Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist known for her First World War trilogy, the third volume of which, The Ghost Road, won the Booker Prize.
On the island
Eight records
And it's a a voice with a lot of poignancy, a lot of tragedy seems to be built into it. But I thought I would like the the other Kathleen Ferrier, the lighter hearted one, the you know, the robust, raunchy, down to earth northern lass.
I think just as Kathleen Ferrier has an absolutely amazing voice, so too does Judy Garland.
Keep Your Feet Still, Geordie Hinny
I remember singing this as in family parties when I was a little girl. And for a long time I thought this was quite an erotic song.
I love his voice, but it's also because it seems to typify my university years, where I shared a flat at one point in Crouch End with somebody who was an enormous Bob Dylan fan...
Four Sea Interludes: DawnFavourite
I want this because it gives me a very, very strong sense of place. When my children were young, we used to go to Alderborough and stay in a caravan. But what this mainly evokes for me is a very, very happy time in family life...
The Dream of Gerontius: Proficiscere, Anima Christiana
We used to play this a lot, and we still do sometimes, and it gives you a guaranteed lift every single time you play it.
Original Cast of Oh, What a Lovely War!
it brings once again the voices of the men in the trenches, the voices that are not the voices of the war poets, but of ordinary men and the words they used.
Appalachian Spring: Simple Gifts
no reason except that it's an absolutely marvelous tune, I think. And it's to me it's sort of got the essence of sanity about it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07Did you know that you could write, or did you just like the idea of being a writer?
I loved reading, I suppose. I regularly got through a book a day at that stage of my life, all kinds of different books. And I suppose it was natural when I thought about what I wanted to do in the future. You know, I enjoy this so much, why don't I do it too? But there was nothing in my family background really which would have encouraged me to think that writing was a possible career.
Presenter asks
1:52How did you think you were going to make a living?
when I told my grandmother, who basically brought me up that I was going to be a writer, she was very, very skeptical and quite rightly so, and said, Yes, but you've got to earn your living as well, you know. So I thought about that. And we lived quite close to a factory at the end of the street, so I thought, okay, I'll work in the factory, and then in the evening I'll write.
Presenter asks
3:38Why did you have so little self confidence [to write about what you knew]?
Why did I have so little self confidence? I don't really know, except that what I wanted to write about was so unfashionable at the time. I think a more aggressive or a more self assertive person... Might have got there on her own, but I didn't, so I'm very grateful to Angela Carter.
The keepsakes
The book
A reference book about tropical fish
I would like to take a book about tropical fish. But it it would be a reference book, you see, because I would be actually identifying the tropical fish. Not as to whether they were edible or not. Not as to whether they were edible or not, just to identify them.
The luxury
Oh, I see. To go and look at the tropical fish in the first place. I would need a project, you see. I would definitely need a project. And I do keep semi-tropical fish at home. So that would also be a link with home. I'd be going and looking at their big brothers and sisters.
Presenter asks
7:16Did your grandfather talk to you about [the First World War]?
I touched it, yes, but he didn't talk about it. So in a sense, there was this wound and there was also a silence. I think he was an absolutely typical veteran of any war in that he didn't want to talk about the trauma. It was too bad to revisit, I think.
Presenter asks
12:15Was there a stigma attached to [your mother being an unmarried mother]?
At the time there was a gigantic stigma, and there was also, of course... It was no light matter, really. It was a real serious inconvenience for a girl to come home wi with a baby like that. And it didn't really help her enormously that she was coming home to a stepfather, not to her own father. I was her wartime mistake...
Presenter asks
18:02How much of [your childhood] informs you still today in the way you think?
I think almost totally. I don't believe that... that a grammar school education or... university actually divorces you from your... upbringing in the way that people... sometimes imply that it does. Because I think the family is so powerful and those early voices and those early experiences, I think you are shaped by them and negotiate with them for the rest of your life.
“I always made it an inflexible rule that whenever my agent rang and said that another publisher had refused another book, I would go straight back upstairs and I would finish... to the end of the sentence I was writing at that time.”
“I think novelists are really made under the table, you know, under the table when they're children listening to the things the adults don't know they're listening to.”
“I think the family is so powerful and those early voices and those early experiences, I think you are shaped by them and negotiate with them for the rest of your life.”
“I'm always very keen to embed the issues completely in a character, or rather, for me the characters come first, the characters and their voices.”