Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist who writes about contemporary marriage, divorce, and everyday life; best known for The Rector's Wife and A Spanish Lover.
On the island
Eight records
Dawn (First Sea Interlude) from Peter Grimes
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Colin Davis
Because of its Englishness it it really reminds me of all those endless childhood holidays, standing on a pebbly beach somewhere looking at the ginger beer sea.
Concerto in D major for Guitar and Strings, RV 93
This is really in honour of Venice. I was taken to Venice very, very late in life, in my mid-forties, and also shown the world of the Italian old masters, and it was an absolute revelation.
Those years after the war which should have been so full of relief, and I just remember them being dark and cold and unhappy and going on forever. And my mother played this over and over again.
I went to America when I was nineteen and heard Joan Baez in concert, and was absolutely bowled over. … this was in the days when she was singing these beautiful pure ballads.
I have a double tape of his on cassette in the kitchen, and occasionally the dogs and a saucepan and I have a little bop to Elvis on our own in the kitchen.
I've chosen this song because I have lived in the country really all my life … It's Manhattan because it seemed to epitomise for me the absolute glamour of city life.
This is Scotland, really. My grandmother and my mother were both born in Glasgow, which is a city I absolutely adore. … when you wake up in the morning on the shores of Loch Fein and you hear this coming out of the kitchen, you know that all is well downstairs.
Laudamus Te from Great Mass in C minor, K. 427Favourite
Diana Montagu, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
This record seems to symbolize for me this amazing thing that's happened to me in the middle of my life. This sudden flowering into a career and a and a communication and a satisfaction that I never dreamt of having.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:56What's different about the nineties, Joanna? Do we require something different from our contemporary fiction than we required in the eighties?
I think the nineties are more sober. I think if my novels had appeared ten years ago, at the beginning of the eighties, they'd have sunk without trace. … But this is the end of a century, you know, this is a reflective time and we've got over that rather greedy decade of the eighties. … We we've just had to become a bit more reflective.
Presenter asks
4:52You say you write about how much of England lives, but your books are essentially about middle class people – vicars, doctors, a television presenter. People have called them Aga Sagas. You don't like that?
Well, the joke's worn a little thin. I think it's rather an urban joke, and I think it's a rather patronising one. … I think I write about the provinces. … I would prefer something like the striving classes, you know, people who are interested in education, in improvement in life, in better social welfare in culture, you know, people with aspiration.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Helen Gardner
Because you see I can read poems to my lizards, can't I? And I can learn a bit of poetry every day. And it's a whole cantor through English literature. I mean, what more could one ask for?
The luxury
a bed with unlimited supply of white Egyptian cotton sheets
This is without question a perfectly wonderful bed, and if I am allowed it as well, an unlimited supply of white Egyptian cotton sheets. Am I allowed both? ... Why not Egyptian cotton, I think? Oh, no, just an unlimited supply, so they could perhaps be stored in a cave until the navy, dressed in white ducks, rescue me.
Your rector's wife makes a bid for freedom by taking a job stacking shelves in a supermarket and the local parish disapprove. Would that happen any more? Do people really disapprove?
Nothing nothing that happens to Anna in the Rector's Wife have I invented, except the character herself. I interviewed an enormous number of country priests' wives before I wrote the book. And all Anna's escapades are real life escapades. … Provincial life is still very provincial, despite communications. And there's still an enormous number of people live out there. Still women out there whose husbands might forbid them to go to work.
Presenter asks
7:01Who reads your books, to your knowledge, and who writes to you? Who reacts to them?
They are the men are saying, It's such a relief to read fiction where we are allowed to have feelings too, because one of the aspects of feminism they found so disconcerting was the capturing of the high emotional ground. … They want to say, Have you just got a minute because I'd like to tell you about this or that.
Presenter asks
10:24Your husband, Ian Curtis, encouraged you to write contemporary fiction instead of historical romance. Why and how did he do that?
Well, he he was really very patient about it. … I said to him one day, you know, I feel I'm absolutely up a cul-de-sac … And he said to me, Well, I've been longing for you to say this, because what I wanted to say in return was, I think it's time you came out of the historical cupboard and went to the supermarket. … I immediately said, I can't possibly do that. What'll I do without the crutch of all that research to lurk behind?
Presenter asks
18:55You said the most unconventional thing you ever did was to get a divorce. Is that true? Was it a shock when it happened to you?
Yes. I I mean, I think it's right it should be a shock. … It throws your world completely, and it's a long time before you find equilibrium again. But if you're going to do anything as serious as that, it should have shock waves as great as that. It is like a death, isn't it? It is a death. … it is an incredibly serious decision.
“I think the nineties are more sober. I think if my novels had appeared ten years ago, at the beginning of the eighties, they'd have sunk without trace.”
“life cannot be all sensation, dear. It is Monday to Friday as well, and that's the Monday to Friday is what you have to live with.”
“They take charge, they grasp the steering wheel, and it may be a very uncomfortable one. But they do grasp it, and of course for me that's a marvellous moment to describe.”
“I think it's time you came out of the historical cupboard and went to the supermarket.”
“It throws your world completely, and it's a long time before you find equilibrium again. But if you're going to do anything as serious as that, it should have shock waves as great as that. It is like a death, isn't it? It is a death.”
“this sudden flowering into a career and a and a communication and a satisfaction that I never dreamt of having.”