Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Prolific writer best known for novel 'Georgie Girl' (made into film) and praised biography of Daphne Du Maurier.
On the island
Eight records
This is because my youngest daughter, Flora, used to play the clarinet, and this is a tune that she used to play. It all seemed to be summer evenings when she played it, and I'd sit in the garden and I'd be conscious that everyone had stopped using their lawnmowers because they were listening to this floating out over the gardens. And I love the image of her playing it almost more than the sound, you know, the intensity and the even the passion that she put into it at the time, and I almost envied her. I thought I can see in front of my eyes what music can mean to somebody.
In the Bleak MidwinterFavourite
This is the carol that she loved most. And they weren't great singers in St Barnabas. And I used to stand beside my mother listening to this amazing voice sort of sore out singing in the bleak midwinter. And it was a bleak midwinter. The forties had some very hard winters. And we would have paddled through the snow on the bitterly cold Sunday night. And I think also, you see, on a desert island, I dread missing Christmas. I adore Christmas. All the things people hate I absolutely love about it. So I'll have my own little Christmas with in a bleak midwinter.
It brings back you know, sort of irritating memories in that I succumbed and let him choose my twenty first present for me. But on the other hand, those were very happy days.
I think of, you know, a lot of the Beatles songs I did actually find that I quite liked. And one that I particularly liked was Blackbird Singing the Dead of Night. And at the end of it, I think there is a blackbird singing, and it would be rather nice on a desert island to have the nice homely blackbird.
This is for my mother-in-law, really. She was Scottish and she loved poetry and songs. And when the children were very little, she bought them along playing a record of Scottish songs, and she would dance with them. And I have, again, it's a question of images rather than the music. I have such a lovely image of Jake and Caitlin, Flora wasn't born at the time, and my mother-in-law all dancing round to this record. And the tune the children liked best was Mary's Wedding, which of course is a very jolly Scottish tune.
On these long drives in the car, I had to learn to put up with some music, because everybody else in the family likes music. It clearly wasn't fair. And one of the ones that I found I could tolerate better than most, funnily enough, was Bob Marley. And again, it was a question of the words, because No Woman, No Cry, which is the one I've chosen, has very interesting words. So I used to after the wretched tune was finished, I used to try and get them to analyse the words of the poem.
Ossie's Dream (Spurs Are on Their Way to Wembley)
Chas & Dave and Tottenham Hotspur FA Cup Squad
One of the funniest things ever was when my son was fifteen and like his father he was a great Tottenham Hotspur fan. ... And he came back after the replay when they'd won it, and I opened the door, and there's this still ashen face, but this time with all the sort of euphoria, and he was singing Totting'um, Totting'um, you know, the awful song that Ossie Ardelius. Well, poor Ossie isn't this year going to Wembley or anywhere else, so it's perhaps a bit cruel, but I think for a really good laugh I would like to have Ossie's dream.
Plymouth Festival Chorus and Orchestra
When my eldest, Caitlin, was in America doing an MA there after her English degree, she sent me a photograph of herself with a group of women, and they were marching to reclaim the night. They were picketing cinemas where pornographic films were shown. And I felt so proud of her. ... I've often wondered would I have been a suffragette? And the dreadful answer is I probably wouldn't have had the nerve. So I thought I'd choose March of the Women to sort of celebrate the suffragettes.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:28What is it that you hate about the cult of the author, Margaret? Is it the literary festivals, the public performance, or just the people?
No, I don't think it's any of those things. I think what it is is that what I want to do is sit in my little room and write, full stop. That's what I want to do.
Presenter asks
4:07Your second novel, Georgie Girl, was a great hit. Do you remember it with pride?
Oh, certainly not. No, it's like an albatross round my neck. I mean, I'm suitably grateful to it because it, you know, got me started and gave me some money from the film and all that kind of thing. So of course I'm grateful, but I mean to think that it's still in print and it's still sort of being around sort of fills me with grief really. It's almost as though you know I've done nothing since.
Presenter asks
6:21But you were also driven by a desire for material gain, weren't you? You wanted to make something of yourself.
Well, it wasn't I did want things, but it wasn't so much that. It was more that I didn't want the lives I could see around me. because the lives I could see around me were hard lives. In which the women in particular, I mean, what did they do? They got up first thing in the morning. You know, had the went out to their cold, freezing wash houses, that did all these great you know, the sort of thing. I mean, their lives were hard, hard and pretty cheerless. And growing up I didn't want that. So it seemed to me that to avoid that kind of life, to escape, if you like, involved money. It was a quite simple equation that I worked out for myself, as many people do. But it wasn't the desire to have, you know, jewels, yachts, fur cooked. I never ever wanted that kind of thing. But I did want a different way of life.
The keepsakes
The book
V.S. Naipaul
out of all the hundreds that I've read over the last, what, thirty or forty years, the one that I think I could bear to reread and thoroughly enjoy, because I thought at the time it was the most brilliant novel, is A House for Mr [Biswas]
The luxury
Unlimited supply of A4 white paper and cartridges for a Waterman fountain pen
I want an unlimited supply of A four white paper and cartridges for my Waterman fountain pen.
Presenter asks
13:22You and Hunter have written some fifty or more books between you. Do you work together or apart? Do you advise each other?
We work very apart indeed determinedly. The day he gave up his uh full time job as a journalist, you know, was really a pretty black day for me, because I'd spent all my time trying to get peace and quiet to write in, dodging between picking children up from school, the sort of thing, you know, we all do. And then when he announced, with great satisfaction, that he was going to work full time from home now, I thought, well, this just it'll it'll be a disaster. And at first it was, because being a journalist and with the sort of character he's got, he likes response to everything. I mean, the minute he writes a line, he wants to show it. What do you think? What do you think? And the other thing is that he drinks cups of coffee about every ten minutes and he, you know, wants distraction of every sort because he was used to working in a newspaper office. And I just can't do that. I mean, I want to go into my room and close the door, and that is it, till I come out again at the end of the morning.
Presenter asks
16:03How do you manage to run the children and their lives as well as write? You've never had any help, you enjoy housework. How do you do all of that and write as well?
Well, it's been done in different ways. I mean, at first, when the children were very small, it was done just on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings, which was Hunter's weekend off. And so I used to have a deal where from he would give them, you know, feed them and put them to bed, and I would write for two or three hours each of those three evenings. That's how it was done then. And then when they started to go to school, it was done the minute that they'd been delivered to nursery school. And so it's just extended itself. And everything else has been fitted in around the corners. But also, you see, for me anyway, this writing was an energy giving process. I would often sit down shattered, especially when the children were very young, and I didn't have a particularly good baby, it's probably my fault. But an awful lot of crying went on, an awful lot of nights. And so I'd drag myself through the day and get to this sort of three evenings a week when it was my turn to write. And I'd think I'm so tired. I can't write anything. But then when I started, when I finished it, I'd feel great.
Presenter asks
31:14What do you think you'll miss most on your desert island, books or people?
Oh, people. I mean, the thing is I'm that um quite common contradiction, I think, that I am antisocial, I'm not gregarious, I do like to be on my own, all that kind of thing. That is absolutely genuine. But at the same time I know perfectly well I've got no illusions. I need people. I need people to watch and to listen to rather than to relate to.
“I want to do is sit in my little room and write, full stop.”
“It's like an albatross round my neck.”
“I didn't want the lives I could see around me.”
“I never show anybody anything I do.”
“I need people to watch and to listen to rather than to relate to.”