Episode 9 My Life in Books

Hello and welcome to My Life In Books,

a chance for guests to chat about their favourite books

and what they mean to them.

Joining me tonight is Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor,

famous for his hard-hitting journalism,

also, and this has me very overexcited, he's actually been voted

one of the 20 sexiest brains in Britain.

I'm hoping he'll be able to explain what a sexy brain looks like.

Alongside him, Sharon Gless, a long-time heroine to so many of us

since her days as the tough, hard-drinking cop Cagney.

She's just finished a West End run in A Round-Heeled Woman.

A woman who sets out to have as many sexual adventures as possible within a year.

And hopefully, that's already exciting Robert, is it?

-It certainly is.

-Welcome to you both.

I'm just going to remind you that this series is,

of course, part of the BBC's Celebration World Book Day.

Robert, I'm going to start with your first choice of book,

which is incredibly traditional.

Winnie-the-Pooh.

You were brought up in North London in a bookish household?

There were books everywhere.

My dad was an economics professor

and you couldn't move in any of the rooms of the house without sort of falling over books.

I just have an extraordinary,

powerful memory of reading Winnie-the-Pooh

as a very young... I must've been four or five,

something like that,

and just finding it incredibly funny,

but also very comforting.

Was it your father or mother who was reading it to you?

I've spoken to them about this.

They don't remember reading it to me, but they must have done, because

when I think of my childhood, I do think of Winnie-the-Pooh.

It just, for me, captures the great puzzlement that all young children have.

I remember reading Winnie-the-Pooh to my boy, Maximilian,

who's now almost 15, but going on 35, he's so sophisticated these days.

Again, I'm afraid, it probably gave me more pleasure

reading it to him than he got.

He preferred Spiderman, I'm afraid, when he was even two or three.

But it is just one of those books.

Almost all the books I really love transport you into another world.

Shall we listen to it? This is an interesting recording,

because it's actually A A Milne reading it.

'One fine winter's day, when Piglet was brushing away the snow in front of his house,

'he happened to look up, and there was Winnie-the-Pooh.

'Pooh was walking round and round in a circle,

'thinking of something else.

'And when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.

'"Hello," said Piglet, "what are you doing?"

'"Hunting," said Pooh.

'"Hunting what?" "Tracking something," said Pooh.

'"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.

'"That's just what I ask myself, I ask myself, what?"

Sharon, that's no great actor reading that,

it's very much a dad reading it.

I think it's fabulous to hear the actual author.

I'm so amused watching you when you're describing it,

you become like a child.

No, it's wonderful to see your excitement.

-But it is the great thing about all brilliant children's literature...

-Right.

..it does transport you back.

-You always described your upbringing as culturally Jewish.

-Yeah.

-And yours, conversely, was very much a Catholic upbringing, wasn't it?

-Very.

-But a very affluent one too.

-Yes, we lived in my grandparents' home.

In Hancock Park, which, in LA, is huge, huge houses.

-Posh, I guess is the word they use now.

-An in-and-out drive.

Right, yes, and very Catholic.

-We've actually got a picture of little Sharon.

-We do?

-We do.

-Looking very...

-Oh, my God!

You look like Shirley Temple, or did everyone look like Shirley Temple?

We probably all did at that age, but Shirley had a lot more curls.

Were there books in the house?

I'm embarrassed to say,

I believe there were books in the house...

This is out of Auntie Mame, the line I'm about to say,

'Books are so decorative, I think.'

I'm ashamed to say, I don't think I came from a big reading family.

I mean, I had my books, but I don't remember...

Certainly not your background.

But, in fact, your grandfather was also in show business,

but at the other end of show business.

He was a very big lawyer.

He was Howard Hughes and Cecil B DeMille's

and Louis B Meyer's lawyer, and Cary Grant's.

And your first book is The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper.

I remember this book very, very, very well.

It's not complicated, but it's a very, very encouraging,

inspiring book for a child.

It's about this toy, this train, that carried toys and food

for children in a village,

and the little red engine that was pulling it died.

And they kept stopping all these big fancy engines saying,

"Please help us, please help us."

They were turned down because it was a little toy train and nobody cared.

Finally, this little blue engine comes along

and is asked, "Can you help us?"

This engine said, "I don't know, I'm too small.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." But she hooks herself onto it

and as she's going up the hill, pulling all these children's toys,

she keeps saying, "I think I can, I think I can,

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."

The sound of a train.

It was her determination to get over that hill

with those toys for the children.

Everybody was celebrating and it was exciting

because she did it, and then as she's driving away, all by herself,

she says, "I thought I could,

"I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could."

And I always remember that ability,

that it is possible to do anything, if you believe.

You were very much I think I can, weren't you, Robert?

I think I'm sort of classic eldest boy.

I was sort of left to get on with things

and I decided, at far too early an age,

that I knew everything.

I went to the local comprehensive school,

my parents were great believers in comprehensives.

My family were Jewish,

came over in that late 19th-century, early 20th century way from Eastern Europe.

My dad, for example, grew up the East End, relatively humble circumstances,

but at the time when you had this extraordinary social mobility,

went to the London School Of Economics, went to Princeton, became a professor.

We were sort of rising rapidly through Britain's class structure.

I suppose my parents' generation, or rather grandparents' generation,

would, I suppose, have been described as working-class,

but by the time I'm growing up in the '60s, we are very middle-class,

but my parents were very committed to comprehensives and state schools,

go to the local comprehensive, and had a wonderful time.

Because, in fact, Robert, it was at a time when the subject for the Labour Party

was a very fierce battle about educating your children in the state system.

Your father is now in the House of Lords, a Labour peer.

He was a passionate believer in comprehensives.

My parents ran something called The Campaign For Comprehensive Education.

I have to say, I remain a passionate believer in comprehensive education,

because it was the one, you know, it got me into Oxford.

So it did nothing but good for me educationally, but also it is the one bit of your life,

at school, where you can mix with a great variety of different people,

from different backgrounds, if you go to a comprehensive.

But, of course, Sharon, yours was completely different, because you went off to boarding school.

I went to a Catholic school when I was little.

Then I went to my mother's all-girls' school for two years,

and before they asked me to leave, I was shipped off to a boarding school.

But I thought I had a good education.

I went on to a Jesuit University, out of which I was thrown,

but my English is impeccable.

You notice I didn't end the sentence with a preposition?

Yes, so I think the world of academia escaped me.

What were you doing that people didn't like,

that it threw you out of school so often?

I just used to sign out to somebody's house,

then we'd just go to a motel and stay and play.

Nobody was screwing around in those days.

You saved yourself for your husband, it was that era.

But a lot of the guys in the graduate school would come

and they would bring kegs of beer and we would just party all night.

So when I got back to school that Sunday,

I was asked to come back next September and take my finals.

My grandmother said, "I might as well have thrown that money down the toilet."

And my education stopped there.

Were you a good boy at school?

Well, I was good, I suppose, in the sense that I did my homework.

I mean, it was a fairly free and easy time, the '70s,

which is when I was a teenager.

In those days, for example,

we went to the pub ludicrously young.

Your voice hadn't really broken and you would say,

"Two pints of bitter, please."

He would say, "Are you 18?" I'd say, "Yes."

Robert, your second choice of book is quite an interesting one.

-Bel-Ami.

-Bel-Ami, yes.

This is the actual battered copy

that I read when I was about 17.

I love that.

It's a book by Guy de Maupassant,

a great French writer. It's about a decommissioned soldier,

in late 19th-century Paris, who's down on his luck

and he bumps into an old army pal who works for a newspaper.

Broadly, it's a story about how Bel-Ami, who's this very glamorous,

handsome young man, sleeps his way to the top of French society.

It's all about the corruption of politics, the corruption of the media,

and I remember at the time thinking it was extraordinarily glamorous.

And it may, for all I know, have contributed to my decision to become a journalist

in some sort of subconscious way.

Having re-read it,

I now cannot believe how much I sort of loved... It's a brilliant book,

I would certainly recommend it, it's a fantastic read,

but this chap, Bel-Ami, Monsieur Duroy, barely has a redeeming feature at all.

I mean, you know, he's sort of cynical, he exploits all these rich women.

He gets involved in insider trading,

he helps dodgy politicians,

very much like journalists today, of course.

It is, I say, I think, in a way, quite a sort of modern book

because lots of the themes of the book do seem still relevant today,

but almost every character in it is appalling.

It's funny that I didn't sort of notice that at the time!

Also, Robert, that you didn't go into journalism as a first choice of career,

so it must have been unconscious.

I think it was. I was one of those people who really didn't know what they wanted to do in life.

I was a slightly strange teenager because I did know I wanted to go to Oxford.

Not only did I know I wanted to go to Oxford, I was absolutely clear, from the age of 13 or so,

that I wanted to go to Balliol.

I think the reason for that was because I loved history

and the master of Balliol was Christopher Hill, who was a great historian.

And I achieved that ambition, but having achieved that particular ambition,

I sort of got there and thought, well, that's all very nice,

but what next? I haven't the faintest idea.

I tried a few things. I actually worked in the City for a bit,

which turned out to be quite useful because I did find out,

when working in the City, there are quite a lot of crooks there,

which, as a journalist, that was quite a useful lesson.

But I didn't really enjoy the City terribly much.

I was lucky enough to have a mate on a magazine who said there were jobs going.

I managed to bluff my way into that job by pretending I knew something about finance,

and miraculously discovered that journalism is absolutely a vocation.

I mean, I now cannot think of doing anything else because I'm so passionate about it.

But it was trial and error that got me into it.

Meanwhile, Sharon, you were determined to be an actress.

There was a boy in my class, Billy Chapin was his name,

and he was a child star.

I went to the movies one day, I was in the second grade,

and I saw Billy on the screen.

I was so excited seeing somebody I knew up on the screen

and how much fun I had watching it that I thought, it's possible,

if you know somebody who did it and they got away with it.

Billy goes to school with me and he's just a normal person.

I thought, "That's not so scary. I want to do that."

My grandfather did say, "It's a filthy business, stay out of it."

I was too polite to say,

"But, Grandpa, that's how you made all your money."

So I just...

But it wasn't until I was 26 years old, it was very old,

especially for a woman to start in my business,

and by 27, I was under contract to the biggest studio in the world, Universal Studios.

-For the next decade.

-For the next ten years.

And after ten years, I was the last contract player in the history of Hollywood.

I was the last one to walk off the lot.

And I walked into Cagney and Lacey.

When you were offered Cagney and Lacey...

Because it was groundbreaking,

-it was the start of the '80s...

-Right.

-..and you were a hard-drinking, tough cop.

-Yes, I was.

Did it seem unusual, when you were reading the script?

Well, I was very taken with it because it was about two women,

but I don't think I had a clue what that show was going to become.

But I was taken with Cagney because she was quite flawed,

and they didn't usually have heroes -

I use the term loosely -

heroes of series that are flawed like she was.

She had a terrible attitude, terribly ambitious,

and I thought she was funny.

But you did turn it down twice, didn't you?

Yes, I had just done a pilot at Universal

where I did play a cop, with a male partner, and it didn't sell,

but my manager talked me into it and I went and met with the producer,

had a meeting with six people.

When I came out, she said, "What do you think?"

I said, "I don't want to do it." She said, "Why not?"

I said, "I don't like the guy with the beard."

That was Barney Rosenzweig, whom I married ten years later.

And it is very significant, the importance, because your next book is indeed

titled Cagney And Lacey...And Me.

-And me.

-And the "me" is Barney.

Barney. He created the show.

It tells... It took him seven years carrying that script,

like a cliche, carried the script for seven years, could not sell it.

The networks were run by men. Finally, he did.

He's the first feminist I ever met, Barney,

which is difficult sometimes because he says things like,

"You wanted equality, open your own door."

Uniquely to this series,

you've chosen a book you haven't read there.

Oh, I do have to admit to that,

but it's gotten amazing reviews.

-Why haven't you read it?

-And lots of nice things on the back.

I deliberately have not read this book

because I want to stay married to him.

And I understand he tells all.

In his experience. He said, "It's my story, it's my memory."

Well, that's a very loyal wife.

Well, I just don't want

-any trouble.

-That's true of all of us, isn't it?

-Yeah.

We've got a very loyal husband here.

Well, I...

Your next choice of book.

I'm more a fan, I think, than loyal, aren't I?

This is a book by my wife, Sian Busby.

It is an incredibly,

I think, impressive novel,

set in the 19th century

and written in a style of a 19th-century book.

And funnily enough, in some ways, it's got things in common with Bel-Ami,

because it's all about political intrigue.

It's about the assassination of the Prime Minister's private secretary,

a chap called Drummond.

This is Peel's private secretary.

And there was. It's a real story, the basis of the...

Let's tell everybody, it's called McNaughton, who is the crazy assassin.

Who is the allegedly crazy assassin.

And my wife is

desperately interested in madness -

maybe that's why she married me -

and all her books are about madness in different ways.

The M'Naghten rules are actually the rules that are still used in courts today

to decide whether somebody is of diminished responsibility when they commit a crime.

The M'Naghten rules stem from this incident,

this attempted assassination.

The chap did die, there is an issue about whether or not

he was killed by his doctors or by the man who pulled the trigger.

But the main thing about it is it just creates, again,

you might have noticed all my books allow one to escape,

and it just creates an entire believable world in which you can completely immerse yourself.

But again, very modern themes, Britain in 1842 to '43,

in the grips of terrible economic conditions.

People are starving, there are lots of protesters out there.

A sort of slightly more extreme version of the St Paul's encampment,

for example, the anti-banker encampment.

So it feels, again, in some ways, very resonant and very modern.

So although I will be accused, I'm sure, of nepotism in choosing it,

I have no shame about it because it is an absolutely outstanding book.

What's lovely about your wife is she's so loyal to you in interviews.

She talks about not everyone being drawn to your presenting style.

My presenting style has been described in lots of unflattering ways by lots of people.

But it is that thing of a newspaper journalist transferring to television.

Some very great newspaper journalists failed to make the transfer

simply because they can't do television,

but we're just going to embarrass you one bit more, because it's such fun.

This is one of your very early attempts at television.

Marks & Spencer's rivals are telling me

that the real problem on the High Street at the moment...

-< Stand still, start again.

-Sorry.

Sorry.

The bosses of M&S's rivals tell me that... Oh, sorry.

Phew... Did I ever say to you I thought it was going to be easy?

APPLAUSE

Actually, I should tell you, that was my audition tape and they still gave me the job.

It's extraordinary, isn't it? Heads should roll at the BBC.

It takes time, doesn't it, Sharon, to perfect?

Yes, I've been doing it for 40 years now.

I used to be taken into a big screening room alone with a projectionist

and the Head of Talent, and she would look at things.

"See that look on your face?" "Yes." "Don't do that again."

Your third choice is wonderful, actually.

It's a book of poetry, and one particular poem by Edna St Vincent Millay.

-Yes.

-An American poet from the turn-of-the-century.

How did you come across this?

Well, again, Barney, my husband,

is very romantic and he gave me,

when we were first dating,

he gave me Edna St Vincent Millay's Book Of Poetry first edition.

Very, very beautiful copy, which he then destroyed by signing it to me.

You're not supposed to touch a first edition,

but it will always be with me and my family.

There was a favourite poem that he used to read to me that I loved.

It's called Love Is Not All.

"Love is not all

"It is not meat nor drink

"Nor slumber

"Nor a roof against the rain

"Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

"And rise and sink and rise and sink again

"Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath

"Nor clean the blood

"Nor set the fractured bone

"Yet many a man is making friends with death

"Even as I speak

"For lack of love alone

"It well may be that in a difficult hour

"Pinned down by pain and moaning for release

"Or nagged by want past resolution's power

"I may be driven to sell your love for peace

"Or trade the memory of this night for food

"It well may be. I do not think I would."

-That was lovely.

-APPLAUSE

She was quite ahead of her time, rather like Cagney, wasn't she?

Cagney should write this well!

Yes, she was a feminist...

..politically very controversial,

and just was an amazing writer.

I don't know if she even became famous in her time.

-Do you know?

-Well, I confess to not having known about her.

-What about you, Robert?

-She's American.

I've only read it in the last few days because I knew that Sharon was going to choose her.

I have to say...wonderful.

I've read a whole load over the last couple of days

and she's the most wonderful poet.

I think she is.

Poetry, I'm not always drawn to, I'd rather read a story,

but I do get caught up in her poems.

Some don't sing to me as well as others.

This one, I think, will be my favourite for all time.

In complete contrast, you go back to being a real boy with your final choice.

Yes, you thought this was one of my choices from childhood, but it's not.

This is John Buchan.

It is hilariously gripping, adventurous stuff.

In some ways, I should probably hate it.

I have mentioned, you know, Jewish background,

there's lots of casual anti-Semitism in John Buchan.

It's a different sort of anti-Semitism though.

Oh, yes, it's not sort of nasty, political, you know, round up the Jews ghastliness,

it's just people...

Actually, the same is true of the Maupassant,

you know, you can say

the Jew somebody or other in a sort of descriptive way.

In a way that these days,

we would find completely shocking.

So long as you know that's how people thought at the time, you just screen that out

and you get involved in the story,

and the story is terrific.

Britain's at war with Germany.

They've got a scrap of intelligence

that the Germans are somehow uniting various Islamic peoples

and the Islamic peoples are then going to launch this Jihad against England and France.

There's no way, obviously, we would win in those circumstances.

Richard Hannay is sent off to defuse this threat and, of course,

he chooses the second son of a baron,

Sandy Arbuthnot, his great army buddy from Eton and New College.

Sandy has this capacity

to take on the identity of all sorts of exotic characters.

At one point, he turns up as the leader of a gang of whirling dervishes.

And, of course, all the whirling dervishes believe he's a whirling dervish.

But if you like easy, adventurous reading

and you can get over - which I easily can, obviously -

the sort of attitudes of the time, it's fantastic stuff.

And it's written beautifully, he's a beautiful writer.

The thing which amazed me is that it's never been made into a film,

because it would make the most amazing film.

Sharon, your final choice?

Well, my final choice is

a book called A Round-Heeled Woman.

I fell in love with this ten years ago.

I purchased the option

to perform in it,

and it's this play that I just finished in the West End.

It's written by a woman named Jane Juska.

A woman of round heels is a woman who is sexually promiscuous.

In America, it's used,

"Her heels are so round, all you have to do is touch her and she's on her back."

But apparently, the original round-heeled woman expression

came from Victorian England,

when the prostitutes would walk the cobbled streets

and their heels would get worn down,

and they became called round-heeled women.

Jane Juska, who wrote this book, chose to call herself that.

And let me read the ad that she took out. She's a real...

she teaches English to English teachers in Berkeley.

"Before I turn 67, next March,

"I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.

"If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.'

In America, where this was printed, she had 63 responses

and a couple of them misunderstood the word Trollope,

which is amusing, we do that in our play.

But it is the most courageous book.

It's very, very funny, very true, very sad,

a touch naive,

but she's a beautiful, beautiful writer.

Could we have a little extract from it, please, Sharon?

This is towards the end.

"She said, I'm not tired, hardly at all,

"so I take pleasure in the memory of lying next to a man

"who knew what to do with me.

"I recall with equal pleasure

"the conversations with intelligent men who were lively

"and curious and thoughtful and who liked to talk with me.

"That was a surprise.

"I never thought we would actually, as my ad offered, talk first,

"but we did, first and last and sometimes in the middle.

"All my parts have been fed by these men, they have made me a rich woman,

"but rich doesn't mean full,

"and rich as I am, I am not full.

"The thing is, once you have a lot of sex with a man you like,

"how do you stop wanting him?"

Very good.

APPLAUSE

Jane Juska is now 78 and still going strong.

Winky, winky!

She has a libido the likes of which I hope to have in my next life.

On that note, I want to thank you both very much,

Sharon Gless and Robert Peston.

APPLAUSE

To remind you, details for this series are on the BBC website.

There is also more there about

my guests and their book choices,

and you can even hear them

read a passage from

their favourite children's book.

Meanwhile, please join me again tomorrow night. Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd