:00:00. > :00:06.region 's first semiautonomous counsel. —— Council. It comes after
:00:06. > :00:11.a 30 year war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Now, it is
:00:11. > :00:22.time for Talking Books. Alan time for Talking Books. Alan
:00:22. > :00:37.landscape. His characters rarely whose critically acclaimed
:00:37. > :00:39.landscape. His characters rarely likeable but always interesting
:00:39. > :00:40.landscape. His characters rarely his modulated prose is put to great
:00:40. > :00:47.effect not least in his frank effect not least in his frank
:00:47. > :00:53.depictions of gay sex. Alan Hollinghurst, welcome to the
:00:53. > :01:02.programme. Thank you.I want to start with the bigger picture, the
:01:02. > :01:02.of your fiction, tracking the emergence of homosexuality as a
:01:02. > :01:10.shaping force in Britain Society, emergence of homosexuality as a
:01:10. > :01:14.from writing poetry, which you won prizes for at university in Oxford,
:01:14. > :01:18.did you think this is what you had in the back of your mind the whole
:01:18. > :01:23.time? I think they thought they might do both Matt actually, but
:01:23. > :01:28.there was a moment when idealised that all of my energies had switched
:01:28. > :01:33.from short form to the bigger one. It was when I was writing The
:01:33. > :01:39.Swimming Pool Library, my first one, Swimming Pool Library, my first one,
:01:39. > :01:42.that I suddenly got access to this wonderful new area of material that
:01:42. > :01:48.had not really been written about in literary fiction in England at that
:01:48. > :01:55.interesting. In 1967, there was the interesting. In 1967, there was the
:01:55. > :01:58.sexual offences act, which decriminalised homosexuality in
:01:58. > :02:03.England. The law changed overnight. The other changes were much slower
:02:03. > :02:05.in coming about. When I was a graduate student at Oxford, I worked
:02:05. > :02:10.on gay writers who had not been able on gay writers who had not been able
:02:10. > :02:16.to write openly about their sexuality. People like Forster. The
:02:16. > :02:22.whole subject was very much in my mind. Yes, I felt very fortunate,
:02:22. > :02:27.really, that eye had all of this stuff, this new stuff to write
:02:27. > :02:29.about. And the novel became just this irresistible medium for that.
:02:29. > :02:33.When you say fortunate, was there any nervousness attached to tackling
:02:33. > :02:40.the subject? A little, perhaps. It's the subject? A little, perhaps. It's
:02:40. > :02:53.beginning of 1984, so newly 30 years was. Started writing at
:02:53. > :02:54.beginning of 1984, so newly 30 years ago. Yes, there is something magical
:02:54. > :02:59.about writing about writing a first novel of
:02:59. > :03:00.course, because no one knows what you are doing and no one has any
:03:00. > :03:03.particular expectations of it. It particular expectations of it. It
:03:03. > :03:10.place that eye went to when I got place that eye went to when I got
:03:10. > :03:13.home from work. —— that I went to. I was just convinced that everyone had
:03:13. > :03:20.a good idea convinced, even though they might be
:03:20. > :03:25.wrong, that they are doing something interesting. And that carried me
:03:25. > :03:31.through passages of through passages of nervousness.
:03:31. > :03:36.There were times that I was nervous and I was very fortunate that my
:03:36. > :03:38.friend Andrew motion, we always showed each other our work. I showed
:03:38. > :03:43.him that work and he rang me up the him that work and he rang me up the
:03:43. > :03:45.next day and said he wanted to publish it. I did not have to go
:03:45. > :03:51.through... The agonies of through... The agonies of
:03:51. > :03:55.prepublication and projection. Yes, it was impossible to sell the
:03:55. > :04:02.paperback rights before publication. People thought this isn't going to
:04:02. > :04:05.work. I was not very widely noticed. Let's talk about why there was
:04:05. > :04:08.difficulty in selling the paperback rights. Because it was a book that
:04:08. > :04:13.made an incredible impact when it was published. Philip Hench said it
:04:13. > :04:22.was extremely important of his generation. Before This Important
:04:22. > :04:26.Library, you could not imagine a novel about gay life appealing to
:04:27. > :04:31.anyone else. It's essentially a story about a young Mr cracked to
:04:31. > :04:39.save the life of an elderly Mr cracked. —— a young barrister
:04:39. > :04:44.cracked —— nobleman who saves the life of an elderly nobleman. In
:04:44. > :04:49.ways exhilaratingly libidinous. It's ways exhilaratingly libidinous.
:04:49. > :04:57.full of sex, pre— AIDS pleasure, in full of sex, pre— AIDS pleasure, in
:04:57. > :05:01.the gay community. But it created a real shock. And a wonder whether he
:05:01. > :05:07.wanted that to be the case. I hoped it would surprise more than shock.
:05:07. > :05:13.Some people were genuinely shocked by it and some were anxious to show
:05:13. > :05:17.that they were. Some people have that reflex when they are shocked to
:05:17. > :05:26.say that they were bored. Some people regard it as almost in and
:05:26. > :05:28.and logical way, as if I had taken the lead of some area of human
:05:28. > :05:32.activity they did not know about before —— in and anthropological
:05:32. > :05:41.way. Others way. Others took to it more
:05:41. > :05:48.naturally, I think. Shock is rather a short—term effect to go for. Now,
:05:49. > :05:58.I think to most reasonably literate Western readers, the book would
:05:58. > :06:06.hardly be shopping at all —— shocking at all. So, I don't suppose
:06:06. > :06:10.that was the effect... I suppose one intention was that you could take
:06:10. > :06:16.gay life as much for granted as most novels take heterosexual life. That
:06:16. > :06:20.seemed to be part of my good idea, to write from a gay point of view
:06:20. > :06:26.completely without explanation or apology, but just to show that this
:06:26. > :06:29.was as natural a thing for a gay person as for the majority of
:06:29. > :06:35.heterosexual writers to write from their point of view. Did the
:06:35. > :06:42.opinion... The nervousness about a paperback publication shift because
:06:42. > :06:47.of the critical acclaim? I think so, yes. The book was in the top ten
:06:47. > :07:00.bestsellers for a couple of months and so it became a property of some
:07:00. > :07:05.commercial interest. So, yes, people overcame their own uncertainty and
:07:05. > :07:08.there was an exciting bidding war. The ease with which were published,
:07:08. > :07:18.with Andrew Motion at Chatto saying suggests that you had an easy way
:07:18. > :07:30.suspect not. Hard to say. I didn't Did that lessen the excitement?
:07:30. > :07:31.suspect not. Hard to say. I didn't know anything else. It was a fact
:07:31. > :07:41.the time that eye was the debit the time that eye
:07:41. > :07:57.from the establishment, as it were. editor
:07:57. > :08:02.from the establishment, as it were. I want to talk about The Line Of
:08:02. > :08:08.Beauty because it is very erudite and so on, but which you made the
:08:08. > :08:09.Man Booker Prize. It also has lots of gay sex. We have this character,
:08:09. > :08:15.Nick Guest, who goes to Oxford. He Nick Guest, who goes to Oxford. He
:08:15. > :08:21.is a Henry James scholar. In many ways, the spirit of Henry James
:08:21. > :08:24.becomes completely enamoured of this becomes completely enamoured of this
:08:24. > :08:29.high Tory family that lives in central London, this very powerful
:08:29. > :08:35.family. There is an encounter with Mrs Thatcher in the book. He dances
:08:36. > :08:39.with Mrs Thatcher. He is sort of a cuckoo in the nest, if you like. And
:08:39. > :08:45.it charts the rise of Thatcherism and AIDS. The sickness and
:08:45. > :08:48.disillusionment they left behind, almost in a way we are still feeling
:08:48. > :08:54.the ramifications of today. Yes, the ramifications of today. Yes,
:08:54. > :08:59.that's right. I think when I'm finished the swimming pool library,
:09:00. > :09:04.the world that eye started writing it in had changed very significantly
:09:04. > :09:11.because of AIDS and also because of this period of political upheaval.
:09:11. > :09:14.Tepper mentally, perhaps I am not the kind of writer that wants to
:09:14. > :09:17.write fiction immediately that responds to what is going on at the
:09:17. > :09:25.write fiction immediately that moment —— temperamentally. Eye could
:09:25. > :09:28.see the AIDS crisis as part of the larger historical picture. Eye was
:09:28. > :09:37.not writing an issue novel about that. Eye like to write —— I like to
:09:37. > :09:41.write novels where there are at least two narrative strands that
:09:41. > :09:46.cross over. It was interesting for me to read the book in the wake of
:09:46. > :09:50.as if it was the most acute as if it
:09:50. > :10:02.glad. They thought the book was dissection of that period. I am very
:10:02. > :10:03.glad. They thought the book was rather more —— there seemed to be a
:10:04. > :10:11.rather rosy looking back at that period. Culminating with the state
:10:11. > :10:16.funeral. In this book, iPhoto would not write about this thing that was
:10:16. > :10:20.so terrible at the time from an oppositional perspective, which
:10:20. > :10:25.would be so tedious and predictable, but from the perspective of someone
:10:25. > :10:28.who was rather seduced by it, and for that to be effective and
:10:28. > :10:31.interesting to me, I had to make him a kind of innocence in a way. And so
:10:31. > :10:34.he was drawn to this world he was drawn to this world of
:10:34. > :10:39.But as they say, he remains But as they say, he remains
:10:39. > :10:50.fundamentally an outsider. And he is welcomed into this world and is
:10:50. > :10:54.expelled from it at the end. Your prose is very easily modulated, even
:10:54. > :10:59.when you are fighting very racy sex scenes and that would interest a lot
:10:59. > :11:04.of people in terms of trying to unpack its —— writing. Although some
:11:04. > :11:06.of the sexual scenes in all of your books are quite comics, and I think
:11:06. > :11:11.you intend that, there is still you intend that, there is still a
:11:11. > :11:16.way of talking about homosexual sex that you write in a very modulated
:11:16. > :11:23.way, which makes it feel incredibly elegant as well. I always thought if
:11:23. > :11:26.you were going to write about sex, actual sexual acts, as it were, you
:11:26. > :11:31.should do so with the same kind of should do so with the same kind of
:11:31. > :11:34.care and attention, that he would bring to other areas of human
:11:34. > :11:37.interaction and that would make sexual interaction is very
:11:37. > :11:43.more interesting. I think that sexual interaction is very
:11:43. > :11:50.interesting. All things which go on conventionally behind closed doors
:11:50. > :11:54.in books, they endless speculation. So, I think
:11:54. > :12:00.that is that is what I thought. You would
:12:00. > :12:01.not want to lose your nerve about it or to move into some sort of
:12:01. > :12:05.obviously other tone of voice or obviously other
:12:05. > :12:15.become pornographic, which is a real something. Yes,
:12:15. > :12:19.danger. I suppose I felt really before the swimming pool library
:12:19. > :12:27.either medical, psychiatric, or it either medical, psychiatric, or it
:12:27. > :12:34.was pornographic. Again, it's very hard to describe. I and very slow.
:12:34. > :12:41.I'm very write more than 300 words in a day, I suppose. —— I only
:12:41. > :12:44.rarely writes. And I do not revise very much after that. All of the
:12:44. > :12:47.concentration seems to be the concentration seems to be the
:12:47. > :12:52.writing process trying to get it right the first time. Let's talk
:12:52. > :12:57.about the stranger's child. In some respects, in a major way to me, it
:12:57. > :13:02.seems a departure. It begins in 1913 seems a departure. It begins in 1913
:13:02. > :13:06.before the great War and ends in 2008 with massive lacunas and long
:13:06. > :13:10.periods of time are missed out. You periods of time are missed out. You
:13:10. > :13:16.ask the reader to do a lot more work. But in some ways, it seems to
:13:16. > :13:20.me that it is a departure because although you are looking at the kind
:13:20. > :13:25.of study of what can be said and cannot be said about the private
:13:25. > :13:29.life of gay people, it is also a study in the vagaries of literary
:13:29. > :13:36.reputation. I suppose the question is, is this a book that comes out of
:13:36. > :13:39.getting older? I really think it is. As they turned 50, I became more and
:13:40. > :13:45.more preoccupied with these more preoccupied with these
:13:45. > :13:51.we remember and how we shape memory, questions of memory, of how patchily
:13:51. > :13:53.we remember and how we shape memory, however body shapes memory, usually
:13:53. > :14:01.favourably but sometimes perversely not, the narrative of their own
:14:01. > :14:04.lives. If we were asked to sit an exam in the life of people be
:14:04. > :14:14.considered very close to, the amount you would not know at all is quite
:14:14. > :14:20.amazing. I love you chose to focus on a poet who obviously inspired by
:14:20. > :14:27.Rupert Brooke. He was really not as look. So
:14:27. > :14:27.Valance, who was a minor poet but has written this poll that has
:14:27. > :14:31.become a kind of national poll, if become a kind of national poll, if
:14:31. > :14:33.you like, because Winston Churchill refers to it in Parliament and he
:14:33. > :14:38.dies during the first great War dies during the first great War and
:14:38. > :14:44.anyone who has anything to do with this man is then an peaked out by
:14:44. > :14:48.this young man called Paul Bryant, again somebody comes from a much
:14:48. > :14:55.lower class than the poet who is engaged in being interested in these
:14:55. > :15:00.place in English history. There is place in English history. There is
:15:00. > :15:04.something about an England of a particular time that really
:15:04. > :15:10.interest. From where does that come? Why did that want —— why do you want
:15:10. > :15:15.that chronicled in a way that you have? I am not quite sure. I was
:15:15. > :15:20.interested in the shift of power. Who has control of this story, as it
:15:20. > :15:24.were. There were two attempts to write the life of Cecil Valance. The
:15:24. > :15:28.first was in 1926, ten years after his death, and we see those gathered
:15:28. > :15:31.after his death and someone will write a memoir and becomes apparent
:15:31. > :15:37.that memoir is so strictly controlled by his terrified mother
:15:37. > :15:38.that the complex truth about him as a person is not going to emerge at
:15:38. > :15:47.all. And all. And something almost
:15:47. > :15:51.unrecognisable, and idealised per trip —— and idealised portrait will
:15:51. > :15:57.emerge from that. I hope that the five sections of the book chart
:15:57. > :16:03.these changes in the ethical mood through the century. With each
:16:03. > :16:12.section, you feel that things become less inhibited. It is a gradual
:16:12. > :16:18.the fourth part of the book, where Paul Bryant is doing is part of
:16:18. > :16:25.book, he is overexcited by all these book, he is overexcited by all these
:16:25. > :16:28.new freedoms where you can say anything you like. We never quite
:16:28. > :16:31.know how good is life of Cecil Bryant is. ——
:16:31. > :16:34.remember that feeling in the 1970s remember that feeling in the 1970s
:16:34. > :16:40.that you could save. —— all the Oxford and there was all this
:16:40. > :16:44.that you could save. —— all the stuff you could say at last. People
:16:44. > :16:48.got carried away by the zeal and the gay subject was made to be the most
:16:48. > :16:53.important thing of all. We start talking about Benjamin Britten's
:16:53. > :17:01.operas and gay interpretations of everything. Now, it forms part of a
:17:01. > :17:08.larger, more balanced appreciation of the Benjamin Britten. There are
:17:08. > :17:15.was interested in. Do you see was interested in. Do you see
:17:15. > :17:22.yourself writing a book that was not informed by what has not have at its
:17:22. > :17:31.heart a gay protagonist? I think in a way that the central character of
:17:31. > :17:35.The Stranger's Child was Daphne, who was a heterosexual woman, the ones
:17:35. > :17:37.who gets tangled up with an unconscionable number of gay and
:17:37. > :17:50.bisexual men. I feel that there are quite a lot of books about
:17:50. > :17:55.heterosexual people already. I don't feel that there is an obligation to
:17:55. > :17:56.add to their number. It feels schematic when one talks about them
:17:56. > :17:59.like this. I very rarely decide that Books will come to me and it
:17:59. > :18:05.an going to write a Books will come to me and it
:18:05. > :18:11.stimulate in my mind in a mysterious way which I cannot quite describe.
:18:11. > :18:15.That is what I have got. I think that I will always write about —
:18:15. > :18:22.part of the book will always be about gay experience. Part of my
:18:22. > :18:24.motivation is more to do with how much has shifted and so much of what
:18:24. > :18:29.you write about is partly you write about is partly the
:18:29. > :18:32.characters engaged in what they characters engaged in what they are
:18:32. > :18:40.doing, it is thrilling because it is illicit and it is no longer illicit.
:18:40. > :18:42.recognised now, society is shifting That gay unions are legally
:18:42. > :18:44.recognised now, society is shifting not just in this country but
:18:44. > :18:46.countries around the world. countries around the world.
:18:46. > :18:52.Obviously there are still major issues in many countries but on the
:18:52. > :18:57.whole, the social and cultural landscape has shifted so profoundly
:18:57. > :19:00.that in a way, it is more of a challenge for you, is it not, to
:19:00. > :19:07.write about the ordinariness of it? write about the ordinariness of it?
:19:07. > :19:11.That is right. I've had a lovely dual sense of gayness, as been
:19:11. > :19:16.completely ordinary, as it were but completely ordinary, as it were but
:19:16. > :19:19.right. The whole landscapes and I right. The whole landscapes and I
:19:19. > :19:26.began writing has changed almost out of recognition. All the urgency and
:19:27. > :19:33.in a way the in your face—ness of what I started, part of the point of
:19:33. > :19:35.it, has rather drained out of the subject. I think that is why I will
:19:35. > :19:42.not write quite so thematically all not write quite so thematically all
:19:42. > :19:48.day —— all gay novels. I feel like I am broadening the canvas all the
:19:48. > :19:52.time. But with that thread of gay interest always in there. You are
:19:52. > :19:59.right that are seen to be drawn back to periods when it was more
:19:59. > :20:03.difficult, being gay. I think that the novelist, that is wonderfully
:20:03. > :20:08.interesting material and things are, as you say, possibly illegal,
:20:08. > :20:16.when things have to be communicated in the coded ways. There is
:20:16. > :20:21.about... Giving your interesting about...
:20:21. > :20:28.swimming pool library as well when biography because it appeared in
:20:28. > :20:29.swimming pool library as well when Nantwich's biography and
:20:29. > :20:37.of him doing the research, not least of things are revealed as a
:20:37. > :20:40.about William Beckwith's own family and his own identity as
:20:40. > :20:41.just wonder whether that is an area just
:20:41. > :20:46.whether you want to explore, would whether you want to explore, would
:20:46. > :20:52.some of the people you admired the some of the people you admired the
:20:52. > :20:56.Firbank who appears time and again Firbank who appears time and again
:20:56. > :20:57.I love Ronald Firbank and aim always as somebody who is a hero of yours?
:20:57. > :21:05.biography of Ronald Firbank, try to do things for
:21:05. > :21:07.biography of Ronald Firbank, something which is badly needed as
:21:07. > :21:18.the anyone is is kind of hopelessly inadequate. Why was he so important?
:21:18. > :21:22.Not just EU? —— not just to you. He was a strange, inimitable writer and
:21:22. > :21:26.he has had an enormous influence, much more of an influence than
:21:26. > :21:30.writers of the same period like James Joyce who I have always
:21:31. > :21:40.treated as the great experiment, and so forth. Ronald Firbank sexualised
:21:40. > :21:46.the novel in its fascinating way —— the most sexualised. He is frank and
:21:46. > :21:51.camp and a very radical. —— homosexualised. He did away with all
:21:51. > :21:57.the apparatus of the Victorian novel and with its, sort of, internal
:21:57. > :21:58.subject of boys and girls are subject of boys and girls are
:21:58. > :22:06.falling in love with each other and falling in love with each other and
:22:06. > :22:10.getting married. —— eternal subject. I was thinking of writing his life
:22:10. > :22:12.and a friend wrote to me and said that he was writing a life of Ronald
:22:12. > :22:14.Firbank and I was furious for a day Firbank and I was furious for a
:22:14. > :22:20.or two and then it was a huge or two and then it was a huge
:22:20. > :22:23.relief. It may be one of the things after which a The Stranger's Child
:22:23. > :22:25.grew. I'm not really cut out to write a biography but I may be cut
:22:25. > :22:30.out to write fiction. To explore out to write fiction. To explore
:22:30. > :22:34.these issues around biography and fiction would be more entertaining.
:22:34. > :22:41.sort of poignancy in him having been sort of poignancy in him having been
:22:41. > :22:47.forgotten in a way which appears in your musings about biography and
:22:47. > :22:51.memory and what we remember. Yes.I wonder, if you had it in your gift,
:22:51. > :23:00.how would you want to be remembered as a writer? I never think about
:23:00. > :23:02.being remembered. At all. That is probably a healthy sign, isn't it?
:23:02. > :23:10.Or to be thought of? Because there Or to be thought of? Because there
:23:10. > :23:12.is, the we are always there is a cannon. There are people at the
:23:12. > :23:12.is, the we are always there is a of that cannon and there are people
:23:12. > :23:20.there are people who do not appear at the
:23:20. > :23:22.there are people who do not appear at all. You have some sense of
:23:22. > :23:25.yourself as someone who has reached a particular scale, if you like, or
:23:25. > :23:25.perhaps not? Identical perhaps not? Identical ado,
:23:25. > :23:33.actually. —— I don't think I do, actually. —— I don't think I do,
:23:33. > :23:37.actually. We talked about writers and other periods but there is
:23:37. > :23:39.I don't think that I am booking my I don't think that I am booking
:23:39. > :23:40.place in the cannon with this place in the cannon with this
:23:40. > :23:46.particular number. There really are particular number. There really are
:23:46. > :23:50.issues which don't occur to me particularly. That is not false
:23:50. > :23:58.modesty or anything. It is just not modesty or anything. It is just not
:23:58. > :24:00.how I think. I have become very uncompetitive about writing. I am
:24:00. > :24:08.delighted by the success of my friends. What one hopes to do is
:24:08. > :24:10.read a game. I was a mentally read a game. I was a mentally
:24:10. > :24:17.they have read a book of mind they have read a book of mind
:24:18. > :24:20.twice. —— a game. Especially The Stranger's Child because when you
:24:20. > :24:25.read the second time, you get more out it. —— again. I love it when
:24:25. > :24:29.people tell me that my books made them laugh because that is one of
:24:29. > :24:32.the things that I admire most in Reading. I can render funny book
:24:32. > :24:37.which was not especially good which had a good joke in it long after I
:24:37. > :24:39.have forgotten greater and duller ones. Thank you very