Jane Gardam

Speaker 30:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For Wrights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:47

My castaway this week is the writer Jane Gardham. She's published over thirty books, winning not just a legion of loyal fans, but the Whitbread Prize, twice. Her work spans novels for children and adults and collections of short stories, and is as impressive in its variety as its style, from detailed domestic dramas to fantastic epics. Much like the narrator on the first page of her first ever book, she herself is not quite normal, having only begun writing aged forty, on the day that the youngest of her three children started school.

Presenter1:22

Although she describes her own childhood as luminous and almost deliriously happy, aged six she suffered two significant traumas, falling backwards into a fire and losing the attention of her mother. She says of her work I don't have a story in my head to begin with. I brood and think, apparently doing nothing for ages, and then I write in a huge frenzy. So welcome, Jane Garden. You've described your stories as being

Speaker 11:45

Uh

Jane Gardam1:45

So what

Jane Gardam1:47

Yeah.

Presenter1:50

Given to you to do. Wonder what you mean by that.

Jane Gardam1:53

I think nearly always. I seem to know. Yes, that's it. Off you go. But what happens before? It's quite long and tiresome and agonising very often. Is it worth doing?

Jane Gardam2:06

Sometimes it's perfectly obvious from early on, but usually I wait for a sort of sign really. It's a sort of cheerfulness you need, you know. The miseries are over.

Presenter2:18

You write very beautifully, highly intelligently. You write about love, about friendship, about loss, about happenstance. You won, as I say, you won The Whitbread twice now, of course, the Costa Prize. First for Best Children's Book for The Hollow Land, and you won Best Novel for The Queen of the Tambourine.

Presenter2:37

How do you decide which audience, I mean now either children or adults, you are writing for? What is it that defines those two different audiences?

Jane Gardam2:45

You know, I just don't know.

Presenter2:46

No.

Jane Gardam2:46

I was reading yesterday Beatrix Potter's Tom Kitten. My goodness, that's a savage book And it's so intricate she never thought for a minute whether it's for children or not. I don't think she's awfully good with children. But um I certainly don't think of an audience sitting, children or grown ups, you know, avidly reading.

Presenter3:06

And so how is that decision made then? Is it's it's made at the end when you go back and read it, or it's made in discussion with your publisher?

Jane Gardam3:12

Well

Jane Gardam3:13

At the beginning I wrote for children, so they said about children, anyway, and I had a oh, I had a very good publisher, really, when I think about it. She was extremely tolerant. I wrote some stories. When my first child went to school

Jane Gardam3:27

And I sat down, I wrote them, I typed them out, I sent them off, and after three weeks they haven't come back. So I rang up and I got the editor herself. It was luncheon, she was eating sandwiches, and I said, I sent you some stories. And she said, Yes. And I said, I just wondered, do you want to publish them? She said, Well, we haven't actually looked at them yet. I said, Well, I do hope you'll send them back, because I want to send them somewhere else. And she put the phone down, she said to her secretary, A mad woman has just rang me.

Jane Gardam4:00

And Julie McRae said, find us stories and send them back.

Jane Gardam4:04

So this girl did find them, and she read them. She said, Do you know, Julia, I think these might just do.

Jane Gardam4:11

So they did do, and Julia had me round. She said, Now, what about a novel?

Jane Gardam4:16

Oh, I said yes, all right. In those days you d

Jane Gardam4:20

He didn't know anything, and so it was all easy.

Presenter4:21

Sorry.

Presenter4:23

And so great literary careers are launched. Tell me then, Jane Gardham, about your first piece of music. What are we going to hear?

Jane Gardam4:29

Well, I was at London University after the war.

Jane Gardam4:33

And the war was I mean, it was lots of wonderful things on the B B C, but where I lived I'd never seen anything, heard very little. And um these new musicals from America it's hard to tell people now what they meant. They're so joyous. And you know, I went night after night after night to them.

Jane Gardam4:53

Could get in for a shilling then. And oh, what a beautiful morning It it still makes me cry when I I hear it. It's so joyful.

Speaker 15:02

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn is as high as elephants are. And it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky.

Speaker 15:26

Oh what a beautiful morning. Oh what a beautiful day.

Speaker 15:36

Uh

Presenter5:37

Gordon McRae singing Oh, what a beautiful morning from the original Rogers and Hammerstein soundtrack to the film of the musical Oklahoma. So, uh, Jane Gardam, you were born in nineteen twenty eight to William and Kathleen. You were very much a wanted child.

Jane Gardam5:52

Oh, very much. Tell me. They'd been married for years and my mother loved babies, loved children, wanted a huge family. My father.

Jane Gardam6:00

Rather wanted children too, but he was a schoolmaster and his children rarely were his boys at um school, where he stayed for forty seven years in the same school. But he he wanted a child or two. Anyway, eventually I turned up, but the disappointment was to him anyway, because they were farming people, I was a little girl.

Jane Gardam6:22

And I honestly tell you this. There was a telegram I saw it once, which was from the farm, saying Well done, glad both well. Pity it's not a boy.

Jane Gardam6:35

And I never quite forgave them for that.

Jane Gardam6:39

The next one was a boy, and he became a farmer, so he was all right.

Presenter6:42

So, your father was from farming stock, but he himself was a schoolmaster. Just flesh that out a bit for me. What sort of man was he?

Jane Gardam6:46

Yeah, just

Jane Gardam6:49

Well, first of all, he died when he was born. He passed out, but Bessie Twenterman, who was the local midwife up in the Lake District, hit him hard over the back this is a story, of course, you know. They tell great tales in the Lake District uh brought him back to life again. He lived to be ninety one.

Jane Gardam7:08

and was never ill all his life.

Presenter7:10

And did you ever, as a child, spend time on the family?

Jane Gardam7:13

Oh, yes, a lot. Came back speaking broad Cumbrian, which is lovely language, and they're great story tellers. You just asked the way in in Cumberland. You say, Can can you tell me the way to Aspatria? except you say can you tell story to aspiatria? And um

Jane Gardam7:31

I remember an old man sitting on the seat and he said, Well, now sit down.

Jane Gardam7:35

Thou goest, thou goest upper brow, upper brow, and downer brow. Tell me a bit about your mother, then.

Jane Gardam7:43

She was very much the lady, and she was um

Presenter7:46

He was um

Jane Gardam7:47

The daughter of a a sea captain who was never at home, but she was very religious and surrounded by aunts and people who were very religious. And she wasn't an educated person, but she ended up writing sermons. She wasn't educated because she was, again, supposed to be terribly ill and wouldn't live very long. Absolute nonsense. She lived to be ninety-one, too. And there was a lot of clergy in the family. Ah. And she thought, I can do that.

Jane Gardam8:15

And um her letters were marvellous, but they were sort of rushed off, but there were multitude in us.

Presenter8:22

And he said Yeah.

Jane Gardam8:23

To which she was thwarted then? I mean, clearly she had a talent. Yes, she was made to stay at home and bring up her little brothers and look after her poor ailing mother, who also lived to be in ninety one. But she never resented this. She thought God had said that that was what she should do.

Presenter8:25

Yeah.

Presenter8:41

Jane Gardman, it's time for your second disc now. What are we going to hear?

Jane Gardam8:46

It's uh from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and it's an extract. And why have you chosen this particular extract? Well, it's about he's find himself lost on a desert island.

Jane Gardam8:58

And he's a very rational, solid sort of man, and he thinks no, I'm not going to go to pieces. So he thinks it out.

Jane Gardam9:07

One thing is good, ya, yes, but another thing is better, you know, and um.

Jane Gardam9:12

But what I do like is that Liffo

Jane Gardam9:15

gets it written down in words that you can he gets it thought out beforehand and

Jane Gardam9:21

I think he's wonderful.

Speaker 39:23

I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all hope of recovery. But I am alive, and not drowned, as all my ship's company was. I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.

Speaker 39:38

But I am singled out two from all the ship's crew to be spared from death, and he that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.

Speaker 39:48

I am divided from mankind, a solitaire, one banished from human society.

Speaker 39:55

But I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place affording no sustenance.

Speaker 310:00

I have not clothes to cover me, but I am in a hot climate where, if I had clothes, I could hardly wear them.

Speaker 310:08

I am without any defence or means to resist any violence of man or beast.

Speaker 310:13

But I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa.

Speaker 310:20

And what if I had been shipwrecked there?

Presenter10:22

An extract from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, read there by Samuel James.

Presenter10:27

Jane Garden, your sixth year certainly reads rather traumatically. It was a year when you yourself had a a horrible accident. You fell backwards into the fire. You were expecting there to be a guard behind you. You fell backwards into the fire. And it was also the same year

Speaker 110:37

Expecting there to be a guard behind each other, you fell backwards and

Presenter10:41

That your brother was born and your mother was very, very ill. Just tell me a bit more about all of that, because that's a heady mix.

Jane Gardam10:43

Yeah.

Jane Gardam10:46

Um yes.

Jane Gardam10:48

Yeah.

Jane Gardam10:49

I hadn't realized that the fire was so important until I began to write it all down, you know. It also meant that I couldn't write anything, couldn't do much with my hands for a while. But the other thing was my brother arriving. I think I was deeply jealous, probably.

Jane Gardam11:04

And then

Jane Gardam11:06

When they were all screaming and shouting about how wonderful this baby was, my mother was taken away.

Jane Gardam11:12

I thought to die no one told me what she why, she had scarlet fever.

Jane Gardam11:17

And tho those days it was a pretty killing, horrible thing, but nobody told me anything about it.

Presenter11:23

Did you did your father talk to you about it? Not a word.

Jane Gardam11:23

The patient.

Jane Gardam11:26

So how did you know? Oh, the maid to I listened by the kitchen door and they said that they I heard them say, Well, that we won't keep the baby if the baby gets it. I doubt if we'll find her.

Jane Gardam11:39

With us very long.

Presenter11:41

And did your father was your father I mean, presumably he was pretty upset?

Jane Gardam11:43

He was absolutely lost. It was a most dreadfully sad time for him. But he used to take me with him we hadn't a car, but uh one of the other masters took us every Wednesday, and he got out and he went into this mysterious fever hospital up in the hills and left me in the car with this miserable man.

Jane Gardam12:04

Then he came out half an hour later, and off we went home again, but no one discussed what was going on there.

Presenter12:10

And your mother did survive. Of course she survived. But when she was back home she was sort of disengaged from you, is that fair? She wasn't quite the same. It's true, yes. Did you manage to get on with the brother you were very jealous of?

Jane Gardam12:24

Oh, I couldn't stand it for years. I thought it was absolutely awful.

Jane Gardam12:28

But do you know he died last year?

Jane Gardam12:30

And um

Jane Gardam12:31

I'm I was very fond of him.

Presenter12:34

And how do you think, looking back now, how do you think your mother has influenced you? How do you think she shaped you?

Jane Gardam12:40

Well, religiously first and there was no question of being an atheist in our house and mind you, I often said I was. Yes, I did admire her very much. I felt she had missed out most dreadfully on education, and one of the things that shaped me, though, was not good she couldn't sing a note, and when in church beside her I was so embarrassed. It was awful, and people round about were wincing, and it was very hard luck on her, but also on me,'cause still to this day God knows I'm nearly ninety I can't make a sound in church. I stand there moving my mouth about.

Presenter13:19

And on that note, as it were, tell me about your third disc. What are we going to hear?

Jane Gardam13:23

It's He Who Would Valiant Be, which is the hymn, is the school hymn. I'm not that sort at all, but I still get a feeling of.

Jane Gardam13:32

us all being together at school.

Jane Gardam13:34

It's pretty ordinary, really. But at the end, the last term, you all tears flowing down your cheeks. It's very strange.

Speaker 313:43

The soul is safe in the road, The wind is a peaceful storm.

Speaker 313:53

Oh God, then the strength of the holy Jesus gave

Presenter14:05

Oh, try to stay wrong.

Presenter14:10

Will be with giant songs.

Presenter14:17

It is right so

Presenter14:26

He who would valiant be arranged by Rafe von Williams, performed thereby the Wells Cathedral Choir, conducted by Malcolm Archer. Jane Gardham, is it true that you used to store the poems that you wrote as a little girl up the chimney in your bedroom?

Jane Gardam14:40

Yes. And what do you still have them? No, because I got the measles and they lit the fire in the bedroom. But the wonderful thing in that I was very young, six, seven um you don't mind. You think, Okay, I'll write some more. And what about the importance of reading to you then? Oh, enormous.

Presenter14:58

Don't know.

Jane Gardam14:59

My mother taught me to read very, very young.

Jane Gardam15:03

I used to look over her shoulder, and I remember the moment when I realized that the marks on the pages it's usually Beatrix Potter or something.

Jane Gardam15:11

Meant sounds. I thought oh, yes, that's reading, and I was away after that.

Presenter15:17

And there was a local library that opened when you were aged eight.

Jane Gardam15:20

I was eight. Before that there was nothing. The opening of the library was the big thing in our lives. It was tremendously important. I can't tell you. At home there were holy books, and there were mathematical books.

Jane Gardam15:32

But I discovered books with my little friend Mary, going every week to the library. And what would you take out? Oh, anything. Just anything. William books. That wasn't anything. The just William ones, Richmond Crompton. She understood children so well. And you you say

Presenter15:48

And you you say there were religious books and mathematical books. Your your father, as we know, was uh

Jane Gardam15:53

They were his prizes, mostly his school prizes. I don't think he ever opened them. Were you good at maths then? No, I was not. I was inhibited, as I was inhibited musically by my mother, and always worried I wouldn't be good enough. Though with writing it was just like breathing, you know.

Presenter16:12

You won a scholarship to the University of London to read English. You were only seventeen. Can you just paint a little picture of your life in London in those very early years? What was London like postwar?

Jane Gardam16:23

Well, it was a miracle of a place, although now I think how awful it must have been. Sandbags, everything covered up with sandbags, drab, and all of us so plain. We were so ugly, we had no make up, we had our hair was frightful. The American girls started coming over, and we could have killed them. You know. It was the time when these wonderful looking girls with their make up and their lovely clothes appeared.

Presenter16:50

Did you decide to sort of pay your look some attention then? Did you start to smarten yourself and glan yourself?

Jane Gardam16:54

Well, it needed money. I had a good scholarship, but I spent any spare money on things I knew about, which is the theatre and opera. Tell me about this then, Disc Four. Well, this is Dom Pasquale. That was put on in, I think, 46. And someone said, Want to come to the opera? I hardly knew what it was, so I went and I was absolutely hooked. It was hilarious and wonderful. And my mother came down, big thing for her, I think her second time only in London. And poor woman, I dragged her off the train. I said, You're coming to the opera. Oh, darling, I'm not too sure that I said, Yes, you are, it's wonderful. I took her straight from King's Cross with her suitcase into the opera, sat her down, and we had Dom Pesquale. I don't know whether she liked it or not.

Jane Gardam17:41

I remember her face so well, sitting there, trying not to drop off, really, because she was so tired.

Speaker 117:56

Ignore.

Speaker 118:04

Yeah.

Presenter18:05

Yeah.

Speaker 118:06

Are heading for

Speaker 118:14

Tomzina, Amenin Borno, Pegos Kerza, Devine Fred, Bellas Posi, Chajaniman Porimenza, Tomzina, Hamen in Porno, Vegos Kerzar, Hamen in Porno, Vectos Kerzar!

Presenter18:31

I'm ready.

Speaker 118:32

Yeah.

Presenter18:32

Uh

Speaker 118:32

Uh Uh

Presenter18:33

Novecus que el soro medito.

Presenter18:36

BAAA. And the status.

Presenter18:44

That was Donicetti's Don Pascuali's Aria, Ah, A Sudden Fire, sung by Renato Brousson, with the Munich Radio Orchestra conducted by Roberto Abado. I enjoyed you laughing just as you were listening to that, Jane Garden. Let's rewind for a moment, because I want you to tell me about the moment when you there was a

Presenter19:00

pivotal and significant, it seems to me, moment when you'd gone to a lecture given by the then very eminent literary critic LAG Strong, and afterwards you'd ended up sharing was it a train carriage, or you were sitting next to him on the train?

Jane Gardam19:12

You were sitting next to him on the train. That was extraordinary. Yes, it was. So tell me about that. It is a wonderful thing to happen, I realize now.

Presenter19:15

It is a

Presenter19:18

Yeah.

Jane Gardam19:19

When I was at school, there was a woman teaching, of all things, cookery. Well, we had no ingredients to cook with, so it was a pretty stupid way to go on, really. And her name was Miss Onions, and I'm not making that up. And she said she said, Jane, you're going to London. Now, I have a niece who's coming from the colonies, from Kenya, I think, and she'll be very lonely. Would you look her up? Oh, yes, I said. When I got to London, I thought I must do this. And the girl was so sophisticated and beautiful and rich, she didn't know what to do with me.

Jane Gardam19:54

And it was an awful time, really. I went round the school and envied her greatly.

Jane Gardam20:00

And then she said, Well, there's a chap coming to talk about

Jane Gardam20:04

The novel or something, or short stories. You wouldn't like it. Oh, yes, I said I would very much,'cause I'd read Strong's book.

Jane Gardam20:11

And I was delighted that he was there. In fact, I was painfully shy, almost ill with shyness, not then. I followed that man to the station, and I got in the same carriage and I sat beside him. And he he said, Were you at the lecture? and I said, Yes. So we got talking.

Jane Gardam20:32

And he said at the end, I think you're a writer. And I said, Yes, I am.

Jane Gardam20:37

And sort of

Jane Gardam20:38

told any one else that, and he said Send me something.

Jane Gardam20:43

So I went back in absolute joy, and I sent a short story I had ready, and two weeks passed, and then a letter came, and it was in bright blue type.

Jane Gardam20:57

And it said Jane Garden.

Jane Gardam20:59

You're a writer beyond all possible doubt.

Presenter21:03

What a moment.

Jane Gardam21:04

What a moment

Jane Gardam21:06

So I never f I never sort of faltered after that. I did very rotten jobs often, but I knew that's what I was.

Presenter21:13

Let's take a pause, just for a moment, for some music. Tell me about this. This is your fifth disc.

Jane Gardam21:17

Oh, this is Ravel. L'Empoint les sautiège. It was the great joy and delight of my first boss. I went to Tyme and Tyler's assistant literary editor. She was literary editor and it was a great job. And she sent me this just about a year or so ago, and it reminds me of that wonderful time when I was on a paper.

Jane Gardam21:40

Everyone who came into the bookroom, as it was called, was a writer.

Jane Gardam21:44

or a painter because Pamela married a painter in the end.

Jane Gardam21:48

I married a painter too, and it was a wonderful time.

Presenter21:53

C'est por vie de ferma puju.

Presenter21:58

She will be darling prominently.

Presenter22:12

Shi hovi dutile khudi shahi de pupi se de la kirai.

Speaker 122:50

Two motor.

Presenter22:53

From Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortières, that was I Don't Want to Finish My Page, sung there by Magdlena Kojna with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. You mentioned, Jane Gardham, that you married a painter. He was also an eminent barrister, a very successful QC. You married in 1954 and you had three children in a period of around about ten years.

Presenter23:16

Did you give up all thoughts of writing when you began to have

Jane Gardam23:19

Popular.

Presenter23:19

Your children.

Jane Gardam23:19

I never gave up writing, really. I was writing in my head. I gave up trying to publish anything. I was hopeless, really. I was just far too anxious a mother.

Jane Gardam23:28

All the children say now, why on earth didn't you go out and get yourself a job? But uh it was not within my power and um

Presenter23:35

Well, meaning this was a time, of course, when women absolutely gave up their jobs as soon as they got married.

Jane Gardam23:39

Oh, they did. It was expected. Now you can look after the children. Poor things. I really wasn't terribly good at it, but um.

Jane Gardam23:47

I double them anyway.

Presenter23:48

Uh what do you mean you weren't terribly good at it? I mean, it sounds as if you were giving them your full attention.

Jane Gardam23:52

Well, I think that's probably the mistake I made.

Presenter23:57

And so you began writing, as legend has it, and as I said today in my introduction, on the day that your final child went to school. Yes, I did. You literally did that.

Jane Gardam24:05

Yeah.

Jane Gardam24:06

That's

Presenter24:07

Trillie did that. I'd planned it.

Jane Gardam24:09

The school was just round the corner, he was five.

Jane Gardam24:12

And um I came back, I thought, Right, I'm going to do this and I'm going to lock the door, and I sat down. I don't know what it was I wrote, I started writing the first book, yes.

Jane Gardam24:21

It was a wonderful release, I have to say.

Presenter24:21

One

Presenter24:23

What

Jane Gardam24:24

Was it almost a physical

Presenter24:24

Uh

Jane Gardam24:25

Sensation. Yeah, it was.

Jane Gardam24:27

Yes, it was. I had a little room called the Book Room. I've always had a bookroom. And, um, I sat down, I just scribbled off. But those were the stories that I sent off to Julia McRae. Did you show them to your husband?

Presenter24:37

Did you show them to

Jane Gardam24:39

I can't remember.

Jane Gardam24:41

He wasn't terribly interested in fiction, and I wasn't terribly interested in the law, and it was a wonderful marriage.

Presenter24:47

Is it true that he really never read any fiction, your husband?

Jane Gardam24:51

I don't think so. He kept thinking this couldn't be true. He read mine, but I could tell the pages went over very slowly.

Jane Gardam24:58

And I used to go down and see his work, and oh, those great briefs they used to bring home

Jane Gardam25:05

Page is all over the floor, he's but he was a very good painter, and that saved him, I think.

Presenter25:10

Women often these days are preoccupied with trying to well, the phrase is juggling it all, making sure the house runs properly, supporting their partner and also themselves trying to fulfil their own working ambitions. What were you like when all of that was going on as a mother?

Jane Gardam25:21

Working

Jane Gardam25:25

That's probably intolerable, I should think. Chaotic.

Jane Gardam25:29

Probably the house was too, but it was all right,'cause on the whole we were a creative family. David was painting, my daughter was painting.

Presenter25:38

who was a very noted botanical artist.

Jane Gardam25:40

She she was. She and her father used to go off to Morley College a lot uh to paint and draw. And two of my grandchildren she has a painter and um a musician plays the guitar rather well.

Presenter25:53

And on that note, then I would like you to tell me about your sixth piece of music. Tell me about what we're about to hear now.

Jane Gardam25:53

And the

Jane Gardam25:58

Yes, yes. This is my first experience of drumming and of jazz. I have another grandson who lives in America called Jake.

Jane Gardam26:10

And he is rather a good drummer, and he's at the Berkeley School of Music. And I learned when I went out to see them last, playing the drums is absolutely

Jane Gardam26:22

Incredibly difficult, and rather marvellous. I don't understand it, but I'm terribly proud of him.

Presenter27:07

Uh

Speaker 327:10

Uh

Presenter27:30

That was Jake Gardham, your grandson, playing drums to the original recording of Cut and Run by Gordon Goodwin's Big Fat Band. At Jane Gardham, in your old filth trilogy, some of your best known work.

Presenter27:42

One of its very notable features is the way you write very vividly about characters in their old age. You, if you don't mind me saying so, turn ninety very shortly. Um how have you yourself greeted ageing?

Jane Gardam27:56

Inevitable, I think.

Jane Gardam27:58

Um

Jane Gardam27:59

I don't think that I like being old at all. I really do not. I'd be frightened. Um

Jane Gardam28:07

But goodness, what luck

Jane Gardam28:10

To be ninety.

Presenter28:11

When you say frightened it it's a sort of physical fear, is it? The idea that you're not as physically capable of being a fear.

Jane Gardam28:17

The next thing that's going to go wrong, but that's the way it was when I was a child. Everyone talked about illness all the time, they all lived to a great age.

Jane Gardam28:25

So I have to be as brave as they were, I suppose.

Presenter28:27

Um january twenty ten, your husband David died of of Alzheimer's, and just a year, almost a year later, you lost your daughter Kitty, we were talking about Kitty, the artist, to breast cancer. A very, very grim period, I am sure. And I'm wondering what it was at that time that helped you through.

Speaker 128:36

Yeah.

Jane Gardam28:48

He would valiant B, I think.

Presenter28:49

Yeah.

Presenter28:50

A sort of story.

Jane Gardam28:50

That sort of thing.

Presenter28:52

Yes. Did you manage to write soon afterwards?

Jane Gardam28:54

Afterwards, no. Oh, afterwards I did, yes. Did you? Didn't write at all while they.

Presenter28:57

Did you?

Jane Gardam28:59

Well, during the Alzheimer's, which wasn't too terrible when I hear of other women who lost their husbands, but David never lost his sweet nature.

Jane Gardam29:09

And he was so funny, almost to the end.

Jane Gardam29:12

He still found things amusing. We had carers and they adored him.

Jane Gardam29:18

And uh I I did get on with my work then, I have to say, I I had to, I'd have gone potty.

Jane Gardam29:24

Is your home full of his paintings?

Jane Gardam29:28

He was good. Kitty was better.

Jane Gardam29:31

But um I think David would have been very good painter, but he

Jane Gardam29:34

He said I'd never make money at it, which I think was wrong. I think he might.

Presenter29:38

And aside from a house hung with rather splendid paintings, from everything that I read, from people who from journalists who have come to talk to you at home, they always reference your exquisite garden. What's it like?

Jane Gardam29:50

Uh

Presenter29:50

Very old.

Jane Gardam29:51

hugely high walls, and it answers your

Jane Gardam29:55

Ideas abs. I couldn't live without it, really. We do open to the public now and then. I I heard one woman saying,'O'cause she's broken her ankle this year. You can see it, can't you?

Presenter30:06

Not enough weeding in the beds, yeah.

Jane Gardam30:08

No, not enough weeding. There's not enough reading, no.

Presenter30:11

Tell me about your next piece of music then. In fact, tell me about your next piece.

Presenter30:18

Tell me why you've chosen this.

Jane Gardam30:19

Because it's the sea. It's the sea and the coast and I'm very much um an Easterner, I think. I have to live quite near the sea.

Speaker 330:29

The sea is calm to night the tide is full the moon lies fair upon the straits on the French coast the light gleams and is gone the cliffs of England stand glimmering and vast out in the tranquil bay.

Speaker 330:44

Come to the window. Sweet is the night air only from the long line of spray where the sea meets the moon blanched land, listen.

Speaker 330:54

You hear the grating roar Of pebbles, which the waves Draw back and fling at their return Up the high strand, begin and cease and then again begin.

Speaker 331:08

With tremulous cadence slow, And bring the eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery. We find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

Presenter31:29

That was part of the Dover Beach, written by Matthew Arnold, and read there by Samuel James. Jane Gardham, you're writing your memoirs at the moment?

Jane Gardam31:39

I suppose so. I don't know what they are. I don't like the idea of writing my memoirs. It's a very final thing to do.

Presenter31:39

I

Jane Gardam31:48

I'm trying.

Presenter31:49

What have you learned about your life so far and what have you learned about yourself through that this period, current period of writing?

Jane Gardam31:55

Oh, it's it's horrific. It's like being psychoanalysed.

Jane Gardam32:01

It's quite nice talking to you because it's so much better, actually.

Jane Gardam32:06

You could go on forever with it. It's probably much better to write fiction. Is it a discomfort that? Examine

Presenter32:11

Yeah.

Jane Gardam32:12

And yourself and your telling the truth.

Presenter32:12

Thank you.

Jane Gardam32:14

Man, you're always trying to tell the truth in fiction, oddly enough, but this is really.

Presenter32:17

Oddly enough.

Jane Gardam32:19

Important that you get it right. It's the most difficult.

Presenter32:22

thing I've ever done. Why do you think it has been writing for you? Why do you think that's the thing that has I don't know. It's a mystery.

Jane Gardam32:31

History for all of us.

Jane Gardam32:33

It's the idea that when something

Jane Gardam32:35

occurs to you you stretch out for a pen well, I I do, stretch out for a pen, I don't stretch out for a machine. And that's writers often say that's partly about the sensation. It is, from the head down the arm

Presenter32:47

A lot of nonsense. But there's something. Yeah.

Presenter32:50

Um

Presenter32:51

A few years ago, I don't know if this is true, but I so hope it is. A few years ago, you ended up posting poems around Sandwich in Kent, where you live, on sort of random places. Is that true?

Jane Gardam32:59

Oh, yes. In Kent, where you live, on on to the random places. Isn't that true? Of course it is. Yes. It's wonderful. Because we see we're threatened with a closure of the library.

Presenter33:03

Yeah.

Presenter33:08

Uh

Jane Gardam33:08

And the bookshops have closed down, which is terrible. And what I did with a friend we go into shops and say, Do you want a poem this week? and they'd say eh and I'd say Yes, come on, this one, yes, all right, put it in the winner and uh it's amazing to s watch their faces. I've got some in my own windows, and you see them moved beyond belief. The one chap, a hoodie, came along and sort of gazing in rapture at her at her Solnet

Presenter33:37

Um you have had, of course, this hugely successful writing career. You're in a position to give advice to young, would-be, or current writers. What advice would you give?

Jane Gardam33:48

Oh, try and be confident.

Jane Gardam33:51

is what I would say. Don't think.

Jane Gardam33:54

It's all going to be rubbish, as I did for ages. But also read a lot.

Jane Gardam33:59

Don't just think you can do everything without knowing it about anybody else's stuff, because I don't think you can.

Presenter34:06

What good advice. Tell me about your eighth disc of the day, then, Jane Gardham. What are we going to hear?

Jane Gardam34:11

This is the Keys Choir, Cambridge, and it's Ave Maria, and it is one in which my granddaughter you see how proud I am all this is singing and I have to say that this is sublime, I think, anyway.

Speaker 335:09

Lord is heard.

Presenter35:30

And that was Ave Maria, composed by Robert Parsons, sung by the Gonville in Keys College Choir, with your granddaughter Imogen there, conducted by Geoffrey Webber. And so, Jane, it is time for me to give you, the author, some books. I give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. And what's the book going to be that you will take to accompany them?

Presenter35:49

It's going to be w

Jane Gardam35:49

Going to be War and Peace because it was suggested to me when I was just through college, I think, that it was time I read it. Some one was very shocked that I hadn't, and, as many will say, it changed my life about the novel.

Presenter36:03

We shall give that to you then, and you're allowed a luxury for the island.

Jane Gardam36:06

Yeah. I would like paper and pen.

Jane Gardam36:09

Uh

Presenter36:09

Good supply. Certainly, we will furnish you with that, of course.

Jane Gardam36:13

Thank you very much.

Presenter36:14

And if you had to save just one disk of the eight that you've chosen.

Presenter36:19

I think I would choose Ave Maria. It's yours. Jane Gardham, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jane Gardam36:28

Thank you very much for having me.

Presenter36:49

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews with comedians, artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars and more at bbc.co.uk/slash desertisland discs.

Speaker 337:24

This is the BBC.