0:00:02 > 0:00:04This programme contains some strong language
0:00:04 > 0:00:08I've planted this tree. It's taller than me now. It was about that high when I planted it.
0:00:08 > 0:00:13I'd like to say thank you to Diana Athill, my first editor in England.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Diana Athill.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23# Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom
0:00:23 > 0:00:25# When the jungle shadows fall
0:00:25 > 0:00:29# Like the tick-tick tock of the stately clock
0:00:29 > 0:00:31# As it stands against the wall... #
0:00:31 > 0:00:36It's all looking a bit shaggy. This time of day.
0:00:36 > 0:00:42Whatever one puts in that corner just turns up its nose and dies.
0:00:42 > 0:00:49# ..You, you, you Night and day you are the one... #
0:00:49 > 0:00:56No-one writes more frankly about sex, love and death than Diana Athill.
0:00:56 > 0:01:01Born during the First World War, she spent much of her childhood in her grandmother's house here in Norfolk.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04She still visits her cousin in a cottage across the field.
0:01:04 > 0:01:09# Night and day. #
0:01:09 > 0:01:13Many of her favourite children's books are still here.
0:01:13 > 0:01:18My first loves when I was very young indeed, I would rescue them,
0:01:18 > 0:01:23that was how my first erotic daydreams began.
0:01:23 > 0:01:28I would rescue this poor person and he would come round from a swoon
0:01:28 > 0:01:36finding me leaning over him with my cloud of dark hair like a curtain.
0:01:36 > 0:01:42I was the most mouse-coloured child you could possibly imagine with straight hair, but I was going to
0:01:42 > 0:01:45end up with coal black hair down to my knees.
0:01:45 > 0:01:53I remember awful days when I was 11 or so looking at myself in the looking glass in the bathroom
0:01:53 > 0:02:00and thinking, no, of course I am going to change quite a lot,
0:02:00 > 0:02:04but I am never going to change as much as that.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09This programme contains some strong language
0:02:11 > 0:02:12For most of her career,
0:02:12 > 0:02:16Diana Athill was a publisher and an editor, not just ANY editor,
0:02:16 > 0:02:17an exceptional one.
0:02:17 > 0:02:25She once wrote, "An editor must never expect thanks. We must remember we are only midwives.
0:02:25 > 0:02:31"If we want praise for progeny, we must give birth to our own."
0:02:31 > 0:02:33And that's just what she did.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37In her 80s she emerged as an author.
0:02:37 > 0:02:40"Here I am almost at my end," she writes,
0:02:40 > 0:02:43"and my beginning rises up to meet me,
0:02:43 > 0:02:46"or rather, even when I was far away from it,
0:02:46 > 0:02:49"it was always there, and now I have come back to it."
0:03:12 > 0:03:17- Hi.- Hello! I come with my entourage. - Come on in.
0:03:17 > 0:03:22Now 92, Diana has moved into an old people's home in North London.
0:03:22 > 0:03:26Come in, come in! Isn't it sad that there are no men?
0:03:26 > 0:03:30There used to be, apparently, a few and they're all remembered
0:03:30 > 0:03:32very fondly by the people who remember them.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35They would be, wouldn't they?
0:03:35 > 0:03:39"The last man in my life was Sam, who was born in the Caribbean.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42"I gave Sam sex that suited him.
0:03:42 > 0:03:48"The first, but not most enduring attraction, was that I was white and well-bred.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52"For seven years, I spent a night with him about once a week.
0:03:52 > 0:03:59"We rarely did anything together except make ourselves a pleasant little supper and go to bed.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03"We had little in common apart from liking sex.
0:04:03 > 0:04:10"We also shared painful feet, which was almost as important as liking sex, because when you start feeling
0:04:10 > 0:04:14"your age, it is comforting to be with someone in the same condition.
0:04:14 > 0:04:17"Our relationship ended gently.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20"He said, 'What about coming to bed?'
0:04:20 > 0:04:23"but I could see he was relieved when I said no.
0:04:23 > 0:04:28"The next thing I heard about him was that he had died suddenly of a heart attack."
0:04:28 > 0:04:35Anne said that men do come and say, "is a room available?" But they never look around.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39- It's too daunting.- They say, "This daunting mass of old women,"
0:04:39 > 0:04:43and they think to themselves, "Oh, my God, I would be lost in there."
0:04:43 > 0:04:45They'd have the time of their lives!
0:04:51 > 0:04:56What made you decide to come and live here then, in the Mary Feilding Home?
0:04:56 > 0:05:03It occurred to me that if I was going to be ill ever, I would have to depend on
0:05:03 > 0:05:10dear friends and my nephews. I've got no children to come and stand around, and this just wasn't on.
0:05:10 > 0:05:16And by a great piece of luck, a friend of mine had to move into an old people's home and
0:05:16 > 0:05:24I thought, how ghastly, how awful, I had this terrible image of what an old person's home must be like.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28I must go and see her. I remember opening the door, and Rose
0:05:28 > 0:05:35struggled up from her chair and said, "Darling, you've got to come and live here, it's the most wonderful place!"
0:05:37 > 0:05:40And they're quite demanding about who they take, aren't they?
0:05:40 > 0:05:45There's a wonderful sort of theory locally,
0:05:45 > 0:05:50that they don't accept you unless you read Proust and Kafka!
0:05:50 > 0:05:55Which is an overstatement, but they do sort of grill you fairly much...
0:05:55 > 0:06:00What they like, is to get people who've had interesting lives.
0:06:04 > 0:06:08"There comes a time when it dawns on you that your legs have become
0:06:08 > 0:06:10"so useless that if you tried to depend on them
0:06:10 > 0:06:13"for more than a few steps without some sort of
0:06:13 > 0:06:19"prop such as sticks or, God help you, a Zimmer, you would simply fall down.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22"At that point your car represents life.
0:06:22 > 0:06:29"You hobble towards it, you ease your unwieldy body laboriously into the driver's seat and lo!
0:06:29 > 0:06:34"You're back to normal." It looks terrible because I've bumped into so many things.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38It looks very ancient, but it never, never fails to start.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42- Scars, you call them. - Scars. It's a scarred car!
0:06:46 > 0:06:52"Off you whizz just like everyone else, restored to freedom, restored almost to youth.
0:06:52 > 0:06:57"I've always liked my car. Now I love it."
0:06:57 > 0:06:59I'll have to get a little bit further in.
0:06:59 > 0:07:01THUD
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Hello! Good evening.
0:07:04 > 0:07:10I had to leave my stick in the car because I couldn't get it out...
0:07:13 > 0:07:15Her neck is slightly more stretched.
0:07:15 > 0:07:18'I'm doing life drawing, which I love.
0:07:18 > 0:07:20'It really is a very consuming thing to do.'
0:07:20 > 0:07:22The sternum is at this angle.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27'It's tremendous hard work. I don't know why. You come away from it exhausted.'
0:07:27 > 0:07:30What is it about drawing?
0:07:30 > 0:07:33It's looking and looking and looking at the human figure
0:07:33 > 0:07:37and then the actual putting down of a line that looks good.
0:07:38 > 0:07:42"I was drawing horses, as I constantly did, when my aunt
0:07:42 > 0:07:48"leant over my shoulder and said, 'Draw a naked man.' I hesitated.
0:07:48 > 0:07:50"She, seeing what I was thinking, said, 'Go on,
0:07:50 > 0:07:55"'you needn't put in his, er...little arrangements if you don't want to.'
0:07:55 > 0:08:00"So I drew a shapeless forked radish and she looked disappointed.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04"I knew I had failed in some way, that there was something of significance
0:08:04 > 0:08:09"I should have been able to do with the human body, instead of being embarrassed by it.
0:08:09 > 0:08:15"So my aunt and my own temperament equipped me with eyes, and seeing
0:08:15 > 0:08:21"things remained, through the dreariest stretches of my life, a reason for living."
0:08:22 > 0:08:27Diana has had to shed possessions to squeeze into her small room
0:08:27 > 0:08:32at the home, keeping only her very favourite books and pictures.
0:08:32 > 0:08:37My two pin-ups are Cezanne and Goya.
0:08:37 > 0:08:39He was a very unconventional man.
0:08:39 > 0:08:44He was a strange man, apparently, by all accounts. Extraordinary chap.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47No-one knows much about him.
0:08:47 > 0:08:54When he was an old, old man he said to someone, "I'm still learning, I'm still learning."
0:08:54 > 0:08:56Wonderful.
0:08:58 > 0:09:06I'm really just living in my own head largely, just sort of letting ideas drift through my head.
0:09:06 > 0:09:12By sitting here in your room, you can experience the world.
0:09:12 > 0:09:17I think that so much of my experience, that is important to me,
0:09:17 > 0:09:24has not been lived really by me at all, but has been read, it's voices.
0:09:24 > 0:09:30Byron's letters, for instance - you are actually hearing a voice, still, over all those years,
0:09:30 > 0:09:38speaking, saying what it said, thinking what it thought. It's magic.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47"Everything important in my life seemed to be a property
0:09:47 > 0:09:50"of that place, the house and the gardens.
0:09:50 > 0:09:56"Beauty belonged to it, and the underlying fierceness which must be accepted with beauty.
0:09:56 > 0:10:01"Animals belonged to it, and so did books and all my other pleasures.
0:10:01 > 0:10:08"Safety belongs to it, and so did my knowledge of good and evil and my wobbly preference for good."
0:10:08 > 0:10:12It was a paradise she always knew she would lose.
0:10:12 > 0:10:17"I felt outraged when someone first pointed out to me
0:10:17 > 0:10:20"that my grandmother's house was not mine.
0:10:20 > 0:10:23"When she died it would be my uncle's.
0:10:23 > 0:10:29"But whoever had given me that early, painful glimpse of the truth had done me a good turn.
0:10:29 > 0:10:35"From that time, my love began, slowly, to take a wistful, nostalgic turn.
0:10:35 > 0:10:40"I felt that I must treasure every detail of it against the future.
0:10:40 > 0:10:45"I remember standing under the great beech tree by the lawn, trying to will
0:10:45 > 0:10:48"some essence of myself into the still green air,
0:10:48 > 0:10:53"so that after I was dead my ghost would materialise there."
0:10:55 > 0:11:00So way back then, aged ten, Diana became a harvester of memories.
0:11:00 > 0:11:05The beech tree was there. Gone, gone, gone.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12There's no place for me to haunt now.
0:11:12 > 0:11:18We had such fun. We were let loose with this enormous garden, with the stables, the ponies,
0:11:18 > 0:11:22there was a farm, which all felt like ours once we were here.
0:11:22 > 0:11:28Our own home was much smaller and simpler, but when we came
0:11:28 > 0:11:31here it was like being let loose in a perfect life, really.
0:11:34 > 0:11:39Here we are. This was a room which no-one ever came into until after tea.
0:11:39 > 0:11:43After tea, Granny sat in her chair there
0:11:43 > 0:11:49and the children came down here and were read to and played.
0:11:49 > 0:11:56And that...was still here... and that was the cupboard in which the toys were kept.
0:11:56 > 0:12:00So we could get out spillikins and things.
0:12:01 > 0:12:05Granny always had a little round table beside her,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09usually with a silver bowl full of Parma Violets.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17"When I fell in love with the gardener's boy, I imagined him
0:12:17 > 0:12:20"urinating, and I went through a phase of doing it myself
0:12:20 > 0:12:25"in odd places. Under a corner of the carpet, for example,
0:12:25 > 0:12:29"leaving a few drops here and there like a dog establishing its territory.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32"I was stunned when this habit was discovered,
0:12:32 > 0:12:37"and so frightened and ashamed that I must have known all along that I was committing a bad breach of the rules.
0:12:37 > 0:12:43"I never again experienced that impulse to pee in corners."
0:12:45 > 0:12:51The room that the children were in mostly was the morning room, a very cosy room.
0:12:51 > 0:12:57The grown ups were all next door in the library, we would be rollicking about in here.
0:12:57 > 0:13:03There were books, books, books, along there, book shelves up to the top.
0:13:03 > 0:13:09- What were you reading?- Actually, I read all George Meredith's novels in here, or most of them.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15I remember Granny coming in through that door and saying, "Darling, are you enjoying all those Merediths?"
0:13:15 > 0:13:22I don't think I was, really! I was reading things I couldn't understand.
0:13:22 > 0:13:26"It was only years later when I picked up The Egotist
0:13:26 > 0:13:29"for what I thought to be the first time
0:13:29 > 0:13:34"that I rediscovered those sessions on the window seat in the morning room.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37"I would think, 'But I've been here before, I have seen this,'
0:13:37 > 0:13:40"and gradually the whole thing swam up."
0:13:42 > 0:13:44- There's Grandpapa.- How did you get on with him?
0:13:44 > 0:13:49Oh, I don't remember a single word I exchanged.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51He was very remote, really.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53I do remember being embarrassed.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58He was sitting here in his chair, my small sister was crawling about there, and I was there.
0:13:58 > 0:14:01And she kept on showing her knickers.
0:14:03 > 0:14:04"Laziness,
0:14:04 > 0:14:06"it was laziness that made one drift
0:14:06 > 0:14:09"in the direction towards which they pushed one.
0:14:09 > 0:14:15"Do what is fun, don't do what is difficult - that was the principle we followed."
0:14:15 > 0:14:19Did you think that the life you lived at that time
0:14:19 > 0:14:25was like everyone else's or did you realise how privileged you were?
0:14:25 > 0:14:28I think we began to understand we were privileged.
0:14:28 > 0:14:35I remember when I rather boastfully said to some small child, "My granny's house has 20 bedrooms", and
0:14:35 > 0:14:42Mum said, "You must never boast about things you've got to people who've got less," and I thought, "Oh, yes."
0:14:42 > 0:14:43We were lucky.
0:14:45 > 0:14:47"Reading was what one did indoors,
0:14:47 > 0:14:49"riding what was what one did outdoors.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52"Ours was a hunting, shooting family.
0:14:52 > 0:14:56"Many partridges and hares were killed every winter for its pleasure.
0:14:56 > 0:15:03"Class came into it, even for the very young. On the whole, poor people didn't hunt or shoot.
0:15:03 > 0:15:07"We felt that those activities and the rituals which surrounded them were
0:15:07 > 0:15:12"somehow part of the superiority with which our families were blessed."
0:15:12 > 0:15:14How many staff were there?
0:15:14 > 0:15:20There was a cook, a kitchen maid, a scullery maid, a butler, and to
0:15:20 > 0:15:25begin with, there was also a footman, so that's five.
0:15:25 > 0:15:32There was Hannah who was the head housemaid, two housemaids under her, six, seven, eight.
0:15:32 > 0:15:34Granny's personal maid...nine.
0:15:34 > 0:15:39This was a marvellous banister for sliding down.
0:15:56 > 0:15:59"'You are not the only pebble on the beach'
0:15:59 > 0:16:01"was often said to me during my childhood.
0:16:01 > 0:16:03"But I knew pebbles well.
0:16:03 > 0:16:08"It was obvious that there was an infinite number of
0:16:08 > 0:16:12"them and an infinite variety, and that they were all equally real.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16"I handled them, but more often I looked at them.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20"It was by looking at pebbles that I began to feel their nature, and
0:16:20 > 0:16:23"it is by looking at them that I feel the nature of people.
0:16:23 > 0:16:29"'What are you thinking?' my lover asks, and often I am not thinking, I am looking."
0:16:32 > 0:16:35So you were prepared, knowing that I was coming to the east coast.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38- Yes, you've wrapped up warm. - I've wrapped up well.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41Diana was sent away to school.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43It felt like a life sentence.
0:16:45 > 0:16:49"It was a small school looking over the North Sea.
0:16:49 > 0:16:57"We were herded down from time to time for the treat of a plunge into the ice-cold, gravy-coloured sea.
0:16:57 > 0:17:03"There must, somewhere, have been some kind of land mass between its playing fields
0:17:03 > 0:17:07"and the North Pole, but it did not feel as though there was."
0:17:09 > 0:17:13It was called North House and South House and I was in North.
0:17:13 > 0:17:15Were you called ill-grounded? Is that the phrase?
0:17:15 > 0:17:21I was ill-grounded because I had had a series of sweet, dear governesses.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23I didn't go to school till I was 14.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26And they really hadn't taught me much.
0:17:26 > 0:17:33I quite enjoyed the fact that one was able to learn more at school, really, but
0:17:33 > 0:17:38it still seemed like prison because I wanted to be at home,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42I wanted to be riding, I wanted to be meeting boys.
0:17:42 > 0:17:46I wanted to be meeting boys and we were hardly allowed to look at boys.
0:17:46 > 0:17:54I always secretly felt I was thinking about boys and sex and love more than anybody else.
0:17:54 > 0:18:02And I was rather careful not to show that.
0:18:02 > 0:18:05What did they make of you at the school?
0:18:05 > 0:18:10They thought I was a clever but lazy girl. And I think that was probably quite accurate.
0:18:10 > 0:18:17- Oh, Runton Hill School, September... - 1926-1931.
0:18:17 > 0:18:20In the garden there was a thing called the dell,
0:18:20 > 0:18:24it was there, I don't know whether it still exists,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26where we used to put on our plays.
0:18:26 > 0:18:32- RECORDING:- 'Today we present The Wind In The Willows - Toad's Adventure.'
0:18:32 > 0:18:35- That's me. I was Badger.- Oh, my God!
0:18:35 > 0:18:37I was Badger in that play.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40- RECORDING:- 'Oh, wise old Badger.'
0:18:40 > 0:18:42There you are, wearing your trousers.
0:18:42 > 0:18:45I was wearing trousers and someone lent me a pipe. That I well remember.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47That was in the dell.
0:18:47 > 0:18:52Well, let's see what else is here. Let's go on.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54That... Oh, dancing classes!
0:18:54 > 0:19:01- There I am again. There I am being Olivia.- Looking rather beautiful.
0:19:01 > 0:19:05- RECORDING:- 'Desire him not to flatter with his lord nor hold him up with hopes.
0:19:05 > 0:19:10'I am not for him. If that the youth will come this way tomorrow, I'll give him reasons for it.
0:19:10 > 0:19:12'Hie thee, Malvolio.'
0:19:12 > 0:19:13I enjoyed that.
0:19:13 > 0:19:15You enjoyed playing that part?
0:19:15 > 0:19:20I enjoyed it, yes. My father said that I gave a dignified performance.
0:19:23 > 0:19:27I can't remember anything happening in the dell that it wasn't sunny.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30There must have been days when we were rained off.
0:19:41 > 0:19:43All quite unrecognisable.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52The only thing that has stayed the same is the sea.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03While at school here, Diana already had a boyfriend, her brother's home tutor.
0:20:06 > 0:20:10One night in the holidays, he gave her a lift home from a party.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14"Halted by shut gates at a level crossing,
0:20:14 > 0:20:17"Paul had put his arm round me again.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21"When he turned my face up and kissed me on the mouth, we were both surprised.
0:20:21 > 0:20:28"I, because his lips were cold and a little sticky, whereas I had expected them to be warm and smooth,
0:20:28 > 0:20:33"he, because mine were hot and parted whereas he had expected them to be a like a child's.
0:20:33 > 0:20:39"He told me later that he'd thought, 'The little devil, she has been at it already.
0:20:39 > 0:20:47"'This is not the first time.' But it was. I was thinking, 'Paul is kissing me, and high time, too!'"
0:20:47 > 0:20:51- You met Paul when you were 15 years old, didn't you?- Oh, yes.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55That used to be rather a comfort to think of when I was being scolded.
0:20:55 > 0:21:00I wouldn't have said, perhaps, in those days, "Bugger you,"
0:21:00 > 0:21:05but that's what I used to think when I stood in front of her.
0:21:05 > 0:21:08"Only three weeks ago Paul was kissing me!"
0:21:08 > 0:21:14Were you pursuing him at that time, or was he pursuing you?
0:21:14 > 0:21:19I was waiting for him because he was about five years older than me
0:21:19 > 0:21:22and I was quite realistic.
0:21:22 > 0:21:26I realised that I was too young to be of serious interest to him.
0:21:26 > 0:21:31I didn't expect him to fall in love with me when I was as young as that
0:21:31 > 0:21:33but I intended that he should eventually do so.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37- And he did, of course.- And he did.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41He was very gifted at enjoying life.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44When you were with him, whatever you were doing,
0:21:44 > 0:21:49it seemed intensely interesting and fun because it was for him.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52And I think he taught me a lot about that.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55We had a wonderful time, really.
0:22:08 > 0:22:09Diana went on to Oxford.
0:22:09 > 0:22:16In 1937, she and Paul got engaged and started sleeping together, pretty bold for that time.
0:22:16 > 0:22:20But Paul went with the Air Force to Egypt.
0:22:23 > 0:22:29Soon after the war started, his letters stopped, until eventually one came asking to be "released".
0:22:29 > 0:22:32He wanted to marry someone else.
0:22:33 > 0:22:36It affected my life very deeply.
0:22:36 > 0:22:41The fact that I lost him in the end and he dumped me made me unhappy for a very long time.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46Ultimately, you didn't blame him for it, did you?
0:22:46 > 0:22:52Not really. I blamed him for the way he did it, but not for doing it.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57I couldn't ever blame someone who had gone away,
0:22:57 > 0:23:02and was facing what he was facing, probably going to be killed.
0:23:02 > 0:23:04He was flying. Oh, look!
0:23:08 > 0:23:14I couldn't blame him for wanting another woman, if he met an attractive woman.
0:23:14 > 0:23:20But I did blame him for not letting me know what was happening, because
0:23:20 > 0:23:25I was left in a vacuum and going on in a rather foolish way, as you
0:23:25 > 0:23:31do when you are in love, thinking, well, perhaps it might be all right if I hang on in there long enough,
0:23:31 > 0:23:37he may turn up again and then we'd be all right. And that was terrible.
0:23:37 > 0:23:44That was what was so sapping of one's energy and made one miserable.
0:23:44 > 0:23:49And I love the way you stayed in bed for the next 25 years.
0:23:49 > 0:23:53I stayed in bed as much as I could.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56Like a mole, I went underground.
0:23:56 > 0:24:01For the rest of your life, you didn't raise your expectations in terms of being in love.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05You obviously had your adventures all the time but you didn't...
0:24:05 > 0:24:13I expected it to equate with pain, really, which was a very bad thing to have happened to me.
0:24:13 > 0:24:19But, um... I didn't expect a great deal from men from then on.
0:24:23 > 0:24:30Soon after, Diana found these words in her younger sister's diary.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33"He told me he was not going to kiss me.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36"He said I mustn't begin that sort of thing too soon,
0:24:36 > 0:24:38"or it would spoil me.
0:24:38 > 0:24:43"'Look at Di', he said. 'You don't want to be like her.' And, of course, I don't.
0:24:43 > 0:24:48"The shrivelling sensation of reading those words is something I still flinch from recalling."
0:24:52 > 0:24:54She was invited on a sailing holiday.
0:24:54 > 0:25:00"Out on the Broad, the engaged couple would be whispering and laughing.
0:25:00 > 0:25:05"In the boat's cabin Hugh and the girl would be holding each other close and kissing.
0:25:05 > 0:25:07"I knew myself to be absolutely alone.
0:25:07 > 0:25:12"It was so absolute that, for a time, I might have been my skeleton lying
0:25:12 > 0:25:17"somewhere, as Paul's was soon to lie, to be picked clean by the elements.
0:25:18 > 0:25:21"This is it, I thought. This is how it is.
0:25:21 > 0:25:27"It put the seal on my loneliness for so much of my life."
0:25:40 > 0:25:44"The gates of Eden had clanged shut," Diana wrote later.
0:25:44 > 0:25:47House, happiness, love were gone.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50She had to forge her own future.
0:25:50 > 0:25:53Paul was killed in the war.
0:25:53 > 0:26:00Diana started life as a working woman, signing up with the Admiralty in Bath.
0:26:00 > 0:26:08Every morning I would get up, walk down to my work in the Admiralty, and I would walk as slowly as I possibly
0:26:08 > 0:26:12could round the Crescent, enjoying every bit of it.
0:26:12 > 0:26:18And the view of course was a good deal rougher then because that was
0:26:18 > 0:26:22during the war and there wasn't much mowing of the grass going on.
0:26:22 > 0:26:29And of course it was absolutely silent. And then I had to hurry very quickly the rest of the way.
0:26:32 > 0:26:35When I was here I was in my very early 20s.
0:26:40 > 0:26:45"Oh, lovely Bath! There is no city in England more beautiful.
0:26:45 > 0:26:47"A man who was walking me home
0:26:47 > 0:26:52"one night said, 'It's like a going into a church.'
0:26:52 > 0:26:58"I was speechless for several minutes in outrage at hearing my own feelings put into such clumsy words.
0:26:58 > 0:27:06"I am one of those people who are hardly ever totally involved in an emotion.
0:27:06 > 0:27:09"There's always a beady-eyed watcher at the back of my mind."
0:27:14 > 0:27:21It feels odd. I wish, in fact, I could have a bit of time here and just stay and potter about.
0:27:21 > 0:27:26But I've got to give a talk, about being old.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33One dies to go in and buy some lovely earrings or something.
0:27:35 > 0:27:38Oh, dear. Duty calls, duty calls, yes.
0:27:39 > 0:27:42APPLAUSE
0:27:46 > 0:27:51It's my very great pleasure to introduce two of the most perceptive
0:27:51 > 0:27:57and eloquent of woman writers - memoirist, Diana Athill,
0:27:57 > 0:28:03and journalist, Michele Hanson, for discussion about memoirs and autobiography and how to grow old.
0:28:03 > 0:28:09You're meant to not care when you hit 40, aren't you, what people think, so you can say what you like.
0:28:09 > 0:28:13But I don't know because I wasn't really writing very early.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15I think you do perhaps get a bit braver, don't you?
0:28:15 > 0:28:20She doesn't know because she's not really very old, you see. She writes about being old.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24If you happen to be 92 and someone who is 60 is
0:28:24 > 0:28:28writing about being old, you think, "What's the poor girl talking about?"
0:28:28 > 0:28:30LAUGHTER
0:28:30 > 0:28:3267! 67! But we're all lumped together, aren't we?
0:28:32 > 0:28:34Over 60, you're all old.
0:28:34 > 0:28:41You said that, on the whole, one can say what one feels and one doesn't mind any more.
0:28:41 > 0:28:44I think probably by the time one's 40, one still goes on minding.
0:28:44 > 0:28:49And possibly by the time one's 60, one still minds quite much.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52By the time one is 92, one really does not mind!
0:28:52 > 0:28:55Something else to look forward to.
0:28:55 > 0:28:59When I was young, I remember absolutely shrivelling at the idea of making a fool of oneself.
0:28:59 > 0:29:03Your creed, I think, was that when you write, it has to be as it is.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06That you can't dodge being frank.
0:29:06 > 0:29:09But don't you sometimes want to leave some things out -
0:29:09 > 0:29:13"I'm not sure I want to let everybody read that about myself?"
0:29:13 > 0:29:17No, I didn't feel like that at all as I was writing.
0:29:17 > 0:29:21By the time I finished, I wondered what my mother was going to think.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27But I thought, "Well, I've written it, so I'd better lump it."
0:29:27 > 0:29:33She got round it by never mentioning it.
0:29:33 > 0:29:35LAUGHTER
0:29:35 > 0:29:37It was very English.
0:29:37 > 0:29:41I thought when I was younger, how hypocritical, how silly.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44But now I think it's a pretty brilliant technique.
0:29:44 > 0:29:50If you have a daughter and you love her, and she does
0:29:50 > 0:29:54something that you can't like, let's pretend she didn't do it.
0:29:59 > 0:30:02The unspokenness had many layers.
0:30:02 > 0:30:07My mother married a very, very nice man, who she knew was a very, very
0:30:07 > 0:30:14nice man but who turned out to be not physically attractive to her, which was a sort of disaster really.
0:30:14 > 0:30:19Were you aware of that at the time or was it something that...?
0:30:19 > 0:30:24Well, one knew that they didn't get on.
0:30:24 > 0:30:30One knew that he irritated her out of her skin.
0:30:30 > 0:30:35And my brother and I used to say, Oh, God, he's done something silly.
0:30:35 > 0:30:40He was slow, and she would sit there getting more and more tense
0:30:40 > 0:30:44and we would think, "Oh, God, why does he have to do that?"
0:30:44 > 0:30:47He's going to set her off.
0:30:47 > 0:30:52And it always did, all their quarrels were about something quite trivial.
0:30:52 > 0:30:57And of course one didn't realise, as a child, why this was.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01It was because of a physical mismatch between them
0:31:01 > 0:31:04which was on her nerves, but one knew something was wrong.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09Her mother never let on that Diana's younger sister was the product of an affair.
0:31:09 > 0:31:15And Diana never let on to her parents about the life she was leading.
0:31:17 > 0:31:20"One device for filling emptiness was promiscuity.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22"Lack of energy prevented me from ranging about
0:31:22 > 0:31:26"in pursuit of men but if they turned up, I slept with them.
0:31:28 > 0:31:32"Several of the painless affairs involved other people's husbands.
0:31:32 > 0:31:37"If a wife ever found out, it would have been from her husband's carelessness, not mine.
0:31:37 > 0:31:43"I wish now that in my youth I had loved my family less.
0:31:43 > 0:31:48"I might have had the courage for revolt, instead of going quietly underground.
0:31:51 > 0:31:57"If I had been open about the sexual freedom I was practising, if I had pressed political arguments
0:31:57 > 0:32:03"instead of sliding out of them into silence, there might not have been the breach I expected and feared."
0:32:04 > 0:32:07I never had a confrontation.
0:32:07 > 0:32:09I was cowardly about confrontations.
0:32:09 > 0:32:13If I didn't hold with the same ideas as they had,
0:32:13 > 0:32:17I just sort of shut up about it, went my own way.
0:32:17 > 0:32:23Because one didn't want to have a quarrel with them, really.
0:32:28 > 0:32:35During the war Diana had moved to London. There she met a Hungarian Jewish emigre called Andre Deutsch.
0:32:35 > 0:32:42He offered her a job in a publishing company he was planning to start when the war was over.
0:32:42 > 0:32:47When you first met Andre, you had a brief affair.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50I did yes, very brief, really.
0:32:50 > 0:32:56- Why so brief?- We just didn't really sort of suit each other
0:32:56 > 0:33:01as lovers, but on the other hand we became friends in a strange way.
0:33:01 > 0:33:07And so we ended up being much more like brother and sister.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13And Diana would become editorial director
0:33:13 > 0:33:17of one of the great independent publishing ventures in Britain.
0:33:17 > 0:33:23For the next 50 years she worked with some of the best known writers of the twentieth century -
0:33:23 > 0:33:27Philip Roth, Simone de Beauvoir, Jack Kerouac,
0:33:27 > 0:33:31John Updike, Stevie Smith.
0:33:31 > 0:33:37Their first big hit was with Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead.
0:33:37 > 0:33:41How did you manage to get The Naked And The Dead?
0:33:41 > 0:33:43Nobody else dared do it.
0:33:43 > 0:33:47The word "fuck", which appeared - he, he was writing about soldiers and
0:33:47 > 0:33:51war, naturally that's what they mostly said with every sentence.
0:33:51 > 0:33:56The American publisher said, "We can't publish that," and so they'd
0:33:56 > 0:34:01substituted the word, which is too absurd really, they'd substituted "fug".
0:34:01 > 0:34:05F-U-G. But, I mean, what could be sillier?
0:34:05 > 0:34:11It sounds just like "fuck", everyone knows it means "fuck", but yet they felt that that made it decent.
0:34:11 > 0:34:16But the English wouldn't accept even that.
0:34:16 > 0:34:19Six bigger publishers had turned Mailer down.
0:34:19 > 0:34:21So Andre Deutsch got it.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24On the front page of the Sunday Times, written by
0:34:24 > 0:34:29the editor, there was a small thing about this perfectly revolting and
0:34:29 > 0:34:35evil book has been published, that no decent man would leave about where his woman or children could see it.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38He literally used those words.
0:34:38 > 0:34:42It became a cause celebre, there was an injunction against it, a question
0:34:42 > 0:34:46in the House, loads of free publicity, but no ban.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50It was a wonderful, wonderful event because it made us.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57We from being quite unknown, became quite a respectable firm.
0:34:57 > 0:35:02Eventually Andre Deutsch was able to buy these offices in Central London.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06They were later shared with an art supplier, who has since taken over the building.
0:35:06 > 0:35:11- My original office must be there. - Yes.
0:35:11 > 0:35:18It was off the passage which went right through to the back. Here we are.
0:35:18 > 0:35:20Back home, how extraordinary.
0:35:20 > 0:35:25- I loved being here because I had a big window looking out.- Yes.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28And it was too small to share with anybody.
0:35:28 > 0:35:32Andre used to be a great one for getting the maximum out of everything.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36Any space that could be inhabited by two people had to be inhabited by two people.
0:35:36 > 0:35:42The rest of the editorial department was condemned to the basement and bitterly resented it.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47"Dictatorships work, that is why they are so readily accepted, and if they
0:35:47 > 0:35:51"are demonstrably more or less just,
0:35:51 > 0:35:54"as they can be to start with, they are accepted with a gratitude
0:35:54 > 0:35:57"more personal than can be inspired by other kinds of regime."
0:35:57 > 0:36:04I was supposed to be a director but, I mean, no-one was a director in this firm, excepting Andre.
0:36:07 > 0:36:11I would like to say thank you to my very first editor in England
0:36:11 > 0:36:17who was Diana Athill who was with Andre Deutsch
0:36:17 > 0:36:25way back in 1969 when they took a chance on a Canadian young person.
0:36:25 > 0:36:27APPLAUSE
0:36:29 > 0:36:33How did the relationship work between Andre Deutsch, Diana, and you?
0:36:33 > 0:36:40Well, Diana was the editor, and she worked out of a broom closet,
0:36:40 > 0:36:46as far as I can tell - it was a very, very small space.
0:36:46 > 0:36:50And I didn't know that she was Andre Deutsch's partner, but she was.
0:36:50 > 0:36:54Whereas he had an enormous office with a huge desk.
0:36:54 > 0:36:57Their relationship seemed to be that he insulted people and
0:36:57 > 0:37:00she went around and mollified them.
0:37:00 > 0:37:06I always liked her, she was very elegant.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09Writers came and sat here.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13Vidia came often and walked out of here in a huff, too.
0:37:13 > 0:37:17Sometimes even Diana couldn't mollify people.
0:37:17 > 0:37:20Vidia Naipaul was a handful.
0:37:20 > 0:37:26If I have to cheer myself up, I say at least I'm not married to Vidia Naipaul.
0:37:27 > 0:37:33You said that, having enjoyed him for a while, you then had to endure him.
0:37:33 > 0:37:37I mean, I admired him very much as a writer, always - that was sort of, unquestioned.
0:37:37 > 0:37:4218 of his books he did with us, you know? He was sort of like family.
0:37:42 > 0:37:47In the way that you could be really quite fond of someone in the family, who's awful.
0:37:50 > 0:37:55Yet Naipaul once said that Diana was the best editor he'd ever had.
0:37:55 > 0:38:01Her gift for storytelling proved invaluable, even to the demanding and meticulous Jean Rhys.
0:38:03 > 0:38:07Her prequel to Jane Eyre is the story of the Caribbean first wife.
0:38:07 > 0:38:13Diana made suggestions for building up the character of Mr Rochester,
0:38:13 > 0:38:21in Wide Sargasso Sea, letting him love his first wife passionately before the marriage fell apart.
0:38:21 > 0:38:23This really helped the book enormously.
0:38:25 > 0:38:27Jean Rhys wrote...
0:38:27 > 0:38:30"I am in touch with Miss Athill who wrote me the kindest of letters.
0:38:30 > 0:38:35"Miss Athill suggested a few weeks of happiness for the unfortunate couple."
0:38:36 > 0:38:39Jean Rhys took the suggestion and ran with it...
0:38:39 > 0:38:45"As soon as I wrote that bit I realised that he must have fallen for her, and violently, too.
0:38:45 > 0:38:49"The black people have a good word for it, 'she magic with him'.
0:38:49 > 0:38:54"Because you see that's what it is, magic, intoxication. Not love at all."
0:38:58 > 0:39:02Diana always says that she learned a lot about how to write from Jean Rhys.
0:39:02 > 0:39:08The extreme precision of her writing -
0:39:08 > 0:39:11cutting, cutting, cutting, she'd say cut.
0:39:11 > 0:39:16And, when you're writing, don't think about, how you're writing,
0:39:16 > 0:39:21try to think very hard of how it was, what you're writing about.
0:39:21 > 0:39:23Try to envisage it very clearly.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27It's really interesting, isn't it? She's a fiction writer and
0:39:27 > 0:39:33yet what she writes is very close to her own feelings and experience.
0:39:33 > 0:39:34"And getting it just as it was" -
0:39:34 > 0:39:38that phrase obviously meant a lot to you when you started to write.
0:39:38 > 0:39:42It was always very close, really, to her own life.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47As it got complicated in difficult situations, she got it to be
0:39:47 > 0:39:51exactly as they really were, so that you knew what it was like.
0:39:53 > 0:39:58Has writing always been partly getting things off your mind?
0:39:58 > 0:40:03Yes. Very much so. I find it almost impossible
0:40:03 > 0:40:10to absolutely make up things. It would have to be something I know.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16I suppose you can write about being unhappy and that can make you feel a bit better.
0:40:18 > 0:40:21Oh, yes. When you write about a thing, you forget it.
0:40:24 > 0:40:26Or at least, it doesn't worry you any more.
0:40:27 > 0:40:29'She was so ashamed of quite a lot of
0:40:29 > 0:40:32'what had happened to her and what she'd done,'
0:40:32 > 0:40:37that she couldn't face it. Being known that it was... I mean, she had to go into fiction.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41She was quite incapable of coping with life, really.
0:40:41 > 0:40:47She was one of those writers so perfectionist, that every word was thought out right.
0:40:47 > 0:40:52But she needed a great deal of looking after.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56Now, Diana herself began to create.
0:40:56 > 0:41:01She writes of the energy, "something bubbling inside of me". At first, it was short stories.
0:41:04 > 0:41:06"A feeling would brew up and then the story would come,
0:41:06 > 0:41:09"as though it had been there all the time.
0:41:09 > 0:41:13"'By God,' I thought, with jubilation, 'I'm going to get it just as it was.'
0:41:13 > 0:41:17"It was something I had done spontaneously, for the pleasure of it,
0:41:17 > 0:41:22"something as much a part of me as the colour of my eyes."
0:41:24 > 0:41:26Your desk is now pastels.
0:41:26 > 0:41:28Lovely pastels.
0:41:29 > 0:41:31Look at them, aren't they marvellous?
0:41:31 > 0:41:36Honestly, they make my mouth water. That's a wonderful colour.
0:41:37 > 0:41:39I'm going to buy one of these.
0:41:39 > 0:41:42You have one, but there's a price for this, which is you have to sign
0:41:42 > 0:41:47- all the copies of your books that I've collected over the years.- Oh!
0:41:49 > 0:41:52This is the most successful book I have ever written,
0:41:52 > 0:41:56described by my publisher as "a bona fide bestseller",
0:41:56 > 0:42:00because it's rather cheerful about being old, it has cheered people up.
0:42:00 > 0:42:03Yes. And this was the first book of yours that I ever read.
0:42:03 > 0:42:08Ah, Instead Of A Letter. I never have liked that jacket very much.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11I wrote this, you see, in the early '60s.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15I thought, "Why have they given me such a horrible old hand"?
0:42:15 > 0:42:20Now my hand does look rather like that, I don't mind it so much.
0:42:22 > 0:42:24It was her first memoir.
0:42:24 > 0:42:28After 20 years of pain and humiliation, she was happy at last.
0:42:29 > 0:42:33"You do not look up because you know you cannot climb the tree.
0:42:33 > 0:42:37"You have forgotten by now that there is fruit hidden among its leaves.
0:42:37 > 0:42:43"Then suddenly a great velvety peach falls plump into your hand.
0:42:44 > 0:42:47"It happens to other people, perhaps, never to oneself.
0:42:47 > 0:42:51"I am still licking peach juice off my fingers."
0:42:53 > 0:42:58And then, another peach. She met the Jamaican playwright Barry Reckord.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02"I slipped off a rock into clear, warm water," she wrote.
0:43:02 > 0:43:08I got over that sense of being on the downhill, with Barry.
0:43:08 > 0:43:11I had a very happy time in my 40s.
0:43:16 > 0:43:20- ALAN WHICKER:- Today, even where British rule remains, it is strongly challenged.
0:43:20 > 0:43:23These were the early '60s, days of decolonisation,
0:43:23 > 0:43:29with black and African writers getting into print. This was the world Barry moved in.
0:43:29 > 0:43:34Any writer feels that he is part of a civilising influence.
0:43:34 > 0:43:39He is defining feelings and if you define a feeling then you widen
0:43:39 > 0:43:41the emotional currency of your society.
0:43:41 > 0:43:47That relationship with Barry lasted, has lasted an incredibly long time, hasn't it?
0:43:47 > 0:43:48Very long time, yes.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51It was a very easy relationship.
0:43:52 > 0:43:57Yet it was also very unconventional in its own way, because he was a married man, after all.
0:43:57 > 0:44:01He was a married man until she divorced him, very sensibly!
0:44:01 > 0:44:02Why do you say "very sensibly"?
0:44:04 > 0:44:09He just simply couldn't stand the idea of being possessed by anybody.
0:44:11 > 0:44:14"I can't remember whether I felt a passing scruple at taking up
0:44:14 > 0:44:19"so quickly and enthusiastically with yet another married man.
0:44:19 > 0:44:22"I can remember thinking what a comfort it was that he had a nice,
0:44:22 > 0:44:27"competent wife to look after him, so I need never worry on his behalf.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30"Being the other woman suited me so well."
0:44:33 > 0:44:34When his wife kicked him out,
0:44:34 > 0:44:40Barry moved into Diana's North London flat and stayed for 40 years.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45Well, you see, at a certain point, Barry and I stopped being lovers
0:44:45 > 0:44:50and we just became very old friends.
0:44:50 > 0:44:54Barry very much disapproved of romantic love and I did, too.
0:44:54 > 0:45:00We both agreed that we did love each other, but in a very unromantic way.
0:45:02 > 0:45:04Then you embrace his young lover, Sally.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07Oh, well, then, that was a huge piece of luck in my life.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09Sally's really lovely now, isn't she?
0:45:09 > 0:45:12Sally was one of the nicest people I've ever known.
0:45:12 > 0:45:15Hello, Diana. Nice to see you.
0:45:15 > 0:45:17Hello! This is my friend, Sally.
0:45:17 > 0:45:20- Hello, Sally. - Dear, my goodness! Look at the door.
0:45:20 > 0:45:24'And to this day, Sally is terribly important in my life.'
0:45:24 > 0:45:27I'll ask the Highgate Library to get it.
0:45:27 > 0:45:32"Quite soon, it occurred to me that since she was spending almost every night in Barry's bed,
0:45:32 > 0:45:37"keeping on her bedsitter was a waste of money, so I suggested she should move in with us.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41"What I felt was that now I had a lovely new friend in the house,
0:45:41 > 0:45:45"as well as a darling old one and the next two years were some of the happiest I can remember."
0:45:45 > 0:45:47Do you know, I made a mistake.
0:45:47 > 0:45:53I thought that time when you were living with me and Barry, I thought it was about two years.
0:45:53 > 0:45:57- It wasn't, it was much longer. - It was six!- Six years, yes.
0:45:57 > 0:45:59A marvellous time.
0:45:59 > 0:46:02I think disapproved of, by some people, at the time.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06I don't know, everyone was always much too polite to say anything,
0:46:06 > 0:46:09- but I think people thought it was odd, don't you?- I do.
0:46:09 > 0:46:14- They may have thought it was an active menage a trois.- Exactly, yes.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20Barry wasn't the only one who had been having affairs.
0:46:20 > 0:46:24"In the course of my close relationship with Barry,
0:46:24 > 0:46:27"I had come to feel more at home with black men than with white.
0:46:27 > 0:46:35"I did, from then on, start out with a bias towards the black, or at any rate the un-English."
0:46:35 > 0:46:42I think curiosity came into my relationships a lot. I think it was, wanting to find out about people.
0:46:42 > 0:46:48It was just terribly interesting to, to get under the skin of someone so completely different to myself.
0:46:48 > 0:46:55Barry was working abroad when she met a young writer from Egypt, through editing his book in 1964.
0:46:55 > 0:47:00She fell in love at once, though he didn't reciprocate.
0:47:00 > 0:47:04He was your author, of course, and your lodger, but he also became
0:47:04 > 0:47:08for a moment, at least, your lover and very much a part of your life.
0:47:09 > 0:47:11In fact, I sort of looked after him.
0:47:11 > 0:47:15And I've sometimes thought that,
0:47:15 > 0:47:19I've never been, basically, a very maternal woman.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21I never particularly wanted to have children,
0:47:21 > 0:47:25excepting for one very short time and I've never minded now not having them.
0:47:25 > 0:47:32But I'm not sure that this thing about Didi wasn't just a form of, of using the maternal instinct.
0:47:33 > 0:47:36One looked after him in the end.
0:47:38 > 0:47:41She let him stay in their flat for three years.
0:47:41 > 0:47:49It became a poisonous power play, with a mad mutual intensity.
0:47:49 > 0:47:54Just as with her sister 30 years before, she read Didi's diary.
0:47:54 > 0:47:59"My own name jumped out at me at once. 'I find Diana repulsive.
0:47:59 > 0:48:05"'I find it impossible to live in the same flat with someone whose physical body seems to provoke mine to cringe.
0:48:05 > 0:48:11"'This has led me to detest everything she does, says and writes.'
0:48:11 > 0:48:14"The blood rushed up into my face and my hands went cold."
0:48:17 > 0:48:21She confesses things most people never would, with a detachment that can be chilling.
0:48:21 > 0:48:26When they finally sleep together, Didi asks her not to tell Barry.
0:48:27 > 0:48:29"Of course, I won't, I promise.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32"I was already mulling in my head the written account,
0:48:32 > 0:48:35"as exact as possible, which I was going to show him one day."
0:48:37 > 0:48:42Didi was a depressive and in 1969, he killed himself in her flat.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46His note read, "I am going to kill myself tonight.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48"I'm leaving you my diary, love.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51"Well-edited, it could be a good piece of literature".
0:48:52 > 0:48:56He involved me in painful experiences
0:48:56 > 0:49:02and because my first book had been a therapeutic thing,
0:49:02 > 0:49:08in a way, that's what writing seemed, at that stage in my life, to be for.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13That if you had a horrible, painful experience, you were feeling
0:49:13 > 0:49:18haunted by it, the way to get rid of it was to write it out.
0:49:21 > 0:49:27Didi, whose real name was Waguih Ghali, is about to have his only book reissued.
0:49:27 > 0:49:31I've got to write an introduction
0:49:31 > 0:49:35or preface, to Waguih's book, after all these years.
0:49:37 > 0:49:40It's not going to be easy. I think probably I shall
0:49:40 > 0:49:46have to read much more of it to get myself back into the mood. But I'm going to start, hoping for the best.
0:49:48 > 0:49:54I remember, at the funeral, crying and crying, which I wasn't expecting to do at all.
0:49:57 > 0:50:00It was just very sad that a life should have been so ruined.
0:50:04 > 0:50:09Diana wrote about her private hell with Waguih long after the events.
0:50:09 > 0:50:14In the '70s and '80s, she was more an editor than a writer.
0:50:14 > 0:50:18One book, in particular, proved a monumental task
0:50:18 > 0:50:21and, finally, an extraordinary achievement.
0:50:24 > 0:50:27"The Road to Heaven was a path ten feet wide,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30"with ten foot fences of barbed wire on each side,
0:50:30 > 0:50:34"through which the naked prisoners, in rows of five, had to run
0:50:34 > 0:50:38"the hundred metres up the hill to the 'baths' - the gas chambers."
0:50:41 > 0:50:45Gitta Sereny brought to Andre Deutsch a unique series of interviews
0:50:45 > 0:50:49she had done with the commandant of Treblinka death camp, Franz Stangl.
0:50:49 > 0:50:55It was so huge, the bulk of the material, I couldn't look at it
0:50:55 > 0:51:01at my desk in the office, I had to take it home and put it on a table, it covered a whole table.
0:51:02 > 0:51:03Stacks of stuff.
0:51:05 > 0:51:07That is a night I shall never forget.
0:51:10 > 0:51:14It was the raw material of the interviews she had made.
0:51:17 > 0:51:24And, of course, there was stuff in that so absolutely blood-chilling.
0:51:26 > 0:51:29"Stangl said, 'Usually I'd be working in my office.
0:51:29 > 0:51:32"'There was a great deal of paperwork, till about 11.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35"'By that time, they were well ahead with the work up there.'
0:51:35 > 0:51:43"He meant that by this time, the 5,000 to 6,000 people who had arrived that morning were dead.
0:51:43 > 0:51:49"The work was the disposal of the bodies. 'You didn't feel they were human beings?' I asked Stangl.
0:51:51 > 0:51:56"'Cargo', he said tonelessly. 'They were cargo.'"
0:51:58 > 0:52:02One couldn't just sit. I kept walking around the room trying to escape from it, really.
0:52:02 > 0:52:08But the only thing I was sure of, at the end of that was,
0:52:08 > 0:52:12the one thing is we'll have to do without adjectives,
0:52:12 > 0:52:18cos if you said, "Horrifying. Ghastly. Monstrous,"
0:52:18 > 0:52:20They were inadequate.
0:52:21 > 0:52:26It was if they were just little bits of paper just flicking, you know, pointless to say these things.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31All you could do really was to present what had happened.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34She's a superb critic.
0:52:34 > 0:52:37It's good for me, because she's quite demanding.
0:52:37 > 0:52:39- In what way "demanding"?- Well...
0:52:41 > 0:52:42In exactitude.
0:52:43 > 0:52:51And the not exaggerating, in keeping it unemotional and yet strong.
0:52:54 > 0:52:55That's quite difficult.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58Yes, especially with material like that.
0:52:58 > 0:53:02Yes. She was quite exceptional as an editor.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05She was a wonderful reader
0:53:05 > 0:53:10and a very, very good questioner and that's what you need.
0:53:10 > 0:53:16It's wonderful thing to talk to somebody who shows being touched.
0:53:16 > 0:53:19You know? I don't mean, makes a thing of it.
0:53:19 > 0:53:24But in whose face you see a reaction.
0:53:24 > 0:53:31That is, for the one who is telling the story, I think, it's just a gift.
0:53:31 > 0:53:37Of course one ended up, in a funny way... The horror went off it, because it became a job.
0:53:41 > 0:53:46I think it was, without any question, the most important editorial job I ever did.
0:53:49 > 0:53:52Diana was 75 when she retired from publishing.
0:53:52 > 0:53:57Seven years later, in the year 2000, she broke through to literary fame
0:53:57 > 0:54:01with Stet, her book about her life as an editor.
0:54:01 > 0:54:07It was swiftly followed by an outpouring about her childhood, her lovers and her mother.
0:54:10 > 0:54:14Barry got ill and she cared for him, until it became too much.
0:54:16 > 0:54:23'I was coming up to 90 and he was really beginning to need nursing. I couldn't do it.'
0:54:23 > 0:54:29If Barry's niece hadn't rescued us, I don't know what... I'd probably be dead by now.
0:54:29 > 0:54:36This wonderful niece said, "I tell you what, I'm going to take him back to Jamaica."
0:54:37 > 0:54:41Before that, Diana had looked after her mother.
0:54:41 > 0:54:44She was a very keen gardener, all the family were.
0:54:46 > 0:54:49"The discomfort of guilt made me take on the job of carer.
0:54:49 > 0:54:54"Perhaps a wonderfully unselfish person gets satisfaction from making a good job of it.
0:54:54 > 0:55:02"If you are a selfish one, you manage by contriving as many escapes and compensations as you can.
0:55:02 > 0:55:09"It is not an admirable solution, but I don't suppose I am the only old person to resort to it."
0:55:10 > 0:55:16Once I'd planted a few things with my own hands and they actually flowered, it was a sort of miracle.
0:55:18 > 0:55:21To my own amazement, I became my own mother!
0:55:24 > 0:55:28Her mother was living near Diana's cousin Barbara's cottage in Norfolk.
0:55:28 > 0:55:31DOGS BARK
0:55:31 > 0:55:33Calm down, calm down, calm down.
0:55:33 > 0:55:38Oh, please hush. That's better. That's better.
0:55:48 > 0:55:51"The fact that death was, so to speak, up in the attic
0:55:51 > 0:55:57"of her house, waiting to come down and do something cruelly and fatally painful to her frightened me.
0:55:58 > 0:56:03"I was not afraid of her being dead, but I was terrified of the process of her dying."
0:56:08 > 0:56:13In fact, Diana's mother died peacefully, the day before her 96th birthday.
0:56:16 > 0:56:20"After a long sleep, she turned her head a little and said,
0:56:20 > 0:56:26"Did I tell you that last week Jack drove me to the nursery garden, to buy that eucalyptus?"
0:56:26 > 0:56:29"Her last words before sleeping again,
0:56:29 > 0:56:35"out of which sleep she didn't wake, were, 'It was absolutely divine.'"
0:56:41 > 0:56:42I've just seen a magpie.
0:56:52 > 0:56:55These graves look like they've been here for centuries.
0:56:57 > 0:56:59Some of them have been here a very long time.
0:56:59 > 0:57:02None of them, I think, more neglected than ours.
0:57:02 > 0:57:04Ours are really rather shameful.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09They're not anything that I bother about, or any of us do, really.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12Once one's dead, one's dead.
0:57:13 > 0:57:19I wouldn't mind being scattered here myself, but I don't particularly want to have a stone or anything.
0:57:21 > 0:57:22Have you given instructions?
0:57:22 > 0:57:24No, people keep on telling me to.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28I say, "Whatever they like." It got nothing to do with me, really.
0:57:32 > 0:57:37Here's us. That's Mummy and Daddy. There's my father. And my mother.
0:57:37 > 0:57:38Are they both together in here?
0:57:38 > 0:57:41No, she's not. She's sprinkled in the garden.
0:57:41 > 0:57:45- She's sprinkled in the garden? - It's what she wanted and so I sprinkled her in the garden.
0:57:45 > 0:57:48I put her on here so she would be remembered somewhere.
0:57:50 > 0:57:53'Recently, Diana has been diagnosed with cancer,
0:57:53 > 0:57:56'which doctors are watching, but not treating, at the moment.'
0:57:56 > 0:58:00Does coming here make you, now you have this wretched cancer,
0:58:00 > 0:58:03does it make you think more about the end than you even did before?
0:58:03 > 0:58:07Being dead doesn't matter a hoot.
0:58:07 > 0:58:11One does hope that dying can be done decently.
0:58:12 > 0:58:16I hope I don't go screaming in agony.
0:58:18 > 0:58:21I've got this thing sort of threatening me,
0:58:21 > 0:58:26which might become vicious, if I manage to die before it does I won't really mind.
0:58:35 > 0:58:38It's that unflinching gaze that makes her writing remarkable.
0:58:38 > 0:58:42I thought Somewhere Towards The End was so beautifully written.
0:58:42 > 0:58:48And it's her success as a writer that has made a life she is happy to contemplate.
0:58:48 > 0:58:50I quite agree with you talking about death before.
0:58:50 > 0:58:53The more one comes to terms with it the better.
0:58:53 > 0:58:59Yes. I can't tell you what this has meant to me, reading that book. Excellent, thank you.
0:58:59 > 0:59:04"I had seen it for so long as a life of failure, but now when I look back, who would believe it?
0:59:04 > 0:59:07"It was nothing of the sort!"
0:59:14 > 0:59:19We used to catch newts in the stream in the kitchen garden, there used to be dozens of newts.
0:59:21 > 0:59:23I can't remember what we did to the newts.
0:59:28 > 0:59:30Along here there were the peaches,
0:59:30 > 0:59:34which we used to come in and steal and then eat them in secret.