Jacqueline Wilson

Jacqueline Wilson0:00

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 two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer. She'd enjoyed a successful but not particularly unusual career as a magazine and children's writer when, in her mid forties, she published a book called Tracy Beaker. It was the story of a ten-year-old living in a care home, unable to be fostered because she was such a handful. It was a hit, and there were more such stories to come, stories that grip their young readers with their realistic characters surviving their parents' divorce, breakdown, and illness. She's become something of a heroine herself, adored by her fans, sometimes mobbed at book signings. She's won all the top prizes for children's fiction, Guardian, Smarties, and Blue Peter, and she's overtaken Catherine Cookson as the most borrowed author from public libraries. And earlier this year, she was named as the Children's Laureate. She obviously knows her audience, but then she says children are much more knowing than we realise. She is Jacqueline Wilson.

Presenter1:23

Jacqueline, your fans don't just enjoy your books, they devour them, as I say, they mob you. You signed in one bookshop recently, I think, until midnight, because the queue kept coming. How do you explain it? Because you write about such

Presenter1:37

To use the phrase gritty realism, why is it so popular? I've no idea. My books are mostly about children who are odd ones out. And I suppose even the most happy, confident child has moments of insecurity when they identify with the sort of children I write about. Or maybe it's also that thing that even if you are very cosy, very happy with your mum and dad, you want to experience other people's lives and see how you'd manage in those circumstances. Or fantasise perhaps about being a little bit unconventional, you know. I mean, I think we all, when we were small, thought, I wonder if I'm adopted, or I wonder if I've got some strange relatives. Totally it. I think everybody goes through that stage. And you write it from the viewpoint of the child, usually a girl, it has to be said. And the adults break the rules. It's the adults who are unreasonable, isn't it? I mean, that's also what's very winning about them, I think. I think it's good, if you're writing as if you are a child, to show what children really think about adults. I try to be very true to each different child. But how do you know what they're thinking? That's the great question, isn't that? Perhaps it doesn't say much for my maturity, because although I'm a grey-haired woman in her late fifties, inside me there must still lurk a 10-year-old, because I find it very, very easy indeed to switch into that sort of child mode. Except that you can't switch into how you were when you were a ten-year-old because it's such a different kind of life change so much. I think basically children have the same worries and dreams, ambitions, but the whole way of leading a life is completely different. And I feel quite sad about it, really. And I particularly think it's sad when you see children of nine or ten and they're dressed up in the most extraordinary gear and you think, oh, gone are the days of pretty little frocks and white socks and sandals.

Jacqueline Wilson1:50

In where

Jacqueline Wilson2:03

In those circumstances.

Jacqueline Wilson2:11

I wonder if I've got some straight.

Jacqueline Wilson2:13

Uh

Jacqueline Wilson2:50

Because I

Jacqueline Wilson3:00

Life has changed so much.

Presenter3:28

Now we are getting middle aged. We shall stop it. Have some music. Number one, what's it to be?

Jacqueline Wilson3:29

Very

Speaker 43:30

To stop it.

Jacqueline Wilson3:30

Uh

Presenter3:33

It's going to be Queen, my favorite, favorite rock band Queen, and I thought I'd choose Crazy Little Thing Called Love, because if I'm going to be stuck on this island I'm going to need some exercise, I'm going to need some cheering up. I love dancing. This is the favorite track to dance to.

Speaker 43:49

Listen.

Speaker 43:51

Hold on.

Speaker 43:52

I don't know.

Speaker 43:57

Hold on.

Speaker 43:59

I don't know

Speaker 44:00

Everything

Presenter4:08

Queen and crazy little thing called Love. You say you do line dancing to them?

Presenter4:12

I have done line dancing to that. I but I also have fond memories of actually jiving in my youth. You can do any kind of dancing to it.

Presenter4:21

Your best-known character, as I said in the introduction, is Tracy Beaker. She changed your fortunes, really, and she's best known because she's been made into an ongoing BBC television series. Let's describe her for those who haven't seen her. She's a tough and feisty little number, isn't she? She is very tough and very feisty, but she's really had to be because she's been let down terribly by her mum, and she's got immense loyalty towards her mother, even though mum never comes to visit her in the children's home. Tracy is outrageous, she behaves terribly badly, and yet underneath she has a soft heart. And of all my characters, she's my favourite. And I don't usually do this faith thing of talking about characters as if they're real, but Tracy seems to be real. Where did she come from?

Jacqueline Wilson5:04

As a

Presenter5:06

I knew I wanted to write a book about a a child who was desperate to be fostered. I'd seen these adverts in the paper of of real children, and I'd wondered what on earth it would be like to be advertised like this, and how embarrassing it would be at school, everybody knowing all all the personal things about you.

Presenter5:25

And so I thought, right, okay, what sort of child am I going to have? And just almost immediately this image of this perky, difficult, street-wise ten-year-old cropped up in my head, and I was away. And the trick is that she, too, writes her own book, as it were. She's writing it as an autobiography, that first one, isn't she? What it enables you to do, of course, is do little diagrams and squiggles and puzzles in the margins and that sort of thing, which of course make it more attractive for children to read. This is precisely what I wanted in that it's wonderful if you hit the right spot with a child who loves reading anyway, but it's even better if you can get a child who isn't interested in reading, actually suck them into a book. But also the grammar, of course, being Tracy is very poor. Weren't you once set as a a kind of lesson in a classroom as to how not to write grammar?

Jacqueline Wilson5:37

And I was

Presenter6:14

Absolutely. And teachers nowadays do sometimes use passages from Tracy Beaker, say, saying, Write it all out properly now, children. More music.

Presenter6:25

Record number two is Mandy Miller. I adored Mandy Miller when I was a small girl. I went to every single film she was in. I collected photographs of Mandy Miller. I would look at these photographs and make up my own stories about the different characters she played. She became it's tremendously embarrassing to admit this, but she was kind of my imaginary friend as a child. So I have to pick Mandy singing Nellie the Elephant.

Speaker 46:52

Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus Off she went with a trumpety trump, trump, trump, trump Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and trundled back to the jungle Off she went with a trumpety trump, trump, trump, trump The head of the herd was calling far, far away

Presenter7:10

Ahead of the h

Speaker 47:14

They met one night in the silver light on the road to Mandalick.

Presenter7:21

Andy Miller and Nellie the Elephant, and that was recorded in 1956. Mandy Miller's films, I recall, had her as rather a plaintive child. She was always up against it in some way. Absolutely. I loved Mandy's films because they often dealt with things that you didn't generally come across as in children's books at that time. My favourite film was actually called Mandy. Mandy played a little deaf girl and she just looked so mournful and so sad a lot of the time. And you you just even though I was a child myself, you just wanted to put your arms around her and cuddle her. But meanwhile you'd have been reading what Enid Blyton in the main I suppose. Yes, and certainly Enid Blyton's parents didn't divorce. Certainly not. So there you were with Enid Blyton and Mandy Miller as influences. What kind of child were you in the middle of all of that?

Speaker 27:57

Yeah.

Presenter8:09

I was an only child. I wasn't a lonely child though, because though I was by myself a lot of the time, I loved books, I loved playing pretend games, I liked drawing and colouring, so I could always sit in a corner and and get on with my own things. But were you a child who who felt secure? I mean, again, I'm thinking of your suitcase kid who

Jacqueline Wilson8:26

But wait

Presenter8:31

You know, her parents have separated and she's moving from one to the other and she doesn't have a room of her own. No room of her own is obviously something that resonates with you. Well, certainly I didn't have a room of my own until I was six. My parents married during the war very quickly, as people did in those days, and they lived in various different digs. We lived for a while with my grandparents. We lived in furnished rooms in Lewisham, but then eventually they got allocated a brand new council flat. And I found it fantastic because I had my own bedroom and I had the luxury of being able to sort of spread my books, spread my paper dolls all around me and just be in my own world. That was wonderful. So that's partly where your understanding comes from of being peripatetic? Well, certainly. My parents did stay together until I grew up, but they really didn't have a thing in common. I'm sure with other partners they would have been fine, but theirs was a very volatile marriage, shall we say, and you you never quite knew what was going to be happening. You said that you found your father a bit scary.

Presenter9:41

He could be scary. He had a very violent temper and he could shout and scream and rant and also he could sulk for weeks, which was a little bit extraordinary and he'd sort of look right through you. However, he did used to like to take a day off sometimes in the summer and take me for long walks in the countryside. And I have very fond memories of these times with him. But it's interesting you used the word sulky about him. You know, you usually talk about children being sulky, not grown-ups. Oh no, no, he could be very, very difficult indeed. I I do remember one terrible time when my school friend was in the back of the car with me.

Jacqueline Wilson10:00

Can I have

Presenter10:19

and we were going up Reigate Hill on the way to Brighton, and my parents had this furious argument. The car stalled. My mum flounced off and said it was all my father's fault. My dad flounced off and said it was all my mum's fault. And that was my friend and I left in the back of the car.

Presenter10:38

Quivering, and I did say to her, Don't tell the others at school, will you? And she was very comforting and said, No, I won't. And then, probably about five minutes later, my parents came back not speaking. But we did actually manage to get to Brighton at long last. Not surprising, then, that you had a kind of imaginary life, that you sat there working it all out in your head and not saying much. Well, perhaps it's a very good training if you want to be a children's writer. But they apparently, you said, thought you were a bit gormless. Yes, when I was very little, my mum was tremendously worried about me. Well, I can't have been a pre-possessing sight because I also had a very serious thumb-sucking habit. So I'd have my thumb in my mouth and generally a hanky over my nose, and my eyes would look a bit vacant because I would be in my own imaginary world.

Jacqueline Wilson11:04

Yeah.

Presenter11:26

So no wonder my mum worried about me.

Presenter11:30

More music.

Presenter11:31

My next piece of music is Accabilt's Stranger on the Shore. I went to hear Akabilt play in I think it was the Jazz Cellar in London. It was very hot and very stuffy, and I was very tired and actually fainted on his feet. And he was tremendously kind to me and sort of picked me up and gave me some water. And so I always had a soft spot for him. And then much later on, my very first radio play, somebody decided that they would use Stranger on the Shore as a theme tune, so it's become a lucky tune for me.

Presenter12:34

Maccabilk and Stranger on the Shore. You were very good, Jacqueline, at writing about friendship, girls' friendships, and you've got three girls in particular, haven't you? Ellie, Magda and Nadine, and you've written lots of books about them, girls in love and girls under pressure and girls out late and so on. I'm surprised you have three, because three's a crowd really, isn't it? Three is. Someone's always left out. Three is a difficult number, but it it brings a sort of variety to the friendship. And so I thought if I made up these three girls, then maybe all sorts of different teenage girls would identify with one or the other. What about you at school though? Did you have a best friend or two best friends? I did have a best friend. I had a best friend called Chris when I was at school. And in actual fact, we're still in touch. We still even sometimes go on holidays together and have a great deal of fun. And did you tell these friends, or your teachers, or your parents, that you wanted to write, to be a writer?

Speaker 212:52

Three is a tree.

Jacqueline Wilson13:08

Be up.

Presenter13:28

Um, I probably shyly mumbled something of the sort and

Presenter13:33

Mostly I didn't go on about wanting to be a writer at school because I didn't want to sound too precious and didn't want to be teased. My mum and dad certainly knew I wanted to be a writer, but didn't really think I would ever have much chance of ever getting anything published. It wasn't considered a serious proposition. Not at all. It was in those days, if you weren't going to go on to university, I'm not sure. I think in those days you had to have Latin, and I was pretty hopeless at Latin. Latin and maths, I think, for some reason to read English by the way. A definite no-no as far as I was concerned. Only good at English, really. Only good. Yes. Quite good at art, but those were my best subjects, and the others were a bit rubbish. And so in those days, you went and did a secretarial training for a year, which I did do at sixteen. At school, my English teacher, who was brilliant and certainly told me wonderful books that she thought I would like to read, but she was rather severe when she marked my English essays with a sea of red pen with sort of

Jacqueline Wilson13:51

Boo nodded.

Speaker 214:04

Peace out.

Jacqueline Wilson14:04

Yeah.

Jacqueline Wilson14:09

Yeah.

Presenter14:41

too colloquial and inappropriate. And I have a little fantasy that if she were alive now and I handed her one of my books, back it would come with too colloquial and inappropriate written all over it.

Presenter14:55

More music.

Presenter14:56

Okay, I often like to listen to music when I'm writing, but it has to be a certain sort of music, and I find Philip Glass particularly chimes in with my thought processes as I write. And you're writing in long hand, aren't you?

Jacqueline Wilson15:11

Yeah. I'm not sure.

Presenter15:17

And his I particularly like his Songs from Liquid Days album and this track, Freezing, I think it's just wonderful.

Speaker 415:31

If you had no history

Presenter15:49

Freezing, written and performed by Philip Glass and Linda Ronstadt, with the Cronus string quartet, the lyrics by Suzanne Vega. The turning point came then, Jacqueline Wilson, when you saw an advert, I think you were about seventeen at the time, um, for young writers. Tell me about it.

Presenter16:05

Well, I was looking in the paper for some sort of shorthand typing job with with a heavy heart,'cause I wasn't very excited about the whole idea.

Presenter16:14

and saw this advert for teenage writers and the Scottish publishing firm DC Thompson, most famous I think for the Beano and maybe the Dandy had decided they wanted to start up a brand new full colour teenage magazine and wanted to gather material. And I wrote a rather funny article about the hell of going to a first dance and nobody asks you to dance. Being a war clerk. Yes, and that awful way you have that set smile on your face pretending that you're enjoying yourself and it must have struck a chord with somebody and so they bought it for the vast sum of it makes you sound Victorian three guineas, three pounds, three old shillings. And then almost immediately they said would you like to come and work with us up in Scotland? So I thought okay so you were based in Dundee. They were based in Dundee. Or are based in Dundee? Yes. And so you went straight up there. I did. First of all two of the gentlemen came down south and they asked to interview me at the Wardolf Hotel.

Jacqueline Wilson17:05

Or are based in the case of the US.

Presenter17:18

And my mum, hearing this, wasn't at all keen on the idea of me disappearing into some hotel suite with two gentlemen unknown. And so she came too, to my immense embarrassment. And we had the interview, and they proved themselves to be highly respectable, grandfatherly figures. And so the officers Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Tate, and they sound like a wonderful music hall act, and they were very dear, sweet men. And I went up to Dundee.

Jacqueline Wilson17:36

But the author named

Speaker 217:37

Do you remember?

Presenter17:47

found myself somewhere to live in the Church of Scotland girls' hostel, where I really had to behave myself much more sensibly than I did at home. And what were you writing? I was writing absolutely everything. I wrote material for the teenage magazine which eventually became Jackie. I also There's a story that that was named after you. Well, Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Tate told me this. However, I believe the editor of Jackie

Speaker 418:08

Well is this

Presenter18:15

has since said no no it was a committee decision. So I think perhaps Mr Cuthbert and Mr Tate had a soft spot for me and just wanted me to feel special. But you were writing for something else as well that predates Jackie by a longer time. I was writing for a very strange magazine, I'm sure it doesn't exist now, called Red Letter, which was on sale for fourpence halfpenny. And it was very much aimed at the working girl, the factory worker, who wanted to come home, put her feet up and read her magazine. Love stories, really? Love stories. Light romance. Yes. You always have a happy ending. I had to have a happy ending, yes. She gets her man almost, doesn't she? Yes, oh yes. You couldn't have anything too realistic or even

Speaker 218:27

I don't know.

Jacqueline Wilson18:44

Light romance.

Jacqueline Wilson18:50

Yeah.

Presenter18:55

Anything with a sense of humour in it. You you had to follow the house style, which is a bit constraining. But I could also run amok in that I wrote the horoscope column at one stage. I think they were. You would just make it up. Yes, only I'm born in December, so of course all Sagittarians are going to meet Tordarkants and Strangers and do very well in their careers. I know. I've always known that's the case, but it's strange, isn't it? People still and I still sometimes read my stars and you kind of half believe it for some other people. I'm sure there are people with all the right sort of training and astrological charts in front of them, but I just, you know, made up the twelve options each month and that was that. Absolutely. And in the end, you found your man up there, didn't you? Mr. Wilson indeed. I did find Mr. Wilson and we joined up and came down south and I sort of wrote freelance ever since then.

Jacqueline Wilson19:08

By physiology.

Jacqueline Wilson19:16

Yeah.

Jacqueline Wilson19:21

And you

Speaker 419:24

This is it and

Presenter19:49

Next piece of music.

Presenter19:50

My next piece of music uh is very much from those times. I adored Dorry Previn. My ex husband Miller loved Dorry Previn. Our lovely daughter Emma loved Dorry Prevan.

Presenter20:03

And I think the track I've chosen is probably my favorite of all time, Mythical Kings and Iguanas.

Speaker 220:12

Singing scraps of angel song

Speaker 220:16

High is right and low is wrong in lime

Speaker 220:21

Taught myself.

Speaker 220:24

Down down.

Speaker 220:28

The iguanas live.

Speaker 220:32

Astral walks I try to take

Speaker 220:37

I see it and throw

Presenter20:38

You spent the next 20 years then, Jacqueline, as well as bringing up your daughter Emma, writing for magazines and books for teenagers. So your writing career was reasonably successful, but unremarkable, as we've said. Yes. Because you were writing much more conventionally, perhaps. It was much denser on the page. There certainly weren't any of these drawings in the margins and so on. There weren't. I tried very hard with them, but they were.

Jacqueline Wilson21:00

So there we

Presenter21:03

I would say slightly more self-indulgent. They were exactly the sort of books I would have liked to have read as a teenager. But then when I started rather nervously going round schools and and talking about them, I realized that ten percent of the the girls liked them, but ninety percent of the kids really you you you couldn't get hold of them, they they weren't interested. And I don't know, I thought there must be some way of making

Presenter21:33

my work more approachable, more s easy, accessible style. But that's the charge that comes your way, therefore, isn't it? That that you have dumbed down, that you ha you are spoon feeding children instead of them being encouraged actually to to

Jacqueline Wilson21:38

But

Jacqueline Wilson21:44

In choppy.

Presenter21:48

Climb a small mountain to get into a book'cause it's worth it.

Speaker 421:50

It into

Presenter21:52

I think you've got to get that child reading first, and then get them a bit stretched. For instance, one of my characters is obsessed with the Diary of Anne Frank.

Presenter22:03

And to my great joy, many children have written to me saying that they have now read Anne's Diary and it's just a wonderful feeling to feel that books that I might be enthusiastic about, if I just have some little reference to them in one of my books, then children might go on to read these. You can help form the bridge, as it were. How lovely this would be. I mean, but you have to keep thinking of ideas like that, presumably. I ask you with your hat on as Children's Laureate, is there a way of encouraging children?

Presenter22:32

More to read classics, to read aloud. I'm very much in favour of reading aloud, not just reading to very small children who can't read for themselves, but if you carry on reading aloud with children, it's such a special thing, and it means it gives you the opportunity as an adult that you can try reading the classics that you might have enjoyed when you were young to your child. And it's a way of stretching children and introducing them to books that they wouldn't necessarily have picked up off the shelf for themselves. Record number six.

Presenter23:08

Revel number six is I thought I'd have to have some Beethoven and I have very very fond memories of I think it's part of the second movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, which is used as a soundtrack in a film called Picnic at Hanging Rock. And this is a film when my lovely daughter Emma was about eight, nine, ten. She so adored it. I went backwards and forwards taking her to the cinema to watch this film and my daughter

Presenter23:37

had a cream frock and pretended to be Miranda the main girl. It it became very much part of our lives, big with hanging rock, and so this piece of music always brings it back to me.

Presenter24:28

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto for piano and orchestra number five, played by Rudolph Serkin with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.

Presenter24:38

You mentioned visiting schools and giving lectures and getting letters from thousands of children, Jacqueline Wilson. I mean, obviously and this has all happened over the past ten years, effectively, hasn't it? It's obviously created a whole new life for you.

Jacqueline Wilson24:50

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter24:54

It has been quite incredible. I do remember on my fiftieth birthday, which is nearly ten years ago, thinking, well, I wonder what's going to happen next. Probably it's just more of the same. Exciting things don't happen after the age of fifty. And my goodness, so many different amazing and fantastic things have happened. So I think this is what every middle-aged woman needs at a time of life when you generally feel invisible. How lovely it is when suddenly everything turns around for you. And your life's been a bit of a struggle because your marriage ended during this period of time. My marriage ended, which this seems to be an ongoing trend, which is rather alarming. You you used to think that if you'd struggled together for, I don't know, thirty odd years, that was it. But now I think more and more marriages are breaking up.

Jacqueline Wilson25:29

Mine

Presenter25:46

I was quite lucky because my daughter was grown up and although I wasn't incredibly well off then, I knew I could earn my living by writing. It was still an emotional blow, isn't it? It certainly takes you by surprise. Weren't you reassured by a young girl in a school or a meeting somewhere at some point about this? This was wonderful. This was.

Jacqueline Wilson25:56

My writing.

Presenter26:10

Two days after my marriage had sort of ended, and I was still feeling shell-shocked and hadn't slept. But I thought, okay, I've committed myself to go and talk in this school. And then the children had happened to read as a class reader, The Suitcase Kid, which is about a child coping with parents divorcing. And I was doing fine. And then this lovely little girl at the end, she put her hand up and she said, What about your marriage, Jacqueline? Do you have a husband? So I took a deep breath and said, Well, actually, no, my marriage has just ended. And she gave me this beaming smile and she said, Never mind, Jacqueline, you've got more time for your writing now. She was the most motherly and sweet little soul. And I mean, I've been fine up till then. Then I really had to blink hard not to start crying. But she was right. But she was totally right. And well, she'll be practically grown up now, but bless you, dear. Thank you.

Jacqueline Wilson27:01

But she was right.

Presenter27:10

Number seven. Number seven. Um I'm generally

Presenter27:14

don't know much about opera and don't very much care for puppets, but on a wonderful magical holiday in Prague I went along with my daughter to what was in effect a puppet show, a puppet version of Gluck's Orpheus, and um it was so magical. So I have to listen to this again to remember that wonderful holiday.

Speaker 428:13

Submis a silence.

Speaker 428:21

Fe tua vi ho losta bianto ser bre titur film.

Presenter28:37

Soumy aux Cylance, submit to silence and constrain your love from the first act of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, with Marianne Arousseau as Lamour and the Musicians of the Louvre conducted by Mark Minkowski.

Presenter28:49

Um how do your family, your daughter and your mother, react to these books you write, Jacqueline?

Presenter28:55

My daughter, though she's in her thirties now, is tremendously loyal and always asks for a copy of a book. I try not to force them on her. And she reads them and she says lovely things about them. So this is quite wonderful. My mum, I think, is proud of what I've done. She hasn't read any of them. When asked why by a friend of mine, she said, well, why should I read them? They're for children, which is fair enough. But she does have pristine copies of them in her living room. You can't borrow them. She won't let you borrow them. But they are there on her walls. You asked her why she never reads them.

Jacqueline Wilson29:33

And how you asked.

Presenter29:36

Not particularly. I mean, I think it's enough to have a a daughter reading your books. I mean, I really don't see why my mum should have to plough through eighty odd books herself. Well, eighty odd books have brought you fame, obviously, and some fortune. You've bought a house recently that you've always wanted. This is so lovely. I live in Kingston, and as a child, I used to go for walks with my grandma, and we used to walk along this particular road, and she would look at this Victorian double-fronted, very pretty house, and say to me, That's the house I'd always love. Wouldn't it be lovely to live there? And last year, a friend suggested to me, just go be bold, approach these people, see if they ever want to sell. And as luck would have it, that was precisely what they were planning to do. But now I'm in my magical house, and I hope the shade of my grandmother looks down and is happy for me. So you can have happy endings. I mean, you've got a happy ending of your own, really, haven't you? Absolutely.

Speaker 230:35

You got the

Presenter30:39

Last record

Presenter30:40

The last record is The Wonderful Dusty Springfield, and I went through so many albums trying to find my absolute all time favourite, and I think it has to be The Look of Love.

Speaker 430:51

The love

Speaker 430:54

Of love.

Speaker 430:56

Kissing

Speaker 430:59

Your eyes

Speaker 431:01

Hello.

Speaker 431:04

You're high.

Speaker 431:06

And disguise

Presenter31:11

Hello?

Presenter31:13

Dusty Springfield and the look of love. Wonderful, isn't it? Absolutely. And she's got such a warm, mellow voice. And if I'm sitting there shivering on my desert island feeling sorry for myself, it will remind me of happy times. What about if you could only take one of those eight records? Which one would you like? I think probably I'd go for Beethoven so that I could relax. I mean I might be anxiously peering at the horizon and this would calm me down and say it's okay, they'll come for you sometime. And a book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? Oh that was such a difficult one too. I think probably I'll have Catherine Mansfield's collected stories because there's a lot of them. I adore Catherine Mansfield and I do think she writes wonderfully and truthfully about children.

Presenter32:01

And your luxury.

Presenter32:03

This is a silly one. I want a carousel, please. A real fairground carousel with lots of painted horses and hurdy-gurdy music, and I will just spend my days whirling round and round and round on my horse. Jacqueline Wilson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been great fun. Thank you.

Jacqueline Wilson32:31

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