Margaret Forster

Margaret Forster0:00

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.

Margaret Forster0:08

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

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a writer. Successful and prolific, she leads a life far removed from the glamour and babble of the literary scene. Her second novel, Georgie Girl, published in the sixties, was made into a popular film. Since then, she's written another twenty books, some of them non-fiction. Her recent biography of Daphne Dumurier, for instance, was highly praised. For years, a house-proud working mother at the heart of a strong family, she says she's always hated the cult of the author. She is Margaret Forster. What is it that you hate about the cult of the author, Margaret? Is it the sort of literary fests that go on, or the public performance that's required, or just the people? No, I don't think it's any of those things. I think what it is is that what I want to do is sit in my little room and write, full stop. That's what I want to do.

Presenter1:15

But of course publishers, as they tell you frequently, we're not charities, darling. And this is true, they're not charities. They're in the tough old commercial world out there and they have to sell these books. And if you are going to have them published by the publisher, then you have to do a little something to help them. But I don't like the helping. I don't want to be a performer. And yet, at the same time, I realize that

Presenter1:40

I can't be totally unhelpful because the whole thing wouldn't work. They'd be entitled to turn around and say, Well, Chum, if that's how you feel, why don't you leave your books just in their handwritten manuscript and forget about

Margaret Forster1:51

Uh

Speaker 41:51

But you

Margaret Forster1:51

Yeah.

Presenter1:52

You don't much care for other authors either, do you? You don't like the those. No, no. My my favourite kind of reading is always the proof. And these days I get sent a lot of proofs, and especially first novels. I adore first novels, because then this book arrives, it has no cover, there's no face staring out at you.

Margaret Forster1:55

Oh no, I'm in my book festival.

Presenter2:10

And you don't come to it with any prejudices, or it doesn't come trailing the clouds of glory that all the great writers have. And I adore that. That's what I go to fiction for. Right. Let's pause there for the first of your records. Eight records for a desert island on which the only inhabitant is tone deaf, I understand. Well, actually, I would quite like to be able to agree with that and say I was tone deaf, because then I'd have an excuse, wouldn't I? I mean, if I'm tone deaf, it's not my fault that music is nothing to me. Whereas as I'm not actually tone deaf, it's somehow disgraceful. And I tried for years to educate myself musically, but then every time a record finished, a piece of music finished, even if I quite liked it, I would think, oh, good, it's quiet now. So in the end, I just gave up. You know, I'm I'm tired of being ashamed. Music is a

Margaret Forster2:52

I'll send the end I

Presenter2:56

Blank page for me. So, eight not entirely essential records, but let's find out what they are anyway. What's the first one? Well, the first one is Send in the Clowns. This is because my youngest daughter, Flora, used to play the clarinet, and this is a tune that she used to play. It all seemed to be summer evenings when she played it, and I'd sit in the garden and I'd be conscious that everyone had stopped using their lawnmowers because they were listening to this floating out over the gardens. And I love the image of her playing it almost more than the sound, you know, the intensity and the

Presenter3:27

Even the passion that she put into it at the time, and I almost envied her. I thought I can see in front of my eyes what music can mean to somebody.

Presenter4:05

Benny Goodman and Send in the Clowns.

Presenter4:07

Your second novel, Georgie Girl, Margaret Forster, was a great hit, published in 1965 and subsequently made into a film starring Lynne Redgrave, about a couple of girls living in a flat, promiscuity, pregnancy, a sugar daddy. It was very much a story of its time. Do do you remember it with pride? Oh, certainly not. No, it's like an albatross round my neck. I mean, I'm suitably grateful to it because it, you know, got me started and gave me some money from the film and all that kind of thing. So of course I'm grateful, but I mean to think that it's still in print and it's still sort of being around sort of fills me with grief really. It's almost as though you know I've done nothing since. Flippant, you've called. Yes, when I started off on the wrong track, I mean

Margaret Forster4:45

Yes, when when I sit down.

Presenter4:47

Originally when I came down from Oxford I wrote this novel which was a kind of Balzacian type thing with an appalling pretentious title. I think it was called Green Dusk for Dreams.

Presenter4:59

And it was all um it was, you know, a Balzac type thing, I thought. And I sent it off, um and of course it was rejected. And then I thought in a kind of slightly sulky way really, well, all right then, I'll do something that's easy. And at the time Catcher in the Rye had just been published, and so this was a pseudo Catcher in the Rye, the first novel, the title of which I refuse to repeat.

Presenter5:23

Dames delighted. That spoiled it. Right. So having started off that way, which of course publishers liked, I then.

Speaker 45:23

Yeah.

Presenter5:30

went on down that path. But you never did intend to do that, did you? Never intended to be a writer in the beginning.

Presenter5:36

Well, in the beginning, I didn't know that such things as writers existed. I mean, I was the typical voracious reader from the age of seven who went to the library and took a book out of day, all that kind of thing that so many people do. But I actually never thought of a writer as either being a job or indeed a writer being alive. I thought all writers were dead somehow, you know, you Dickens, you're Austin, you Bronte. And in Carlyle growing up in the nineteen forties and fifties, there was no such thing as a writer. Therefore it was completely outside my experience. I couldn't say that that's what I wanted to do. But you were also driven, if I understand you correctly, by a desire for material gain, really, weren't you? You wanted to make something of yourself. You wanted to get somewhere. You wanted things. Well, it wasn't I did want things, but it wasn't so much that. It was more that I didn't want the lives I could see around me.

Margaret Forster6:21

You don't

Presenter6:29

because the lives I could see around me were hard lives.

Presenter6:32

In which the women in particular, I mean, what did they do? They got up first thing in the morning.

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You know, had the went out to their cold, freezing wash houses, that did all these great you know, the sort of thing. I mean, their lives were hard, hard and pretty cheerless. And growing up I didn't want that. So it seemed to me that to avoid that kind of life, to escape, if you like, involved money. It was a quite simple equation that I worked out for myself, as many people do. But it wasn't the desire to have, you know, jewels, yachts, fur cooked. I never ever wanted that kind of thing. But I did want a different way of life.

Presenter7:08

Record number two.

Presenter7:09

Uh record number two is actually harking back to Carlisle in the nineteen forties. My mother was a very beautiful singer. It's terribly sad, you know, that I have a voice like a concrete because she was a beautiful singer, a beautiful contralto voice, and she loved to sing, especially hymns. And one of the first times that I ever went to evening song with her at St Barnabas in Carlisle was at Christmas when I was about seven, and as a special sort of favour I was allowed to go to evening song.

Presenter7:35

And this is the carol that she loved most. And they weren't great singers in St Barnabas. And I used to stand beside my mother listening to this amazing voice sort of sore out singing in the bleak midwinter. And it was a bleak midwinter. The forties had some very hard winters. And we would have paddled through the snow on the bitterly cold Sunday night. And I think also, you see, on a desert island, I dread missing Christmas. I adore Christmas. All the things people hate I absolutely love about it. So I'll have my own little Christmas with in a bleak midwinter.

Speaker 48:11

Interwar.

Speaker 48:14

Frosty wind made

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Thus could

Speaker 48:35

Slow I fall but slight.

Speaker 48:43

Oh.

Speaker 48:52

I breathe in tongue.

Presenter9:08

In the Bleak Midwinter, sung by Tommy Williams in Tewkesbury Abbey. So when you escaped, as you put it, Margaret Forster, from Carlisle to Somerville, Oxford on a scholarship, your university career seems to have been dominated by the fact that your boyfriend Hunter Davis was either in Durham at University or in London working. He comes from Carlisle too, or came, does. You were always hitchhiking to see him? Well, he did most of the hitchhiking. I did very little of it. I mean, he did it. He hitchhiked to see me, actually, on the backs of lorries and things like that. So did that mean you didn't take much part in Oxford social life? Were you always? Oh, I took a no, I took part in it. I mean, I acted. I sort of, you know, wrote for Charwell and Isis. I.

Margaret Forster9:44

Why to

Presenter9:50

I did all the things people usually did, but I didn't really like it. But why not? Well, I think it was the wrong age. I think if I had gone at either fourteen or forty I would have loved it. But it just happened to be the wrong age for me when I went there. And it wasn't'cause your heart was with Hunter. Oh, it was. But no, it wasn't just that, I don't think.

Presenter10:08

And then you got married in your last week in all of that.

Presenter10:13

Well.

Presenter10:14

We were obviously going to live together for the rest of our lives, we thought, and in nineteen sixty, which was when it was, if you were just going to live together it was going to cause so many problems it didn't seem worth it. So we thought, well, we'll just get married, make life simpler, make our families happier.

Presenter10:29

And and why the time? Why at that point, your last week in Oxford? Quite a dramatic moment to do it, really? Well, because if I was giving in by getting married to make everybody happy and respectable, after all, just respect was the most important thing, what I wasn't going to do was have the farce of a wedding. Absolutely not. I wasn't going to t go through that chirade, you know, and dress up in white. So I thought if I did it quickly, the very minute I finished, it wouldn't hurt as much. But did you invite your parents to go? Oh no, no, didn't invite anyone. We just tripped into the registry office. And did they know it was going to happen? Yes, we did tell them it was g mind you, you know, we'd been sort of, as they say, going out, an item, for something like five years. So why it was all such a shock?

Margaret Forster10:57

Oh no.

Margaret Forster11:01

And did they know it was going to happen?

Presenter11:13

I think. But no, I'm afraid we didn't invite anybody at all. And then off you went to live in North London, where you've been ever since. Yes. Well, we started off in the Vale of Health in Hampstead, but then we bought a house on what used to be the wrong side of the Heath. Of course, there's no such thing as the wrong side of anywhere in London today, but that's where we bought our house, where we've been for 32 years. Record number three.

Presenter11:34

Well, record number three actually comes from those years when I was finishing at Oxford.

Presenter11:39

By some I mean, I can't understand now, looking back, how I can have allowed it. But when I was twenty one my family said that if I wanted to, they would all club together and buy me something worth while.

Presenter11:50

And Hunter persuaded me that what I really wanted in life was a record player, and he told me what sort to ask for, and then all the wider family gave me record tokens, you see. So then he was very happy, because I mean he didn't have a record player, so he then played all these records which he had chosen.

Presenter12:08

And I couldn't bear them. I mean, it was Beethoven and oh, good grief and Sebalius and whatever drove me mad. But he had included some jazz, and one of them was Sidney Bercher playing Petite Fleur, and I found I liked that one. So it brings back

Presenter12:23

you know, sort of irritating memories in that I succumbed and let him choose my twenty first present for me. But on the other hand, those were very happy days.

Presenter13:19

Uh

Presenter13:22

Sidney Bechet playing Petit Fleur. You and Hunter have written some fifty or more books between you in the past thirty years. You're you're both prolific. Do you work together or apart? Do you advise each other? Do you work very apart indeed determinedly.

Margaret Forster13:34

We work

Margaret Forster13:37

Yeah.

Presenter13:39

The day he gave up his uh full time job as a journalist, you know, was really a pretty black day for me, because I'd spent all my time trying to get peace and quiet to write in, dodging between picking children up from school, the sort of thing, you know, we all do.

Presenter13:53

And then when he announced, with great satisfaction, that he was going to work full time from home now,

Presenter13:58

I thought, well, this just it'll it'll be a disaster. And at first it was, because being a journalist and with the sort of character he's got, he likes response to everything. I mean, the minute he writes a line, he wants to show it. What do you think? What do you think?

Presenter14:11

And the other thing is that he drinks cups of coffee about every ten minutes and he, you know, wants distraction of every sort because he was used to working in a newspaper office. And I just can't do that. I mean, I want to go into my room and close the door, and that is it, till I come out again at the end of the morning. How long is that? The whole morning? That's the whole morning. Well, it's time now that I'm enjoying a glorious middle age, it goes from half past nine till one o'clock. In the old days, it used to be up to nursery school time, or whenever.

Margaret Forster14:26

How do I do it?

Presenter14:37

What about the business of showing him your work? Oh, never. I never show anybody anything I do. I mean, I wouldn't dream of showing a publisher even until I've completely finished the manuscript and then I send it to them. So who helps you along the way? Do you help yourself? Do you look at yourself and think, I know what's wrong with this? Or I know what's wrong with you. Well, it depends what we're talking about. Whether we're talking about fiction or biography, if I'm doing fiction, it's a very rapid process. I mean, a novel the last few novels have taken me between six and nine weeks and they just sort of um

Margaret Forster14:54

Swan to

Presenter15:06

Come out, and that's it. Now, I don't work on those. I mean, I probably should, and I would probably.

Presenter15:14

Perhaps I would get over that awful sickening feeling of failure that comes at the end of each novel if I decided, right, I'll put it away for a year, then I'll take it out, apply my own critical faculties to it and rewrite it. But somehow I can't. You know, it's either a natural process or it's nothing. So it all comes out in one great rush, as you say, of the future. Yes, that's right. Whereas with biography, you're really weighed down with responsibility all the time. You're fretting about is this true? Is it fair?

Margaret Forster15:32

Yes, that's right.

Presenter15:42

And then, on top of that, am I making it readable? You know, you're juggling so many things with biography, it's a real sweat, a real grind. But on the other hand, it's immensely satisfying. When you get to the end of it and you've done the job, then you feel I feel quite differently from a novel when I think, okay, so I enjoyed it, but after all, what is it?

Presenter16:03

What I don't understand is at the same time as doing all of this, you have managed throughout your life, your working life and your motherhood, to run the children and their lives as well. You've never had any help. You enjoy housework. You're a proper Mrs. Tiggywinkle. How do you do all of that and write as well? Well, it's been done in different ways. I mean, at first, when the children were very small, it was done just on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings, which was Hunter's weekend off. And so I used to have a deal where from he would give them, you know, feed them and put them to bed, and I would write for two or three hours each of those three evenings. That's how it was done then. And then when they started to go to school, it was done the minute that they'd been delivered to nursery school. And so it's just extended itself. And everything else has been fitted in around the corners. But also, you see, for me anyway, this writing was an energy giving process. I would often sit down shattered, especially when the children were very young, and I didn't have a particularly good baby, it's probably my fault. But an awful lot of crying went on, an awful lot of nights. And so I'd drag myself through the day and get to this sort of three evenings a week when it was my turn to write. And I'd think I'm so tired. I can't write anything. But then when I started, when I finished it, I'd feel great. Next piece of music. Oh, the next piece of music has to be the Beatles. I mean, our life was dominated by the Beatles throughout the 60s, with Hunter coming home, singing, playing, whistling, everything to do with them. I mean, I can't claim to know them. They all did come to our house because Hunter insisted that what the lads most wanted was normal living and that they actually liked to go to people's houses and have ordinary meals and things. So I said, all right, if you say so. But the first time one of the Beatles came, I think it was Ringo came first, and Hunter had said, casual-like, the day before, they are vegetarians. I said, what? Vegetarians? Because, you know, in the 1960s, vegetarianism wasn't at all common, and none of our, although I've always liked vegetables, none of our cooking was geared to it. So I spent a great deal of time making a beautiful vegetarian meal, only to be told by Ringo and Maureen when they arrived very nicely, very charmingly, that actually they didn't like vegetables. They were the sort of vegetarians that it meant, I don't know, egg chips, whatever. But fortunately, I'd made about three puddings, and so we had an entirely pudding meal. But I think of, you know, a lot of the Beatles songs I did actually find that I quite liked. And one that I particularly liked was Blackbird Singing the Dead of Night. And at the end of it, I think there is a blackbird singing, and it would be rather nice on a desert island to have the nice homely blackbird.

Speaker 418:43

Flagbird Fly

Speaker 418:47

Into the light of a dark black night

Presenter19:02

The Beatles and Blackbird.

Presenter19:04

Your novels, Margaret, ha have often drawn on on family experiences. Um for example, Have the Men Had Enough, which you published about five years ago, was about her mother's slow decline with Alzheimer's disease, and the argument within the family about how to cope with her.

Presenter19:19

How close was that to your own experience? Was it based on fact? It was very close. It's the only novel I've ever written which was virtually a documentary, from the point of view of the central experience in it. And in fact, you see, I mean, it was my mother in law who died of Alzheimer's disease.

Presenter19:33

You wrote more recently in Mothers' Boys about the mugging of a teenage boy by another boy and the effect on both boys' families, their anguish again and attempts to cope. Again, a social issue very closely observed uh and and you create a human drama out of it. Is that what you would now say is your main recipe for writing? Is that what you do? No, that if and there is no recipe. I mean that one uh was not a documentary and it came out of

Speaker 419:53

What do you

Margaret Forster19:53

Oh.

Presenter20:00

reading newspapers really, and just sort of fretting over I wonder how far a mother can go, I wonder if you always would love a son, whatever he did, or a daughter if it comes to that, and just sort of thinking and thinking about it, and then experimenting and writing the novel. But

Presenter20:16

The last thing I want to do is have people imagine that I want to write social dramas, that I think of an issue. Let me think, oh yes, Single Mother's very interesting, let's write a novel about it. But I don't it doesn't work like that at all. That's kind of what Anita Bruckner said when she wrote a criticism of that book, isn't it, in The Spectator? She said, you know, it was very good, but is it art? is basically what she said. It could be a documentary, it it could have been twenty episodes. Very good point. But to me, art.

Margaret Forster20:37

Basically what she said.

Margaret Forster20:41

That's right.

Presenter20:45

is about taking the reader into other people's

Presenter20:49

Emotions into their lives and making them for a while live that person's life. That's what I call art. And if I can do it this way, I think that's legitimate. So you would say it is art? I don't know if my book was art, but I would say the process is art, yes. Do you criticize your own books? Are you your own best critic in the book? Oh, of course I'm but I do love critics, whether they're Anita Bruckner or anyone else. I mean, I I love being reviewed and I

Margaret Forster21:07

Oh f

Presenter21:13

Really, um I'm so disappointed if I don't get reviewed.

Margaret Forster21:18

I mean I decided

Presenter21:19

Oh no, it doesn't hurt at all. It doesn't hurt. It's fascinating. It's as near as you'll ever get to being that fly on the wall and hearing what people really think about you. But what would you say about yourself were you to write a criticism of your own work? Of that one in particular? Oh well, I mean that's too self-indulgent. I mean what I'd probably say is that um she nearly gets there but doesn't quite. I mean that's th would be the overall thing. But that's it sounds as if that's what you feel about all of your novels if you say you feel it down at the end of the day. I mean I never get I always start off with tremendous enthusiasm and I adore the writing of them.

Margaret Forster21:41

See

Margaret Forster21:44

You've got to do it.

Speaker 421:46

At the end of the day.

Presenter21:51

There's none of this sort of sitting over an empty page and oh my god, isn't it awful? None of that at all. I love it. I can't get there quick enough. But when I finish and I'm compelled to read it before I send it to the typist, I do feel sad usually. There is this sort of feeling of let down because I can see that I didn't quite

Margaret Forster22:04

Yeah.

Presenter22:10

pull off what I thought I was going to pull off. Do you think you ever will? Well, I hope so. I mean I wouldn't it would be awful to think I wouldn't. I mean I couldn't bear that. I'm always working towards it, towards getting nearer to that moment which I presume is pretty heady when you think there, I've done it, I've pulled it off. You know, I really have written a brilliant novel.

Presenter22:33

More music.

Presenter22:34

Well, this is for my mother-in-law, really. She was Scottish and she loved poetry and songs. And when the children were very little, she bought them along playing a record of Scottish songs, and she would dance with them. And I have, again, it's a question of images rather than the music. I have such a lovely image of Jake and Caitlin, Flora wasn't born at the time, and my mother-in-law all dancing round to this record. And the tune the children liked best was Mary's Wedding, which of course is a very jolly Scottish tune.

Speaker 323:04

Step wigaily on we go, Hill for hill and toe for toe, Almanarman roll and road, All for Mary's wedding. Step wigaily on we go, Hill for hill and toe for toe, Alm and arm and roll and road, All for Mary's wedding. Over hillways, up and down, Mirtle green and black and brown, Fast as she link through the town, All for sake of Mary. Step wigaily on we go, Hill for hill and toe for toe, Alm and Armen, roll and road, All for Mary's wedding. Red her cheeks and trow ones are, Bright and high as any star, Fairest of them all by far, Is our darling Mary. Step, we gaily on we go, Hill for hill and toe for toe, Alma narrow and roll and road, All for Mary's wedding.

Presenter23:36

Um

Presenter24:02

Kenneth McKellar, singing Mary's Wedding. Now, the other aspect of your work, as we've said, is biography, the latest of which was Daphne de Murray. Now, the birth of that book was, as Dave Medner would put it, quite spooky, wasn't it? Oh, it was. It was marvellous, actually. I was looking through a bookcase for a book and knocked another one out, picked it up, and it was Rebecca, a very tattered copy of Rebecca. And I stood there the way you do, flicking through it and remembering how I'd adored it at the age of thirteen. And then I thought, I wonder if anyone has done Daphne de Maurier's biography. I actually also wondered, is she still alive? I had no idea.

Presenter24:36

And I sent a postcard to my publisher, Carmen Khalil, saying, What would you say to a biography of Daphne Damori? Is she still alive or not? Because I wouldn't do a biography of an of someone who's alive.

Presenter24:48

And Carmen sent me back a postcard immediately saying, Brilliant idea, I'll get on to it at once. And then less than twenty-four hours later, the BBC rang me kaleidoscope and said, Would I come and do a sort of on-the-spot obituary of Daphne DeMaurier? And I said, She hasn't died, has she? And they said, Yes, she died this morning at eight o'clock. And later, when, you know, telling her three children about this, they said, Oh, well, that was mum arranging her own biography. And then, just when you thought you'd finished it and were about to send it off to the publisher, what, four years later, or three and a half years later, suddenly some dramatic new evidence turned up. She you discovered she'd had a lesbian or several lesbian relationships. How did that come about? How did you find out?

Presenter25:29

I got all Daphne De Maurier's files, and you can learn as much from letters written to a person as you can letters written by that person. And I saw that Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her American publisher, had obviously been a very great friend.

Presenter25:44

but that there were very few of Ellen's letters, and, of course, where were Daphne's to her?

Presenter25:50

So I wrote to the daughter of Ellen Doubleday, saying that obviously her mother had been Daphne's great friend. Did she by any chance have letters from Daphne?

Presenter26:00

And this woman, also called Ellen, but known as Pucky, wrote back to me and said that she had letters of her own because she'd become a friend of Daphne. Would I like to see them? I said yes. So she sent these letters, and they were interesting, but nothing startling. And then she wrote to me and said she was coming over to England. Would I have lunch with her at the Savoy? I said I'd be delighted. The book was finished anyway. So we had the lunch and she sort of grilled me over the lunch about what I thought about Daphne, and I told her.

Presenter26:28

And then she put her knife and fork down and said, Well, I've got something to tell you. And that something was that she had in fact hundreds of Daphne's letters to her mother.

Presenter26:37

and that they showed, beyond what she thought was reasonable doubt, that this affection that Daphne had had for at least Gertrude Lawrence had been rather more than affection. Would I like to see them?

Presenter26:50

Well of course I

Presenter26:52

It was both a thrilling and an appalling moment. Because in in the in the book, which was finished, I had not I had suspected that something of this might have gone on, but I had no proof. And I loathe the kind of biography that says

Margaret Forster26:55

Yeah.

Margaret Forster26:56

Because

Presenter27:07

There is no proof, but I feel that she had some kind of, you know, lesbian side to her. I mean, that's awful to do that. So it hadn't been in the manuscript. But there I was being offered these letters. And all the time, of course, the children thought the book was finished and the publisher thought it was finished. And we were. Damn, did you marry his children? Yes, her children. And did you have the task of telling them about the book? Yes, I wrote and just explained what had happened and said.

Margaret Forster27:22

Daphne, do you marry his children?

Margaret Forster27:26

Yes, I

Presenter27:29

You know, things like it isn't as though I've discovered that your mother was a child murderer or something. All that there seems to have been is an infatuation with Gertrude Lawrence which tipped over, perhaps only once, into something more. And what I'm going to do is let your mother tell that story. I'm going to quote, you know, what she says in her letters. And it was very upsetting for them. Number six. Well, number six is we've spent a great deal of our life going up and down to the Lake District. We've always had a little cottage that was about twenty minutes from Carlisle so that we could go and visit the parents and spend holidays in the north.

Presenter28:05

And on these long drives in the car, I had to learn to put up with some music, because everybody else in the family likes music. It clearly wasn't fair. And one of the ones that I found I could tolerate better than most, funnily enough, was Bob Marley. And again, it was a question of the words, because No Woman, No Cry, which is the one I've chosen, has very interesting words. So I used to after the wretched tune was finished, I used to try and get them to analyse the words of the poem. There's no time for that, of course.

Speaker 428:35

In this bright future, you can't forget your past.

Speaker 428:41

So dry your tears, I say.

Speaker 428:46

And

Speaker 428:47

No woman applied.

Speaker 428:54

No, woman, no pride.

Presenter28:57

Bob Marley and No Woman, No Cry. You've made it plain, Margaret, that uh the great difference as you see it between writing novels and biographies is that writing novels you feel gloriously free and

Presenter29:09

Biography is a kind of crucifying business. Why aren't you then writing even more novels if they only take you nine weeks or so and if the children have now left home, which they have? Well, because novels just have to happen, don't they? I mean, you can't think I'll write a novel. You have to wait for a novel. For what Thackeray used to call boiling up in the interior. You know, and then you're ready to write. But I couldn't when you hear people saying how they're researching something to write a novel, I think how very peculiar to research, to write a novel. It's just n not that I don't write like that. So what happens in your case? I mean, do you feel it boiling up? Oh, definitely, yes. And then I feel there's a moment when it's time to go, and I go with it.

Presenter29:47

Record number seven. Record number seven. Well, this is another I think on a desert island what you most want is probably to laugh. And one of the funniest things ever was when my son was fifteen and like his father he was a great Tottenham Hotspur fan. I mean after the Beatles we then lived with Tottenham Hotspur for a year. You know, that's how it goes in our house. So although I'm not interested in any game, either watching or playing, it's just a waste of good reading time to me. I had to get interested in Spurs because my son's whole life at fifteen revolved round it. And Spurs in 1981, I think it was, they won the FA Cup, but only after a replay. And Jake went and queued forever, you know, and came back white-faced, having got something like the last ticket.

Presenter30:30

And he came back after the replay when they'd won it, and I opened the door, and there's this still ashen face, but this time with all the sort of euphoria, and he was singing Totting'um, Totting'um, you know, the awful song that Ossie Ardelius. Well, poor Ossie isn't this year going to Wembley or anywhere else, so it's perhaps a bit cruel, but I think for a really good laugh I would like to have Ossie's dream.

Speaker 430:53

Spurs are on their way to Wembley!

Speaker 430:59

Nothing's gonna do it again.

Speaker 431:02

They can't stop and the boys from Tottenham, the boys from Wyatt Lane.

Presenter31:08

Tottenham Hodspur and Ozzy's Dream Spurs are on their way to Wimbley, and their legs are all trembly.

Presenter31:14

What do you think, Margaret Foster, you'll miss most on your desert island, books or people? Oh, people. I mean, the thing is I'm that um quite common contradiction, I think, that I am antisocial, I'm not gregarious, I do like to be on my own, all that kind of thing. That is absolutely genuine.

Presenter31:30

But at the same time I know perfectly well I've got no illusions. I need people. I need people to watch and to listen to rather than to relate to. So you're the sort of person who sits in a restaurant and makes up fictitious lives for the people on the next one. No, I no I don't make up fictitious lies, but I'm intensely curious. I mean there's no one I wouldn't like to follow home.

Margaret Forster31:39

But the server

Presenter31:48

And find out where they're going to. I mean, I sit in buses and speculate, all that kind of thing. And will you make house on the island? Will you will you?

Presenter31:55

You'll get it all neat and tidy. I'm not sure. I'm not constructive. My brother and sister would both be capable, literally, of building their own house, but those talents bypass me. But I'm very ingenious.

Margaret Forster31:56

Yeah.

Presenter32:06

I would always, I think, find ways of, you know, constructing shelters and so on. And will you find, um, in doing all of that and finding a way of going on, will you find an inner peace? No, because you're going to deprive me of books. If I can't have new novels all the time, there's no inner peace, is there? It'll be absolute hell. There's no point in getting to the end of a day if there isn't a novel at the end of it, as far as I'm concerned. So I'll be in serious trouble.

Presenter32:28

Last record. Well, the last record is a rather an inspiring one, I think. And again, it's a question of images. When my eldest, Caitlin, was in America doing an MA there after her English degree, she sent me a photograph of herself with a group of women, and they were marching to reclaim the night. They were picketing cinemas where pornographic films were shown. And I felt so proud of her. I mean, this funny little grainy photograph in a local newspaper of Caitlin with her banner, you know, marching with the women. And it was also because I've always felt such a sense of shame that I'm not an activist. I don't march. I'm too fond of just being at home, too domesticated. And I've often wondered would I have been a suffragette? And the dreadful answer is I probably wouldn't have had the nerve. So I thought I'd choose March of the Women to sort of celebrate the suffragettes.

Speaker 433:29

What home make a song?

Speaker 433:35

The dawn is breaking.

Speaker 433:38

March, March, sweet you alone!

Speaker 433:43

I close our banner and hope is waking so

Speaker 433:49

Glory fills with the glory

Speaker 434:00

Golder it swears, Gonder of Freedom, the boys are

Presenter34:15

Ethel Smythe's March of the Women with the Plymouth Festival Chorus and Orchestra. So if you could only take one of those eight records, Margaret. I'd take the Carol.

Presenter34:22

In the bleak midwinter.

Margaret Forster34:23

And yeah.

Presenter34:24

And uh your book? I'll have to have a contemporary novel, and out of all the hundreds that I've read over the last, what, thirty or forty years, the one that I think I could bear to reread and thoroughly enjoy, because I thought at the time it was the most brilliant novel, is A House for Mr Bisois, V S N

Presenter34:40

And it would make you laugh. It would make me laugh, yes. It's a very funny novel. And your luxury.

Presenter34:45

What I really like is a novel, at least one parachuted in each week, but you won't allow that, will you? No. So therefore, in that case, I don't think I can have a luxury. My luxury will have to be necessity.

Margaret Forster34:50

Will you know?

Presenter34:57

I want an unlimited supply of A four white paper and cartridges for my Waterman fountain pen. I wouldn't have been shipwrecked without the fountain pen. I mean I would always have it on me, so that would be all right, but I would run out of cartridges. And then I will write and try to write the book I haven't yet written.

Presenter35:16

Margaret Forster, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Margaret Forster35:27

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