Joanne Harris

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the writer Joanne Harris. For over 20 years, she's been bringing everyday magic into the lives of her readers, publishing over two dozen books in a dizzyingly diverse range of genres. Her creative explorations have encompassed fantasy, short stories, historical fiction, non-fiction, musical theatre, thrillers, and fairy tales. It's arguably to this last category that her own story belongs. She was a Barnsley-born French teacher with a writing career that was strictly extra-curricular and had been told in no uncertain terms that her style was neither commercial nor fashionable enough to succeed. It was also pointed out to her that there was no market for books set in rural France filled with quote self-indulgent descriptions of food. But she couldn't resist writing Chocolat. Her 1999 bestseller catapulted her into the big league so fast it was adapted to Oscar-nominated film before she had time to resign from her teaching post. When she did, she was clear on her creative direction and who was calling the shots. She says, In my heart, I knew that I wanted to be something more than just a finger on the page, following the printed lines. I wanted to drive the dream machine. More than that, I wanted to own it. Joanne Harris, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Joanne, you're very helpful to other writers, and one of your pieces of advice to them is to give yourself a story prompt every day based on what you can see on the way to work or in the street outside. I wonder about your day so far. Have you seen anything that might be creatively promising? Oh, I see lots of things all the time. I mean, um.

Presenter2:19

I sense that writing stories is just about observing things and seeing that things are happening. And I give myself a little story prompt every day in that I describe my shed. Wherever I am, the shed comes with me.

Speaker 12:31

I'm

Presenter2:33

This is your writing shed? It's my writing shed. It's actually a real shed. My husband had it built for me in the bottom of our garden. But it is also a version of Hal's Moving Castle. And it has a personality and it goes to different places. It changes aspect every day. And so one day it can be a flying carpet, the next it can be a rocket ship. And that is my story prompt, the little Zen exercise that I set myself every day before I start writing. So Joan, magic is a word that you use a lot. I think you've described both words and music as magic. And supernatural forces play a part in much of your work too. Where did that fascination that you have with magic come from?

Presenter3:13

I think I've always had it. My great-grandmother, who died when I was three, was known in the village, the little French village where she lived, as a witch. And she had all sorts of spells which she would cast. And I remember them. Some of them were to do with food, some of them to do with the flowers that you were allowed to bring into the house or the ones that you weren't allowed to bring in. Some of them were little rituals about how you had to cut bread, for instance. And it must have stuck to me. She wouldn't cut the end off the bread, would she? Why was that again? Apparently, the devil is in the bread if you cut both ends off the bread at once.

Presenter3:48

Okay, so you can see one of the crusts on there. You absolutely do, yes.

Speaker 13:48

It's one of the most sinister things.

Presenter3:53

Music is also incredibly important to you. You're the flautist and vocalist in the Storytime band, which is the latest iteration of a band that you've, I think, been in with your husband Kevin since you were both teenagers. Absolutely, yes. I was 16 when I joined that band, and I was a flautist, but I didn't really know what that band would be able to do with a flautist, and so I thought, well, don't they have oh, they've got no bass player. So I suddenly asked my parents for a bass for my birthday, for my 16th birthday, and joined this band because basically I was in love with the drummer.

Presenter4:25

You didn't know that at the time, but uh

Presenter4:29

Well, let's stick with music then. What's your first choice today, Joanne, and why are you taking it with you?

Presenter4:34

Well, this is one of my old-time feel-good songs. I associate it with the time at which my daughter was born. I was still working as a teacher, but I had a sense of the future opening up as I'd never really had before, and it still makes me feel that way. It is I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash.

Speaker 34:55

I can see clearly now the rain is gone

Speaker 35:03

I can see all obstacles in my way.

Speaker 35:11

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.

Speaker 35:16

It's gonna be bright, bright

Speaker 35:19

Bright, bright, sunshiny day.

Speaker 35:24

Gonna be bright

Presenter5:26

Johnny Nash, and I can see clearly now. Joanne Harris, your father is English, your mother is French, and you've said that you yourself have a French identity and an English identity. How do they compare, I wonder, and how does it work shifting between them?

Presenter5:42

Well it's strange because when I was a child I didn't realize that some people didn't speak French and other people didn't speak English. Later I realised that I was a slightly different person when I was in France, when I was with my French family. I think I was more outgoing then and I was more concerned with cooking. Nowadays I tend to tell people that my French side cooks and my English side writes stories and I think that's pretty accurate actually.

Presenter6:05

So French was your first language when you were small, I think. Did that set you apart from your classmates when you started school? The fact that perhaps your mum would be speaking to you in French at at the school gates? My mother remembers speaking to me in French as she wanted to pick me up from school, and the other mothers waiting by the gate, drawing away as if there was something that they could catch.

Presenter6:27

I mean, obviously this was Barnsley in the sixties. It was slightly different then. But it did it did feel as if I was I was very foreign. Of course I didn't actually speak very good English when I got to school. I picked it up very fast. But I was that little foreign girl for quite a long time.

Presenter6:43

So that sense of otherness was planted early on? Oh yes, I think I was quite odd. There were lots of odd things about me. It wasn't just the fact that I was French, although I'm sure that was the main part of it. I think I was just generally quite an odd child. I was introspective, I was very imaginative, and I expected people to understand what I was talking about when I said, let's play at this game, let's do that. I expected them to share in what I was imagining, and I think probably they didn't, and they thought that I was peculiar.

Presenter7:13

Outsiders often feature in your stories, don't they, in the power that they have to disrupt. Do you feel a kinship with them?

Presenter7:21

Being both French and English, it meant that everywhere I went I was at least fifty per cent foreign.

Presenter7:26

And an outsider's perspective is not quite the same as an insider's perspective, and so I think I was able to observe groups of people interacting in a different way. But I think also outsiders are the catalyst for the stories that happen in these communities.

Presenter7:42

It's always the outsider that comes and makes a difference, either to help, like Fian Roche and Chocolat, or or sometimes really to put a bomb under the the quiet community and to see what happens. And that's that's always been fascinating to me.

Presenter7:54

Joanne, it's time for your second piece of music today. What are we going to hear next and why?

Presenter8:00

This is one of the songs of my early childhood. We didn't have a radio, but we did have a big reel-to-reel player, and my mother played the songs that she had loved when she was at home in France. And she was sometimes a little homesick, and I think music really brought home back to her. And she was a great fan of Georges Bracins, and so I ended up with a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of his songs. And this one is La Ballade de De Dame du Tangadie. It's a song about vanished beauty. It was translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as The Snows of Yesteryear.

Speaker 18:34

Di temoi au nan quelpé, et floral la belle romaine, archi pie ad netaille, qui fusacousina germaine, et coparlain cambruion de surivière au surtain. Qui boté trople que mène, mais aux sons les na jeantang, qui boté trople quain, mais au sons les na je dentang.

Presenter9:03

Georges Bresson's ballade des d'ammes du tome jadie. Joanne Harris singing along with every word.

Presenter9:11

So Joanne, you were born in 1964 in Barnsley, where your father Bob is from. How did he come to meet your mother, Jeanette?

Presenter9:19

Well he was studying languages and she was training to be a teacher.

Presenter9:22

And they met on some kind of teaching exchange, as far as I understand. So they both became language teachers? They did, yeah. They were a very handsome couple. I've seen photographs and they look very well suited. Were they alike in terms of personality or are they alike? They're very different.

Speaker 19:28

They did, yeah.

Speaker 19:33

But when

Presenter9:38

My mother is forceful and passionate and very French in that way. My father is much more careful and introspective. But, you know, they work really well together, I think. And obviously educated and educateurs. Did their commitment to learning play out at home? Did you grow up surrounded by books? Always, yes. We had more books than we had furniture. They were all in French. I didn't really have any children's books in English. I went to the library instead.

Presenter10:03

And I think because there were so many books in the house the walls of books I was just fascinated by the idea that every one of them was written by somebody, every one of them contained a story.

Presenter10:16

And it was

Presenter10:18

It was just so important to me. I wasn't particularly sociable. I didn't really have a lot of friends among the other children. Books were my friends, every one of them.

Presenter10:29

How well did your father mesh with his Breton in laws, I wonder? Were they welcoming to this Northerner who wanted to marry their daughter? Oh, they were very welcoming, but they were also very French. In what way?

Speaker 110:40

In what way?

Presenter10:42

My great-grandmother, La Mimie, who was the matriarch of the family, she had some reservations about him because she knew that her favourite granddaughter would be taken away, would have to go and live in a foreign country if she married this young man. And so she kind of laid a trap for him and invited him to dinner. Now, my dad really has a problem eating late at night. He's still somebody who's a little cautious about foreign food. He doesn't like to overdo things. Knowing all this, La Mimie invited him to a dinner in the evening with multiple courses, twelve courses, twelve wines, that went on for hours and hours. The whole family was there. Everybody must have been talking at once, because that's what my French family does when they all get together. And at the end of it, after midnight, when he'd managed to acquit himself reasonably well and had eaten some of all the twelve courses and drunk some of all the twelve wines, she went into the kitchen with a gleam in her eye and said, I hope you've left some space.

Presenter11:42

And she came out with an enormous stack of Breton pancakes, slapped a dozen of them on to his plate and said, Enjoy. And I think he understood that at this point this was the crunch, this was the moment at which he would be judged worthy or not. And so he managed to eat the pancakes. And the pancakes are what my mother makes for everyone's birthday every time we have a celebration. It's we don't have birthday cakes, we have pancakes. And my dad is always very, very cautious about how many he's going to eat.

Presenter12:12

It's time for some more music, Joanne Harris. This is your third choice today. What is it, and why are you taking it to the island with you?

Presenter12:19

This is a song that I should have heard when I was 15. I didn't. I heard it when I was in my 20s because I didn't have a radio when I was growing up and I didn't discover a lot of pop music until sometime later. But this is really the story of my adolescence. And it is at 17 by Janice Ian.

Joanne Harris12:40

And those of us with ravaged faces, Lacking in the social graces, Desperately remained at home

Joanne Harris12:52

Inventing lovers on the phone

Joanne Harris12:56

You got to say come dance with me

Joanne Harris13:00

The murmur vague obsenities

Joanne Harris13:04

Uh

Presenter13:04

It isn't all it seemed.

Presenter13:07

At seventeen Janicean at seventeen. Joanne Harris, when you were born, your parents had set up home with your paternal grandparents in the corner shop that they ran in Barnsley. What were those early years like for you?

Presenter13:22

It was um a newsagent's and and corner shop and there were sweets in the window in glass jars. I remember this very well. As a small child I had some sort of bed in the drawer under the till and I could look up and see the colours of the sun shining through the sweets in the glass jars. And I remember this very, very keenly. My parents weren't working at the time. My mother still couldn't speak English.

Presenter13:47

My father was finishing his his degree, I think, and so we must have spent three years living at the shop with my grandparents, who spoke no French. It must have been quite tough, I think, for my mother particularly.

Speaker 113:59

Yeah.

Presenter14:00

But my grandparents were wonderful, and they adored me, and they loved having me there. And so I remember my grandfather taking me for walks when he went to deliver the newspapers, and he would let me ride in the bag that had the newspapers in it, and I thought that was wonderful.

Presenter14:14

Did it give you an ear for dialogue, living among several generations of a family and among all those stories?

Presenter14:21

I think it is very important for a child to have access to different generations. I think it's important in terms of their maturity and their articulacy, and it's important also for a child to understand what things were like for their parents and their grandparents. I used to love listening to stories of my grandfather when he was a minor. He was from a family of minors, but his real love was gardening.

Presenter14:48

And I have a picture of him, aged about seventeen, standing in a garden full of cabbages and if you look underneath the cabbages, there are roses growing there, because he was told as a boy that he should only make things that were useful for the family. But he liked growing flowers.

Presenter15:07

You've written very evocatively about the smells of the shop as well, and scent is extremely important to you. What part does it play in your writing?

Presenter15:17

Well, it took me a long time to understand that my sense of smell was slightly unusual. I also smell colours, and I realized when I learnt about synesthesia in my 30s, that actually this was what I had. And so I do tend to process the world through colours and scents, and so they're very important to me. They tend to be the things that I notice most.

Speaker 115:28

Uh

Presenter15:37

For the moment I'm sitting in a studio with some red lights, and those lights smell of chocolate to me.

Presenter15:43

Because the colour red sparks the smell of chocolate. As I understand it, Joanne, for you to stop smelling that, you have to close your eyes, right? I would have to do that, and then I would smell whatever was actually

Presenter15:54

To smell in the studio, which I don't think is very much. So keep your eyes open, is all I'm going to say. Absolutely, I shall do that.

Speaker 115:58

Sure, keep your

Speaker 115:59

Yeah.

Presenter16:01

Joanne, it's time for your next piece of music, What's It Gonna Be and Why?

Presenter16:07

Well, this is a piece of music that reminds me of when I was in sixth-form college and I met my husband B.

Presenter16:15

He was in the year above me.

Presenter16:17

and we both had lessons in the same mobile classroom, which was full of these rather old wooden desks, and I noticed that there was some graffiti, it was song lyrics, on there, and I started to answer it.

Presenter16:32

And so little by little, week by week, we we developed a kind of dialogue.

Presenter16:37

on this desk and eventually we met and and we we met because I heard somebody playing the piano in the hall.

Presenter16:45

And there was this this boy sitting next to it singing along, and I just knew that it was him.

Joanne Harris16:51

When the night shows, The signals grow on radios.

Joanne Harris16:59

All strange things, they come and go, As early warnings, stranded starfish have no place to hide.

Joanne Harris17:10

Still waiting for the swollen Easter time

Joanne Harris17:18

There's no point in direction

Presenter17:21

Here Comes the Flood by Peter Gabriel. So, Joanne, you were still at school when you met your husband Kevin, and also when you started writing fiction. What were your early stories about? For a long, long time I copied other people. I wrote muscular boyzone paper stories at the age of seven or eight. In fact, I think the first thing I remember

Presenter17:42

Writing

Presenter17:43

that I let anybody else read.

Presenter17:45

was called Cannibals of the Forbidden Forest or something like that, and it was a kind of rider haggard pastiche, and I was I was about nine.

Presenter17:54

and I wrote it out in a little booklet with illustrations at school, and I got another girl at school to help me to copy it out half a dozen times, and we then sold these copies to our friends at school for sweets, which we then ate without telling our parents, and it was the best book deal I was likely to get for the next forty years.

Presenter18:13

Coming from a family of teachers, it could have gone either way, but you became a teacher yourself. Your first job was at Leeds Grammar School for Boys, where you taught French. How did you find it? Most of the teachers were men of a certain age, so it was quite a patriarchal environment. I was fine with the boys. With the members of staff not always quite so fine, I had some teething troubles, particularly with what I wore.

Speaker 118:34

But

Presenter18:37

Completely naively I'd assumed that it would be fine for me to wear a trouser suit.

Presenter18:42

I had this navy blue trouser suit, which actually looked a little bit like the school uniform, unfortunately. I was constantly being mistaken for a boy and shouted at for being in the wrong place. But I was also pulled into the Deputy Head's office. He was horrified that I was wearing trousers. And I said, Well, what should I wear? And he said, Ladies, wear a frock or a skirt.

Presenter19:03

So I thought, all right, I've got a choice here. I can either do what he's saying, or I can actually exercise a little bit of willpower. And so I came into school the next day in a red P V C mini skirt and thigh boots.

Presenter19:17

and walked into his office rather early before the boys were there.

Presenter19:21

And said, I've taken on board your advice about the dress code of LGS, but actually, if you felt like modernising the dress code to include trousers, I have brought the trouser suit and I had it in a dry cleaning bag. And he looked at me with horror and said, Oh, wear the pants. And I never heard anything about it after that. And I know it sounds like a tough beginning in my new job, and it was a bit, but once I settled down, I got really fond of the place, and you know, I still look back with a lot of affection.

Presenter19:51

It's time for your next disc, Joanne. What's it going to be and why are you taking it with you today? It takes me right back to my university years and my bass teacher who taught me all sorts of things about music and I remember sitting in a coffee shop with him and listening to this song on the radio and to me it's one of those golden uncomplicated happy memories that I carry about with me and it is Diastrate's Sultans of Swing.

Joanne Harris20:19

Get a shiver in the dark, it's raining in the park meantime.

Joanne Harris20:26

Son of the river, you stop and you hold everything.

Joanne Harris20:33

A band is blowing Dixie, double fall time.

Joanne Harris20:39

Feel alright when you hear the music

Joanne Harris20:47

Well now you step inside.

Presenter20:51

Diastrates and Sultans of Swing. Joanne Harris, all the while you were teaching, you were writing two, and in 1999, your third novel, Chocolate, was published. Now history tells us that it became an international bestseller, but initially the response from publishers wasn't so good. Why didn't they like it? It was difficult to categorise, and as such, difficult to sell. Lots of people said they loved it before they then rejected it. And also, I think, because it was so immersive, because it was so full of description and colour and sound and scent and taste, it went completely against what the popular things in literary fiction were doing, which was stripped-back narrative with absolutely no self-indulgence and usually quite a bleak tone. There were a lot of very minimalist books coming out. And the idea that this splashy, self-indulgent book about feelings and tastes and indulgence could just exist alongside those things, I think some publishers found that difficult, but it is also, I think, what made it popular.

Presenter21:55

Because it wasn't because the publishers had put a lot of money into promoting it, it was because the people who read it talked about it to other people, and it became a word of mouth success, to everyone's surprise.

Presenter22:07

And a few years later, it was made into a film starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Bernoche, who I think was delighted to find out that you were half French. Oh, yes, she was great. I met her before the movie was shot. She wanted to get some insights onto the book and how I saw the script. And so she came and stayed with us in our little house in Barnsley and slept in our daughter's bed because we didn't have a spare bedroom. And we cooked together and we read the screenplay together and I gave her my ideas. And she even took some things from our house and put them on the set. There's one point where she's hanging some bells and some little red charm bags onto the top of the door of the shop. And she took those from our kitchen and said, could I put these in the shop at Shepperton? And so when I watch the movie and I see that, I just think back to our house and how strange it was to have her there. The film, of course, was a huge success. As we said, Oscar-nominated. And that must have taken things to a new level for you in terms of press attention and demands on your time from the media.

Presenter23:16

It became quite disruptive, I think, at its height, all that. What effect did it have on you?

Presenter23:21

I remember at one point I was down in London for something and my husband and daughter were being pestered by various journalists who are just basically parked outside the house.

Presenter23:33

And they were demanding to see me and I wasn't there. And so they were following Kevin to school with Anoushka and shouting questions at him. And I found it profoundly uncomfortable. And then of course I went to the States for the premiere and to do promotion around the movie. And although I enjoyed it, it was deeply surreal. And I started having these panic attacks. I didn't realize exactly what they were, because I would just pass out, suddenly and without any warning.

Presenter24:03

Was it some kind of glitzy venue? So you'd just be feeling fine, thinking this is going well, and then suddenly.

Speaker 124:03

Oh wizards

Speaker 124:04

So we just

Presenter24:08

You're on the floor. Exactly. At a premiere or in a royal palace or something, boom, I would be out there like Tony Soprano and and

Speaker 124:14

And

Presenter24:15

And it was it was very strange, because I didn't feel that I wasn't coping, but obviously I wasn't, because it never happened again after that year. I I I managed to acclimatise and and managed to achieve a new normal.

Speaker 124:21

Hmm.

Presenter24:28

We've got to make way for the music. Disc number six now, please, Joanne. What's it going to be?

Presenter24:34

Well, when my daughter reached her teens she started to get

Presenter24:38

a kind of interest in musical theatre, and we went to a lot of shows. And this is one of my favorite musical theatre performance and one of her favourites. And this is Letting You Go by Philip Quast.

Joanne Harris24:53

Closing the door.

Joanne Harris24:57

Filling the cracks.

Joanne Harris24:59

Out in the hall

Joanne Harris25:03

Scraping the pain

Joanne Harris25:05

Off of the wall

Joanne Harris25:09

Changing the lot

Joanne Harris25:11

Turning the key.

Joanne Harris25:15

Letting you go

Joanne Harris25:19

Oh well

Presenter25:19

Hey.

Presenter25:22

From me

Presenter25:25

Letting You Go, performed by Philip Quast. Joanne Harris, last December you were diagnosed with breast cancer. You delivered the news of your diagnosis on social media and you've kept your followers up to date with your treatment. Why was it important for you to share what you were going through online?

Presenter25:43

Well, I've shared so much online and I feel so connected to the world because of the social media that I use that it seemed like a natural thing to do, partly because I knew that I would have to explain to an awful lot of people otherwise individually. And I thought, you know, I'll just tell everybody and that way it will make it easier for me. But then I realised that actually as I was getting more

Presenter26:05

feedback from people. I realized that there were a whole load of people who were also going through the same experience and who felt empowered by the fact that I'd come out and talked about it, that people are very afraid to say I have been diagnosed with cancer. And I realised that if I could just get something positive out of this experience, and it hasn't been an entirely negative experience for me, it was diagnosed early because I went to a routine mammogram.

Presenter26:34

And I have been telling people on social media, don't cancel your mammogram, go for it, it could save your life, it could have saved mine. And you know, if I can have some good come out of this, then why wouldn't you? Use whatever platform you have as a person with a platform to give that message.

Presenter26:51

Some of the posts are very funny as well, Joanne. Did you expect to find humour and jokes in the midst of something so stressful and difficult?

Presenter27:01

I think it's one of the coping mechanisms that the human mind has.

Presenter27:05

To poke fun at something which which is terrifying.

Presenter27:08

And so I started doing various tweets in which I brought out the funny side of some of the things that were happening, because, a, I thought they were ludicrous, but also because every time you do this psychologically the the fear gets smaller and smaller. What kind of thing, do you want?

Presenter27:24

Oh well, I I decided that I would give my cancer a name. I called him Mr C. I created a hashtag goodbye, Mr. C, and um

Presenter27:33

And I would basically tell jokes about losing my hair, losing my eyebrows, losing my eyelashes, looking like a potato, all of these things that people thought might matter, but actually in the face of what's actually happening to you, you don't feel they matter all that much. You feel that there is actually quite a lot of amusement to be taken from the situation. Your diagnosis and treatment hasn't held you back. You continue to write and you say that work helps. How exactly?

Presenter28:03

It's always been an escape for me.

Presenter28:05

I've always felt that I was able to write myself a door into another reality.

Presenter28:11

And if this reality is a bit grim, then it becomes easier for me to create another one. That's what I'm doing, and I feel tremendously privileged to be able to do that.

Presenter28:20

It's time for your next disc, Joanne. What's it gonna be and why are you taking it with you today? It's a beautiful song, and I love the middle section particularly because

Presenter28:30

It features the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, and because I'm from Barnsley and my husband's family was from Grimethorpe, that band has been so much a part of my life and the soundtrack to my childhood that

Presenter28:43

I'm really happy to be able to take this disc with me.

Presenter28:46

And it's When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease by Roy Harper.

Joanne Harris28:50

Did it be the staying in the air?

Joanne Harris28:56

Sang in the age

Joanne Harris29:06

Uh

Presenter29:18

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, Roy Harper. As a child, Joanne Harris, I know that you are fascinated by islands, which is handy, as I am about to cast you away to ours. Absolutely.

Speaker 129:28

Uh

Speaker 329:28

Yes.

Presenter29:29

What do you imagine about what lies ahead?

Presenter29:33

Ah Well, when I was a child, of course, I took this programme absolutely literally. I was convinced that it was a real island, and I visualized it. In fact, it's it is a Pacific Island.

Presenter29:45

somewhere just off the coast of Hawaii.

Presenter29:49

It's quite large.

Presenter29:50

There are wonderful green canyons and

Presenter29:54

palm trees and vast swathes of bamboo, and there's a little beach just big enough for me to string a hammock between two palm trees and sit and listen to the waves and watch the birds and the albatross fly overhead and and make up stories. And I'm not afraid of being alone. I find that being alone is is creative and I shall enjoy that.

Presenter30:20

It's lucky that it's Pacific because I think you're very affected by the weather. Does it change what you write, how you write? Very much, yes.

Presenter30:29

I tend to get SAD in winter, and I have a lot of lamps to try to counteract that. And my shed is full of bright, colourful objects, and the combination of the lights and the colours means that I wake up just a little bit more than I would normally. So, yes, I do. I am a sort of plant that responds well to light. And in summer, I write twice as fast and twice as well as I do in winter. In winter, it often feels like I'm quite sluggish and I have to really drag myself to the shed.

Presenter31:00

One more disc before we send you there, of course. Number eight, what's it gonna be?

Presenter31:05

This is one that I associate with my daughter.

Presenter31:08

One of the last days before the world changed with COVID, I remember us both of us sitting in a bubble tea place in the West End and this song brings me back to that. And to me it's a portrait of her and me sitting together in a cafe on a beautiful sunny day having bubble tea.

Presenter31:28

On the Edge of the World, and it is Little Plastic Castle by Annie DeFranco.

Joanne Harris31:33

And they sick old fish, I have no memory

Joanne Harris31:37

I guess their lives are much like mine.

Joanne Harris31:41

And the little

Joanne Harris31:43

Plastic Castle

Joanne Harris31:45

Give a surprise every time.

Joanne Harris31:49

And it's hard to say if they're happy.

Joanne Harris31:53

But they don't seem much the mind.

Presenter32:01

Annie DeFranco and Little Plastic Castle. So, Joanne Harris, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere to take with you. You can also take one other book. What would you like? The collection of Victor Hugo's poetry.

Presenter32:17

He was the first poet I knew as a child. My grandfather loved him.

Presenter32:22

And the arc of his creative energy starts with the poetry of a young man.

Presenter32:27

Then it goes into love and tremendous loss and pain, and then the joy and fun of being a grandfather, and so it encompasses his whole life.

Presenter32:39

And that, I think, is something good to take on an island.

Presenter32:43

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like that to be?

Presenter32:47

I would like to take my shed.

Presenter32:50

Hmm. Interesting. Well, people have taken buildings before. But it's full of things that remind me of times and people.

Presenter32:59

Well, you may have it, Joanne Harris. And finally, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to?

Presenter33:08

I think it's going to be I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash, because that is the track that will always, whatever I'm feeling like, make me happy.

Presenter33:18

Joanne Harris, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter33:34

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Joanne. Let's leave her soaking up the rays in her hammock, shall we? We've cast away many writers, including Maggie O'Farrell, Terry Pratchett, Bernardine Evaristo, Stephen King, and Maya Angelou. Next time, my guest will be the engineer, Dame Joanna De Silva. I do hope you'll join us.

Joanne Harris33:56

If I think I've made a mistake, I'll just sort of pause and try and read it again so you can get your scissors in. Paul McCartney, as you've never heard him before. Are you ready? Revealing the stories behind his life and music. We hear about Superstardom. When the show aired, 73 million people watched us. Drugs. What we had to get into our lives, it seems, was marijuana. Falling out with John and Yoko. The thing is, so much of what they held to be truth was crap. His grief after Lennon's death. I was just sitting there in this little bare room thinking of John and realizing I'd lost him. And his sense of wonder. Sometimes I pinch myself and think, were we there? To hear all 10 episodes from BBC Radio 4, just search for Paul McCartney inside the songs on BBC Sounds.