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0:00:05 > 0:00:06from the BBC archive.
0:00:06 > 0:00:08For this Collection,
0:00:08 > 0:00:10Sir Michael Parkinson has selected BBC interviews
0:00:10 > 0:00:13with influential figures of the 20th century.
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0:00:49 > 0:00:51Jeanette Winterson,
0:00:51 > 0:00:56you write some of the most excitingly written fictions of our day.
0:00:56 > 0:00:59The very first of them, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02in which a girl, a young woman called Jeanette,
0:01:02 > 0:01:04discovers she loves other women,
0:01:04 > 0:01:09had as great a success on BBC television as it did as a book.
0:01:09 > 0:01:13To what extent is Oranges autobiographical?
0:01:14 > 0:01:17I have very often been asked the question about
0:01:17 > 0:01:21Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and its autobiographical content.
0:01:21 > 0:01:27And I have to say that when I was 24 and I was writing Oranges,
0:01:27 > 0:01:30I thought that, as a Northern, working-class girl,
0:01:30 > 0:01:32suddenly thrown into the big city,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35that I would find sophistication and a culture
0:01:35 > 0:01:38which had perhaps otherwise been denied to me.
0:01:38 > 0:01:41So when I made myself into a fictional character,
0:01:41 > 0:01:45I did not believe that those critics and reviewers,
0:01:45 > 0:01:48who seemed to me to be authority at that time,
0:01:48 > 0:01:51would therefore assume that Oranges was autobiographical.
0:01:51 > 0:01:53I thought that they would be cleverer than that.
0:01:55 > 0:01:56It was a play on form,
0:01:56 > 0:02:01in the same way that Virginia Woolf called Orlando a biography,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04in the same way that Gertrude Stein wrote
0:02:04 > 0:02:06the autobiography of Alice B Toklas,
0:02:06 > 0:02:10both saying, "I'm telling you the truth," but with a large wink,
0:02:10 > 0:02:14both inviting intimacy, both offering confidences,
0:02:14 > 0:02:16but in a playful way,
0:02:16 > 0:02:20in a way which was from the very outset challenging a genre,
0:02:20 > 0:02:23a boxing-in, a way of looking at the world.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26I thought I would do that with Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.
0:02:26 > 0:02:30I wanted to challenge, and one way of challenging
0:02:30 > 0:02:34was not just to talk about lesbianism or...
0:02:34 > 0:02:36the fear, as well as the love,
0:02:36 > 0:02:38that the Church can inspire in people,
0:02:38 > 0:02:41but to play with the whole literary works.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45I am a literary writer and... I like to get my tool box out
0:02:45 > 0:02:48and dismantle what already exists.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51So...there is a great game going on in Oranges
0:02:51 > 0:02:54and some of it, of course, is based on experiences in my life,
0:02:54 > 0:02:58but that is true of every single book that has been written by anybody.
0:02:58 > 0:02:59You always use things that you know.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02But more importantly, you use the power of your imagination,
0:03:02 > 0:03:06you transform those experiences and you invent other ones.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09And if you cannot remember, you must invent.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13And most of Oranges is invention,
0:03:13 > 0:03:16though, of course, I was brought up by Pentecostal parents
0:03:16 > 0:03:19in a working-class, Northern town.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22Er, are there elements of autobiography
0:03:22 > 0:03:24in any other of your fictions?
0:03:25 > 0:03:29I have always used my own experience in my work.
0:03:29 > 0:03:32But it's true to say that there is more autobiography
0:03:32 > 0:03:34in Sexing The Cherry,
0:03:34 > 0:03:39um, which is set in an invented historical past,
0:03:39 > 0:03:42than perhaps there is in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.
0:03:42 > 0:03:45I want to knock down those walls.
0:03:45 > 0:03:48I don't want to tie myself in in any way.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52And so...whenever I take a situation for my books,
0:03:52 > 0:03:55whether it's a historical situation or a contemporary situation,
0:03:55 > 0:03:57it is nevertheless an invention.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00That place does not exist, it never did exist.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03It's not authenticity, it's not realism.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05It's a great game, it's a pretend,
0:04:05 > 0:04:09because I think that the greatest truth is in the most feigning,
0:04:09 > 0:04:12and so I set up what is an entertainment, an enchanted place,
0:04:12 > 0:04:16um, a forest which grows up overnight and then collapses.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20The next day, you walk through it and you say, "What was that place?"
0:04:20 > 0:04:23It is a fiction. I am a fiction writer.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25And I cannot stress too highly enough
0:04:25 > 0:04:29how important I think the role of the imagination is in literature.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32And I really have very little time for realism.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35If you want that, you can get it on the streets.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38Using your imagination, however,
0:04:38 > 0:04:40you write about passionate love between women
0:04:40 > 0:04:42in a way that didn't used to be possible.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45I mean, when Radclyffe Hall wrote Well Of Loneliness,
0:04:45 > 0:04:47and it was published in 1929,
0:04:47 > 0:04:51the nearest thing it contains to a description of lovemaking is,
0:04:51 > 0:04:55"And in the night, they were not divided," or something like that.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58- Yes. - And that book was prosecuted.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00- Yes. - It must be possible,
0:05:00 > 0:05:02it is possible, to write much more openly
0:05:02 > 0:05:06about women's love for women today than it was then.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09It is certainly possible, I think,
0:05:09 > 0:05:15for a writer...to exercise greater moral freedom,
0:05:15 > 0:05:18greater freedom of choice in subject matter,
0:05:18 > 0:05:23but with any extension of freedom comes concomitant dangers and risks
0:05:23 > 0:05:27which also beset the writer, and when everything is possible,
0:05:27 > 0:05:30you must be very careful to make your own boundaries,
0:05:30 > 0:05:31to make your own limitations,
0:05:31 > 0:05:34otherwise chaos is everywhere.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38We must have shapes, forms to our lives to make them significant,
0:05:38 > 0:05:41and it seems to me that a writer's job is
0:05:41 > 0:05:46to look into that chaos and make it shapely, make it coherent.
0:05:46 > 0:05:49So, when I write about love between women,
0:05:49 > 0:05:52when I talk about passion, when I talk about sex -
0:05:52 > 0:05:55which I hope to do, movingly and startlingly
0:05:55 > 0:05:56and shockingly, if need be -
0:05:56 > 0:06:01nevertheless, um, I am my own judge, my own censor,
0:06:01 > 0:06:03which is better than having someone on the outside
0:06:03 > 0:06:04judging and censoring you.
0:06:04 > 0:06:08But you must still be...you must be your own critic, first and foremost.
0:06:08 > 0:06:10Is there such a thing as lesbian fiction?
0:06:10 > 0:06:13There is such a thing as lesbian fiction
0:06:13 > 0:06:15and it's genre fiction, like science fiction,
0:06:15 > 0:06:17like crime writing, like thriller writing,
0:06:17 > 0:06:20and its scope is necessarily narrow.
0:06:20 > 0:06:21It must be.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24Just as you have to have a body in a murder story,
0:06:24 > 0:06:26so you will have to have obligatory sex scenes,
0:06:26 > 0:06:29love scenes, in your lesbian books.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31And that's fine. They speak to a particular audience
0:06:31 > 0:06:33and they are necessary,
0:06:33 > 0:06:35but they are a kind of Mills & Boon.
0:06:35 > 0:06:37And I'm not interested in them.
0:06:37 > 0:06:40Just as I wouldn't be interested in Mills & Boon,
0:06:40 > 0:06:42or in that kind of very narrow writing.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45I want everything in my work. I don't want to say,
0:06:45 > 0:06:48"I'm only going to write about lesbians."
0:06:48 > 0:06:51I want the whole thing, the whole gamut,
0:06:51 > 0:06:57and I will have to draw it in, disciplined only by a lasso of words.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01In your most recent book, you say,
0:07:01 > 0:07:03"There's no such thing as autobiography,
0:07:03 > 0:07:06"there's only art and lies."
0:07:06 > 0:07:07Yes.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10I said that partly as...
0:07:10 > 0:07:15one of my challenges, because I was so tired of people assuming
0:07:15 > 0:07:20that much of what I wrote or write is autobiographical,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23because I think it's a way of limiting women's work,
0:07:23 > 0:07:25of trying to make it domestic and contained,
0:07:25 > 0:07:27so that imagination is a male prerogative,
0:07:27 > 0:07:29but women write about experience,
0:07:29 > 0:07:32they write about what they know, they write about their lives.
0:07:32 > 0:07:34And of course, this has been true.
0:07:34 > 0:07:36You know, the semi-myth of gentle Jane Austen
0:07:36 > 0:07:38sitting in the drawing room
0:07:38 > 0:07:41scribbling under her sampler what she saw going on around her.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45True and not true. It's more than that.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49And I think...although feminism has done so much work -
0:07:49 > 0:07:52I couldn't be sitting here today if it wasn't for feminism -
0:07:52 > 0:07:54nevertheless we have to be careful
0:07:54 > 0:07:56not to concentrate too much on experience,
0:07:56 > 0:07:59but to recognise that there is something outside of that,
0:07:59 > 0:08:03which is spiritual, which is cerebral, which is intellectual,
0:08:03 > 0:08:06um, and which is purely to do with ideas
0:08:06 > 0:08:09and not to do with "what I did today".
0:08:09 > 0:08:12Can I begin, however, by asking you about you?
0:08:12 > 0:08:15And we'll come back to the writing.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18Could you tell us where you were born?
0:08:18 > 0:08:20Yes, I was born in Accrington,
0:08:20 > 0:08:22which is the place where the football team once came from
0:08:22 > 0:08:25and where Harrison Birtwistle comes from,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28and it's in Lancashire and it's a small mill town...
0:08:28 > 0:08:34Uh, typical, cut out of the hills, smoky, dark,
0:08:34 > 0:08:37but then, suddenly, into a rush of green space,
0:08:37 > 0:08:39into a rush of air, a rush of trees.
0:08:39 > 0:08:43And those two things, that tension is important to me.
0:08:43 > 0:08:44Who brought you up?
0:08:44 > 0:08:48I was brought up by my parents, my adopted parents,
0:08:48 > 0:08:51um, who took me from an orphanage in Manchester
0:08:51 > 0:08:55because they wanted a child that they could dedicate to God.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58Um, for my parents, religion was a vital thing,
0:08:58 > 0:09:01a muscular thing, an everyday thing
0:09:01 > 0:09:04and God was not a remote being.
0:09:04 > 0:09:06God was on the doorstep,
0:09:06 > 0:09:08God was in the armchair,
0:09:08 > 0:09:11and if the larder was empty, God would fill it.
0:09:11 > 0:09:16So, since neither of them, it seemed, could produce a child,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19they had to adopt one, and that was me.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21Did you have brothers and sisters?
0:09:21 > 0:09:23No, I had no brothers and sisters.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26My mother felt that she would prefer to concentrate on one.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29What was your mother like?
0:09:30 > 0:09:32Ah. Mrs Winterson!
0:09:32 > 0:09:33Um, my mother is dead now.
0:09:33 > 0:09:39She was...a gargantuan figure, she...
0:09:39 > 0:09:43was Rabelaisian in her dimension, she was biblical in her anger.
0:09:43 > 0:09:48She was too much for a small child,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51and so the small child had to, perhaps...
0:09:53 > 0:09:56..begin to be like her in those dimensions,
0:09:56 > 0:09:58and some of my own feistiness
0:09:58 > 0:10:01and willingness to put up my fists and scrap,
0:10:01 > 0:10:04if I am challenged, comes out of having to scrap with her,
0:10:04 > 0:10:08because if you didn't stand up for yourself in my household, um,
0:10:08 > 0:10:09you were finished.
0:10:09 > 0:10:11Did your father stand up for himself?
0:10:11 > 0:10:15Um, no, my father didn't stand up for himself.
0:10:15 > 0:10:17I think my father was
0:10:17 > 0:10:21born on his knees and he stayed on them throughout his married life,
0:10:21 > 0:10:25um, always in supplication, either to my mother or to God.
0:10:25 > 0:10:27It didn't really make much difference
0:10:27 > 0:10:30and I don't know that he thought there was much difference.
0:10:30 > 0:10:35How religious was the religiousness of the household?
0:10:35 > 0:10:39It was religious, but it was not conventional.
0:10:39 > 0:10:43It was a household where miracles were expected
0:10:43 > 0:10:46and where, indeed, they happened.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49It was an Old Testament household -
0:10:49 > 0:10:51this is really the God of Moses
0:10:51 > 0:10:55and you expect the God of Moses to be ever-present,
0:10:55 > 0:10:57but also a God that loses his temper,
0:10:57 > 0:11:00a God that is difficult, a God that is irrational.
0:11:00 > 0:11:06All this played out through the large frame of my mother.
0:11:06 > 0:11:09The Bible, was that read?
0:11:09 > 0:11:13Yes, there were six books in our house until I left and went to Oxford
0:11:13 > 0:11:18and one of them was the Bible. Another was Cruden's Concordance
0:11:18 > 0:11:20so that we knew where to look things up in the Bible,
0:11:20 > 0:11:24um, and it was necessary to read it before school
0:11:24 > 0:11:26and, for me, at lunchtime as well,
0:11:26 > 0:11:28I had to take my own, and in the evening,
0:11:28 > 0:11:31the evenings were entirely given over to church activities.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33The church was about five miles away
0:11:33 > 0:11:36and I think most of my health comes from the fact
0:11:36 > 0:11:39that I had to walk to school two miles there and two miles back
0:11:39 > 0:11:42and to church five miles there and five miles back every day.
0:11:42 > 0:11:44Was your childhood happy?
0:11:44 > 0:11:47Yes, my childhood was happy.
0:11:47 > 0:11:51I was a happy child, largely because I believed that I was special,
0:11:51 > 0:11:52chosen by God,
0:11:52 > 0:11:56that my relationship to the world was unique
0:11:56 > 0:11:58and that I had a place in it
0:11:58 > 0:12:01and that place was to change what I saw around me.
0:12:01 > 0:12:04And I think if a child has a strong framework,
0:12:04 > 0:12:07even if it's a difficult one, that is a help to the child,
0:12:07 > 0:12:12and if the child grows up in a loving atmosphere, no matter how bizarre,
0:12:12 > 0:12:13the child will be happy.
0:12:13 > 0:12:15I look back, I know it was bizarre,
0:12:15 > 0:12:18but, to me, I thought everyone lived like that.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21Are you still in touch with Accrington or your father?
0:12:21 > 0:12:23I'm not in touch with Accrington any more.
0:12:23 > 0:12:25I don't think I can go back there now
0:12:25 > 0:12:28because it exists for me as an invented place.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30Partly because...
0:12:31 > 0:12:33..if you...
0:12:33 > 0:12:36..do use any of your own past, you write it out,
0:12:36 > 0:12:39you finish with it somehow, you make it into fiction
0:12:39 > 0:12:43and therefore it's accessible in a way which real life is not,
0:12:43 > 0:12:47but it's also closed in a way which real life is not.
0:12:47 > 0:12:51The Accrington that means something to me does not exist.
0:12:51 > 0:12:53So I'm not going to go and look at it.
0:12:53 > 0:12:55And I do keep in touch with my father, yes.
0:12:55 > 0:12:57He's married again and he's happy.
0:12:58 > 0:13:02Um, did you ever meet your real mother?
0:13:02 > 0:13:04No, I never met my real mother.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09I often wondered about her and I know that my parents knew who she was,
0:13:09 > 0:13:12but it was a part of the fierceness with which I was guarded
0:13:12 > 0:13:14that that would not have been possible.
0:13:14 > 0:13:16You see, I was snatched out of the fire -
0:13:16 > 0:13:19as my mother saw it - out of the sin of the world
0:13:19 > 0:13:22and redeemed to a better place
0:13:22 > 0:13:25and she was absolutely determined that nothing - nothing -
0:13:25 > 0:13:28would come between me and my vocation.
0:13:28 > 0:13:29Well, it hasn't, but we just have
0:13:29 > 0:13:32a different idea of what that vocation was.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36When your adoptive parents, your father and mother, read Oranges,
0:13:36 > 0:13:38what did they think of that?
0:13:38 > 0:13:42Did they think that that was what they'd adopted you for?
0:13:42 > 0:13:45No, when Oranges was published,
0:13:45 > 0:13:49I hadn't seen my family for some time - many years, in fact -
0:13:49 > 0:13:53and when they read it, my mother wrote to me and she said,
0:13:53 > 0:13:55"Oh, Jeanette, it was the first time
0:13:55 > 0:13:58"I had to order a book in a false name."
0:13:58 > 0:14:00And I did feel for her.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04And she was torn, of course, with a mixture of absolute hatred,
0:14:04 > 0:14:07and some understandable pride.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11But it wasn't possible for her to find a place to put that pride,
0:14:11 > 0:14:14um, so we couldn't discuss what I was doing.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16We couldn't discuss what I had become.
0:14:16 > 0:14:18My father is now very proud of me.
0:14:18 > 0:14:22Now that Mrs Winterson is gone, he's able to say what he feels.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26How did you think... How do you think you acquired your love of,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28your fascination with language?
0:14:29 > 0:14:31Well, my fascination with language
0:14:31 > 0:14:34comes straight out of the King James version of the Bible.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37I think there's no better book to be brought up on,
0:14:37 > 0:14:39and if you've only got six books in your house,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41let's pray that one of them is the Bible!
0:14:41 > 0:14:43Because those rhythms, that prose...
0:14:43 > 0:14:46It is a magnificent work of literature.
0:14:46 > 0:14:49I'm reading it through again now, though I'm not very far on -
0:14:49 > 0:14:52I'm only in with the Prophets, but I'm fond of the Prophets.
0:14:52 > 0:14:57Um, and I grew up hearing a language which was...
0:14:57 > 0:15:00which was both special and intimate,
0:15:00 > 0:15:03which was detached and had presence and had authority,
0:15:03 > 0:15:05and yet spoke to me directly,
0:15:05 > 0:15:08just as it speaks to millions of people directly,
0:15:08 > 0:15:12and it is that wonderful tension which a writer seeks
0:15:12 > 0:15:15because writing literature...
0:15:15 > 0:15:18it's lovers' talk, it's whispers in the ear,
0:15:18 > 0:15:22but it's also a public declaration, and that's what the Bible offers.
0:15:23 > 0:15:25After school, what did you do?
0:15:25 > 0:15:30Ha! Well, after school, it is true, I did work in a funeral parlour
0:15:30 > 0:15:33and I did have to make my living making ice cream and flogging it
0:15:33 > 0:15:36because I needed money. I'd left home.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38What did you do in the funeral parlour?
0:15:38 > 0:15:40Made up corpses.
0:15:40 > 0:15:43Um, I know it's an unusual job for a girl,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45but it was quiet
0:15:45 > 0:15:47and, er, I was able to get on with my own thoughts
0:15:47 > 0:15:51and the alternative would have been to work in the pea-canning factory
0:15:51 > 0:15:54and I felt that that would be more of a hindrance
0:15:54 > 0:15:55to the contemplative life
0:15:55 > 0:15:57than making up dead bodies.
0:15:57 > 0:15:59A mental hospital?
0:15:59 > 0:16:01Yes, I did work in a mental hospital for a time,
0:16:01 > 0:16:05again, because I had nowhere to live and they offered me a place to stay,
0:16:05 > 0:16:11so I worked amongst the mad and I found them very companionable.
0:16:11 > 0:16:14I mean, they didn't interfere with the contemplative life either.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16What did you learn from that experience?
0:16:16 > 0:16:19When I was working in the mental hospital...
0:16:21 > 0:16:26..I learned how quickly that those who work among...the damned -
0:16:26 > 0:16:29and I mean that because they are cut off
0:16:29 > 0:16:32from all those points of human comfort
0:16:32 > 0:16:34and sanity and love and warmth
0:16:34 > 0:16:36that are so necessary to us -
0:16:36 > 0:16:39I learned that people who work in that atmosphere
0:16:39 > 0:16:42become like it very, very quickly. It's terrifying.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45And in there steps an inhumanity
0:16:45 > 0:16:48which is very uncomfortable, very unpleasant,
0:16:48 > 0:16:52and there was much brutality in the mental hospital I worked in.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57I'm sure that there still is, and it is because people become cut off
0:16:57 > 0:17:01from those points of human sympathy which are so necessary.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05You went to Oxford. Why Oxford?
0:17:05 > 0:17:09I went to Oxford because I had fallen in love with the idea of it,
0:17:09 > 0:17:11because if you're a working-class girl
0:17:11 > 0:17:14and you have to fight to get at books
0:17:14 > 0:17:18and you have to memorise passages of poetry and literature that you love
0:17:18 > 0:17:20because you can't have the books,
0:17:20 > 0:17:24and anyway, books are rather suspect in your house if it's not the Bible,
0:17:24 > 0:17:28then the idea of somewhere which could be devoted to reading,
0:17:28 > 0:17:31which has a magnificent library, um,
0:17:31 > 0:17:33which is a place of learning,
0:17:33 > 0:17:34um, and where, when somebody knocks at the door
0:17:34 > 0:17:37you will not have to hide the book under the pillow
0:17:37 > 0:17:38and pretend you weren't reading it,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42seemed to me to be a charmed place, an enchanted place,
0:17:42 > 0:17:45and I thought, "If I can just go there, it will be my talisman,
0:17:45 > 0:17:48"I will get out of this, it will be rocket fuel to me,
0:17:48 > 0:17:51"and I will change my life." And that's what I did.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54I needed something large, a framework,
0:17:54 > 0:17:56through which to push my energies
0:17:56 > 0:17:59so that I could break away from the smallness
0:17:59 > 0:18:01of what seemed to be around me.
0:18:01 > 0:18:03How did you start as a writer?
0:18:04 > 0:18:06Well, I suppose I started as a writer
0:18:06 > 0:18:08when I was very young because I always wrote sermons.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11I had enormous success as a preacher in my early youth
0:18:11 > 0:18:14and converted many souls.
0:18:14 > 0:18:16I don't know what's happened to them now!
0:18:16 > 0:18:19Um, and it seemed natural to me to try...
0:18:19 > 0:18:22to persuade people of my point of view,
0:18:22 > 0:18:25um, to be declamatory, to be public -
0:18:25 > 0:18:28which is not usual for a girl.
0:18:28 > 0:18:31It was that particular upbringing, I think, which allowed me to think,
0:18:31 > 0:18:35"Yes, my place in the world is a loud one."
0:18:35 > 0:18:39So I was prepared from the start to...
0:18:40 > 0:18:42..offer myself up as a target,
0:18:42 > 0:18:43and you have to do that if you're a writer
0:18:43 > 0:18:45because you'll always get knocked down.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47You have to have a lot of confidence.
0:18:47 > 0:18:50So I started to write Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
0:18:50 > 0:18:52when I had no job, when I was in London thinking,
0:18:52 > 0:18:56"This is a complete mess, how did I get here?"
0:18:56 > 0:19:00Um, "I must amuse myself." So I did.
0:19:01 > 0:19:05Were you influenced by other writers? You've already mentioned Orlando.
0:19:05 > 0:19:08- Mmm. - What about Angela Carter, say?
0:19:11 > 0:19:16No, I don't think Angela Carter is an influence, because...
0:19:17 > 0:19:22..in a way, part of the problem with being brought up as I was,
0:19:22 > 0:19:24is that I have been influenced by things
0:19:24 > 0:19:28which are a lot older than my generation
0:19:28 > 0:19:31and many of the things that were influencing her
0:19:31 > 0:19:33were also influencing me in parallel.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36The fact that she's older than me really wasn't a point.
0:19:36 > 0:19:38- Um... - Did you admire her?
0:19:38 > 0:19:41I do admire her, yes, I admire her work enormously
0:19:41 > 0:19:45and I am sorry that she didn't get the kind of recognition
0:19:45 > 0:19:48that she should have got while she was alive and I hope
0:19:48 > 0:19:51that that changes.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55Books like The Passion and Sexing The Cherry
0:19:55 > 0:19:58are feats of invention on a grand scale
0:19:58 > 0:20:02and sprawling across huge, historical landscapes.
0:20:02 > 0:20:04What is it that draws you, when you're writing,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08across the more conventional confines of time and space?
0:20:09 > 0:20:14I need to have a broad canvas. I like the large challenges.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17It's not enough for me to...
0:20:18 > 0:20:21..ever to try and speak about what I know,
0:20:21 > 0:20:23because what any of us know is so little.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25I want to speak about what I can imagine.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28And that's the challenge that I set myself in my work,
0:20:28 > 0:20:32and when I was writing both The Passion and Sexing The Cherry,
0:20:32 > 0:20:36I wanted to create a place where people could come
0:20:36 > 0:20:38which would be freed from the problems of gravity,
0:20:38 > 0:20:42where they would be outside of the confines of their daily life,
0:20:42 > 0:20:44where they would have to -
0:20:44 > 0:20:48as we do, say, in Shakespeare, in the Forest of Arden -
0:20:48 > 0:20:49go to somewhere other,
0:20:49 > 0:20:52somewhere set apart from that which they usually know,
0:20:52 > 0:20:56and in this set-apart space, the normal problems of life
0:20:56 > 0:21:00would be altered or character would be revealed.
0:21:00 > 0:21:02Of course, you have to go back to the real world - you always do -
0:21:02 > 0:21:05and that's the lesson of the Shakespearean comedies -
0:21:05 > 0:21:08you step out of your own world, your own place
0:21:08 > 0:21:10and you go somewhere different, but then you return with a knowledge
0:21:10 > 0:21:14which allows you to continue, um, as a better,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16and, always with Shakespeare, a more moral human being.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19Um...
0:21:19 > 0:21:22and Shakespeare is a great influence on me, and I thought,
0:21:22 > 0:21:25"What I want is to make a space for people where they will enter
0:21:25 > 0:21:29"into the separate world of fiction, into the world of art."
0:21:29 > 0:21:30That's why I love opera so much,
0:21:30 > 0:21:32because it's quite outside
0:21:32 > 0:21:34of everything that we know on a daily level.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38And in this extravagance, and my books are extravagant,
0:21:38 > 0:21:39the smallness of life -
0:21:39 > 0:21:42which is the thing I fear most, the smallness -
0:21:42 > 0:21:43will drop away.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49Certain themes recur - there are searches in your books,
0:21:49 > 0:21:52there's separation in your books,
0:21:52 > 0:21:54there are powerful, dominant women
0:21:54 > 0:21:59on a Rabelaisian and gargantuan scale in your books.
0:21:59 > 0:22:02There's a great deal of cross-dressing in your books.
0:22:02 > 0:22:07Um, and yet the woman's body
0:22:07 > 0:22:10is described as a love object in several of your books.
0:22:10 > 0:22:12- Mmm. - Is that a coincidence?
0:22:12 > 0:22:14Is that reality or is that invention?
0:22:16 > 0:22:20I think that we push ourselves forward,
0:22:20 > 0:22:22as individuals and as a species,
0:22:22 > 0:22:25by inventing what we want to be -
0:22:25 > 0:22:29by imagining ourselves as something other than we are.
0:22:29 > 0:22:34And that seems to me to be one of the virtues and the point of art,
0:22:34 > 0:22:35however you find it -
0:22:35 > 0:22:37that it tells you there is more to it
0:22:37 > 0:22:42than this little life, than the daily round, than the everyday existence,
0:22:42 > 0:22:43that there is something larger.
0:22:43 > 0:22:46And it's not just for statesmen, heroes and great figures,
0:22:46 > 0:22:48it is for you, in your own life.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51Because art's not elitist, art leaves nobody out.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54As long as you are prepared to come to art with an open mind
0:22:54 > 0:22:57and do a little bit of work, the rewards are infinite.
0:22:57 > 0:23:02And it is, for me, I think,
0:23:02 > 0:23:04an opportunity to stretch...
0:23:06 > 0:23:08..the ordinary material, the fabric of life,
0:23:08 > 0:23:12and make it more than it is, make the individuals who read my work
0:23:12 > 0:23:15perhaps a little bit more than they are, even if it's only for a while.
0:23:15 > 0:23:18And so I will use every device possible to bring that about,
0:23:18 > 0:23:21whether it's love, or whether it's war,
0:23:21 > 0:23:23whether it's history, whether it's passion.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27Whatever I think will act as a grappling hook for my reader,
0:23:27 > 0:23:29I will use.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33When you adapted Oranges for the television,
0:23:33 > 0:23:36how necessary was it to change it?
0:23:36 > 0:23:39When Oranges was adapted for the television by me,
0:23:39 > 0:23:44I had to go back to the book and read it again, which was dreadful!
0:23:44 > 0:23:47It's awful reading your own work because all you are ever conscious of
0:23:47 > 0:23:49are the failures and the things that you did wrong.
0:23:49 > 0:23:51One of the things about developing
0:23:51 > 0:23:53is that you do become a better craftsman,
0:23:53 > 0:23:57and ten years have passed and I'm a much better technician than I was,
0:23:57 > 0:24:00and so when I read Oranges, there were yawning gaps, I felt,
0:24:00 > 0:24:02and things that had just been written badly.
0:24:02 > 0:24:05You know, I think both Oranges and The Passion
0:24:05 > 0:24:08are in some ways rather like Wuthering Heights, um...
0:24:08 > 0:24:13They're not that well written, but they have an intensity and a power
0:24:13 > 0:24:14which cuts right through them,
0:24:14 > 0:24:17but they are a young person learning a craft.
0:24:17 > 0:24:21Are you concerned to invent new forms? I mean, the novels, the books,
0:24:21 > 0:24:24are not in the form of a conventional linear narrative.
0:24:24 > 0:24:26They jump around all over the place.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30Or are they actually more sophisticatedly arranged than that?
0:24:30 > 0:24:33They're not linear, no. I'm not interested in a linear narrative,
0:24:33 > 0:24:36but I do try and write a spiral narrative,
0:24:36 > 0:24:39a narrative which is continually returning to itself,
0:24:39 > 0:24:40both thematically,
0:24:40 > 0:24:43and as far as the images and the ideas are concerned,
0:24:43 > 0:24:46but primarily as far as the language is concerned.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50And this is nowhere clearer than in my new book, Art And Lies,
0:24:50 > 0:24:53because that occupies very large territory,
0:24:53 > 0:24:56and it has a sophisticated narrative which requires
0:24:56 > 0:25:00that the reader follows very closely the linguistic clues
0:25:00 > 0:25:03as much as the strain of ideas which run through it.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06And when you get to the end of Art And Lies, you have to see it
0:25:06 > 0:25:09in quite a different light to the one which was thrown upon it
0:25:09 > 0:25:10as you went along.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13Would you call it a novel? Would you call that a novel?
0:25:13 > 0:25:15No, I don't really call my work novels.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19They're called that by other people. I am a fiction writer
0:25:19 > 0:25:21and I am trying to push into my fiction
0:25:21 > 0:25:24the discipline and the denseness of poetry.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28That seems to me to be a proper late-20th-century challenge.
0:25:28 > 0:25:32But, no, in so much as the novel is a 19th-century idea,
0:25:32 > 0:25:34I do not write novels.
0:25:34 > 0:25:39You have a very wide and a very refreshingly novel vocabulary.
0:25:39 > 0:25:41Where do you find these words?
0:25:41 > 0:25:45I find these words in the dictionary! I'm a great dictionary lover
0:25:45 > 0:25:47and I have the OED in full,
0:25:47 > 0:25:49not the horrible, shrunk-up miniature version,
0:25:49 > 0:25:51and I have Johnson's dictionary,
0:25:51 > 0:25:56and I spend many, many hours going through the dictionary,
0:25:56 > 0:25:58um, delighting in words.
0:25:58 > 0:26:00And it's because I delight in them
0:26:00 > 0:26:02rather than care about them pedantically,
0:26:02 > 0:26:04or even in any fashion of scholarship,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08that I'm able to use them in my work and they don't sound forced.
0:26:08 > 0:26:10But it seems to me that if words are what you love,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13if words are your craft, then you are honour-bound
0:26:13 > 0:26:16to have as many as possible in your tool chest.
0:26:16 > 0:26:18Are words weapons?
0:26:18 > 0:26:21Words are weapons, they are also love affairs.
0:26:21 > 0:26:25They always reach you on every possible front,
0:26:25 > 0:26:30they attack you from all sides simultaneously when well used.
0:26:30 > 0:26:34Words work, but they need the discipline of the writer behind them
0:26:34 > 0:26:36because you can't just string words together
0:26:36 > 0:26:38like so much washing on the line,
0:26:38 > 0:26:40you have to arrange them.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44And I cannot stress too highly the importance of craft.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48In some of your books, your characters, as I said,
0:26:48 > 0:26:50appear to be searching for something.
0:26:50 > 0:26:54What are they searching for? Are they searching to be joined to someone?
0:26:54 > 0:26:57Are they searching for a still place?
0:26:57 > 0:27:00Or are they fated always to adventure on?
0:27:01 > 0:27:03I think we're all fated always to adventure on.
0:27:03 > 0:27:07I don't think there's any stopping. I think there's only a development,
0:27:07 > 0:27:09which is why I suspect there is an afterlife.
0:27:09 > 0:27:12I really can't believe this is it. It's so short.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15And in my books people do go forward.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19They go forward out of the last page of the book as much as anything else.
0:27:19 > 0:27:23They still exist. They exist for me, they exist for other people.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26They are trans-time. They are beyond time,
0:27:26 > 0:27:28they are not caught in it.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31And I don't think the human spirit is caught in it either.
0:27:31 > 0:27:32Let us not be caught.
0:27:32 > 0:27:36Art is a way of opening the cage door and saying, "Fly."
0:27:36 > 0:27:39You say somewhere that there's a choice between staying with
0:27:39 > 0:27:43a ready-made world that may be safe but which is also limiting
0:27:43 > 0:27:47or pushing forward into a personal place, an unknown and untried.
0:27:47 > 0:27:49Do we all have that choice?
0:27:49 > 0:27:51Yes, we do all have that choice.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54Everybody in their life, large or small,
0:27:54 > 0:27:56whether it's mundane or marvellous,
0:27:56 > 0:27:59comes often to the frontiers of common sense
0:27:59 > 0:28:02where they are required to retreat into a world
0:28:02 > 0:28:04that they know and is safe
0:28:04 > 0:28:07or to push forward into a world which is unknown.
0:28:07 > 0:28:10And those choices get harder as we get older
0:28:10 > 0:28:14because there are small threads that bind us throughout our lives
0:28:14 > 0:28:16and suddenly you think, "I want to change everything,"
0:28:16 > 0:28:18and you can't because you're caught.
0:28:18 > 0:28:22And that's why it's important to make real decisions, serious decisions,
0:28:22 > 0:28:25early on and through your life when those challenges arise.
0:28:25 > 0:28:27And I hope that my book, my books,
0:28:27 > 0:28:30offer something of the courage and the strength needed
0:28:30 > 0:28:32to make those moral choices.
0:28:32 > 0:28:38Is there a self of you between...beneath the writer?
0:28:38 > 0:28:40Is there a private you?
0:28:40 > 0:28:44There certainly isn't a me... that isn't...
0:28:44 > 0:28:46Jeanette Winterson, the writer.
0:28:46 > 0:28:49I am caught up in that. I am that.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52People don't always find their way forward in life,
0:28:52 > 0:28:54but this is what I am, this is what I am here for.
0:28:54 > 0:28:56This is everything to me.
0:28:56 > 0:28:57It is my blood and my bone.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59It is my body. It's my breath.
0:28:59 > 0:29:04It's my daily exercise. It's my pleasure. And, yes, it is my passion.
0:29:04 > 0:29:06Are you a vulnerable person?
0:29:07 > 0:29:11I'm vulnerable in so much as I am very open.
0:29:11 > 0:29:13I could not do my work if I wasn't open.
0:29:13 > 0:29:18I must always be open to experience and to the natural world.
0:29:18 > 0:29:20I think Walter Pater was right
0:29:20 > 0:29:23when he said, "Failure is to form habits."
0:29:23 > 0:29:26And one of the worst habits is to become dead to your surroundings,
0:29:26 > 0:29:30to be so used to everything that you no longer notice it,
0:29:30 > 0:29:32that you no longer notice the face of the person you love
0:29:32 > 0:29:35that perhaps you've lived with for 20 years,
0:29:35 > 0:29:39that you no longer notice the things that you bought with such excitement
0:29:39 > 0:29:41and decorated your house with,
0:29:41 > 0:29:44that you no longer notice the fields and the natural world.
0:29:44 > 0:29:46That's deadness, and the artist cannot be dead.
0:29:46 > 0:29:48And the artist is always arranging things
0:29:48 > 0:29:52in a way to say to the onlooker, "See, here it is.
0:29:52 > 0:29:55"It's what you thought you knew, but it's different, isn't it?"
0:29:55 > 0:29:58It's not the shock of the new, it's the shock of the familiar,
0:29:58 > 0:30:02arranged so that we can actually see it, and that is very vulnerable,
0:30:02 > 0:30:05so in that way, yes, I suppose I must be.
0:30:05 > 0:30:07Are you a violent person?
0:30:07 > 0:30:12I get very angry. There's plenty in the world to be angry about.
0:30:12 > 0:30:17But...I think if you do have a temper, and I do, um...
0:30:17 > 0:30:19you must be very disciplined about that anger
0:30:19 > 0:30:24because it's a destructive force as well as a positive one,
0:30:24 > 0:30:26so I try and channel it into my work.
0:30:26 > 0:30:30But over my typewriter I do have a little text which says,
0:30:30 > 0:30:32"Rant is out."
0:30:33 > 0:30:36What have been the greatest ecstasies of your life?
0:30:38 > 0:30:42If I said what had been the greatest ecstasies,
0:30:42 > 0:30:45it might presume that there were perhaps to be no more,
0:30:45 > 0:30:48but the truth is that it is a daily ecstasy for me.
0:30:48 > 0:30:54It is ecstasy for me to be able to do this work, to be alive,
0:30:54 > 0:30:59to live with the woman that I love. I am surrounded by good gifts.
0:30:59 > 0:31:02If I were not happy, I would be...churlish,
0:31:02 > 0:31:06because there is so much about my life which is wonderful.
0:31:06 > 0:31:11And it is that daily ecstasy that keeps me pushing on with this work
0:31:11 > 0:31:13because I believe it comes from that.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16What have been your worst experiences?
0:31:16 > 0:31:19My worst experiences?
0:31:19 > 0:31:22I think my worst experiences were early experiences.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26They were to do with having to leave behind everything that I knew -
0:31:26 > 0:31:29my own frontiers of common sense, to leave behind the church,
0:31:29 > 0:31:33to leave behind my family, to leave behind the people that I love,
0:31:33 > 0:31:37to leave behind a framework that I had been brought up in
0:31:37 > 0:31:40and to set out again. That was very difficult.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44And I've had some really terrible love affairs.
0:31:44 > 0:31:46But I'm settled now and I hope...
0:31:46 > 0:31:51I've been with my partner five years. I hope I'll be with her for 50.
0:31:51 > 0:31:54Without wishing to disrupt that,
0:31:54 > 0:31:57that is precisely the stillness that...
0:31:57 > 0:31:59perhaps, that earlier you were rejecting.
0:31:59 > 0:32:01It is a stillness, yes.
0:32:01 > 0:32:05It's a stillness, but it's not a passivity, and there is a difference.
0:32:06 > 0:32:08If I ever thought that I was forming habits,
0:32:08 > 0:32:12that I was settling into a comfortable armchair,
0:32:12 > 0:32:16I would surely find a way to blast myself out of it.
0:32:16 > 0:32:19What do you fear most?
0:32:19 > 0:32:21I fear mediocrity.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24I fear the settling.
0:32:24 > 0:32:29Not only settling down, but settling for less, settling for second best,
0:32:29 > 0:32:33settling for the easy option, making life small
0:32:33 > 0:32:36instead of noticing how glorious it is.
0:32:36 > 0:32:38We talked about ecstasy, and it is there every day,
0:32:38 > 0:32:40it is there every moment,
0:32:40 > 0:32:42if we can but see it, if we can but have it.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44It's there for us.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47Suffering is not part of the human condition,
0:32:47 > 0:32:52and I think it's very important to reject it in your own life because...
0:32:52 > 0:32:56Anybody who reads Dante will know the special circle of hell
0:32:56 > 0:32:59reserved for those who wilfully lived in sadness.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04You had a huge success very early. Was that dangerous?
0:33:06 > 0:33:08Success is dangerous.
0:33:09 > 0:33:12Yes, it was very unbalancing, it was very unsettling
0:33:12 > 0:33:18and I had nobody I could trust at that time with Oranges,
0:33:18 > 0:33:22um...and nobody with whom I felt absolutely secure.
0:33:22 > 0:33:24It was a rocky period for me.
0:33:24 > 0:33:28And...I nearly lost sight of my own way
0:33:28 > 0:33:30and I couldn't hear my own voice any more.
0:33:30 > 0:33:32I think that very often happens to writers.
0:33:32 > 0:33:35And I wrote a comic book called Boating For Beginners,
0:33:35 > 0:33:38which is great fun, but it wasn't worth writing.
0:33:38 > 0:33:41Fortunately, it only took two weeks, so that cheers me up.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44And I had a contract for another book,
0:33:44 > 0:33:46you know, of a similar vein, which I had to throw away.
0:33:46 > 0:33:49And then I wrote The Passion.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52You've said, and I think you've said more than once,
0:33:52 > 0:33:55that writers divide into priests and prophets.
0:33:55 > 0:33:58- Yes. - Could you explain that distinction?
0:33:58 > 0:34:00It was something I wrote in Oranges
0:34:00 > 0:34:01and it's a little bit rhetorical, actually,
0:34:01 > 0:34:04because it was really to do with those writers
0:34:04 > 0:34:07who use the well-known words
0:34:07 > 0:34:10and tread the well-known paths and simply offer
0:34:10 > 0:34:14a kind of magnified version of what we already are,
0:34:14 > 0:34:18which is comfortable enough to look at, and solid,
0:34:18 > 0:34:20strong in a particular way.
0:34:20 > 0:34:23And then there are the writers who want to challenge all that
0:34:23 > 0:34:25and say we must have it differently,
0:34:25 > 0:34:29that the purpose of the world is not to describe it,
0:34:29 > 0:34:31but to change it,
0:34:31 > 0:34:32and I do believe that.
0:34:32 > 0:34:35I think art is...a changeful thing. It is metaphor.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38I think it's transformation.
0:34:38 > 0:34:43Um, and I do not want to be one of those writers who becomes
0:34:43 > 0:34:45a grand old woman or a grand old man
0:34:45 > 0:34:47and settles back into a life of letters
0:34:47 > 0:34:49where everyone says, "Wonderful!"
0:34:49 > 0:34:52Because then I won't be challenging anybody any more.
0:34:52 > 0:34:58As long as I'm still being targeted and...pummelled,
0:34:58 > 0:35:03as I often am in the press, I know that I'm on the right track.
0:35:03 > 0:35:06You say that prophets cry out because they're troubled by demons.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09- Mmm. - Are you troubled by demons?
0:35:09 > 0:35:10Yes, I am troubled by demons,
0:35:10 > 0:35:13but not the same demons that used to trouble me.
0:35:13 > 0:35:16I have got my sanity back, which is something, because I had...
0:35:16 > 0:35:18When did you lose it?
0:35:18 > 0:35:20Well, in my rackety early life,
0:35:20 > 0:35:23it was quite hard to hold on to everything.
0:35:23 > 0:35:26You can't hold on to everything. Some things have to give.
0:35:26 > 0:35:29My mental equilibrium was not always what it is now,
0:35:29 > 0:35:33because I left home early, because I had to fight my way into Oxford,
0:35:33 > 0:35:35um...and because I had no support,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38and normally people cannot let go of everything
0:35:38 > 0:35:40and forge through on their own.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43Um...and I've always had to do that.
0:35:43 > 0:35:46And there were certain things in my early life and upbringing
0:35:46 > 0:35:50which were damaging to me, and you have to heal yourself.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53It is important to be healed, to be well.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55It's not enough to go through the rest of your life
0:35:55 > 0:35:59baring your wounds and polishing your scars
0:35:59 > 0:36:01and saying, "Poor me, what can I do?"
0:36:01 > 0:36:05And for me, to be well, to be sane and to be well,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08has been a significant achievement.
0:36:09 > 0:36:14Each book exists entirely in its own world, its own right.
0:36:14 > 0:36:16But what's the single most important thing
0:36:16 > 0:36:19that you are saying to us in your writing?
0:36:20 > 0:36:23If there was a single thing - I don't think there is -
0:36:23 > 0:36:26but if I wanted to hone it down,
0:36:26 > 0:36:30we would come back again to the point of challenge -
0:36:30 > 0:36:35to say that there is no lot that is so great
0:36:35 > 0:36:39and so burdensome that it cannot be changed.
0:36:39 > 0:36:42And I do believe in the transforming power of art.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46I believe that it can unlock locked lives
0:36:46 > 0:36:49and that it can quicken the dead places.
0:36:49 > 0:36:53I put all of my faith in it, all of my trust in it, in art.
0:36:53 > 0:36:58And I want to bring it to people and say, "This is for you.
0:36:58 > 0:37:00"It's not rarefied, it's not academic, it's alive.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04"It's the most alive thing you will probably ever touch and feel
0:37:04 > 0:37:06"because it comes from a vortex,
0:37:06 > 0:37:11"a great core of passion in the artist...of whatever kind."
0:37:11 > 0:37:15Do you sense from readers' response that you are communicating that?
0:37:15 > 0:37:19Yes. I have a huge mailbag. We get endless letters
0:37:19 > 0:37:24and the push of those letters always is that the work is speaking to them,
0:37:24 > 0:37:28which is important - again this question of intimacy.
0:37:28 > 0:37:29It speaks to them one to one,
0:37:29 > 0:37:32even though there are tens of thousands of people reading it,
0:37:32 > 0:37:36and that people have been able to use it, as a rod and a staff,
0:37:36 > 0:37:40to move on, to move forward, to break through.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45So I think I've given them some dynamite and also some salve.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48That must make you very happy.
0:37:48 > 0:37:51It does make me happy, but it's a duty.
0:37:52 > 0:37:55I must not fail. Perhaps I am a missionary after all.