Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A children's writer who created Tracy Beaker, won the Guardian, Smarties and Blue Peter prizes, and became Children's Laureate.
On the island
Eight records
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
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.
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. ... So I have to pick Mandy singing Nellie the Elephant.
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 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.
Philip Glass and Linda Ronstadt
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.
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. And I think the track I've chosen is probably my favorite of all time
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor" (Adagio un poco mosso)Favourite
Rudolf Serkin, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic
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.
Orfeo ed Euridice: "Soumis au silence"
Marianne Rorholm and Les Musiciens du Louvre, conducted by Marc Minkowski
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.
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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:23Why is the gritty realism of your books so popular with children?
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.
Presenter asks
4:21Where did the character of Tracy Beaker come from?
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. 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.
Presenter asks
7:21What kind of child were you?
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.
The keepsakes
The book
Katherine Mansfield
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.
The luxury
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.
Presenter asks
12:34Did you tell your friends, teachers, or parents that you wanted to be a writer?
I probably shyly mumbled something of the sort and 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.
Presenter asks
28:49How did your family, your daughter and your mother, react to these books you write?
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. ... 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.
“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.”
“I think you've got to get that child reading first, and then get them a bit stretched.”
“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.”