Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A top ten best-selling British writer and the number one horror fiction author, known for his debut novel The Rats.
On the island
Eight records
And the reason I love this record is because I lived in a street that was very narrow, and there were cobblestones, gas lighting. It wasn't that many years ago, but it was uh one of the oldest streets in London.
Next again, I'm afraid this is all sort of fifty stuff because that was my, I think, my formative years and I've got happy memories of it.
this in the old days actually reminded me so much of sitting on a a desert island and playing records
The London Philharmonic Orchestra
In Mars the bringer of war. That could actually sum up Any last chapter of any one of my books, because it's all there the big climax.
I still have that record and I still play it. I'm still trying to learn the chords.
Three friends of mine, we bought an old Full Poplar car... we went to Monte Carlo in this car and we virtually pushed it all the way... And on the way down, all I remember us singing is summertime blues.
I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City
This one takes me back to uh New York. I I went over there on a publicity tour... And it was such a good feeling about New York.
Morning MoodFavourite
if you're on a desert island... It's great to be reminded of pastures and hills and streams and flowers. And I know Pierghent was about Norway, but this particular theme of morning, it reminds me so much of England.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:50How daunting is a review like that [for your first book, The Rats]?
Very first book you've ever written. It got a review in which the critic suggested it was thrown into the garbage can... it was so traumatic... And I said to my wife, Well, that that's it, I'm no good as a writer, I'll stick to uh advertising... And I really thought I was finished before I'd even started.
Presenter asks
2:49Whereabouts was this area of London where you grew up, and what kind of an area was it?
Well, it was the back of Petticoat Lane at the market, in fact, around Augate East. The street I lived was called Tyne Street... Half the street was uh gutted houses that had been bombed out during the war... Our toilet was out in that yard, and over the wall was this a vegetable graveyard that was full of rats, big rats. This all sort of stuck with me over the years. I think this is where the horror element came out in me.
Presenter asks
3:49What about your parents? What did they do?
Well, they're called fruiterers, street traders. They had a stool in the market, one in Bethnal Green Market, and one in uh Brick Lane on a Sunday morning. Before that they had a fruit shop in Hackney Road. which they sold as well as fruits and potatoes, they sell coal. Chickens eggs. We had chickens out in the back and uh my mother used to shovel the coal up from the cellar.
The keepsakes
The book
H. G. Wells
I chose that because I read that when I was about twelve years old. It got me away from comic books and Biggles and Jennings. It got me onto slightly more serious reading. … That broadened my outlook, if you like. And suddenly I realized I liked the written word, the ideas that it conjured up.
The luxury
I've got a huge grand piano at home that I'm learning to play. … I think I'd like that with me. And then if I got fed up I could chop it up and make a boat.
Presenter asks
9:04Where did you go to school?
Yes, my first school was Our Lady of the Assumption, which was a Catholic school in Bethnal Green, and that was run by nuns. After that I did the good old Eleven Plus... and so I was sent up to a school in Highgate called St Eloysha's College, which was run by priests and brothers. So I had a a good Catholic education.
Presenter asks
9:32In what way did you rebel [against your Catholic education]?
I didn't go to church. I found there were too many questions that never got answered for me... There were other questions to do with the dogma of the Catholic faith that I demanded answers to, and I never got satisfactory answers. So that made me go my own way a bit.
Presenter asks
22:07Why did you choose that particular form of writing [horror fiction]?
It was just purely accidental that I chose the route because of you know the street I lived in. The environment as a kid, being told ghost stories all the time, Jack the Ripper slicing up his victims two doors away It just seems to come out.
“when you come from that environment You don't realize that you're poor, and in fact the kids in your class there are a lot that are worse off than you... And you never actually felt that you were poor and I certainly didn't suffer from it.”
“I hate violence anyway, and I always believe... That if you depict violence, you've got to show it in detail to show how bad, how nasty it is. I'm not one for Tom and Jerry violence, where that the cat can hit the mouse and the mouse jumps up immediately afterwards. I think you've got to Feel it. The reader has gotta feel it.”
“I don't look to the future at all. In fact I never have. Uh it's going to make a a few people chuckle this, but I don't think I've ever been ambitious. It just seems to have happened for me.”