Sister Wendy and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen My Life in Books

APPLAUSE

Welcome to My Life In Books, a chance for my guests to share their favourite reads.

And with me tonight, Sister Wendy, the Roman Catholic nun

who has opened thousands of eyes to the pleasures of paintings.

And the TV presenter and style guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

Now his books include Display, Design Rules, Home Front

and A Pinch Of Posh, which gives us a rough idea of what he's about.

Thank you both for joining us.

APPLAUSE

Let's start with your childhood.

Sister Wendy, you were actually born in South Africa but brought up in Scotland.

I was two when my father decided he wanted to be a doctor.

So he took my mother and myself and we went to Edinburgh.

I loved Edinburgh.

Now I read a great deal as a child. I read at least two books a day.

-Good heavens.

-And after school - this is back in South Africa again,

where we returned when I was about eight -

I used to go straight to the Carnegie Library that our little town

was lucky enough to have.

Did you not have friends at that time or were you too busy reading?

Well, I did have friends, but I thought inviting a friend to come and play meant that you provided her

with a book and you got your book and you both sat there reading.

Laurence, you were brought up in London.

-Your father was an orthopaedic surgeon.

-He was.

-Your mother?

My mother was a teacher and she was very involved in pioneering

a lot of the early research into dyslexia.

-Did you read a lot as a child?

-Yes.

I used to enjoy reading enormously.

And I can remember reading as much as I possibly could,

you know, feeling very much...

My parents were very quick to encourage me to read anything that was in the bookshelves.

My mother read a lot of Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark - a lot of female authors.

But I can remember my father's study having absolutely no fiction in it whatsoever.

Sister Wendy, you're starting with Agatha Christie,

Death On The Nile.

Can you give us the plot

in a few sentences without the end?

You have a beautiful young man, Simon,

and here you have the beginnings of the story because

Nanette, who has everything, takes Jacqueline's Simon and marries him

and they go off on their honeymoon on the Nile.

Jacqueline pursues them ever step of the way.

And then, of course, somebody gets killed, I won't say whom,

and somebody kills that somebody.

And there's a delightful working out of how it all happens

and I think the wool is pulled over our eyes right till the end.

There's so many suspects.

Were you never tempted just to go to the last two pages?

Oh, no. I used to keep my hand on the books,

cos I read so quickly, so I wouldn't jump too quickly to the next page.

Have you re-read Agatha Christie?

Oh, I've read, I've re-read Agatha many times.

And in a way it's important for me because I think it was from her I got my great love of detective fiction.

Laurence, your first book you discovered when you were ten,

but you still have it by your side today.

It's A Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James Hall.

Tell us about it.

Should I ever be able to go back

and meet myself as a ten-year-old, we wouldn't get on.

-Precocious?

-I was very... I was going to slag off

the fact that I was in a velvet suit and then I realised I still am!

I was mildly attracted by the cover,

which I'm glad to see hasn't changed much.

-Rubens on the cover there.

-Lots of pearly female flesh there.

But it is, to be fair... It is a bit of a train timetable, isn't it,

-in terms of art books? Because it's a dictionary.

-It is.

-Very much a dictionary.

-It's the art historical version of twitching

but I used it quite early on as one of my major plays in the courtship ritual -

I would... Potential girlfriends would be asked to test me

from any random page. So you've got to do it now.

Did they last, the girlfriends?

Occasionally. One, I'm still married to. That's 25 years...

-It wasn't too bad. You've read it from cover to cover?

-Yeah.

If I tested you now, how would you do?

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

OK. So if I say to you, Laurence - I'm quite good at asking questions -

-Gismonda.

-Gismonda?

It's, erm... Mmm... No. Sorry, can I phone a friend, please, Anne?

-You see, you wouldn't be so good at dating. I'll try you on something else.

-No, I'm getting old.

OK, how about serpents?

I mean, symbol of intelligence and of knowledge

but also the anti-knowledge of the Garden of Eden.

Wrapped around a staff to denote mercury.

And Asclepius the God of healing.

-I was going to say, that's one though isn't it, Asclepius?

-Another example.

Of a serpent? Medusa.

Sister Wendy, your turn.

St George killed a serpent, which was another term for dragon.

-Yep.

-Maybe Sister Wendy's better than you are.

Oh, no, no, no, that's not true.

But I have used the book quite a lot because it's so valuable when you're looking at a symbol

that you can't understand, you look it up and you know, and you remember the story.

That's the thing and it's the only book from my childhood that I've still got.

It's not too complicated but it allows you to read a painting

on a basic level and then add your own interpretation.

Sister Wendy, you went to Oxford.

You studied English, so how did art come into it?

Well, nuns have to earn their living.

-So you... So you were a nun by the time you went to Oxford?

-Oh, yes.

I entered the minute I could.

I was... I was not quite 17.

And I taught for many years.

Then I got permission to live in solitude, a life of prayer, where you still had to earn your living,

and I thought I might write a book about art.

Your next choice is Spiritual Letters

by Abbot Chapman. Tell us about Abbot Chapman.

Well, Abbot Chapman was a Benedictine Abbot

and all those letters are about prayer.

Now I longed to become a nun and I found the convent

was a very welcoming and happy place.

But I wanted to pray and so did they,

but they had different ideas about prayer.

You call this a life saver at a certain time in your novitiate, don't you?

Yes. Because when I was blocked by the fact that I was expected

to prepare prayer and that God...

God is a great king with whom you approach with all your thoughts ready,

and I couldn't do it,

because, from babyhood, I'd been in the presence of God

and I didn't know who to turn to for help so I turned to a book

and Abbot Chapman solved all my problems.

It comes in three parts because there's letters to lay people

and there's letters to priests and then there's letters to a Jesuit.

-A Jesuit.

-It is quite simplistic.

This is from his letters... Well, it doesn't say who he's writing to,

but it's a lay person and he says, "I can't help advising you to pray.

"The longer one prays the better it goes, but when it goes badly,

"it goes well, for it becomes a continued humiliation."

In other words, you mustn't expect how you feel to tell you what your prayer is like.

You're there for God, not for yourself.

And when you look at it now, does it impress you in the same way?

No. I could see why I had been reassured by it, cos it was saying some of the things I deeply believe,

but so little of them, and a lot of it is technical.

Still, if anyone wants to read a good sensible letter on prayer, turn to Abbot Chapman.

OK, Spiritual Letters.

-Now it's interesting how you live your life as a nun because that's not conventional, is it?

-No.

You live in a caravan, not with your own order, which is the Notre Dame order, but in

the grounds of a Carmelite convent, and lead, for some of the time, a very solitary life, don't you?

Well, my own order agreed that I should leave their work,

and you can't say you're a Sister of Notre Dame if you're not teaching.

They would remove the burden and allow me the privilege of living in solitude.

So, I don't see anybody.

Just occasionally there are these interruptions, as we're having now,

but for months on end, I just see the sister who looks after me once a day.

Could you live with solitude, Laurence?

I have to say, I like it noisy. I like, sort of,

social distraction and a lot of very muddy noisy spaniels, that's fine.

That's fine. Because everybody's vocation is different.

Laurence has mentioned his spaniels - a cat, a dog?

All I've got, I'm very fond of cats and I've been offered

some very beautiful kittens but I say I can't live with another person.

-Not even a cat, Sister Wendy?

-A cat is a person.

Oh, no, no, it's unthinkable.

That's completely ruined your Christmas present. Guess what I'd got you?

Laurence, your next choice is Venice by Jan Morris.

It's a very much celebrated travel book. Tell us about it.

It is extremely evocative I think and it's incredibly good

about the Venice that I love, particularly,

which is when there's virtually no-one there and Venice, you know,

for most people it always seems as if it's full of people but actually,

particularly in the winter, but even in the evenings, it's not a late-night city at all.

You can get quite lost, you can get quite alone, you can get quite lonely in Venice.

I know you've got a favourite bit.

I think this is wonderful, this bit, because it does celebrate the fact

that Venice has always been in peril, it's always been getting old.

The buildings of Venice are mostly very old and sometimes very decrepit and for centuries it has been

a popular supposition that Venice will one day disappear

altogether beneath the waters of her lagoon.

She sprang from the sea 15 centuries ago and to round her story off aesthetically - so many a writer

and artist has failed - she only needs to sink into the salt again with a gurgle and a moan.

And there is that feeling that you're enjoying it then but it might not still be there.

It's challenged, it's delicate, it's like a mayfly.

It is, I think, the definitive book on Venice and I think the fact

that it was written, predominantly written, in the '60s, it feels much more timeless.

In fact, it was 1960 and Jan Morris was not Jan Morris at the time - Jan Morris was James Morris.

Yeah, I have to admit, I mean, I've re-read it and I think

that's a good idea because when I first read it, I was, in a very stupid schoolboy puerile way,

trying to work out, you know, whether it was Jan or James saying this or reacting like this.

Well, it was during the '60s - in fact, I knew him as a foreign correspondent then. It was towards

the end of the '60s that he changed sex and wrote a very good book called Conundrums,

didn't he, about it. Do you go back to Venice often?

Yes, we go a lot, actually. We go, and particularly in the winter.

-Your favourite city in the world?

-One of them, yes.

Yeah, it probably is. That and Las Vegas.

Sister Wendy, Venice, Las Vegas, which do you prefer?

-You'd love Vegas.

-I would not love Vegas.

You really would.

You see, when I go to a city, all I ever see

are the art galleries and the church I go to mass in the morning to.

So people say, you went to Cairo? What did you think of the pyramids?

I never saw the pyramids. I was looking at the museums.

You went to Venice, what did you think of this and that? I never saw them.

And since Las Vegas hasn't got all that much in the way of art,

it's got some, I don't think it would be worth my while going there.

-But Venice, you love.

-Oh, yes.

Sister Wendy, your next choice, pretty heavy tome,

it's The Duty of Delight - it's the diaries of Dorothy Day.

Quite recently published.

Who was she?

She was an American journalist and writer

during the 20th century who co-founded a magazine, a newspaper, called the Catholic Worker

and set up Catholic Worker homes in New York and around America.

A wonderful woman and the very title of those diaries - The Duty of Delight.

That it's our duty to enjoy life.

-And you only discovered it quite recently?

-Yes, I did.

The publisher sent it to me, and for the first time I thought, "This is what it means to be holy."

Because here was a woman living in the most appalling circumstances

with practically no back up.

A passionate woman who would love to have had friends and support, she didn't get them, and she took

that with sweetness and courage, and clung to God and it's so difficult to write about holy things without

sounding pious or sanctimonious or as if you're preaching to somebody - she never does.

Perhaps you'll choose a little bit to read to us.

Well, this is Dorothy on August 7th.

"My ailments, for these last two weeks -

"sore throat, coughing at night, retching spasmodic, dry, very disagreeable.

"And always when I fine comb my hair, a few lice in the head.

"Long talk with Sister Donald, she's very quiet.

"No sentimentality and no judging.

"She has no delusions about being able to do much except to begin with herself.

"But two exponents of the sentimental approach to our work were in yesterday, M and T.

"Hard to keep them out.

"They at least are persevering.

"If they refuse to go, to give us up, we may be stuck with them.

"But that may be God's will too."

-Lovely. Lovely. Is God in your life, Laurence?

-Not, erm...

-Not explicitly.

-OK, well done.

Sister Wendy, the life of somebody like Dorothy Day,

very much in the community, is a contrast to the life you've chosen.

Do you ever hanker for being out and spreading the word, as it were?

Oh, no, no, no. I do not hanker.

I give great thanks that I'm not called to this.

-Yeah.

-She wanted to pray and she had no time.

She had to get up at night to do it.

I need the kind of luxury of swimming, swimming in God, as it were, freely.

And then you have this contrasting life when you appear on television and you're in London

and it's quite racy and lively. Do you enjoy that too?

Sounds very rude to say, Anne, but no, not really.

-OK.

-This is a pretend me.

It's a very nice one, Sister Wendy.

-Thank you.

-Laurence, your next book is a biography.

It's the biography of Aubrey Beardsley

by Stephen Calloway. Tell us about him.

Well, I think Aubrey Beardsley is the most extraordinary person.

He died tragically young in 1898.

Really, he'd only been working for about three or four years as a graphic artist.

He developed a reputation very quickly for a kind of decadence

a badness, a wickedness. But really, I think, perhaps it was his circle

and of course it was all happening at the same time as the trial

of Oscar Wilde, but Aubrey Beardsley, I believe, was one of the most original

graphic talents that Britain has ever produced and certainly

there was a point in 1893 where he suddenly started creating a new way

of drawing which was then reproduced all over the world and really created what we now see as

being art nouveau, which then led on to this new attitude, this kind of modern attitude to art.

Just the black and white that's so dominant at the moment, in fashion,

and in interiors, is a tribute, is a homage to him, I think.

What about Beardsley, for you, Sister Wendy?

Well, I think the graphic strength and grace and wit of his line is exceptional.

There's never been an artist whose hand was so ready to please the eye.

Now I won't go further than that, Anne.

He's not top of your list then?

It's a principle of mine - never say anything that might

damage an enthusiasm.

Now I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of people

who revere Beardsley, and hurrah for that. Here is one. Well done, lad.

THEY LAUGH

We'll go on to Sister Wendy's next book.

It's TJ Clark's The Sight Of Death.

Not the most inspiring title.

It's a wrong title too. It gives you no idea of the book.

Can you describe it then?

Yes. This man is an art historian.

A very famous art historian who mainly writes books about

sociological approaches to art, which are not my main interest.

But he had a sabbatical at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles

and wandering around it very early on to his stay, he found

that they recently bought

a Poussin, Landscape With A Calm,

and had borrowed, as a match to it,

the National Gallery, Landscape With A Man Killed By A Snake.

And, this entire book features looking and discovering

what it is about these two pictures?

That was what was so exciting to me.

Because everything I've written has been about looking and responding.

But when I read that book, I realised I'd never really looked at all.

But he came day after day in all the different lights and darks

of the Californian time looking and looking at these two works.

Nothing but these two works.

And each time he saw something deeper and more beautiful.

He never got to the end of them.

Is it vital to see the original

or can you live with reproductions?

It's not vital. It's very desirable.

-It helps.

-But most people can't see the originals.

And why reject bread, if you're only given half a loaf?

That's better than nothing.

Very well said.

Laurence, your next choice, it's the one novel you've chosen.

It's Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh. Tell us about this.

It's quite big

and slow-moving and cumbersome which I like

and I think the description is very good.

I read it before the original, you know,

the big 1980s series.

Give us a rough idea for those who haven't seen any films,

or television series, or read the book.

Well, baldly, it's about one man, Charles Ryder, who is very middle class

falling in love with an aristocratic family who are Catholic

and that makes them feel very different and special in the book.

And, originally, he comes into it via Sebastian the son, but ends up

becoming much more involved with the daughter, Julia.

Let's have a look at, famously, Sebastian with his teddy bear.

Ah, here's Lord Sebastian.

Well, I mustn't stand here talking, not with pin cushions to get.

Morning, Charles. What in the world is happening at your college?

Is there a circus? We've seen everything except elephants.

I must say, the whole of Oxford's becoming very peculiar suddenly.

Last night it was pullulating with women.

You're to come away with me, at once, out of danger.

I've a motorcar outside,

a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Perigord

which is not a wine you've ever tasted so don't pretend.

It's heaven with strawberries.

I shall go and get my things.

Interesting. That's Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews,

and it hasn't really dated, has it?

-It was incredibly faithful to the book.

-How old were you?

I must have been about 16, I think, when I first encountered it.

Have you read it, Sister Wendy?

-I have.

-Are you an Evelyn Waugh fan? He was a convert to Catholicism.

Yes.

I wonder what she's saying "yes" to?

-I'm agreeing with Anne. He was a convert to Catholicism.

-Full stop.

And a very enthusiastic Catholic of the old school.

I think he's one of the wittiest and funniest of men.

Is there a "but" coming?

Well, you see, I'm hog-tied by this "never destroy an enthusiasm."

-So I don't like to say.

-Go on.

Well, I think Brideshead Revisited deserves its reputation

for a romantic view of a romantic place or places.

Because perhaps I haven't got romance in my soul, it's never all that pleased me.

Also, I found the Catholicism so...

trivial, really, as opposed to the deep sort of fundamentals of what it's all about.

But the religion is quite modish, it's quite...

Which is the one thing that Christianity isn't, you see? It isn't modish.

In the book, it feels like a style statement all the time.

I know, and the upper class are best at it.

You're very tactful.

We've had books that have inspired you, ones you love,

and we also want to hear about books you might keep reading.

Laurence, yours is a guilty pleasure.

It's Eloise.

Yes, so not terribly grown-up,

and, actually, probably the naughtiest book

that I've ever read. I didn't grow up with Eloise at all.

-Tell us about her.

-Written in the 1950s,

by a very glamorous lady called Kay Thompson,

who I think was a sort of Hollywood B-movie actress,

very elegant, but she created this extraordinarily spoilt

and very, very naughty character

called Eloise who lived in a suite at the Plaza in New York,

but then took her British nanny on various jaunts

to Moscow and to Paris and it's written in this extraordinarily naughty, very breathless way.

There are some wonderful illustrations by Hilary Knight.

The illustrations were very much part of it and very fashionable.

Eloise in Paris, there's a section where Eloise goes for a fitting

with Christian Dior, and basically it was

given to Hermione, my youngest,

by one of her godmothers and it became an absolute joy to read.

But, you know, we'd read several books at bedtime

because it was just so fun and subversive.

It's deeply, deeply subversive. Hermione is the spit of Eloise.

Sister Wendy, your next book, which is quite a heavy book,

it's Weitzmann's book on icons.

Tell us about this one.

Well, I used to have a bit of a problem with icons.

How they sort of fitted into art history. I began

to look into this wonderful world of the early icons.

Now these are icons before they were icons, if you understand me.

What date are we giving?

We're talking now the fifth-sixth-seventh century.

And they had no...

visual images of Christ and the Saints.

And they wanted them.

-Here's one.

-Yes, now this is... This is the wonderful Pantocrater from Mount Sinai.

This book is about the icons of Mount Sinai

where nearly all the early icons are.

And that's a very great image of Jesus.

It has all the tenderness

and compassion and yet strength and power

and he's set in a real world, which the later icons don't set him in.

This is a real discovery to me and I didn't realise that

they got more formulaic.

-I didn't realise they got so much tighter.

-Much more.

Originally, they were quite expressive.

-That's an incredibly expressive face.

-Isn't it?

Almost contemporary. Very, very powerful.

-Could I show another one, Anne?

-Of course.

This one has been moved from Mount Sinai - but it was there - to Kiev.

This is the Virgin and Child

as we never paint now.

The later icons haven't got that look

on Mary's face of emotion, almost fear,

and she's clutching the child.

And the mother's trying to clutch him back.

Do you have photographs of icons in your caravan?

Oh, yes.

-You've brought one?

-Well, this is a traditional icon.

I've got lots of things in my pockets.

They're very good, nun's habits, for carrying.

-Oh, they're so useful.

-I have sometimes wondered, and now we know.

It's an icon of a guardian angel

with a young female saint and a young theologian.

But this is not one of the great, great icons but it gives me great joy

that they're praying away there in my pocket.

That's lovely. Now, when you think about your book choices,

Laurence, that you've selected, what does it tell us about you?

I'm suddenly struck by how predominately frivolous it is.

-Oh, no.

-Compared to my friend here.

And, Sister Wendy, your book choices, what do you think it tells us about you?

I don't think it tells you very much, really. Which I would like.

It tells you that I like reading,

that I like looking.

Actually, what's interesting, Sister Wendy, is that you're happy to go on learning.

Oh, yes. I'm only 81.

LAUGHTER

And if you had to choose, Laurence, just one book to recommend, which would it be?

I think it has to be the Jan Morris, Venice. If you've not read it, you should.

-Yeah, wonderful book. Sister Wendy, what would you select to recommend?

-This is very difficult.

It's no good telling people the Weitzmann because it's out of print.

You can pick one of mine if you want - Eloise or Aubrey Beardsley.

So kind. So Kind. But no, I think I'll stick with mine.

I'm very torn between saying everybody has a Duty of Delight to read Dorothy Day,

cos it will transform their ideas about how to be fully human,

but, this is such a lovely book, the TJ Clark.

How to look. How to look at Poussin, or to look at anything.

So, get Dorothy Day and if you've any money left, get this one.

Two for the price of one. Well, there you are.

Thank you, Sister Wendy and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, for joining me on My Life In Books.

APPLAUSE

And don't forget, there's more about this book series on the BBC website.

Please, join me again, same time, same place,

for more stories of lives and books.

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