Rose Tremain

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

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a novelist. She began writing when she was ten years old, to fill the vacuum created when her father left home. At university Angus Wilson encouraged her to take risks, but it wasn't until she was thirty two that she published her first novel, Sadler's Birthday.

Presenter0:47

She went on to be acclaimed as one of Britain's best young novelists and write radio and television plays. Her fifth book, Restoration, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a feature film starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant. These days her books are bestsellers here, in France and in America. Her stories cover a wide range of settings and characters. Writers, she says, should not be tourists in the country of the imagination, but explorers and mountaineers. She is Rose Tremaine.

Presenter1:16

It strikes me, though, Rose, you have to have great courage uh to be an explorer or a mountaineer. I mean, whatever happened to the adage that you have to experience something in order to be able to write about it? Well, I think s r some writers

Rose Tremain1:26

Still

Rose Tremain1:28

I think I've never started with that premise. I don't know why, probably it's incredibly foolhardy. But I think um that even with my first book, when I look back now, I think there's a lot of myself in that book, but I wasn't really aware of putting myself in that book at the time.

Presenter1:47

But it was about a 76-year-old.

Rose Tremain1:48

It was about a 76-year-old man. Not a lot of you. For me, there is it's part of the excitement and the consolation of being a writer.

Presenter1:49

Yeah.

Presenter1:50

But not just

Rose Tremain1:57

It is to imagine myself, to empathize with somebody who is probably quite distant from me in age or place or time. That's.

Rose Tremain2:06

Why I love being a writer. That's what

Rose Tremain2:10

The great excitement of it is. And

Rose Tremain2:13

I don't rule out the idea that one day I might put in a greater section of my life than I ever have done into a book. Are you avoiding yourself then, perhaps, in doing what you do?

Rose Tremain2:23

I don't think I'm exactly avoiding myself because I think, um, as I say, I think I am there in the books, displaced, disguised. Um, sometimes i I'm in a different gem.

Presenter2:33

But it's precisely the same thing.

Rose Tremain2:33

I think that's a good idea.

Presenter2:35

I mean, you you you've written, as we know, as a seventeenth century man in in in Restoration, you do t transcend sex and gender and so on, as well as time and place and setting, don't you? In your latest in your latest book, you're a thirteen-year-old adolescent loose on the streets of Paris.

Presenter2:50

It obviously makes it more difficult to write. I mean, do you feel it makes a better book? Is that why you do it?

Presenter2:56

I think it

Rose Tremain2:56

makes it a better book because it's much more exciting to me to do it. I think if I was rehashing things that I'd lived, it would be like a sort of second hand living of them. The act of writing a novel is for me like a journey. I'm I'm sort of saying to the reader,

Rose Tremain3:10

I am interested in this subject. I am interested in 17th century London and what this person who starts from these rather humble beginnings and has this enormous rise followed by this great fall. I am interested in this as a human dilemma. Or I am interested in what happens to somebody who believes they're stuck in the wrong gender. So come with me, reader, and let's see what we can understand about this.

Presenter3:32

But why does it have to be you in the first person? Why can't you write it with that sort of authorial.

Presenter3:37

A distant voice, as it were.

Rose Tremain3:40

It's assumed to be a terribly dangerous thing to do for me, a woman, for instance, to be writing as a man or as a as a as a young adolescent boy. But when you you set out on a novel, the possibilities are immense. They're sort of um terrifyingly boundless. And what the decision to

Rose Tremain3:57

See something from one sensibility only.

Rose Tremain4:00

enables you to do is to is to channel

Rose Tremain4:03

Various decisions that you make at the beginning so that you're constrained, if you like, but it's a fruitful constraint.

Rose Tremain4:10

Tell me about your first record.

Rose Tremain4:12

Well, my first record is Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Um this sort of takes me back to a time in my childhood when I was at boarding school. It was a strange little school which didn't have a very high powered set of teachers, but we had a wonderful music teacher, somebody called Joyce Hatta.

Rose Tremain4:28

And she was also a concert pianist. What she was doing, teaching young girls at a boarding school as well, I don't know.

Rose Tremain4:35

And this is the first concert I ever went to, was Joyce at the Festival Hall playing Rhapsody in Blue.

Presenter5:22

Part of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, with Joanna MacGregor at the piano, conducted by Carl Davis. I said, Rose Tremaine, that you wrote to fill a vacuum created by your father's leaving home. Was it just like that, cause and effect?

Rose Tremain5:37

Yeah.

Rose Tremain5:40

I think that uh certain things happened in in my life all in that one year until I was ten. I think I'd had a very happy life with my mother and my father and my sister and my my nan and we lived this sort of tranquil family life actually. This was in London in Chelsea.

Presenter5:53

This was in London, in Chelsea.

Rose Tremain5:55

And then when I was 10, going on 11, various things happened, of which the most devastating was the fact that my father left. But also, that house where we lived was sold, and my mother moved, and I was sent to a boarding school. So, sort of in a stroke, I lost my father and the house that I was used to, and my friends. And I just started writing. But he was.

Presenter6:15

But he was a writer, wasn't he?

Rose Tremain6:16

He was a writer, he was a dramatist actually, and he was he was doing rather well at that time.

Presenter6:16

He

Rose Tremain6:20

Although his career was sort of endlessly fated to be disappointing. So I slightly grew up with this idea that writing was a very honourable thing to do. I remember my.

Speaker 16:28

Yeah.

Rose Tremain6:30

Mum sort of saying, you know, Dad's working this tap, tap, tap coming from the study and we had to be quiet. This had to be accorded a a certain sort of reverence. Um but then it as the years went on I also saw it as something doomed and I suppose part of me thought it must not be doomed, it must be possible to do this without it being doomed.

Presenter6:46

But it's interesting that you began to write because you were presumably, you know, under some stress. It was a kind of therapy, wasn't it?

Rose Tremain6:53

This is all hindsight. I think I look back on it now and I think that's why I started then, because I was I was lonely and um uh very anxious I think about what was happening.

Presenter7:04

But a lot of writers say that they need to be, you know, at peace in order to be creative. Are you saying you can write when you're not at peace?

Rose Tremain7:09

Yes, I can, absolutely. In fact, it's the way I find peace when my life is going badly. It's a great refuge. I don't I think if I hadn't been a writer, I often I mean I was a I was a

Rose Tremain7:20

It's a well mannered little girl, because that's the way I was brought up. But I think inside I was absolutely hysterical, really. Did you see your father afterwards? I mean, did you go on having a relationship with him?

Rose Tremain7:31

That's one of the sad things in my life, that I haven't really had a relationship with him. And I had been very fond of him as a child. I've had a wonderful relationship with my

Rose Tremain7:40

mother and she's been incredibly supportive about what I've I'm doing, what I've tried to do. But my father effectively sort of disappeared from my life.

Rose Tremain7:49

I know this happens to hundreds of thousands of people, but I think um

Rose Tremain7:53

I think people who are sort of abandoned by one parent have suffer something which

Rose Tremain7:59

I don't think it's necessarily a sort of torture or suffering, but I think perhaps what it's done in me and what it does in many people is that.

Rose Tremain8:08

In order to sort of

Rose Tremain8:09

In a way

Rose Tremain8:11

please or um call back the lost parent. It ma it turns you into somebody who who strives a great deal, who sets herself or himself very high goals. And I think it's done that to me.

Presenter8:23

Tell me about your second record.

Rose Tremain8:25

After after this

Rose Tremain8:27

boarding school. I was sent to Paris initially to a rather nice little school for young ladies run by nuns and without telling my mother

Rose Tremain8:37

I discharged myself from this nuns' school and went along. In those days you could just go along to the Sorbonne as a as a foreign student and enrol, and I enrolled in something called the Cour de Civilisation, which was wonderful. And so suddenly having been pent up in my boarding school, I found myself in in Paris, aged eighteen.

Speaker 48:53

Je vous par le denton, que les moi de venton, le pauvau pa quentro.

Speaker 48:59

Muma force dollars.

Speaker 49:02

Atroche, c'est lylaris que sou lon fenetre, silent ble garnie, qui nous serve donnie, ne payer pas de milen, c'est la cause, c'est conne moi, qui cre famili es troi qui poss.

Speaker 49:21

Love or

Speaker 49:25

Sabouled.

Speaker 49:27

On latre

Speaker 49:31

La Ma

Speaker 49:33

Love, noudion car, leu.

Presenter9:44

Charles Navour singing Laboeme. So, uh memories of your year at the Sorbonne there, but you came back to this country to do your A-levels, go to university. You already had an A-level.

Rose Tremain9:53

I had one. Yes, I had art, or art history, art and art history. But I needed more. I'd left school without the idea of going on to university. This wasn't the sort of the track that that my my parents put me on, but I had so I had to come back to the track.

Rose Tremain10:07

So I went to the Westminster College and I did a couple of more A levels and then I went to the University of East Anglia. And there was Angus Wilson. Yes, that was my main reason for going there. I read in a in a magazine article actually that this great writer was

Rose Tremain10:19

It this was an innovative thing in those days. I mean, now writers are seeded around all the great universities, but in those days I think Angus was the only one who was attached to a university to have a a living writer.

Presenter10:29

So this was what mid-60s he just

Rose Tremain10:30

Yes, this is mid-sixties when he was absolutely at the height of of his his fame. The old men at the zoo and the public.

Presenter10:35

The old men at the zoo and

Rose Tremain10:38

read his little gem of novel Late Call in the year that I went up to uh UEA in'64.

Rose Tremain10:45

The writing course didn't exist then, but what what I did, um, rather nervously was to go along to him and and show him some of the little

Rose Tremain10:53

stories and stuff that was right. I think it were all probably very bad at that time.

Rose Tremain10:57

And

Rose Tremain10:58

He

Rose Tremain10:59

took great risks in his own work. I mean, every one of his books is different from the other one. And again, I think it's except possibly in the later novels, it's quite hard to pin down Angus in his work. He's not really there. I certainly think in the early novels he's not really there.

Rose Tremain11:13

I think I w I very much sort of held his example in my head when I I started writing my first novel.

Presenter11:18

It's been said um that that it was a lot to do with the relationship that you had with him that eventually the creative writing course was set up at East Anglia. Do you think that's right?

Rose Tremain11:27

So I'm told, I think, yes, because I was really the first student who went along with work. The idea um when Malcolm Bradbury came there, the idea was put forward that they could sort of formalize this. It of course it existed already in America, it existed at Iowa and and both uh Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson had

Speaker 111:38

Die

Rose Tremain11:41

had done semesters at Iowa. So the idea, which was very un-English actually, we we certainly then we believed that everything should be done in a sort of amateurish way. Do you remember there used to be amateur tennis and all of that? And so the idea that that writer young writers could be taught or helped to become better writers was in some way slightly slightly anathema to the the the English sensibility, I think.

Presenter12:05

Let's have another record.

Rose Tremain12:08

When I was married to John Tremaine, who's the father of my daughter, Eleanor.

Rose Tremain12:13

We made some epic journeys during the sixties down through Europe.

Rose Tremain12:18

starting at the hook of Holland and going down through

Rose Tremain12:21

Through Germany and Austria, and eventually into what we now have to call the former Yugoslavia, and eventually down to Dubrovnik, which I

Rose Tremain12:28

was just used to be one of the most beautiful mediaeval cities on earth. And the first time I heard this piece of music was in Dubrovnik. We stumbled on a music festival.

Rose Tremain12:38

And Rostropovich was there and he was playing this in one of those most beautiful medieval squares and it was one of those early evening

Rose Tremain12:47

times when the light is just sort of blue and fading and the the quality of the air is sort of like a child's breath, absolutely beautiful evening.

Speaker 413:01

Mm-hmm.

Presenter13:55

Rostropovich playing part of Dvorak's cello concerto in B minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

Presenter14:03

But despite that encouraging beginning, Rose Tremayne, and Angus Wilson obviously recognising your talent, it was some ten years before you actually wrote and published your first novel. Why did it take so long?

Rose Tremain14:16

I think the idea of the novel, the just the the sheer size of it, was was daunting to me in my twenties. I I just felt that I wasn't capable of any writing anything that big. I was continuing with with stor short stories.

Rose Tremain14:30

Most of which I sent to small magazines and they came sharply back.

Rose Tremain14:34

So none of

Presenter14:34

So none of them were public.

Rose Tremain14:35

No, no, none of them were published. In fact, I I know why they weren't published, that I didn't understand the short story form. People

Rose Tremain14:44

Well, a lot of young writers think the short story is the way to begin because it's short. So they think it's easy. But it isn't easy at all. It's a terribly complex form, I think. And it took me at least another ten years after starting to write novels to really understand how to do it.

Presenter14:57

So you're not saying it's easier

Rose Tremain14:58

Yes, I am saying it's easier to write a novel.

Presenter14:59

Two SIMs.

Presenter15:01

I am saying

Rose Tremain15:01

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter15:02

There's more space for your mistakes.

Rose Tremain15:05

No, I I'm I think everything that goes in North sh co should ideally be controlled and it should belong in there. But there is more space for sort of baggage and dreams and extraneous things.

Rose Tremain15:16

Whereas in my view the short story has to be like turning rock into diamonds. It has to be

Rose Tremain15:21

Finely polished.

Presenter15:22

It has to be perfect, I suppose.

Rose Tremain15:23

It has to be perfect, it has to as anyway aspire to a kind of poetic perfection.

Presenter15:27

Hmm.

Rose Tremain15:28

And I think in those early stories I simply didn't understand what I was doing.

Presenter15:31

But you were working, you were your day job, as it were, was as a sub-editor.

Rose Tremain15:34

Yes, I was working for IPC magazines and I owe them a great debt, really.

Rose Tremain15:41

I don't know if you remember in the the sevent we're into the seventies now that the there was a great

Rose Tremain15:45

a fashion for things called part works, which were the cookery part works and the history part works, and these were magazines that you collected week by week and they built up into sort of grand volume.

Rose Tremain15:55

And the one that I was working on was a history part work about the First World War.

Rose Tremain15:58

And um Barry Pitt of Ballantine Books said, would I like to write a book?

Rose Tremain16:03

This magical word for the young writer commission suddenly tumbled out.

Rose Tremain16:08

And I was offered a thousand pounds to do this work, which in 1973 or whatever it was seemed a great deal of money, and I said yes.

Rose Tremain16:15

But I heard later that, um

Rose Tremain16:17

Because it had been part of a series, not because it was a wonderful book, but because it was part of this series about all the great political movements of the twentieth century.

Rose Tremain16:25

that it had sold something in excess of a million copies. So if I'd had even a two per cent royalty, you know, that would have been very nice, but I didn't. But in fact, I don't um I owe it uh really quite a lot because it was a thirty five thousand word book.

Rose Tremain16:40

And

Rose Tremain16:41

I remember thinking to myself, if I can w write thirty-five thousand words, perhaps I can manage to write a novel. Tell me about your next record.

Rose Tremain16:48

Oh, record number four is Nina Simone singing Baltimore.

Rose Tremain16:52

I seem to have known, played, loved this record all my life, and I probably still will love it when I'm very old.

Rose Tremain16:59

I love the sorrow in this voice. It's a

Rose Tremain17:02

It's a black, mannish, sorrowful voice, but it's a kind of robust song.

Speaker 417:07

Hard times in the city

Speaker 417:12

In a hard town by the sea

Speaker 417:20

Ain't nowhere to run to

Speaker 417:24

There ain't nothing here for free.

Presenter17:30

Nina Simone and Baltimore.

Presenter17:33

Restoration, Rose Tremaine, probably your most successful novel to date, been made into the feature film and so on. It was five years in the writing, I believe. Why did it take so long?

Presenter17:44

I think if you

Rose Tremain17:44

We're going to tangle with historical fiction.

Rose Tremain17:48

I think two things. I think you have to do...

Rose Tremain17:51

An immense amount of research, and you have to do it in a s sort of scholarly way. I'm not a terribly scholarly person.

Rose Tremain17:57

But I did endeavour to be reasonably scholarly about this research because I knew the areas that I wanted to operate in.

Rose Tremain18:02

But so I it took me a long time to do the research, and then I think what I sort of quite instinctively understood before I wrote that book.

Rose Tremain18:10

was that I had to let a period of time pass in which

Rose Tremain18:13

the research that I'd done.

Rose Tremain18:15

sort of just simmered in me and became something else.

Rose Tremain18:19

I think that in certain historical novels

Rose Tremain18:21

You feel that the author simply transcribed a lot of data onto his or her page. The research shows. The research shows.

Speaker 118:28

Yeah.

Rose Tremain18:29

So this is why I said there are two things about it. I think first of all you need to do it and the second thing is that you need to forget it and then just bring back and change sort of alchemise the things you need.

Presenter18:35

Hmm.

Presenter18:39

But the interesting thing is that you say you do that, but then

Presenter18:44

Beyond that that very precise research that you use, that's that's that's, as you say, gone through a certain process in you, you then embroider upon it and make things up, don't you? Yes, I made a lot of

Rose Tremain18:54

Things have been that book.

Presenter18:55

Yeah.

Rose Tremain18:56

I I thought again that I wanted it to feel dangerous. I didn't want to know everything.

Rose Tremain19:01

Either about the story and what was going to happen.

Rose Tremain19:03

Or about I didn't want to have feel that I'd researched this so well that there was nothing that I didn't know.

Rose Tremain19:09

So I said to play a game with the readers in that book.

Rose Tremain19:12

that for everything that that I find, I try to invent a parallel thing. And I think the readers of are often confused. They think I've made up the most outrageous things. In fact, often I've made up things which seem quite ordinary and the outrageous things actually happen.

Presenter19:21

In this factor.

Presenter19:26

But what about, for example, the the the heart? You know, there's a point in the book, isn't there, early on, where the the two physicians put their hand into a hole in the man's chest and squeeze his heart. Did you make that up? Well, everybody married

Rose Tremain19:37

That I made that up. And in fact, I I discovered well, the origins of of that anecdote in a life of William Harvey, who was the the seventeenth century physician who discovered, although he couldn't verify this, that blood circulates. And so I was reading this life of Harvey and I came across this scene.

Rose Tremain19:54

where he Harvey is taken.

Rose Tremain19:57

to see this man who's had a terrible accident. I don't I can't remember what it whether it was a fall from his horse, which it is in the book, or what. Um but anyway, there is this hole in his chest, and visible in the hole

Rose Tremain20:08

is this fleshy substance which is beating and it's it's his heart. And Harvey gingerly reaches in and just touches it. In in in the book actually the the two characters actually put their fists right inside the hole and squeeze it to see if it hurts. But it is true. I actually had this verified by a heart surgeon that our internal organs are less sensitive to touch, are less sort of um

Presenter20:24

Do you see a

Rose Tremain20:33

Sensitive to pain than our external ones. So you could, in theory, touch, reach in and touch my heart, not cause me any pain. Record number five.

Rose Tremain20:42

Well, this this is very much out of the seventeenth century. This is Darlin's lacrime.

Rose Tremain20:48

I think this kind of love affair that I have with the seventeenth century isn't

Rose Tremain20:52

finished yet and

Rose Tremain20:54

One of the things well, the thing I love most about this early music is the kind of

Rose Tremain20:59

extreme purity about it. I think it's it's incredibly beautiful.

Presenter22:02

Part of John Dowland's Lachryme, or Seven Tears, played by the Parley of Instruments Renaissance violin consort, directed by Peter Holman. You didn't much care for the film version of Restoration, did you, Rose?

Rose Tremain22:16

I think the film looks very beautiful. I think it has a wonderful sort of painterly texture about it. I think the problem was that.

Rose Tremain22:23

Because it was a movie that was so expensive.

Rose Tremain22:27

What the makers of the movie decided they want to tell wanted to tell was a romance and

Presenter22:32

They wanted a seventeenth century rum.

Rose Tremain22:32

They wanted a seventeenth

Rose Tremain22:34

Well, there's a them the romp I don't mind the rompy bits if if the story had had its own coherence, but I think that's why the movie got into trouble.

Presenter22:34

Well

Presenter22:43

And the book d didn't win the booker. How how disappointed were you? Uh you know, one always

Presenter22:50

Well it feels it must be a horrible experience sitting there in the guild hall or wherever. You know, all that anticipation, all the build-up, your friends are around you, everybody willing you to win.

Rose Tremain22:54

Ignore

Rose Tremain22:58

You know, you've been to the hairdressers.

Presenter23:00

Uh

Rose Tremain23:00

For h

Rose Tremain23:03

Well, I think a strange thing happens is that you you go into the dinner thinking I'm just very happy to be on the shortlist and it doesn't matter if I win or not and then as the evening goes on it gets nearer and nearer to the announcement. You think I I desperately want to win this prize and I hope when that person stands up he's going to say my name and then when he doesn't you you do feel quite cast down for about twenty four hours.

Rose Tremain23:25

I don't know, the book is it's it's a sort of post in the road that writers have to navigate round. I think you can't quite ignore it. I think it's there. I think it's important that it's there.

Rose Tremain23:34

And you can't quiet it. As I say, it's

Presenter23:36

Step rounded.

Presenter23:37

And your latest one, um, The Way I Found Her, your latest novel, wasn't shortlisted. This time you said

Presenter23:43

You predicted that it wouldn't be. You said it was too accessible. What did you mean by that? Not intellectual enough for the booker.

Rose Tremain23:50

Well, the narrator is this thirteen year old boy.

Rose Tremain23:53

And in order to um

Rose Tremain23:56

maintain the integrity of the thirteen-year-old character. Obviously the thought processes in that book are much less complex than in, say, Restoration or in Sacred Country.

Rose Tremain24:05

Because I had to say simply in his mind and what he's able to understand. So I think it it

Rose Tremain24:11

Perhaps it didn't have a sort of satisfying complex the kind of satisfying complexity that would have satisfied the book of judges. That's my own analysis of it.

Presenter24:18

That's my own analysis of it. But why I mean, why can't the Booker Prize be won by a a good yarn well told?

Rose Tremain24:27

I think the Booker Prize can be won by anything. I think having been a j I was a judge on the Booker in in in 1988, the year that Peter Carey won.

Rose Tremain24:35

And I think what emerged in through the judging session is that

Rose Tremain24:40

The personal preferences of those five people just emerge and they're discussed in our year in a very sort of amicable kind of way.

Rose Tremain24:47

And a decision is arrived at. And any book can surface out of the hundred or so that you read, any book can surface. And there isn't an absolute sort of booker criteria, I'm not saying that.

Rose Tremain24:57

I just had a feeling this year that this this book wasn't one that would surface.

Rose Tremain25:03

Next piece of music

Rose Tremain25:05

Oh, this is this is Millie Jackson singing Making the Best of a Bad Situation. It takes me back to a period of my life which was in in many ways difficult and and yet in many ways I think very important.

Rose Tremain25:20

I'd been divorced for the second time and um

Rose Tremain25:24

I was on my own i in my house in in Norfolk with my daughter Eleanor.

Rose Tremain25:31

And we were both at a sort of, I think, a very crucial stage. I had the feeling in the wake of that divorce.

Rose Tremain25:39

in a sense that sort of my life was over, this sort of feeling of failure and anguish about it.

Rose Tremain25:45

And Eleanor, who was eighteen, was trying to get into drama school, which she eventually did, but she didn't manage to get in that year. And so she had this feeling that her life, which she was desperate to start, couldn't quite start.

Rose Tremain25:59

It was an extraordinary year of closeness with her and I think that's I hope that will never leave me.

Speaker 426:05

Making the best of a bad situation

Speaker 426:12

In anticipation of

Speaker 426:14

Brighter days to come, I'm just

Speaker 426:19

Making the best of the bad situation

Speaker 426:25

Although I feel you'll always be the one

Presenter26:36

MILLIE JACKSON MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD SITUAATION. Your partner in life now, Rose, is Richard Holmes, who is also a writer, although of non fiction.

Presenter26:46

And he now lives with you in the house just outside Norwich. How does that work domestically? Do you sort of get up in the morning and disappear to your different studies?

Rose Tremain26:55

Yes, we work at sort of diametrically opposed ends of the house. I work on the downstairs west and he works upstairs east. So we can't hear he's Rich is rather a noisy writer because he um

Rose Tremain27:06

He works for an old fashioned typewriter and so it would be terribly demoralizing to be in the room next door if I was having a bad day and he he was typing away. So we have to be separated by these these various

Rose Tremain27:16

little cubicles of silence.

Rose Tremain27:19

But I think perhaps the the most important thing is that we each understand the needs of the other. Writers do need time, they need solitude, they need to be able to go and do whatever it is they need to be to go and do. And I think certainly this is the first relationship that I've had where these things have been totally accepted and understood.

Rose Tremain27:37

And that this is a mutual there's a mutuality about this and we give each other these things, which is amazingly important.

Presenter27:44

I suppose the the one thing that your books could be said to have in common is is that they're always

Presenter27:52

Your character's always searching for something. I mean, not not

Presenter27:55

necessarily love, but I suppose a desire to belong or searching for themselves, I suppose. I I was going to say to you

Presenter28:01

Is that where you come in? Is that where the parallel with your own life is? But on the other hand, I suppose that's what we all do all of the time. I think it's what we all do, isn't it?

Rose Tremain28:08

Yes, I think they are at a the the characters are at a sort of moment of transition. They are trying to become the thing that they are inside.

Rose Tremain28:16

I mean when I I wrote Sacred Country, which is about a a little girl who believes she isn't really a girl but a boy.

Rose Tremain28:21

People say to me, God, this is a bit extreme, isn't it? Why are you writing about transsexuals?

Rose Tremain28:26

A, I was interested in a marginalized group about which nobody seemed able to talk sensibly but, b, that seems to me to be a wonderful universal metaphor for what I think.

Rose Tremain28:36

we all feel that we all have this internal self, this other self inside, which occasionally appears. It it occasionally manifests itself under sort of perfect conditions. I don't know what those conditions might be. But what is it? It's the person we want to be. It's the person we want to be. It's the person who's who's wiser, cleverer, funnier. I don't know all those things we want to be.

Presenter28:49

Supposed to be wanted be

Rose Tremain28:55

And which we of course are trying to be. I mean, life isn't isn't a narrative. It isn't it doesn't have that shape and it's it's sort of full of of one takes as many steps back as one does steps forward.

Rose Tremain29:07

But I think this idea of aspiration and actually trying to become the thing one feels ones have people were becoming inside.

Rose Tremain29:15

I think

Rose Tremain29:16

That'll always sort of be part of what I'm I'm

Rose Tremain29:19

I'm writing about.

Rose Tremain29:22

Another record.

Rose Tremain29:23

This is Leonard Cohen, uh Dance Me to the End of Love.

Rose Tremain29:27

I've I've always loved Leonard Cohen. There might have been several that I could have could have chosen.

Rose Tremain29:34

He's a kind of he and Bob Dylan seem to me the the great poets of the of the songwriting world. His words are so good.

Rose Tremain29:41

This, I don't know, I it probably is based on sort of the the the tune is is sort of formalized and I think it's probably based on some sort of Hebrew wedding song or something. I'm not certain about it, but it's a beautiful tune.

Rose Tremain29:53

And um

Rose Tremain29:54

I remember listening to this with Richard and then we're going on holiday we went to Greece and the first thing we arrived rather exhausted outside of the little house in the olive groves, opened our windows and coming across the hillside from I Know Not Where, some other rented house, was miraculously this song.

Rose Tremain30:12

Yeah.

Speaker 430:12

Yeah. Let's meet to your beauty with a burning violin

Speaker 430:19

Dance me through the panic Till I'm gathered safely in

Speaker 430:27

Lift me like an olive branch And be my homeward dove

Speaker 430:34

There's me

Presenter30:35

Uh

Speaker 430:35

Okay.

Presenter30:36

In of love.

Presenter30:39

Leonard Cohen singing his song Dance Me to the End of Love.

Presenter30:43

You'll um find your refuge from your fears on the island in writing, I suppose, Rose, because you've as long as you've got something to write within the sand, I suppose.

Rose Tremain30:51

That's actually good.

Presenter30:52

Yes, I yes, I I think I would. I I I probably would be quite

Rose Tremain30:55

Quite frightened.

Presenter30:57

But you're a gardener, and you won't starve when you can grow something to eat.

Rose Tremain31:01

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter31:01

Yeah.

Rose Tremain31:01

I've got to find the seeds first, haven't I? And the or the roots or something. Yes, I I suppose I would um

Rose Tremain31:08

I would be resourceful in a small way. I don't think I'd be very good at building a raft or.

Rose Tremain31:13

Would would you try?

Presenter31:13

And would you

Rose Tremain31:15

No, I think'cause I think my terror of the sea would be greater than my terror of

Rose Tremain31:19

I don't know if you know that that poem by A. Milne, which is about a guy who's stranded on a desert island, and he he thinks, right, now I'm going to do everything in an orderly way. I'm going to find a sharp flint that I can make a needle out of, and then I'm going to find some thread.

Rose Tremain31:34

put through the needle and I'm going to find something that I can make a sail out of, and then I'm going to find something to attach the sail to. And he thinks there's there's this whole list of tasks.

Rose Tremain31:42

And he thinks they're all so daunting that he he doesn't do any of them. And I think I'd be like him. He just sits down and waits to be rescued. I think I'd be like that. Tell me about your last piece of music.

Rose Tremain31:53

Well, this is the slow movement of uh Mozart's clarinet concerto.

Rose Tremain31:57

I think

Rose Tremain31:58

Listening to how music is constructed.

Rose Tremain32:01

And particularly something which is as

Rose Tremain32:03

exquisitely constructed as Mozart, can teach the writer quite a lot, actually, about

Rose Tremain32:08

tempo and light and shade and and mood, the way something

Rose Tremain32:14

robust and loud needs to be followed by something meditative.

Rose Tremain32:17

There's a sense in which all my novels, up until the last one, are constructed like concerti with with this sort of slow

Rose Tremain32:25

difficult, almost like a sort of fall from grace.

Rose Tremain32:29

anxious time in the middle and I think I've sort of learned this from pieces of music like this.

Presenter33:36

Part of the slow movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major with Mark Vander Weel and the Cheatham's Chamber Orchestra conducted by Julian Clayton.

Presenter33:45

Um if you could only take one of those eight records, Rose.

Rose Tremain33:49

Well, I thought about it, so I think I'd take Leonard Cohen because um

Rose Tremain33:54

Then I could dance. What about your book? Well, I've decided that what I would do is I would take Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time, which I've tried to read several times, and it's the sort of book where I underst I think I've understood a quasar or black hole, I think, for about five minutes, and then in the next ten I've forgotten it again.

Rose Tremain34:10

Perhaps by the end if it took a long time to be rescued.

Rose Tremain34:13

I would have understood something amazing. And I think I can guess what your luxury is, really. Yes, well it'd be something to

Presenter34:20

Better have a word bridge.

Rose Tremain34:21

Better have a word processor.

Presenter34:24

Yeah.

Presenter34:24

Rose Romaine, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 134:36

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