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necessary to think there's some necessary to think there's some | :00:03. | :00:08. | |
perfect thing you'll fall into by mistake. Sweet Tooth is launched at | :00:08. | :00:13. | |
the end of Edinburgh Book Festival, any particular reason or you love | :00:13. | :00:18. | |
Edinburgh? It is very happy coincidence, I agreed long ago to | :00:18. | :00:26. | |
Edinburgh. I loved there. And I it just happens to be my peb will you | :00:26. | :00:32. | |
case day. Edinburgh doesn't change. It morals maintained its intimacy, | :00:32. | :00:37. | |
and general sense of mischaef and fun. I don't know how many times | :00:37. | :00:44. | |
I've been but it is a great pleasure. Philip Roth said the only | :00:44. | :00:49. | |
way he could finish the painting was when he broke the emotional | :00:49. | :00:53. | |
engagement with. How do you break with a book? That moment you hand | :00:53. | :01:00. | |
it of, I now take care to tell publishers, this is the penultimate | :01:00. | :01:04. | |
draft because there's a long tailoff, many after thoughts | :01:04. | :01:11. | |
between that moment of handing over, often disruptive suggestions, and | :01:11. | :01:16. | |
then the process of talking about it, which at first is very happy, | :01:16. | :01:21. | |
and then is neutral and becomes an affliction. You find if the name of | :01:21. | :01:29. | |
the character crosses your lips again, you'd cut your throat. | :01:29. | :01:33. | |
Ian McEwan novel things are rarely as straightforward as they appear, | :01:33. | :01:38. | |
and his latest is no exception. Filled with spies, sex and | :01:38. | :01:43. | |
seduction, Sweet Tooth is nar rated by Serena, a beautiful Cambridge | :01:43. | :01:48. | |
maths student who is recruited for MI5 for one of her lovers, as | :01:48. | :01:55. | |
befits a spy, she seems candid and evasive in equal measure. My name | :01:55. | :02:05. | |
:02:05. | :02:07. | ||
is Chris Froome - President Obama On a secret mission, I didn't | :02:07. | :02:11. | |
return safely. Within 18 months of joining I was sacked having | :02:11. | :02:14. | |
disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a | :02:14. | :02:23. | |
hand in his own undoing. By day she toils in the belly of | :02:23. | :02:28. | |
the service, but night, she consumes popular fiction. And a | :02:28. | :02:32. | |
love of novels prompts her first assignment, oming a new front in | :02:32. | :02:42. | |
:02:42. | :02:43. | ||
the Cold War, by cultivateing Tom Halley, who is a source of anti- | :02:43. | :02:49. | |
Communist pop prop ganda. What did you think of my stories, I said | :02:49. | :02:52. | |
quietly. I think they're utterly brilliant. He flinched as though | :02:52. | :02:57. | |
sun swun had pokeed him in the chest, in the heart, and he gave a | :02:57. | :03:02. | |
little gasp, not a laugh. He went to speak but was stuck for words. | :03:02. | :03:07. | |
He stareed at me, waiting, wanting me to go on, tell him more about | :03:07. | :03:13. | |
himself and his talent but I held back. Sweet Tooth explores a | :03:13. | :03:18. | |
potential crossover between the worlds of literature and espionage, | :03:18. | :03:22. | |
play flee mixing creation with real life characters, in compelling | :03:22. | :03:32. | |
:03:32. | :03:33. | ||
What was the origin of Sweet Tooth? Two or three little notes to myself, | :03:33. | :03:41. | |
over a period of five years, one was to a man writes a novel to get | :03:41. | :03:47. | |
a woman out of his system but ends up doing the exact opposite. | :03:47. | :03:53. | |
Another was what would happen in a love affair if one of the parties | :03:53. | :03:58. | |
had a secret and then it became too late to divulge it. It would | :03:58. | :04:04. | |
threaten. And finally, I had a vague idea of writing a novel, one | :04:04. | :04:09. | |
day, in which when you got to the very end, you realised that there's | :04:09. | :04:13. | |
a whole story that's happened outside the novel, and now you must | :04:13. | :04:18. | |
think again to include it. So I don't want to give away the end of | :04:18. | :04:23. | |
the novel, but I was conforming to a wish that I had a ending that | :04:23. | :04:28. | |
rewrote the novel at a stroke. There's no perfect novel, but do | :04:28. | :04:33. | |
you feel this one was as you wanted to be? I feel the novel was as good | :04:33. | :04:40. | |
as I get them, but, in terms of thinking about the future and what | :04:40. | :04:46. | |
I might do, I always think there's something, something I haven't yet | :04:46. | :04:54. | |
quite got or achieved, or fulfilled. And without that tug I think I'd | :04:54. | :05:00. | |
stop. It is necessary that there's some perfect thing you're going to | :05:00. | :05:06. | |
fall into by mistake. What is sweet toot at heart S it a spy story? | :05:06. | :05:12. | |
It's a love story and spy novel and reflection of Britain in the 7 0s, | :05:12. | :05:19. | |
in a sense historical novel. And a back ward look at a stretch of the | :05:19. | :05:25. | |
Cold War. The cultural Cold War. A subject that maybe still ripe for | :05:25. | :05:33. | |
investigation by historians. The CIA and somewhat poorer cousins, | :05:33. | :05:38. | |
MI6 pouring money into a cultural argument with the Soviet Union, as | :05:38. | :05:44. | |
to whether the great works derived from the best work, and cultural | :05:44. | :05:49. | |
activity derives from a Capitalist or Communist society. Writers, will | :05:49. | :05:55. | |
not talking optimistically about the West in the 1970s, I myself, | :05:55. | :06:00. | |
wrote an abandoned a very gloomy dystopian novel, it would have been | :06:00. | :06:05. | |
my first novel, and I borrowed that novel, and fed it back into the | :06:05. | :06:15. | |
book. I revived it and given it to Serena target, Tom Haley at the | :06:15. | :06:23. | |
University of Sussex. I mean, Sweet Tooth is a highly distorted | :06:23. | :06:27. | |
automatic biography. I was at Sussex hike Tom Haley I got my | :06:27. | :06:33. | |
first stories published with the new review, edit by Ian Hampton, | :06:33. | :06:42. | |
mash mash mash was my first editor. I did give a reading Like Tom Haley | :06:42. | :06:48. | |
did with Martin Amis. He got first billing in New York, he brought the | :06:48. | :06:52. | |
house down, everyone sobing with laugh ter. I was standing in the | :06:52. | :06:54. | |
wings, but fortunatelyly, Christopher Hitchins was the | :06:54. | :06:59. | |
moderator. I was about to go on, and he said don't go on stage, I | :06:59. | :07:03. | |
got to talk them down. Christopher, went on stage, and | :07:03. | :07:10. | |
spoke very eloquently about the state of British literary culture, | :07:10. | :07:14. | |
where Martins work stood there and by the time I came on, everything | :07:14. | :07:20. | |
was calm and it was fine. So this is a distorted biography, in that | :07:21. | :07:24. | |
Christopher Hitchins isn't there to do that. Eggs' dead. Of course it | :07:24. | :07:32. | |
is dedicated to Christopher Hitchins. It is dedicated to him. | :07:32. | :07:40. | |
In the early 7 0s, McEwan was the graduates of Malcolm Bradbury | :07:40. | :07:44. | |
ground breaking course in East Anglia. His early stories, revelled | :07:44. | :07:50. | |
in the shocking and grotesque, earning him the nickname, Ian | :07:50. | :07:55. | |
Macabre. If I'm sitting down facing an empty sheet of paper, what is | :07:55. | :08:00. | |
going to compel me into writing fiction? It is not what is nice, | :08:00. | :08:06. | |
and easy, and pleasant and somehow affirming, but somehow what is bad, | :08:06. | :08:12. | |
and difficult, and unsettling. That's the tinks I need to start me | :08:12. | :08:16. | |
writing. The collection, first love, last rights, dealt with | :08:16. | :08:21. | |
masturbation, incest and paedophilia, provoking controversy | :08:21. | :08:27. | |
but lavish critical praise. Reaction to his debut novel, The | :08:27. | :08:34. | |
Cement Garden was similarlyly split between disgust and administration. | :08:34. | :08:39. | |
In later novels he toned down the shock factor, but maintained a | :08:39. | :08:44. | |
precise writing style that drew a wider readership. In 1987 he won | :08:44. | :08:49. | |
the Whitbread prize for the child this time. It seemed impossible to | :08:49. | :08:54. | |
write about children and without time. Time in the various | :08:54. | :08:58. | |
manifestations, became the hero, the central element. A booker gong | :08:58. | :09:06. | |
was finally awarded for the black comedy, Amsterdam in 1988. Three | :09:06. | :09:15. | |
years later, Atonement was a published sen sensation, it was | :09:15. | :09:22. | |
made into a popular film by Joe Wright. More recent books tackleed | :09:22. | :09:29. | |
social issues. Saturday was sat in the day against protest fl the Iraq | :09:29. | :09:33. | |
war, and solar is ethics and climate change. On chessel beach | :09:33. | :09:37. | |
looks back in the 6 0s, and considers the thought lines between | :09:37. | :09:40. | |
sex and social expectations, a theme that recurs throughout his | :09:40. | :09:49. | |
work from the early stories, to the latest novel. Your first novel, | :09:49. | :09:54. | |
cement garden, 1978, it was shocking at the time. People were | :09:54. | :10:00. | |
shocked, the idea it was incest, and violence and so forth. But, you | :10:00. | :10:04. | |
now talk, you performance it as being, what was the phrase "it's | :10:05. | :10:14. | |
:10:15. | :10:16. | ||
staring at the wall fiction"? I was in love, with a certain kind | :10:16. | :10:20. | |
of exextension aesthetic in the '70s, I thought it was irrelevant | :10:20. | :10:26. | |
or even cheating to name the time and the place. And I wanted, my | :10:26. | :10:31. | |
character, suspended in space and time and hiss rifplt maybe I was | :10:31. | :10:40. | |
taking something from khat ker and it is suspended in time and place. | :10:40. | :10:45. | |
But that seemed like a blind alley for me. I think the novel needs to | :10:45. | :10:50. | |
team with life and circumstance, and particular Lottery, and I've | :10:50. | :10:56. | |
fallen love in history more. And like the novels of Sobello, the | :10:56. | :11:02. | |
feel of the street or the times and real people in it. It didn't do | :11:02. | :11:09. | |
harm that you were the shocker in your literary group? I had to sit | :11:09. | :11:14. | |
through the first readings, and the joke, it was new to the person | :11:14. | :11:20. | |
introducing me, so that required patience and took about 15 years to | :11:20. | :11:27. | |
wear off. Until last Thursday, when I saw Jane's corporation, I never | :11:27. | :11:33. | |
had special thought about death. I saw a dog run of onceings and the | :11:33. | :11:37. | |
wheels go over the neck and its eyeballs burst, it meant nothing. | :11:37. | :11:42. | |
When my mother died, I stayed away, a distaste for my relatives. I had | :11:42. | :11:51. | |
no curiosity about seeing her dead, thin and grey, among the flowers. | :11:51. | :11:59. | |
I first became aware of Ian McEwan through a television programme, | :11:59. | :12:05. | |
Melvyn Bragg used to write, it was first love first rights, I was 15, | :12:05. | :12:09. | |
trying to write short stories and attract today this weird, twisted | :12:09. | :12:13. | |
imagination, that I seemed to be presented to me. His stories were | :12:13. | :12:19. | |
twisted, taken every day, and putting a twist on it. Really, I | :12:19. | :12:24. | |
started copying him N my short stories. He got a reputation early | :12:24. | :12:32. | |
on, of being the this writer that had mordant imagination, had a I | :12:32. | :12:37. | |
think critics said queasyness, about the way sex appears in his | :12:37. | :12:42. | |
early short stories and first novel, The Cement Garden. Will is that | :12:42. | :12:48. | |
kind of weirdly, curdleed notion of relationships and how relationships | :12:48. | :12:54. | |
can go wrong. It was interesting, of the | :12:54. | :12:57. | |
development, he didn't stay like that, the first novel was | :12:57. | :13:00. | |
unrepresentative of the work afterwards. It was fascinating | :13:00. | :13:06. | |
going on the journey, from me being 16 to 52 and watching the way his | :13:06. | :13:15. | |
world viewed and his rank style has changed. Me growing up, at 19 I was | :13:15. | :13:25. | |
:13:25. | :13:28. | ||
in rooftop, I was working on a rooftop, reading a book, I saw how | :13:28. | :13:33. | |
rich and different the American novel was, from the British | :13:33. | :13:37. | |
counterpart, I couldn't begin to write like that, it was like a | :13:37. | :13:42. | |
light on the horizon, it was something to start walking towards. | :13:42. | :13:48. | |
And then, later, when Philip Roth lived in London, how he was and as | :13:48. | :13:52. | |
a mentor, but you did have controversial? Philip took a great | :13:52. | :14:01. | |
deal of interest in my work, and was kind about it. I made him | :14:01. | :14:04. | |
impatient because I didn't want to do with my books he would have | :14:04. | :14:08. | |
wanted to do. He spread the whole of The Cement Garden in type script | :14:08. | :14:14. | |
on my floor, and he was saying this is fantastic, but this, forget all | :14:14. | :14:19. | |
this, it's got to explode at this point. I thought this is amazing, | :14:19. | :14:24. | |
this legendary novelist, is on my sitting room carpet on his knees, | :14:24. | :14:33. | |
telling me what to do. I felt this thrill of recognition, that at | :14:33. | :14:39. | |
least he thought I was another writer. But I also knew, quietly, I | :14:39. | :14:45. | |
didn't dare say, so he was describing for me, a brilliant | :14:45. | :14:50. | |
Philip Roth, and what he would have done with it, is brilliant and | :14:50. | :14:56. | |
funnyings like port any's complaint. When you hear writers talk about | :14:56. | :15:04. | |
the way they write, like Jonathan Franzen, puts a pair of headphones | :15:04. | :15:09. | |
on and sticks glue in the internet tube, to get him in the state. What | :15:09. | :15:14. | |
is the most pleasureable state for you? Well, this doesn't happen | :15:14. | :15:18. | |
often, but when it happens it is wonderful. It is when you hit a | :15:19. | :15:23. | |
stretch of writing when the sentepss set themselves down, with | :15:23. | :15:30. | |
a kind of inevitability and more than that, your absorption is so | :15:30. | :15:33. | |
total you forget you exist, and whole narrative of your life. You | :15:33. | :15:41. | |
are ut territorial in the present, maybe like some yogy should be. It | :15:41. | :15:46. | |
lathss maybe at aest best an hour, or hour-and-a-half, and you come | :15:46. | :15:54. | |
out of it, and the world plods back in. I only have those moments, | :15:54. | :16:00. | |
maybe, three or four times in a year. But they're worth living for. | :16:00. | :16:05. | |
And that's when I'm very grateful to be a novelist. I think you can | :16:05. | :16:11. | |
obviously get it playing tennis or cooking a meal, that nice sense of | :16:11. | :16:16. | |
some psychologists call it "flow" of being self-less and happy | :16:16. | :16:22. | |
without being mirthful, content, fulfilled, justifying your | :16:22. | :16:30. | |
existence. One way or the other, that's when it really is sweet. | :16:30. | :16:34. | |
British literacy landscape was altered in the 197 0s, by the new | :16:34. | :16:44. | |
:16:44. | :16:46. | ||
wave of writers, McEwan, Rushdie, barns barns and aim mus, it was | :16:46. | :16:49. | |
provocative and often shocking. Nifplt a way they were creating the | :16:49. | :16:52. | |
theme the literary novel we call now. Where the point was novels | :16:52. | :16:59. | |
could be exciting, partly because of the difficulty in subject matter, | :16:59. | :17:03. | |
but also because they played all sort of clever tricks, with | :17:03. | :17:10. | |
narrative and doing that. Writing at a time of mass unemployment, | :17:10. | :17:15. | |
protest and sea-change, McEwan spear headed a literacy revolution, | :17:15. | :17:21. | |
that altered the form of the novel. I remember the issue of Granta, | :17:21. | :17:31. | |
:17:31. | :17:32. | ||
which was published in 193, which had the opening chapter of AMIS's | :17:32. | :17:38. | |
money, that came at you with energy, which was novel in fiction. They've | :17:38. | :17:42. | |
all gone on to award winning success. When literature comes | :17:42. | :17:45. | |
face-to-face, with stardust. They've all been short listed for | :17:45. | :17:55. | |
:17:55. | :17:56. | ||
the booker, and all, apart from Amis have won. It is how fiction | :17:56. | :18:00. | |
has come to prominence. Rushdie wins the book, it is important and | :18:00. | :18:07. | |
influential thing, those particular four names, lush by, McEwan, AMIS | :18:07. | :18:13. | |
and Barns, can be misleading now, not least because - rush by, | :18:13. | :18:17. | |
because some of them have done their best work in recent years, | :18:17. | :18:23. | |
and some have found it hard to recapture what they had in the 80s,. | :18:23. | :18:33. | |
:18:33. | :18:35. | ||
Novelists like to be accepted, and acknowledged. Amsterdam, when it | :18:35. | :18:39. | |
was described as a comic novel, what did you make of that? | :18:40. | :18:47. | |
thought it was comic, joy despirit, it was one of the few novels I | :18:47. | :18:51. | |
wrote having the whole idea from the start. I just finished, | :18:51. | :18:55. | |
Enduring Love, it is the only time I've just been publishing one novel | :18:55. | :19:01. | |
and correcting the proofs of another. I thought how wonderful if | :19:01. | :19:08. | |
you managed this in one's life. I suppose it is, you know, the | :19:08. | :19:14. | |
accident, the spining bolt of prize committees, it won a prize, but | :19:14. | :19:20. | |
maybe I would have rathered it won for Atonement or Saturday, or a | :19:20. | :19:24. | |
longer and more considered book. But what I think funny about Sweet | :19:24. | :19:30. | |
Tooth is because, the committee, suggests that well, if Tom Haley, | :19:30. | :19:36. | |
can fix it for him to win the booker, this new fangled prize, and | :19:36. | :19:41. | |
that's, because it seems like you are taking a poke at prize giving | :19:41. | :19:47. | |
anyway? One of the operatives said in 1972, sooner or later, someone | :19:47. | :19:50. | |
from MI5, will be chairing the booker committee, and we'll make | :19:50. | :19:56. | |
sure it gets in. I mean, Stella Rimmington, not for a minute, was | :19:56. | :20:00. | |
she influenced by anything that MI5 would have wanted in the way of a | :20:00. | :20:05. | |
book. But I thought I would have fun in with the idea. And all of | :20:05. | :20:12. | |
your group, Rushdie, have been nominated or short listed or | :20:12. | :20:17. | |
whatever, was there an element of competition amonk you as writers? | :20:17. | :20:22. | |
We've known each other, long before we were well known. I met, Martin | :20:22. | :20:26. | |
just as he was publishing his first book, I was yet to publish mine. | :20:26. | :20:35. | |
Skpwruelian was three or four years away from his. Metro land, that | :20:35. | :20:42. | |
came later with Grimus. I feel it is not a positional good, there is | :20:42. | :20:49. | |
infinite space for good novels. So it is not a race. There's an | :20:49. | :20:54. | |
credibly funny rant, obviously measureed rant. A measureed rant. | :20:54. | :20:59. | |
You basically rant about ox bridge, the great stiff about Tommy being | :20:59. | :21:03. | |
at Sussex, and Sussex is a new university, we have to do work | :21:03. | :21:10. | |
there. You don't get to Swan about at ox bridge? Well I had to balance | :21:10. | :21:20. | |
Serena's snipy and They dripgs of the university, she shares jeth | :21:20. | :21:23. | |
though tul and ask see people play football in the student union and | :21:23. | :21:33. | |
can't take seriously the idea of a university being new. So, her lover, | :21:33. | :21:37. | |
mounts a spirited defence of Al- Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade brig' New Map | :21:37. | :21:42. | |
of Learning, from which I benefited enormously. I was put in touch with | :21:42. | :21:47. | |
a lovely, thriving diverse sense of European literature and yet still, | :21:47. | :21:53. | |
wrote three he is says, every two weeks for three years, Sussex | :21:53. | :21:58. | |
tuetuerl system in those days. It was jolly hard work, but it was | :21:58. | :22:04. | |
eminently defensible, and so, I just wanted to give Serena a little | :22:04. | :22:11. | |
correcting. Unfavourable comparisons are often made between | :22:11. | :22:19. | |
a novel and screen adaptation, with seven films made and author of | :22:19. | :22:23. | |
screen place, he is not a stranger of moving it from page to screen. | :22:23. | :22:29. | |
His first original screen play, the ploughman's lump, in 1938, was | :22:29. | :22:33. | |
laweded by one critic as the most politically aware film, produced in | :22:33. | :22:39. | |
Britain since the second world war. What have you been up to? | :22:40. | :22:44. | |
Everyone's desperate for a new Falklands angle. Purdy's come up | :22:44. | :22:51. | |
with a real dog. Workers writes in Argentina. | :22:51. | :22:55. | |
I've been running around trying to get people to do thing, workers | :22:55. | :23:04. | |
rights. In contrast, his Hollywood thriller, The Good Son, featured a | :23:04. | :23:12. | |
change of role. If I let you go, do you think you could fly? I hope. | :23:12. | :23:16. | |
Films made from early novels reflect his unusual story lines, | :23:16. | :23:23. | |
such as the incestuous relationship in The Cement Garden. Ill Top of | :23:23. | :23:29. | |
them. And the troubleling atmosphere that pervadeed McEwan's | :23:29. | :23:34. | |
Venice is caught by Augusto Pinochet in The Comfort Of | :23:34. | :23:38. | |
Strangers. The precise scriptive style and striking imagery, became | :23:38. | :23:48. | |
:23:48. | :23:59. | ||
a gift for film makers, as evidence, But Atonement, nominated for seven | :23:59. | :24:05. | |
Oscars, including a nod for best screen play for Christopher Hampton | :24:05. | :24:10. | |
has become the biggest box office triumph. It gloryeeed in sum tueous | :24:10. | :24:16. | |
sets and made the most of their young stars, Keira Knightley and | :24:16. | :24:21. | |
James McAvoy, to make a success out of a novel, that some deemed | :24:21. | :24:31. | |
:24:31. | :24:33. | ||
You always had a relationship with screen plays, a film? Tifplt always | :24:33. | :24:39. | |
fascinate me, writing, Writing for a director so much, but writing for | :24:39. | :24:44. | |
a camera. And around about the time I was publishing my first story, I | :24:44. | :24:51. | |
was writing for television, worked with Mike Newall. We made | :24:51. | :24:58. | |
adaptation for one of mine, Sold Geometry, that was exciting, I was | :24:58. | :25:07. | |
on the front page of the Sun, and then Morrison seriously, started | :25:07. | :25:13. | |
work with Richard Air, we came up with a screen play for the | :25:13. | :25:18. | |
ploughman's lump. And when I gave it to Richard, almost two weeks | :25:18. | :25:24. | |
later, hardly any gap at all, the whole Falklands crisis started. So | :25:24. | :25:31. | |
I was able to adapt this to absorb that, and end, to write into it, | :25:31. | :25:34. | |
the Tory party conference of that year, and triumph and speeches. And | :25:35. | :25:40. | |
I thought this is the charmed life, I will now just write novels and in | :25:40. | :25:50. | |
between, I will write movies. So, meetly I started working with | :25:50. | :25:54. | |
Bernardo Bertolucci, and it was then you can't plan, movies are | :25:54. | :25:58. | |
messy and hard to fund, they fall apart, screen plays V to be | :25:58. | :26:03. | |
rewritten, sometimes by other people, you get sacked. So that | :26:04. | :26:08. | |
dream, never really worked out. It was only, in that early time. | :26:08. | :26:14. | |
when it came to, for example, Atonement, did you never think, | :26:14. | :26:18. | |
when you wrote Atonement, "I would like to tackle the screen play of | :26:18. | :26:23. | |
this" or was that never going to happen? Well, I had first refusal | :26:23. | :26:30. | |
on that. I had a novel I wanted to write, and when Christopher Hampton | :26:30. | :26:35. | |
said he would do it, I was delighted. I think, Joe and his | :26:35. | :26:45. | |
:26:45. | :26:48. | ||
team, pulled off a brilliant, superb job in the casting, I | :26:48. | :26:58. | |
:26:58. | :27:00. | ||
thought Henry Perowne was beautifully chosen. - Saoirse Ronan | :27:00. | :27:07. | |
was superbly delight, I was delighted by it. It brought me to a | :27:07. | :27:13. | |
much wider readership. Like most, I start in publishing, a few stories | :27:13. | :27:18. | |
in literary mag designs, publish your first book, I solid maybe 1500 | :27:18. | :27:22. | |
copies, and the next one, 2,000, and so you proceed through a | :27:22. | :27:27. | |
writing life and you get to 1,000 readers. If you're lucky. And you | :27:27. | :27:34. | |
keep at it. And Atonement's purned this up into hundreds of thousands. | :27:34. | :27:40. | |
Is there a conflict, between a very much literary writer and being a | :27:40. | :27:44. | |
best seller? Modernism wanted to teach us, if a book was understood | :27:44. | :27:48. | |
about too many people, there must be something wrong with it. But I | :27:48. | :27:55. | |
think the novel always had, it was always a popular form and the great | :27:55. | :28:01. | |
19th century novelists, where Dickens, or whatever, were read by | :28:01. | :28:05. | |
a wide section of society. And I think we got fooled in the early | :28:05. | :28:11. | |
part of the 20th century, by the high priest notion, of the novel as | :28:11. | :28:15. | |
exclusive form. And perhaps, we're regaining that territory now. | :28:15. | :28:19. | |
there is always a discourse at the heart of the novel that stays with | :28:19. | :28:24. | |
you. Let's go to rattle for a moment, you hold on to rationalism, | :28:24. | :28:31. | |
almost like a talisman, don't you? I don't think it was a talisman, it | :28:31. | :28:39. | |
was irrational kind of symbol. I'd like to give rattle a full riched | :28:39. | :28:44. | |
blooded life. I think it underpins, many things in our lives from our | :28:44. | :28:50. | |
legal system, to the laws we consider good, to the love affairs | :28:50. | :28:55. | |
that run with fulfilment to both sides. In other words, coherence | :28:55. | :29:00. | |
and degree of holding to what you say in meaning, to what you say, as | :29:00. | :29:09. | |
well as understanding the world around us, and science has shown us | :29:09. | :29:15. | |
wonders all down to one corner of our total being, which is our per | :29:15. | :29:20. | |
expenseity for being rational. So, I want to rescue it from the | :29:20. | :29:30. | |
romantics, I suppose that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the | :29:30. | :29:37. | |
first in a long battle to give us, rattle a cold hard, logical, poor | :29:37. | :29:47. | |
:29:47. | :29:47. | ||
images. I want to celebrate it. I think it is a marvellous thing. | :29:47. | :29:51. | |
favourite of eep's books is Saturday. I was given it when I was | :29:51. | :29:55. | |
a junior doctor. And I was a trainee in neurosurgeon, very much | :29:55. | :30:01. | |
at the beginning of my career. Throughout your training, you | :30:01. | :30:04. | |
become immune to other people's suffering, because you're expose | :30:04. | :30:09. | |
today such a lot of it. And it is possible, after years and years of | :30:09. | :30:16. | |
working why A and E or surgical works, McEwan he talks about that, | :30:16. | :30:20. | |
the five or six years character worked in emergency units, how you | :30:20. | :30:25. | |
can lose think for people. And then, also how difficult it is to not let | :30:25. | :30:29. | |
that translate into when you go back home. There's an account in | :30:29. | :30:32. | |
the book of a very difficult separation, called a | :30:32. | :30:38. | |
transsphenoidal hypophysectomy, where you have to peel the face | :30:38. | :30:45. | |
back, open up the nasal cafity and go in the central of the caf vit, | :30:45. | :30:50. | |
through the nose, you get in the pituitary gland and extraordinarily | :30:50. | :30:56. | |
difficult place to get at. You can tell he took great deal of care. | :30:57. | :31:00. | |
But similarly great deal of care over the poetry publishing business, | :31:00. | :31:06. | |
or the ins and outs of becoming a blues, player in New York and | :31:06. | :31:12. | |
London together. So, I think, his research on the neurosurgical topic | :31:12. | :31:18. | |
sincere as good as the research on other topics. You talk about | :31:18. | :31:25. | |
learning, you take your learning seriously. So in Saturday, Henry is | :31:25. | :31:29. | |
the neurosurgeon, but you shadowed a neurosurgeon for a long time? | :31:29. | :31:36. | |
stood at the elbow of a gifted neurosurgeon, Neil Kitchen, on and | :31:36. | :31:43. | |
off over a period of two years. And hung about in his operating theatre | :31:43. | :31:50. | |
and got to know his firm as he calls his team. Often in my scrubs, | :31:50. | :31:55. | |
passed myself off as a neurosurgeon at one point. You passed yourself | :31:55. | :32:02. | |
off as a neurosurgeon? Yifplt he I did. I say we, Neil was doing an | :32:02. | :32:05. | |
operation, so already I was thinking we, and two medical | :32:05. | :32:10. | |
students came into the theatre, fifth year, and came over to me, | :32:10. | :32:15. | |
and said "excuse us doctor, would you mind if we watch" I said go | :32:15. | :32:25. | |
ahead". They said, what is going on, I saidings well, we're cliping a | :32:25. | :32:29. | |
middle cerebral artery aneurysm". And I thought, have I learnt enough | :32:29. | :32:35. | |
to do this. They come to the light box and I show you the CT scans, I | :32:35. | :32:40. | |
told them exactly what was going on in a low murmuring voice. And at | :32:40. | :32:43. | |
the end, they said, thank you very much doctor, and they left. I | :32:43. | :32:49. | |
always wonder how they got on in their exams,. I wop der were you | :32:49. | :32:55. | |
right, the danger was you were given the right details? I had it | :32:55. | :32:59. | |
right. Do you fear the wrong detail? I always get things wrong | :32:59. | :33:05. | |
and I get letters, I have written a lecture on making mistakes in | :33:05. | :33:13. | |
fiction. I made so many mistakes in fiction. An xax, in Saturday, Henry | :33:13. | :33:19. | |
has a Mercedes 500 SE, he gets into it, and the car, as he releases the | :33:19. | :33:26. | |
clutch, it slips out the garage. I get a nice letter, saying, they | :33:26. | :33:32. | |
enjoyed the nox, but you can't get a man uel, if you want him to | :33:32. | :33:38. | |
change the gears, you have to step down to the00, TKL, and it won't do | :33:38. | :33:46. | |
you any good changeing to a BMW or Audi, because these are plutocratic | :33:46. | :33:53. | |
cars, and owners don't need to mess with gear sticks. In eliminated the | :33:53. | :34:00. | |
clutch. And at the end of Atonement, which is full of mistakes, slowly | :34:00. | :34:08. | |
corrected, Imperial War Museum library, Briony, and she herself | :34:08. | :34:12. | |
talks about crawling towards the truth. These points, of moments of | :34:12. | :34:18. | |
truth, when she's corrected by a military historian, who says no-one | :34:18. | :34:25. | |
was wearing a beret at Dunkirk, someone told me that. So, I think | :34:25. | :34:30. | |
that when writers, write you and correct you on a detail, you are | :34:30. | :34:35. | |
lucky to have that engagement. That is the instead of rejecting it | :34:35. | :34:39. | |
oring with defensive, well say, either they're right or wrong. If | :34:39. | :34:43. | |
they're right that is the form of engagement, a realist novel, would | :34:43. | :34:47. | |
welcome. But do you think as a writer then, | :34:47. | :34:54. | |
you have a duty to be involved in the public debate? I don't feel it | :34:54. | :35:01. | |
as a duty. And I think broadly, the novelist, is so cap patience as a | :35:01. | :35:08. | |
form. Some writers, clearly should or need to or want to inhabit a | :35:08. | :35:13. | |
private space and others a mix of both and others write in a public | :35:13. | :35:19. | |
world. There should be no should in this. I just go where I'm | :35:19. | :35:24. | |
fascinateed. That's all. Walking down to the kitchen, he reads the | :35:24. | :35:28. | |
headlines, Blix telling the UN the Iraqis are beginning to co-operate. | :35:28. | :35:32. | |
In response, the Prime Minister, is expected to emphasise in a speech | :35:32. | :35:42. | |
:35:42. | :35:42. | ||
in Glasgow today, the humanitarian reasons for war n but thepm's late | :35:42. | :35:47. | |
switch looks cynical. Hen very hoping his own story, breaking at | :35:47. | :35:53. | |
4.30, may make the late editionness London. But there's nothing. | :35:53. | :36:00. | |
There were I mean, memories play tricks, but in the leadup to the | :36:00. | :36:04. | |
invasion, I was present, as no doubt you were, with a a lot of | :36:04. | :36:08. | |
thunderous kitchen table debate. Nor could you tell if someone was | :36:08. | :36:15. | |
on the left or right, quite where they would stand. I wanted to get | :36:15. | :36:19. | |
that full, cock cough any of voices. I'd been following Iraq since the | :36:19. | :36:28. | |
late 8 0s, hen the republic of fear came out, at that point. And I do | :36:28. | :36:31. | |
remember, nobody much noticed the weapons of mass destruction used in | :36:31. | :36:38. | |
norp Iraq on the Kurds, it didn't bring anyone out on the street so. | :36:38. | :36:41. | |
I was sceptical that suddenly, people cared about Iraqi lives, | :36:41. | :36:46. | |
when the Iraqi trade unions were saying, please come. And the women | :36:46. | :36:52. | |
as movement and all kinds of good sectors of Iraq. But, by the time | :36:52. | :36:58. | |
we got to January, February, March, I was really, I knew that the last | :36:58. | :37:02. | |
country on earth, or last administration on earth, to invade | :37:02. | :37:08. | |
Iraq and organise it, would be the Bush administration. Paradoxically, | :37:08. | :37:12. | |
France or Germany, would have been actually better, running the | :37:12. | :37:18. | |
occupation. Than the United States, which wanted to privatise even | :37:18. | :37:22. | |
torture at Abu Ghraib. I had one sleepless night, I woke my wifeings | :37:22. | :37:26. | |
and said, I will get, I think I could get half an hour with Tony | :37:26. | :37:31. | |
Blair, I have a plan. It was one of those hours of the wolf. To talk | :37:31. | :37:39. | |
him out of this. What was your plan, your argument? My argument we would | :37:39. | :37:45. | |
move 8,000 troops out of Kuwait and put them in Afghanistan. So the | :37:45. | :37:52. | |
Army would lose no face, and we wouldn't be contradiction of not | :37:52. | :37:59. | |
having a second resolution in the UN, we couldn't stop the Americans | :37:59. | :38:04. | |
invading anyway. And, then 8am, full light of day, this, you know, | :38:04. | :38:10. | |
of course I couldn't get half an hour of Tony Blair, what was I | :38:10. | :38:16. | |
thinking of. That was after a good bolt of Beaujolais after you went | :38:16. | :38:21. | |
to bed. Now here we were, somewhere between 1 d 30 and 2 in the morning | :38:21. | :38:26. | |
lying in bed, staring at each other by the low light of one lamp. Me | :38:26. | :38:32. | |
naked, she in a cot tan nightdress, our arms and hands touching, but | :38:32. | :38:37. | |
neutrally, without commitment. All the questions, were heaped | :38:37. | :38:40. | |
around us arcs for a while, neither dared speak. | :38:41. | :38:48. | |
It was enough that we could look each other in the eye ". When you | :38:48. | :38:53. | |
seek inspiration, do you have a comfort blanket of books, or do you | :38:53. | :38:59. | |
seek new fiction? I try to write each novel as if it is my first. | :38:59. | :39:03. | |
I'm happy to leave a stretch of time. I'm in this time now, and I | :39:03. | :39:09. | |
always look forward to it now. Time to read or think or hike, or just | :39:09. | :39:16. | |
hang out with friends, and travel. And then sooner or later, I get | :39:16. | :39:21. | |
impatient and loif doesn't seem structured or worth living without | :39:21. | :39:25. | |
something forming and that's the time I start looking back into my | :39:25. | :39:28. | |
notebooks and fishing out the suggestions and messages that will | :39:28. | :39:32. | |
mean something to me. So I'm just on the edge now. What do you have | :39:32. | :39:37. | |
in the plot book? Do you have a gather plot books of scenes yos, | :39:37. | :39:42. | |
what do you think your next novel will be? It has something to do | :39:42. | :39:48. | |
with the law. And with hau, in general. And I think its hero is a | :39:48. | :39:51. | |
judge, that's all about I'm prepared to say. You're going to | :39:51. | :39:56. | |
have to shadow a judge now? going to have to talk to someone. | :39:56. | :40:02. | |
Pass yourself off as one? Yes, we all could with a wig and firm | :40:02. | :40:06. | |
opinions. If you were to look at a novel that you think is the perfect | :40:06. | :40:16. | |
:40:16. | :40:18. | ||
novel. What would it be? I would say, Anna Karenina would be my | :40:18. | :40:25. | |
candidate. It is cap patience novel, it is sprawling, in there, is a | :40:25. | :40:35. | |
:40:35. | :40:36. | ||
kind of perfection. Greatest sweep of emotion and the intimate as well | :40:36. | :40:40. | |
as the whole society at a particular turning point. Plus, and | :40:40. | :40:49. | |
I think this is the clincher for me, scores, maybe 150 pages describing | :40:49. | :40:56. | |
the nature of happiness. But it is long, and maybe the point | :40:56. | :41:01. | |
here is that novels are bound to be imperfect. They're all too human. | :41:01. | :41:09. | |
It is a very personal form. Anyone who sights down to write, a few | :41:09. | :41:13. | |
hundred words of prose in noveliststic form will discover how | :41:13. | :41:17. | |
embarrassing and personal it is, even if you think you're writing | :41:17. | :41:25. | |
about something outside you. As I have in Atonement, even writing "he | :41:25. | :41:28. | |
said" embarrassing, because he didn't and you made it up. And | :41:28. | :41:35. | |
somehow, in making it up, you make yourself, vulnerable. Highly | :41:35. | :41:40. | |
susceptible. That's why, when, a reviewer, says," Don't take this | :41:40. | :41:46. | |
personally, but your book is a load of crap" you know it is impossible | :41:46. | :41:51. | |
proposition. It is probably the most intimate personal form, there | :41:51. | :41:57. | |
is. And you cannot help over 300 paims, somehow, splaiing yourself, | :41:57. | :42:02. | |
like a flog in a dissection class back in the O-level days, when such | :42:02. | :42:05. | |
terrible things were permitted, your insides are suddenly out. | :42:05. | :42:14. | |
There's no way around it. I think in, Karenina ka car Dr Anna | :42:14. | :42:20. | |
Karenina, opened him up in a way which is near to perfection. Thank | :42:20. | :42:26. | |
you very much. Sweet Tooth is out this week. I will be back next week, | :42:26. | :42:29. | |
in the final programme in our Edinburgh festivals. | :42:29. | :42:36. | |
We'll be brainging you the best of the fest and new novel by Zadie | :42:36. | :42:46. | |
:42:46. | :43:11. | ||
Well it is bank holiday weekend for most of us, so rain in forecast, | :43:11. | :43:18. | |
showery day on Saturday, heavy, slow moving in Scotland and Wales. | :43:18. | :43:24. | |
Let deal with England and Wales first. Some very heavy thundery | :43:24. | :43:26. | |
downpours across the heart of the Midlands, southern England too. | :43:26. | :43:30. | |
Light winds for most part but brisk breeze along the English Channel | :43:31. | :43:34. | |
coasts and not a clever day to be going to the beach. There will be | :43:35. | :43:39. | |
heavy rain at times and cool breeze. Across Wales, the winds will be | :43:39. | :43:44. | |
lighter but that means the showers could well last a while. This will | :43:44. | :43:48. | |
be sunshine in between. Talking of sunshine, Northern Ireland will get | :43:48. | :43:53. | |
away with best of the weather, on Saturday. And showers will be | :43:53. | :43:56. | |
isolate, and should stay mostly dry and bright. | :43:56. | :44:02. | |
Further east, rather cloudy, cool breeze and scattering of showers. | :44:02. | :44:06. | |
As we go to the evening time, showers will linger on. Further | :44:06. | :44:12. | |
afield, to find sunshine, good luck if you're going to north western | :44:12. | :44:17. | |
parts of Europe, showers are around. The heat hangs on, particularly | :44:17. | :44:23. |