and she thought that there was a war on

Jeanette Winterson7:39

between education and Christianity.

Presenter7:42

What what did you do then? Did you smuggle books home? I mean, did you read things like Bothering Heights and Jesus?

Jeanette Winterson7:44

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson7:46

Oh, yes, and I used to hide them under my bed. You can fit seventy seven paperbacks under a single bed in a single row. But of course, after a while my mother realized that the bed was rising visibly, and I was discovered, and my books were taken away and burned. But you found more? I found more.

Presenter8:02

What does this phrase mean that that the Wintersons had adopted you because they wanted a child they could dedicate to God?

Jeanette Winterson8:09

Yes. My mother always saw her life in operatic terms, in grand dramatic terms. She wasn't at all oppressed by being poor, by being nobody. She felt that she had a mission, that she had been called by God to find a child, and that this child would fulfil all her ambitions for her. Common enough, except that, in my case, the way at the twist in it was bizarre.

Jeanette Winterson8:31

Record number two.

Jeanette Winterson8:32

Yes, this is Mozart from Cosy Fantute, sung by Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, and I'm sure everyone will know this when they hear it. And it was the first piece of music that I ever discovered for myself. I heard it playing out of an open window when I was at Oxford, and I kept going back and walking up and down in front of the window, thinking they'll play it again, they'll play it again. And eventually they did, and eventually I found out what it was, and it began in me an uh a love of Mozart and a love of classical music.

Speaker 29:12

Mercy on.

Presenter10:02

The trio suave si il vento from Mozart's Crucifan Tute, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, and Walter Berry, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carl Burm.

Presenter10:12

Your childhood, Jeannette Winterson, sounds as if it would have been very oppressive and suffocating, but at the same time you seem to imply you you were actually rather happy, because you knew nothing else.

Jeanette Winterson10:23

Yes, I'm irrepressibly happy. Um I have to have a reason to be unhappy. Um

Jeanette Winterson10:29

That doesn't come along very often, and so I have I have retained a kind of cheerfulness which helps me, I think. So even within that kind of childhood, you you

Presenter10:37

who became a very confident person.

Jeanette Winterson10:40

Very confident. I think the church helped there enormously because I was given responsibility from a very early age. And again, for a girl, that was helpful. It it taught me to be self-reliant, to

Jeanette Winterson10:51

be self-trusting and not to be afraid to voice my opinions to speak out.

Presenter10:56

But what did you think you were going to do? I mean, did did you think you were going to do something with your life? Did you believe that?

Jeanette Winterson11:01

Oh, yes. Um I have always believed that I would do something with my life. How could I not, with Mrs Winterson telling it to me every moment of every day? Um and for a while I thought I would be a missionary and and convert thousands and thousands of people. I was always a very good preacher, and people were converted, and I think there are many souls even now still following the Lord, thanks to a Winterson sermon.

Presenter11:21

You've saved a lot of souls in your time.

Jeanette Winterson11:23

Yes, I don't know what I've saved them for.

Presenter11:23

Uh

Jeanette Winterson11:25

How what sort of age were you when you preached in that kind of way? Oh, I'm sorry to say I started early at five, and went on until I left home, because they thought that God was giving me messages, you see, through this innocent flower who would offer them forth pure and unadulterated.

Jeanette Winterson11:42

Yeah.

Presenter11:42

And then Then you fell in love with another girl. You were fifteen. Yes, that's right. Wh where and how did that happen?

Jeanette Winterson11:45

fifteen.

Jeanette Winterson11:48

It happened in the way it so very often happens to girls that there is someone a little older whom you admire and respect enormously and who is kind to you. And you fall for them and obviously there are sexual feelings involved at that age and it it's silly to pretend that they're not.

Jeanette Winterson12:04

And for me an involvement took place because perhaps I was confident and I knew what my feelings were, I was self-aware.

Jeanette Winterson12:13

And I couldn't keep it a secret. I didn't know that it was wrong because nobody had ever told me. It was such a fantastic shock to find out that some people thought that falling in love with another girl was not the thing to do.

Presenter12:18

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson12:24

And and did they?

Presenter12:25

Um like Jess in oranges are not the only food. Did they have you publicly denounced in church?

Jeanette Winterson12:31

Yes, it was that w that was typical for all crimes, uh, public denunciation. It wasn't particular to me.

Presenter12:38

And were you then given an ultimatum to to get out of the house if you didn't get

Jeanette Winterson12:41

There was a period. Um obviously and Orange is not the afraid is not a straight autobiography by any means. In fact, there was a fairly long period when I was supposed to be choosing uh and and trying to. Get back on the straight and narrow because I did want to try at that stage. I was still.

Jeanette Winterson13:00

in deep conflict with my own feelings, the first time I had ever been in conflict with my own feeling. I suppose there's a moment in every adolescent's life when they reach the point where they must decide whether they will carry on with a kind of received wisdom or whether they will take the risk and set off on their own. Record number three.

Jeanette Winterson13:17

Yes, this is this is Marilyn Horne.

Jeanette Winterson13:20

Singing Softly Awakes My Heart, and it's it's a song which has many romantic associations for me. Um it was played for me by the girl that I fell in love with, and I carried on playing it to myself as I went through various and many romantic affairs. And I suppose every affair has a kind of theme song to it, and I was a terrible romantic, not any more.

Speaker 214:14

Yeah.

Speaker 214:19

Feared.

Presenter14:28

Marilyn Horne singing Monqueur souvre tavoie softly awakes my heart from Sampson and Delilah by Saints.

Presenter14:36

So, going back to your early life, you left home at sixteen or so, and to support yourself you worked among other places in a funeral parlour. Did it have any attractions?

Jeanette Winterson14:45

Yes, it was absolutely silent and I wanted to be able to think. I wanted to be quiet. But you worked in a mental home as well. That can't have been very peaceful. Well, it was. You know, they are they are quite restful lunatics. I found them so. Um, perhaps because

Jeanette Winterson15:01

We shared in common a sense of being outside and unregarded. Uh at that time things were very difficult for me and strangely I found a rest and a respite in that mental hospital. And then you talked your way

Presenter15:15

say into Oxford to read English. Is it true that you you begged the authorities, you told them they had to take?

Jeanette Winterson15:18

So that you

Jeanette Winterson15:21

Well, I'm too proud to beg. But I did go down there after they had turned me down and bang on the door and say, Really, you can't do this, and there are good reasons why you can't do it, and I have had considerable disadvantages.

Jeanette Winterson15:35

But I'm bright and I can work and I will, and also I'll take my air levels and do extremely well, which I did. So it was again a sense of fighting for what I wanted from a disadvantage, because I know that working-class girls do not automatically get into Oxford.

Jeanette Winterson15:52

It it was a sense of scaling mountains, but I had to have a talisman, I had to have something to keep me going, something that I desperately wanted, and that would shore me up when I felt that I was failing.

Jeanette Winterson16:02

Yeah.

Presenter16:02

And was it a success for you in the end? Were were you a success at Oxford?

Jeanette Winterson16:04

You are successful.

Jeanette Winterson16:06

Yes, I mean the teaching was abysmal. But I didn't care because I'd gone there to read, and read is what I did. And it it filled in for me all of those things which I hadn't got in my formal education, although nobody knew the Bible as well as I did. Of course that's that's a great advantage if you're studying literature. And they still don't, presumably. They still don't.

Presenter16:23

Do we see?

Presenter16:25

Uh

Jeanette Winterson16:25

Uh Before

Presenter16:26

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson16:27

Yes. Well, this is something of a rallying cry for me. Of course, it's Maria Callus singing Visid Arte, Visid Amoure, I lived for art, I lived for love. And I am drawn to heroines who have achieved something against their own circumstances, like Ferrier, like Callas, who get to a point where they should not be, but who do it anyway. And so Callas, when I play this, gives me strength. I I play it when I have been particularly upset by the idiot press and the media, which is always happens when I publish. And I think, yes, this is what matters, this is what I'm for. And of course the great thing is at the end of this scene she picks up the dinner knife and she stabs the bastard.

Speaker 217:35

Single.

Presenter18:09

Maria Callas singing Vicidate from Puccini's Tosca with the Orquestre de la Societe des Concerre du Conservatoire, conducted by Georges Preet.

Presenter18:19

So you left Accrington and the the Pentecostal church behind. Have you ever been back?

Jeanette Winterson18:24

Uh

Presenter18:25

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson18:25

No. I have passed through, but I haven't been back as such. I I don't think you can go back if if you leave entirely in in your heart and in your mind and with your spirit. Where is there to go back to? That place no longer exists. And did you have m Much context. Yeah. The parents afterward. That's after you got to University and so on.

Presenter18:44

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson18:44

Yeah. A little bit, but it was it was unsuccessful. Our our our worlds had become entirely separate. We were we were on different planets and

Presenter18:52

What about after you wrote Oranges, which which you did, as I said, when you were twenty five?

Jeanette Winterson18:55

Saying you would

Presenter18:56

Did they react to that?

Jeanette Winterson18:58

Yes, my mother did write me a letter and she said, Oh, Jeanette, it's the first time I had to order a book in a false name.

Jeanette Winterson19:05

And she'd read it, of course, and she said, This isn't true, this isn't your life. And I said, No, of course it's not, it's fiction.

Jeanette Winterson19:13

Uh she was perhaps my most acute critic at that time. But I'm sure, because I mean the portrayal of her is pretty devastating, isn't it? I don't think so. I think it's a homage. I think that she has gone into legend now, and with a woman like Mrs Winterson, legend is the best place for her.

Presenter19:28

Why did you call her misses Winterson?

Jeanette Winterson19:31

It suits her.

Jeanette Winterson19:33

And I couldn't call her mother.

Jeanette Winterson19:35

It distances her. It distances you from her. It would be it would be inappropriate to call her mother.

Presenter19:36

Distances you from her.

Jeanette Winterson19:40

A lady less motherlike I cannot imagine.

Jeanette Winterson19:44

But she dedicated her life to you? Well, to God and to me in a roundabout sort of a way. Did you love her?

Jeanette Winterson19:52

I don't know. I am wary of that word because it's so often used sentimentally, and above all, I I loathe sentimentality. It's a horrible sticky wash that people indulge in.

Jeanette Winterson20:02

I I use the word carefully.

Jeanette Winterson20:05

I know those people who I love. I'm not sure that I loved her.

Jeanette Winterson20:09

I think I was too young by the time I came to decide it was too late.

Presenter20:13

Uh

Jeanette Winterson20:13

Uh But

Presenter20:13

Did you never worry that you caused them pain? As she as you say, your mother had to order the book in in another name. I mean

Jeanette Winterson20:19

Another name.

Presenter20:20

Well, she didn't have to. I mean that she

Jeanette Winterson20:20

Well, she didn't have to. I mean that she

Presenter20:22

She was a drama queen and I'm sure

Jeanette Winterson20:24

She adored her.

Presenter20:24

Yes, but there were things in there. Certainly looking at the story objectively, one did feel she was a monster and that she had treated this child you b

Jeanette Winterson20:24

Yes, but there were things in there.

Jeanette Winterson20:27

Okay.

Jeanette Winterson20:30

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson20:32

You badly.

Presenter20:34

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson20:34

I think he

Jeanette Winterson20:36

It is notorious through history that artists appear to be indifferent to the pain of others, in that they seem not to notice quite often the trouble that they cause around themselves.

Jeanette Winterson20:48

I don't think of myself as callous, but I do think of myself uh

Jeanette Winterson20:55

At having to make artistic choices above personal choices. And when I had finished Oranges, I knew that it was.

Jeanette Winterson21:02

An extremely well written book.

Jeanette Winterson21:05

And I thought I will send this on its way. And from that moment on, I didn't think any more about the personal considerations involved for for other people or for myself.

Presenter21:14

It became a piece of work, separate from you.

Jeanette Winterson21:16

Yeah from you.

Presenter21:17

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson21:17

Yes.

Presenter21:17

And what about your real parents? They knew who adopted you, didn't they? They wouldn't know your name. They know your name is Jeannette Winterson. But you've never tried to find them. Oh no.

Jeanette Winterson21:22

Wouldn't know your

Jeanette Winterson21:24

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson21:26

Oh no, no I wouldn't and I'm glad that they have not tried to find me because that would be very awkward indeed. We have no connection except a biological one and we all know that uh families are often the most difficult places to find real love and real happiness and I think in that instance it it would be unpleasant for everybody. You wouldn't like to find out where you got your talent from?

Jeanette Winterson21:53

I think you you you were given gifts. I think I've been given a gift. I don't know where gifts come from. Um but I also know that the discipline involved is is is a personal decision and that many people have lost their gifts through lack of that discipline and lack of that respect for the gift. What I do with it now is up to me. I'm very thankful for it. But where it comes from, who knows?

Jeanette Winterson22:16

More music.

Jeanette Winterson22:17

Yes, the writer Ruth Rendell has been very helpful to me since 1986 when we first met, and she has always allowed me a cottage on her estate where I have been able to go every autumn to work. And whenever I go down there in the autumn, the hunt is just beginning. And whatever you think about hunting, this is the most extraordinary sight across the cold ground in the early morning air. And it's a sight I associate with Ruth and with my work. And that's why this aurea is particularly important to me.

Speaker 222:53

How silently how slightly when once the scent is table

Speaker 223:04

Once went down to sleep.

Speaker 223:13

When once the sand is taken, the huntsman drags the school.

Speaker 223:26

Oh silent true, how smiling, When once the saint is taken.

Speaker 223:33

And the letters.

Speaker 223:41

Yeah.

Presenter23:45

Dame Janet Baker singing the aria How Silently, How Slyly from Handel's Julius Caesar, with the Orchestra of the English National Opera, conducted by Sir Charles MacKerris.

Presenter23:55

Uh some of your subsequent books, Sexing the Cherry and Art and Lies, the latest, are are great feats of imagination and they move backwards and forwards through time and space and uh

Presenter24:06

They defy gravity. I mean, in in in the one you have this castle where there are no floors and people are suspended from the ceiling over snake pits and things.

Jeanette Winterson24:14

Why? I think art does celebrate ceilings and deny floors. It it isn't something that is that is boxed in, that is straightjacketed. It's something which is always pushing out, pushing at the boundaries of the heart, pushing at what we can imagine. That's why it makes people more than they are. That's why it challenges them in the way that it does, because it is larger, it is offering another dimension. And in my work I want to do this. I want to make the canvas as broad and as deep as it can be. So you want to shake us out of

Presenter24:43

of our complacency.

Jeanette Winterson24:45

Yes, I think failure is to form habits, and habit is probably the most dangerous thing that a human being can fall into. Then you're no longer question, then you're no longer looking. You're only half alive when you're acting out of habit.

Presenter24:57

But do you have the right to shake us out of our complacency? I mean, we may not wish to be rid of our our daily routines and habits. We might be extremely comfortable.

Jeanette Winterson24:59

The Seville.

Jeanette Winterson25:04

Yes, that's a choice that the reader must make. Or all I can do is throw down the gauntlet and perhaps offer some alternatives, um perhaps offer a different paradigm for life. So it's it's still The preacher Renew is it? It's still

Presenter25:17

Yeah. That evangelical bit of you that wants to say, come this way, I can show you something better than you've got.

Jeanette Winterson25:19

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson25:23

Yes. It's not a it's not a this way. I don't believe that there is only one particular road. I believe that there are many, many roads. It's simply important to know which one you're on and why. But but there is a kind of missionary zeal about it, isn't it? Yes, I shall never lose that. It's too late now. And give me a child until she's seven, and I'll give you the writer.

Jeanette Winterson25:43

Record number six.

Jeanette Winterson25:44

Ah, yes. Now this is Handel's Al Cena. This is an opera that I love. It is an opera which means more to me perhaps than any other opera. And I first saw it in nineteen ninety two at Covent Garden and then went to see it four more times and learned the score. And the the aura I've chosen is one

Jeanette Winterson26:04

which I associate with the woman that I love and have loved for five years, and who herself was such a strength to me when I was writing that very difficult book, Art and Lies.

Speaker 226:18

Only for Christmas we lie upon my life for your fault, and you are thee.

Speaker 226:32

Don't be the source, free is so.

Presenter27:06

Arline Auger, singing the aria Di Comio from Act One of Handel's Alcina with the City of London Baroque Symphonia conducted by Richard Hickox. You live now, Jeanette, I'm told, in a in a lovely Georgian house in North London, and you're well off and you look after yourself and your writing, you have no agent. You and your partner, Peggy Reynolds, control all your business affairs, don't you?

Jeanette Winterson27:30

Yes, we do. I do keep an agent in the States to look after foreign matters.

Presenter27:35

But

Jeanette Winterson27:35

But basically

Presenter27:35

You have control, it seems to me. That's what you like, isn't it?

Jeanette Winterson27:37

That's what you

Jeanette Winterson27:39

I do like control, yes.

Presenter27:39

That is work.

Presenter27:41

I think

Jeanette Winterson27:42

Rather dangerous to give up your affairs into the hands of others.

Presenter27:46

But you've gone further than that, haven't you, which is why some of the critics have accused you of arrogance and conceit, because there was a point when you nominated your own book as Book of the Year, or yourself as Writer of the Year, or you sought to compare yourself to Virginia Woolf.

Speaker 127:56

Uh

Jeanette Winterson28:01

Hmm.

Presenter28:01

Why do you do those things? Because obviously, a as one hears them or reads them or hears you say them, it does sound pretty outrageous.

Presenter28:09

Time will t

Jeanette Winterson28:09

Tau.

Presenter28:09

Yeah. Um, I think what you mean you'll be proved right?

Jeanette Winterson28:13

Yes. And if not, what does it matter? So you say it because you believe it. I say it because I believe it. I'm not a liar.

Presenter28:20

I mean, it could have been, you could have said it with a twinkle in your eye, it could have been camp.

Jeanette Winterson28:25

Well, there is there is an element to that. But

Jeanette Winterson28:29

I think that

Jeanette Winterson28:32

I am

Jeanette Winterson28:34

A true writer, and I believe that my work will last.

Jeanette Winterson28:38

I do not believe that any artist of any worth at all has ever been modest about their abilities. I think they have always believed that what they are doing is absolutely essential and that

Jeanette Winterson28:49

They must do it, otherwise why would you carry on?

Jeanette Winterson28:52

And you're prepared to put up with being called out? arrogant and conceited. Yeah. For that. Oh, I dare say I'll be have to put up with a lot more than that as the years go by. Do you not mind?

Jeanette Winterson29:01

No, I mind my work. As long as I am doing my best work, I can acquit myself honourably. The rest would be shoddiness, laziness. But do you worry?

Presenter29:11

That you might have cut yourself off from reality. You said earlier on that you don't read uh the critics anymore and you know you keep yourself apart as we've described. Do you think there might be a danger in surrounding yourself only with people who care about you and who believe in your work, and shunning anybody who dares to criticise it?

Jeanette Winterson29:33

Not at all. I don't shun people. I simply ignore them. I walk my way. They walk theirs. I'm not interested in literary London. I'm not interested in parties or being in being one of the crowd. I never have been. There's no change in the way that I am. Um I prefer to be around those people whom I love and trust. And I seek solitude. I'm not I'm not a party goer. So I would rather carry on with my life and let others carry on with theirs. But you don't think you suffer from a lack of a bit of

Jeanette Winterson30:00

Constructive criticism.

Jeanette Winterson30:02

There is no such thing in this country as constructive criticism, there are only ignorant reviewers.

Jeanette Winterson30:08

Record number seven.

Jeanette Winterson30:10

Well, this has to be Strauss, it has to be the trio from Rose and Cavalier, which I know is a great favourite on Desert Island is, but nevertheless it is a great favourite of mine.

Presenter31:15

The trio from the final act of Strauss's De Rosen Cavalier, sung by Christa Ludwig, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, and Theresa Stich Randel, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Presenter31:26

You're about, Jeannette, I think, to remove yourself even further away from those you despise. You're off to that country and you're going to become self sufficient and eat off the land. Is that right?

Jeanette Winterson31:32

Talking of the

Jeanette Winterson31:36

Yes, I expect I shall go to the shop sometimes, but never supermarkets. I refuse them.

Jeanette Winterson31:41

I am going to live in Gloucestershire and we shall have some land about us and it's extremely beautiful and I will be a hermit and no one will see me or find me and no one will be able to come there without permission. And Peggy, your partner, obviously is going with you.

Presenter31:55

She is. Um, you see this partnership I know you said before, so I don't feel terribly intrusive in asking you you you believe this partnership will last a lifetime?

Jeanette Winterson32:03

It's coming.

Jeanette Winterson32:05

I do. It's it's for life as far as I'm concerned, and I have made that decision extremely carefully. It took me three years to make that decision. Uh it's not one I would make light lightly. If you've had a rackety past, you you want to get it right.

Presenter32:19

You said before, uh mentioning your rackety past, that that it is a significant achievement that I am sane and well.

Jeanette Winterson32:28

Yes.

Presenter32:28

Uh

Jeanette Winterson32:28

Uh

Presenter32:28

Nothing to do.

Jeanette Winterson32:28

I think it is. I think it is. There have been many obstacles in my life. There still are. But.

Jeanette Winterson32:36

I think because of my work, and perhaps because of my happy disposition, I have been able to arrive at an equilibrium which is not habit or complacency, but which is a settled place from which to do better work, and perhaps even to be a better person.

Jeanette Winterson32:52

Last record. Yes, this is from Benjamin Britton's Gloriana, and uh I am not really myself a great Britain fan, but

Jeanette Winterson33:00

This seems to me to be very beautiful, and it is about living alone and solitary, living the contemplative life, and being cut off from envy and from spite. It's a sonnet by the Earl of Essex, and even in those days it seems the press were everywhere.

Speaker 233:36

Yeah.

Speaker 233:39

In some unhappy deaths of ear

Speaker 233:49

It's unholding.

Speaker 233:53

Where's us were obscured from all society?

Speaker 234:06

From the land hate of the world.

Presenter34:15

Philip Langridge singing the song Happy Were He from Benjamin Britton's Gloriana, with the orchestra of the Welsh National Opera conducted by Sir Charles MacKerris. If you could only take one of those eight, Jeanette.

Jeanette Winterson34:26

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson34:27

I would have to take Alcina or Alcina, however you pronounce it, because Handel is a composer who means much to me. It's his his formality, his precision, his mathematical beauty, which leaves space for the emotion rather than squashes it up.

Jeanette Winterson34:45

And what about your book?

Jeanette Winterson34:46

Well, could I take the OE D, do you think?

Jeanette Winterson34:50

I suppose so. Could I? Oh, well I should be happy then, because in there I will find many, many more books and I will amuse myself for the rest of my life.

Presenter34:57

And if you couldn't, if you had to name one book, one novel, one piece of work.

Presenter35:02

I'll take T

Jeanette Winterson35:03

S. Elliott's four quarters.

Presenter35:03

Uh

Jeanette Winterson35:04

Tits.

Presenter35:05

Yeah.

Jeanette Winterson35:05

And what about your luxury?

Jeanette Winterson35:08

I couldn't decide between a case of Krug and a printing press. Well, a printing press might be too utilitarian. What do you think?

Presenter35:15

Well I think

Jeanette Winterson35:16

Champagne sounds like a very good idea to me. I'll have the crew.

Presenter35:18

Brood.

Presenter35:20

Dr. Nette Winterson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 135:33

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.