0:00:16 > 0:00:19Welcome to My Life In Books, a chance for my guests to share their favourite reads.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23Joining me tonight, best selling author Jeanette Winterson.
0:00:23 > 0:00:28For a woman who says she was never encouraged to be clever, she's not done badly.
0:00:28 > 0:00:31Her 19th book will be published later this year.
0:00:31 > 0:00:37Her first, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was made into an award winning television series and is now on
0:00:37 > 0:00:41the list of recommended reading for A-Level.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43And alongside her, Alastair Campbell.
0:00:43 > 0:00:47For nine years he was the press spokesman for Tony Blair.
0:00:47 > 0:00:49He's published three books about that time
0:00:49 > 0:00:54and there's surely several more to come, as we've only arrived at 1999.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57He's also written two novels. The latest only narrowly missed
0:00:57 > 0:01:03winning the Bad Sex Award, which will disappoint his many adoring female fans.
0:01:03 > 0:01:09Both my guests are northerners, both in their early 50s, but with very different stories to tell.
0:01:09 > 0:01:11Thank you both for joining me.
0:01:11 > 0:01:13APPLAUSE
0:01:13 > 0:01:16We begin with childhood reads, starting with you, Jeanette.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18Can you remind us a little of those years?
0:01:18 > 0:01:22Yes, Mrs Winterson, my mother, was in charge of language.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25And she read the Bible to us every day, morning and evening, to me and my father.
0:01:25 > 0:01:27And we always started at Genesis.
0:01:27 > 0:01:31The Bible has 66 books, as you'll remember. This is my old copy.
0:01:31 > 0:01:33And we went through to Revelations.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36And when we got to the Apocalypse, where all the awful people are thrown
0:01:36 > 0:01:40into the bottomless pit, she always gave us a week to think about it.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44And then we went right back to the beginning and started again.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48The Bible as your first choice is quite unusual, really.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51Weren't you sick of it by the time you left home?
0:01:51 > 0:01:53No, I've carried on reading it.
0:01:53 > 0:01:58I think God is religion-proof and you can separate religion from spirituality.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03The way that the Bible is written, the sentences are very simple but the language is precise.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07And that I think, is a great introduction for a writer.
0:02:07 > 0:02:08It stops you saying too much.
0:02:08 > 0:02:13You say you wouldn't be who you are today if you didn't have such a great knowledge of the Bible.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15No, certainly not.
0:02:15 > 0:02:20I think you know all those stories which are the basis of western literature.
0:02:20 > 0:02:23It's a great pity, I think, if kids don't know the Bible.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25They can reject it, they don't have to believe it,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28but it is a literary resource and a beautiful one.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30I think it's really good that Jeanette has chosen the Bible.
0:02:30 > 0:02:33I don't do God, as they say, but...
0:02:33 > 0:02:36You famously said, "We don't do God."
0:02:36 > 0:02:40But I describe myself as a pro-faith atheist.
0:02:40 > 0:02:41You're absolutely right about
0:02:41 > 0:02:43the beauty of the language.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46It's important we understand it's an extraordinary book.
0:02:46 > 0:02:51I think we should also be encouraged to read the, the books of other religions as well.
0:02:51 > 0:02:53Did you grow up with the Bible?
0:02:53 > 0:02:56My dad was Hebridian, he came from the Isle of Tiree.
0:02:56 > 0:02:58And it was quite a God fearing sort of place.
0:02:58 > 0:03:00And we were Scottish Presbyterian.
0:03:00 > 0:03:05And whenever I went back to where my dad came from, you felt the power of religion.
0:03:05 > 0:03:09Sundays were very special and different and you felt that they were different.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12I don't think I've ever actively rejected God.
0:03:12 > 0:03:17I think I've just applied kind of my own intellectual thinking
0:03:17 > 0:03:22to it and come to a conclusion that I am not a believer.
0:03:22 > 0:03:25That said, I have all sorts of kind of spiritual thoughts and moments
0:03:25 > 0:03:31and I sometimes do feel myself getting quite close to what I think it is that my parents believed.
0:03:31 > 0:03:35Jeanette, your mother was a Pentecostal Evangelist.
0:03:35 > 0:03:38She was, we had a gospel tent.
0:03:38 > 0:03:43I thought all children did. It was a surprise to find we were the only ones.
0:03:43 > 0:03:47She wanted me to be a missionary and when things went wrong
0:03:47 > 0:03:50she always said, "Oh, the devil lead us to the wrong crib."
0:03:50 > 0:03:54We have a clip here from the television series adapted
0:03:54 > 0:03:59from your book, when she's doing just that, I think. Being disappointed in you.
0:04:01 > 0:04:03Who was the oldest man in The Bible?
0:04:03 > 0:04:06- Methuselah. - How old was he when he died?
0:04:06 > 0:04:08- 969.- What sort of tea is this?
0:04:08 > 0:04:11Stand up and be counted.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14I mean, Empire Blend.
0:04:14 > 0:04:17Just in time for the missionary report.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19Can I have my breakfast?
0:04:19 > 0:04:21- There'll be no breakfast in Hell. - I'm not going to hell.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26No, not like all these heathens in hot places we'll be hearing about when the set warms up.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29LIGHT LAUGHTER
0:04:29 > 0:04:31- You were adopted.- Yes.
0:04:31 > 0:04:37And did you think of your mother as a monster at a certain stage, or was that quite acceptable to you?
0:04:37 > 0:04:40Always. This was a woman who kept a service revolver
0:04:40 > 0:04:44from the war in the duster drawer and the bullets in a tin of Pledge.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47And when things got bad she'd get the revolver out.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49And if it got really bad, she'd get the Pledge out.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53She was too enormous for her life and so she crouched under the shelf
0:04:53 > 0:04:57of her life, gloomy and angry and occasionally burst out of it.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00- Was your father a match for her? - By no means.
0:05:00 > 0:05:01No. My father left school at 12.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05He was one of those First World War babies that they forgot to celebrate.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08And he couldn't read and he never really spoke.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10So my mother and I, in our sparring...
0:05:10 > 0:05:12There he is.
0:05:12 > 0:05:17Yes, there he is. That's my dad. I would like to look at that picture, because that is Blackpool beach.
0:05:17 > 0:05:19Why are there no people?
0:05:19 > 0:05:23She must have got us up at like quarter to five in the morning for the photo!
0:05:23 > 0:05:26I don't look very pleased.
0:05:26 > 0:05:30But that's my dad. He'd had a rough, hard life. But he did love me.
0:05:30 > 0:05:35And, towards the end of his own life, we were reconciled long after Mrs Winterson was dead.
0:05:35 > 0:05:37So these things can be redeemed in some way.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41- So, he's not Mr Winterson to you? - No, he's Dad. She's Mrs Winterson.
0:05:41 > 0:05:46Yeah. Meanwhile, Alastair, you were brought up in Keighley in Yorkshire.
0:05:46 > 0:05:48A lot of books around the house?
0:05:48 > 0:05:51Yeah, there were books around the house. I read a lot.
0:05:51 > 0:05:53But I kind of read what I had to read. I was very, very...
0:05:53 > 0:05:57Well, I wasn't a swot exactly, but I always liked school. And I liked reading.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01And your first choice is This Sporting Life, David Storey.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04- How old were you when you read this? - I was probably 13.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07And why is it so important to you?
0:06:07 > 0:06:09Sport is a huge part of my life.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12And I grew up wanting to play football for Burnley and Scotland,
0:06:12 > 0:06:16cricket for Yorkshire and England, and Rugby League for Keighley and Great Britain.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20This book is, I think, the best novel about sport ever written.
0:06:20 > 0:06:22But it's also a love story and it's a social...
0:06:22 > 0:06:25It's a portrayal of a particular place at a particular time.
0:06:25 > 0:06:30It's beautifully written, but it is about a sort of gritty working class
0:06:30 > 0:06:32environment, which wasn't yours, was it?
0:06:32 > 0:06:37No, my dad was a vet. And, in a sense, we lived at the top end of the town.
0:06:37 > 0:06:39Maybe it is because of my parents' background,
0:06:39 > 0:06:45I've always felt a great affinity with that fairly tough, northern approach to life.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50We've actually got a clip of the hero with his unforgiving landlady here.
0:06:50 > 0:06:521963, this is.
0:06:52 > 0:06:55You don't appreciate one bloody thing I've done for you.
0:06:55 > 0:06:57I've given you a life.
0:06:57 > 0:06:59A life better than any other woman in this street,
0:06:59 > 0:07:00but you will not admit it.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02"Admit it"? You must be mad.
0:07:02 > 0:07:07I can't lift my head up in this street without somebody pointing at me and saying I'm your slut.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10- Who says that? - "Who says that". Just listen to him.
0:07:10 > 0:07:12They all laugh at you. Don't you know that?
0:07:12 > 0:07:16Trying to be different. And they point me out, too, and Ian and Linda.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18We're not proper people now because of you.
0:07:18 > 0:07:20Cos you show off every Saturday in front of thousands of them.
0:07:20 > 0:07:25- Because you're just a great ape on a football field! - Because you want me to be like them!
0:07:25 > 0:07:28That's him wrestling with fame, isn't it?
0:07:28 > 0:07:32I think it's also him feeling he has to be the hard man.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36But actually, beneath him, he's got this passion for the woman
0:07:36 > 0:07:39who's being very, very unyielding. But certainly part of the...
0:07:39 > 0:07:44I mean, Rugby League players, they're nothing like today's footballers or film stars.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48But, within the context of that novel, he was a big figure within a small town.
0:07:48 > 0:07:50And he was finding it very difficult to adapt to
0:07:50 > 0:07:53the fact that people looked at him and thought they knew him.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56- And the whole thing that goes with fame.- Do you enjoy being famous?
0:07:56 > 0:08:00Well, I don't feel I am famous in the way that, you know, others are.
0:08:00 > 0:08:02I think it's all changed, anyway.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06- Yeah, it has.- I think the celebrity thing now is so sort of ridiculous
0:08:06 > 0:08:11and, frankly, kind of out of control in terms of who's a celebrity, what's a celebrity.
0:08:11 > 0:08:14I don't feel like I'm a celebrity at all.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Celebrity to me is Katie Price or it's, you know...
0:08:17 > 0:08:20Jeanette might not know who Katie Price is.
0:08:20 > 0:08:22- Of course I do!- Jeanette knows lots and lots of things.
0:08:22 > 0:08:27But what I do think, I definitely had a moment, I can't remember when,
0:08:27 > 0:08:32but I definitely had a moment in my childhood when I felt I was going
0:08:32 > 0:08:36to do something different and unexpected, beyond what anybody in my family had done before.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41- So you never really grappled with a lack of self confidence, then? - That's not the same thing, Annie.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43Jeanette, your next choice.
0:08:43 > 0:08:46By now you're 11.
0:08:46 > 0:08:49Your adopted mother reads to you Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
0:08:49 > 0:08:51Tell us about this.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54Yes. There were only six books in our house.
0:08:54 > 0:08:58We had the Bible and the Concordance to the Bible and books about the Bible. But really nothing else.
0:08:58 > 0:09:03It never occurred to her that, rather than books falling into my hands, I might fall into the book.
0:09:03 > 0:09:07But she used to send me to the library to get her mystery stories.
0:09:07 > 0:09:12And I said, "Well, why can you read mystery stories and why can't I read?"
0:09:12 > 0:09:17And she said, "The trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it till it's too late."
0:09:17 > 0:09:19And I used to think, "Too late for what?"
0:09:19 > 0:09:21LAUGHTER
0:09:21 > 0:09:27So, naturally enough, I was curious about books. I longed for books.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29But we weren't allowed to have them.
0:09:29 > 0:09:32And in fact, in our house, I had to start smuggling books in.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35I was either reading them in the loo or I was smuggling them into the house.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38And if you've got a single bed and a collection of paperbacks,
0:09:38 > 0:09:42you can get 76 under the mattress and one under the pillow.
0:09:42 > 0:09:47And that's what I did, and my bed was rising visibly, I was like the Princess And The Pea.
0:09:47 > 0:09:51Then one day, because she was a suspicious woman by nature, she came in and she saw the corner of
0:09:51 > 0:09:55a book sticking out, and she pulled it and it was really bad because it was DH Lawrence "Women In Love".
0:09:55 > 0:09:58- Oh, God!- And she knew that Lawrence was a Satanist and pornographer.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02All the books came tumbling down, me as well, she threw them out into the back yard,
0:10:02 > 0:10:07and then she took the paraffin stove and she poured the paraffin over the books and set them on fire.
0:10:07 > 0:10:12And it was a saturnine January night and there were these orange flames going up
0:10:12 > 0:10:16against that black slate-like sky, and I watched them all go and in the morning there were fragments
0:10:16 > 0:10:20everywhere and I picked up these fragments thinking like TS Eliot "These fragments I have shored
0:10:20 > 0:10:24against my ruin", and I carried these burned bits in my pocket for a long time and then I thought,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27I can write my own.
0:10:27 > 0:10:33- That's wonderful. - Yeah. But one of the books she did read to me, and I don't know why,
0:10:33 > 0:10:35was Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre.
0:10:35 > 0:10:39She loved it, and I think it was meant to be some sort of moral uplift, because she was a very
0:10:39 > 0:10:42good reader, and it was only much later I realised what she'd done,
0:10:42 > 0:10:45because in her version she has Jane Eyre marry St John Rivers,
0:10:45 > 0:10:51not Rochester at all, and they go and be missionaries.
0:10:51 > 0:10:56- So she was writer as well?- Yes. And it was only much later when I read it for myself that I realised what she'd
0:10:56 > 0:11:02done, so it was a very post modern moment, because she'd got it and rewritten the text, which was perhaps
0:11:02 > 0:11:07an example to me because I thought, well, you can do anything with language if you make it your own.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11Before you read us a little bit, can you just sum up the plot for us?
0:11:11 > 0:11:14Well, you all know the story, because it's the staple of Mills and Boon.
0:11:14 > 0:11:19It appears to hinge around who will Jane Eyre marry.
0:11:19 > 0:11:23Will she marry the gorgeous, sexy Mr Rochester, or will she give in
0:11:23 > 0:11:30and will she marry the awful, pious milksop, St John Rivers and go and be a missionary in fact.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35And of course there's the mad Bertha in the attic, Rochester's first wife and all that burns down and Rochester
0:11:35 > 0:11:41goes blind, because if you're going to have a sexy hero, he at least has to be a blind one.
0:11:41 > 0:11:48But she missed out all the bit, Mrs Winterson missed out all the bit about Jane going back and finding
0:11:48 > 0:11:53Rochester blinded and being able to accept him and the wife dead and all the rest of it.
0:11:53 > 0:11:58And instead we had this, "Reader, I married him.
0:11:58 > 0:12:04"A quiet wedding we had, he and I, the parson and the clerk were alone present and when we got back
0:12:04 > 0:12:08"from the church Mary was cooking the dinner, and John was cleaning
0:12:08 > 0:12:14"the knives, and I said, 'Mary, I've been married to St John Rivers this morning'."
0:12:14 > 0:12:19- Of course it was meant to be Mr Rochester.- That's wonderful.
0:12:19 > 0:12:23Alastair, your next book, Madame Bovary.
0:12:23 > 0:12:25- What a choice.- Gustave Flaubert.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30- Fantastic choice.- Is it? Oh, good. I thought you were scolding me. - No, no.
0:12:30 > 0:12:35I think it's quite, if I may say so, it's quite an unusual choice.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38- Why?- For a big, beefy lad like you.
0:12:38 > 0:12:40Well, because two things.
0:12:40 > 0:12:47One, the heroine is, is not very likeable, indeed no-one in it is very likable.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50- Tell us the story.- Well, it's actually a very, very simple story.
0:12:50 > 0:12:55Madame Bovary, well there are two Madame Bovaries, it starts with Charles, who becomes her husband.
0:12:55 > 0:13:01Charles is this absolute sort of wimp of a man who's the local doctor.
0:13:01 > 0:13:08He loses his wife and he ends up marrying the Madame Bovary of the title, who's Emma...
0:13:08 > 0:13:15Very provincial town, but she has extraordinary kind of aspirations, uber-bourgeois aspirations for
0:13:15 > 0:13:21herself, and he just never satisfies her in any way at all and she eventually sort of edges
0:13:21 > 0:13:26towards having a couple of what today in the Sunday papers would be called inappropriate relationships.
0:13:26 > 0:13:31It's an account of one woman and these relationships and why they develop, but I think for me
0:13:31 > 0:13:37it was the just the power of a very simple story, beautifully told.
0:13:37 > 0:13:40So it had a very, very big impact on me and it's the reason I did
0:13:40 > 0:13:43languages at University, it's probably the reason why
0:13:43 > 0:13:48we go to France every year for our summer holiday, it's the reason why I feel as passionately as I do.
0:13:48 > 0:13:51And I probably read as much French now as I do English.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55And tell me, whose French was better, yours or Tony Blair's?
0:13:55 > 0:13:58Mine, by a mile.
0:13:58 > 0:14:03- Really?- So when you were in France with him you could talk to Chirac and the others.
0:14:03 > 0:14:05- Yeah.- In their own language.- Yeah.
0:14:05 > 0:14:07But it's wise with the French to
0:14:07 > 0:14:10pin them down through interpretation.
0:14:10 > 0:14:12Right.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15Jeanette, we move on to your university days,
0:14:15 > 0:14:19and about the same time that Alastair was going up to Cambridge
0:14:19 > 0:14:22you went off to Oxford to read English.
0:14:22 > 0:14:25That was a pretty large achievement, getting to Oxford.
0:14:25 > 0:14:28It was for me, because we didn't know anybody
0:14:28 > 0:14:32who'd gone to university at all, let alone to Oxford or Cambridge.
0:14:32 > 0:14:34I tried to get into Oxford and when I went for my interview,
0:14:34 > 0:14:39I was so frightened and I didn't do well at all, I could hardly speak,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43and then I didn't get a place, so my world collapsed at that point and people were saying,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46"Oh, you could go to another university", and I thought I can't.
0:14:46 > 0:14:52So at that time I had a little car, a Hillman Imp, and I got in it and I drove back down to Oxford
0:14:52 > 0:14:55a year later and I camped in a campsite, because I'd no money,
0:14:55 > 0:14:58and I went round to see the senior tutor
0:14:58 > 0:15:03and I said, "Look you have to give me a place, you don't understand, this is everything to me".
0:15:03 > 0:15:05It's probably the longest car journey you'd ever made.
0:15:05 > 0:15:09Well, yeah, I hadn't been past Blackpool.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14When eventually I did go to Oxford, nobody told me that there were
0:15:14 > 0:15:19motorway service stations where you could get petrol, so I just had to fill up all these tins and have
0:15:19 > 0:15:23them in the back of the car, and then stop on the hard shoulder!
0:15:23 > 0:15:27So I'd have the engine running and I'd be filling up with tins of petrol
0:15:27 > 0:15:29and then going onward on my journey.
0:15:29 > 0:15:33I mean it seems astonishing to people that this was the late '70s
0:15:33 > 0:15:37but we knew nothing in Accrington, never been further than Blackpool.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39So they did give me a place which was fantastic.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43Anyway, your next book choice, this is while you were at St Catherine's.
0:15:43 > 0:15:45- Yes.- Is Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
0:15:45 > 0:15:47Yeah, it's a simple story.
0:15:47 > 0:15:52Really it begins with a young nobleman, Orlando, in the days of Elizabeth I, and he's reckless
0:15:52 > 0:15:56and restless, and of course passionate and full of love.
0:15:56 > 0:16:02It's the story of Orlando changing gender, going across time and across sex, so it's a very audacious
0:16:02 > 0:16:08and bold book, in fact the first line of it is, "He, for there could be no doubt about his sex....", and then we
0:16:08 > 0:16:11spend the rest of the book doubting his sex entirely.
0:16:11 > 0:16:16- It's what she was so good at.- So did this make you feel you could be who you really were at Oxford?- Yes.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21It made me feel that I could learn to be myself, or begin that journey, and that your gender wasn't
0:16:21 > 0:16:27so important, and that you could be a girl who's a boy who's a boy who's a girl and just not worry about it.
0:16:27 > 0:16:31- And do you think the written word can change views?- Completely.
0:16:31 > 0:16:36We are creatures of language, human beings invented language because we have to deal with all these things.
0:16:36 > 0:16:39Not just our outside world, our inside world, and we have to find
0:16:39 > 0:16:41a way of expressing that and a way which is complex.
0:16:41 > 0:16:46And the great thing about literature and why it's important never to dumb things down is that in a complex
0:16:46 > 0:16:50world you need a complex language, otherwise you're reduced to the equivalent of a pair of hot and cold
0:16:50 > 0:16:54taps, "I like it, I don't like it, I feel good I feel bad", it's pathetic.
0:16:54 > 0:16:57What language does is give you that range to express your world.
0:16:57 > 0:17:02And reading Virginia Woolf, this great romp, this gusto, this extravagance,
0:17:02 > 0:17:06this excitement with language, I thought, "That's what I want to write like and to be."
0:17:06 > 0:17:11It's this world beyond the world first seen through Mrs Winterson's eyes and The Bible.
0:17:11 > 0:17:15Alastair, your next choice is Team Of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
0:17:15 > 0:17:19It is a fantastic but historical account of Abraham Lincoln.
0:17:19 > 0:17:21The reason why it's called Team of Rivals
0:17:21 > 0:17:26is because he, when he started out on his road to become president,
0:17:26 > 0:17:29he was the fourth favourite for the Republican nomination.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33There was a guy Bates, Seaward and another one called Chase who were way ahead of him.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36And he was just seen as this kind of backwoods lawyer.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39He wasn't terrible impressive, he wasn't terribly charismatic,
0:17:39 > 0:17:43but he had real qualities within him that over time came out.
0:17:43 > 0:17:50What you do feel with this book is the link, I feel a direct link from him through all sorts of historical
0:17:50 > 0:17:54figures, probably Martin Luther King most importantly, to Barack Obama being president.
0:17:54 > 0:17:59Barack Obama could not be president had it not been for some of the things that Abraham Lincoln did.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02But the point about Team Of Rivals, and Obama learned
0:18:02 > 0:18:05from this in appointing Hillary Clinton in the way that he did,
0:18:05 > 0:18:09he gave the top jobs when he became president to his rivals.
0:18:09 > 0:18:15And the other thing about Lincoln and this book is that he was
0:18:15 > 0:18:20a depressive, I mean, he had really, really bad depression.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23But I think he's gone down in history as probably
0:18:23 > 0:18:29the greatest American president, this book tells the story why and you really get a feel for it.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33And his rivals, come the end, they basically see him as the closest
0:18:33 > 0:18:37thing there is to kind of perfection in another political human being.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40Will you read us a bit you've chosen?
0:18:40 > 0:18:44I have actually gone for a section that is about his depression.
0:18:44 > 0:18:48"In Lincoln's time, this combination of symptoms, feelings of hopelessness and listlessness,
0:18:48 > 0:18:54"thoughts of death and suicide, was called hypochondria, the hypo or the vapours.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57"It's source was thought to be in the abdomen which
0:18:57 > 0:19:01"was then considered the seat of emotions containing the liver, gall bladder and spleen."
0:19:01 > 0:19:06"Treatment for the liver and digestive system was recommended."
0:19:06 > 0:19:10Quoting Lincoln, "'I have within the last few days been making a most discreditable exhibition of myself
0:19:10 > 0:19:14'in the way of hypochondriasm', Lincoln confessed to his
0:19:14 > 0:19:18"law partner and friend John Stewart on January 20, 1841.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22"Desperately he sought a post office job for Doctor Anson Henry who would
0:19:22 > 0:19:24"leave Springfield if the job did not materialise.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28"'His presence', Lincoln told Stewart, 'was necessary to my existence'.
0:19:28 > 0:19:30"Three days later, Lincoln wrote to Stewart again.
0:19:30 > 0:19:33"'I am now the most miserable man living.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36"'If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family,
0:19:36 > 0:19:38"'there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.
0:19:38 > 0:19:41"'Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell.
0:19:41 > 0:19:43"'I awfully forebode I shall not.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46"'To remain as I am is impossible.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50"'I must die or be better, it appears to me'".
0:19:50 > 0:19:55And I just think that is a description of somebody right at the depths of depression.
0:19:55 > 0:20:02And somehow he finds a way through it and to become this giant historical figure
0:20:02 > 0:20:06who changed America and the world, as much, I think, as anybody else.
0:20:06 > 0:20:10You've written a lot about your own depression. What has helped you?
0:20:10 > 0:20:15I don't think there is a cure. I think the most important thing is to accept it, that it's a part of you.
0:20:15 > 0:20:20I find sport helps. I find taking some sort of exercise every day is important.
0:20:20 > 0:20:24I think being open with my family has helped - it took me a long, long time to be able to do that.
0:20:24 > 0:20:27And I did find writing about it incredibly helpful.
0:20:27 > 0:20:33This may be just to do with other things, but I have found the gaps between the depressions widening.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37Jeanette, your next choice, interestingly, is at a time when you were at an all time low, 2007.
0:20:37 > 0:20:45So it's quite recently and, on paper, you're now a huge
0:20:45 > 0:20:50literary success and you live comfortably from that.
0:20:50 > 0:20:52What happened?
0:20:52 > 0:20:55I'd been going through my father's paperwork after he died
0:20:55 > 0:20:59and I found various things to do with my adoption, which surprised me.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02And it seemed to me that Mrs Winterson knew who my mother was.
0:21:02 > 0:21:04I now know who my mother is.
0:21:04 > 0:21:09And, so that was the beginning of a very surprising journey,
0:21:09 > 0:21:13but it began with the floor opening up and me cascading down into a pit.
0:21:13 > 0:21:14I'd also just
0:21:14 > 0:21:18been dumped by my partner and I didn't want that to happen.
0:21:18 > 0:21:20It was a relationship I wanted to stay in.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23So it was about loss. I was in a period of loss.
0:21:23 > 0:21:28And that opened up, for me, terror. I don't actually have cyclical depression.
0:21:28 > 0:21:33I simply went into those two years in a place of fighting for my life.
0:21:33 > 0:21:35You know, trains came, I couldn't get on them.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38The doors opened and I was still on the platform.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41I had to cancel engagements. I was too humiliated to say why.
0:21:41 > 0:21:45If you're in the public eye, everybody hates you because they just think you're being an idiot.
0:21:45 > 0:21:47And that wasn't like me.
0:21:47 > 0:21:49You turned to poetry.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52I mean, I know you'd always been interested in poetry, but you regard
0:21:52 > 0:21:58Don Paterson, Carol Ann Duffy and Alice Oswald as lifesavers from this time.
0:21:58 > 0:22:00Yes, because they're my contemporaries,
0:22:00 > 0:22:04and I think as well as the past, you need a now.
0:22:04 > 0:22:06You need people you can turn to.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10And poetry has always been the recourse and the inspiration because it is so exact.
0:22:10 > 0:22:15And this was a bit of Don Paterson I was reading called The Passing,
0:22:15 > 0:22:18where he says, "Be ahead of all departure.
0:22:18 > 0:22:24"Learn to act as if, like the last winter, it was all over.
0:22:24 > 0:22:29"For, among the winters, one is so exact that wintering it,
0:22:29 > 0:22:33"your heart will last forever."
0:22:33 > 0:22:36And then at the end of that he says,
0:22:36 > 0:22:39"Take all of nature, it's one vast aggregate.
0:22:39 > 0:22:45"Jubilantly multiply it by the nothing of yourself, and clear the slate."
0:22:45 > 0:22:49And people say to me, "It's elitist, language is elitist, it's only for
0:22:49 > 0:22:53"a few, many, poetry, who are they for? Educated people."
0:22:53 > 0:22:57I think those people have had an easy life. If you're having a tough life and a tough time,
0:22:57 > 0:23:01you want this perfection of poetry, and you need it for yourself.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04And we're really doing people down when we don't give it to them.
0:23:04 > 0:23:09Your next choice, Alastair, is modern fiction from a few years ago.
0:23:09 > 0:23:11It's Ian McEwan's Saturday.
0:23:11 > 0:23:13Why this?
0:23:13 > 0:23:20I think Ian McEwan is - I know you disagree - I think he is our greatest living novelist.
0:23:20 > 0:23:22Tell us the story of this.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24Well, it's the day of
0:23:24 > 0:23:29the march against the Iraq War, and it's the story of a surgeon and a mixture of some
0:23:29 > 0:23:33very mundane things that he's doing through this particular Saturday,
0:23:33 > 0:23:36during which there is one violent incident where he gets involved
0:23:36 > 0:23:39with this guy who prangs his wing mirror and they get into an argument
0:23:39 > 0:23:41and the guy later turns up at the house
0:23:41 > 0:23:46and threatens the family and makes one of the people there strip off...
0:23:46 > 0:23:50Implausibly, while the guy's damaging his car,
0:23:50 > 0:23:54the doctor can diagnose what's wrong with him.
0:23:54 > 0:23:59Yeah, you can say it's implausible, but actually he does see certain tendencies that
0:23:59 > 0:24:03he's seen in patients before and he thinks this guy has got a disease,
0:24:03 > 0:24:05and he tries to talk to him about treatment.
0:24:05 > 0:24:12And later on, back to the power of words, his daughter, when the guy turns up at the house for revenge,
0:24:12 > 0:24:16the daughter disarms him by reading him a poem
0:24:16 > 0:24:21that does say something to him, and he backs off.
0:24:22 > 0:24:27And I suppose, for me, what I suppose drew me in,
0:24:27 > 0:24:32was that the setting is the march, which obviously was a huge political moment for the country,
0:24:32 > 0:24:35and I think that one of the points he's making is that
0:24:35 > 0:24:40while these big events are going on, people are still having to live their own lives and deal with their
0:24:40 > 0:24:47own issues and they kind of weave in and out of this media reality.
0:24:47 > 0:24:52This backdrop that's there, where the media is kind of telling you 24/7 that's all that anybody's
0:24:52 > 0:24:56thinking about and talking about, but actually there's all this other stuff going on.
0:24:56 > 0:25:01And I think he captures that sort of sense of dislocation that sometimes people feel between
0:25:01 > 0:25:06big events and their own lives, which at the time are just as big.
0:25:06 > 0:25:10We're going to move on now to ones you've simply enjoyed.
0:25:10 > 0:25:13We call this the Beach Read or, if you like, the Guilty Pleasure.
0:25:13 > 0:25:18Yours, Jeanette, is Susan Hill's The Woman In Black. Tell us about this.
0:25:18 > 0:25:24I think this is the best modern ghost story that anybody's written.
0:25:24 > 0:25:29And it is the classic tale, where the young solicitor has to go along to
0:25:29 > 0:25:35some dreary and dreadful house and, of course, in the house Mrs Drablow - wonderful name - has just died
0:25:35 > 0:25:38and left behind her a dark and deadly secret.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42It's terribly frightening, and I love reading ghost stories,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45partly because I don't want a world that's entirely bounded by the material.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48And I still like to think that there is a possibility of another world beyond that.
0:25:48 > 0:25:53Alastair, your guilty pleasure - I hope I'm able to pronounce this
0:25:53 > 0:25:56correctly - The Broons and Oor Wullie.
0:25:56 > 0:25:58Would you like to correct that?
0:25:58 > 0:26:01Oor Wullie. They're cartoons.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05They appear every week in the Sunday Post,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08and my parents were both Scots and we lived in Yorkshire,
0:26:08 > 0:26:11but we got the Sunday Post sent down, every Monday it used to come.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15And Oor Wullie is this very likable young boy.
0:26:15 > 0:26:19He just has a lot of fun. What I love about it is the fact that
0:26:19 > 0:26:23he's been going now for decades and they're very simple morality tales,
0:26:23 > 0:26:26and again the values that come out of them are pretty good.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30The Broons are a strong family who kind of look after each other.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33It's nice. You'd enjoy it, Annie.
0:26:33 > 0:26:37- Don't look at me like that. - No, no, I wouldn't, cos it's part of your Scottish ancestry.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39It is, yeah.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44Jeanette, if you had to choose just one of those books to recommend from your choices, which would it be?
0:26:44 > 0:26:48I think we'd better have Virginia Woolf's Orlando because it combines everything.
0:26:48 > 0:26:52It's got the language, it's got the poetry, it's got the plot, it's got the romp.
0:26:52 > 0:26:55She always said, "I wrote this at the top of my speed."
0:26:55 > 0:26:59She wrote it in six weeks and you think of Virginia Woolf sometimes as an inner depressive.
0:26:59 > 0:27:01This is a joyful book.
0:27:01 > 0:27:03Alastair, for you?
0:27:03 > 0:27:05If I had to pick one it would probably be Team Of Rivals,
0:27:05 > 0:27:09but if anybody was not interested in politics or non-fiction, Madame Bovary.
0:27:09 > 0:27:11Good choice.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14OK. And, Jeanette, what do you think your choice says about you?
0:27:14 > 0:27:16It says I'm a romantic.
0:27:16 > 0:27:18It says that I believe in the future.
0:27:18 > 0:27:23And it says that my hope for myself and others is through the power of language.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26Alastair? It's interesting.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29As we've been talking, I've sort of realised
0:27:29 > 0:27:35a link of depression, because Madame Bovary, she was another one who had what they call the vapours.
0:27:35 > 0:27:37Can't blame her though, can you?
0:27:37 > 0:27:42No. I think it says that... I think I hope they reflect something of my
0:27:42 > 0:27:45interest in the beauty of language and the power of politics.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48What do you thinks his choice says about him, Jeanette?
0:27:48 > 0:27:52I think that it says that he's a softer guy than we all thought.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Pussycat!
0:27:55 > 0:27:57Softer than Mrs Winterton.
0:27:57 > 0:27:59- A lot!- Well, there we are.
0:27:59 > 0:28:05Thank you to Jeanette Winterson and Alastair Campbell for joining me for My Life In Books.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09APPLAUSE
0:28:09 > 0:28:12Please don't forget there's more about this series on the BBC website
0:28:12 > 0:28:15and please join me again tomorrow,
0:28:15 > 0:28:18same time, same place, for more stories of lives and books.
0:28:26 > 0:28:30Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd