0:00:28 > 0:00:33Sharing the surname of one of the great 19th century writers -
0:00:33 > 0:00:36Anthony Trollope, author of the Barchester Chronicles -
0:00:36 > 0:00:38Joanna Trollope has earned more and more of her own
0:00:38 > 0:00:42space on the book shelf and in the video-library of TV adaptations.
0:00:44 > 0:00:47After originally writing romantic fiction, she began,
0:00:47 > 0:00:51in 1988, a series of bestselling contemporary novels dealing
0:00:51 > 0:00:53with social or sexual dilemmas.
0:00:55 > 0:00:57The first - The Choir - was
0:00:57 > 0:01:01adapted for screen by Ian Curteis, who is now her second ex-husband.
0:01:02 > 0:01:06After 17 modern novels - most recently, The Soldier's Wife -
0:01:06 > 0:01:10Joanna Trollope recently combined the historical and the contemporary
0:01:10 > 0:01:14with a 21st century rewrite of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
0:01:18 > 0:01:20There is a division between writers.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22Some say they write for themselves, essentially.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25They write the book that they would like to read or, indeed, like to
0:01:25 > 0:01:28write. And there are others who have a reader in mind.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31Marketing departments and publishers famously have a reader in mind.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35Do you have, in your case - with an AGA in the kitchen and all the rest of it -
0:01:35 > 0:01:38do you have a Joanna Trollope reader in mind?
0:01:38 > 0:01:42No, I don't at all, but I do have a sense of an audience because
0:01:42 > 0:01:47when I'm writing, I'm very conscious of a kind of movie happening
0:01:47 > 0:01:52inside my head that I can both see and hear and I'm describing it.
0:01:52 > 0:01:56But it's not for a specific cardboard cut-out of the ideal
0:01:56 > 0:02:01reader. It's for other people. It definitely is for other people.
0:02:01 > 0:02:04I'm of the camp... I don't feel this is a beloved baby that
0:02:04 > 0:02:06I can't bear to give away.
0:02:06 > 0:02:08I feel, at the end of a novel, I've lived
0:02:08 > 0:02:12so intensely with these people for so long I'm quite thankful to
0:02:12 > 0:02:16hand them over to other people to proceed with, really.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19This is fascinating, as you say, because many writers do talk about
0:02:19 > 0:02:20their books as their babies,
0:02:20 > 0:02:23but you're very happy to leave them on somebody else's doorstep?
0:02:23 > 0:02:27Oh, very much so, yes. Oh, yes, under the cabbage leaf, without question!
0:02:27 > 0:02:28I think it's surprised some people -
0:02:28 > 0:02:31I don't know if it's surprised your publishers -
0:02:31 > 0:02:33but it's interesting, a lot of your most admiring reviews
0:02:33 > 0:02:37have been from male critics and you clearly have male readers.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41Was that unexpected to you or to your publishers?
0:02:41 > 0:02:46I don't think it was unexpected to me because, after all, men have
0:02:46 > 0:02:49all the emotional and inner lives that woman do. It's just
0:02:49 > 0:02:55the culture has forbidden them to articulate it as much. But it's
0:02:55 > 0:02:59quite interesting how the culture does prevent them admitting it.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03I mean, an awful lot of the fan mail I get - obviously, by e-mail now,
0:03:03 > 0:03:06not letter letters - but they start by saying, you know,
0:03:06 > 0:03:09"I just happened to pick up my girlfriend's copy
0:03:09 > 0:03:10"of something!"
0:03:10 > 0:03:14You know, you can't be seen to be carrying it like you could be
0:03:14 > 0:03:18seen to be carrying a Jay McInerney or a Wilbur Smith or something.
0:03:18 > 0:03:21It's not quite blokey enough.
0:03:21 > 0:03:24The tendency in publishing to categorise... I had an interesting
0:03:24 > 0:03:27example the other day - I was talking to a writer who had just
0:03:27 > 0:03:33received the suggested jacket for her new book, and she ripped it up
0:03:33 > 0:03:35and said, "I do not write chick lit
0:03:35 > 0:03:37"and these people are trying to position me
0:03:37 > 0:03:39"as a writer of chick lit!"
0:03:39 > 0:03:44These categories they have - chick lit, AGA Saga, all the rest of it -
0:03:44 > 0:03:46has that been infuriating to you?
0:03:46 > 0:03:49It's slightly infuriating, but actually, the readers don't
0:03:49 > 0:03:52take much notice of it. And it's increasingly dictated
0:03:52 > 0:03:54by the retail end.
0:03:54 > 0:03:58And, you know, we never thought we'd say, "Thank God for supermarkets!"
0:03:58 > 0:04:02when it came to shifting physical books, but now the supermarkets
0:04:02 > 0:04:06want things of a certain size and a certain appearance and
0:04:06 > 0:04:12they're quite dictatorial, in their way, about what they'll accept.
0:04:12 > 0:04:14And a lot of people, I think, don't even know this goes on
0:04:14 > 0:04:18or are astonished by it, but the stories, certainly, I hear, with
0:04:18 > 0:04:22the supermarkets, they will change the jacket of a book, ask for
0:04:22 > 0:04:25that change, they may even ask for the title to be changed. There are,
0:04:25 > 0:04:27it is said, cases of them asking for the author's name
0:04:27 > 0:04:29to be changed, even.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31Really? I hadn't heard of that.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Well, asking someone to go to initials or whatever
0:04:33 > 0:04:36so that they don't appear so male or female.
0:04:36 > 0:04:40That's, again, trying to imitate a certain mega...
0:04:40 > 0:04:42- JK Rowling.- Yes, or even EL James.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47Yes. It's a sort of tremendous anxiety.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49It's a sort of herd instinct.
0:04:49 > 0:04:55And, of course, you... It goes on until somebody else breaks the mould.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59And the physical book is rearing its head again as a very
0:04:59 > 0:05:00desirable possession
0:05:00 > 0:05:04because, after all, you don't own an e-book, do you? You only lease it.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07So if you have a library of e-books, you can't leave them,
0:05:07 > 0:05:09say, to your grandchildren.
0:05:09 > 0:05:11But some people, as you know, are quite apocalyptic about this.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14You've probably been to these sales conferences where people
0:05:14 > 0:05:17say, "In ten years, it will all be e-books. There won't be any
0:05:17 > 0:05:20"physical books at all for most publications."
0:05:20 > 0:05:23I mean, it's clear, from what you say, you would regret that.
0:05:23 > 0:05:26I would regret it and I don't think it'll happen.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29And if it did happen, then the book will start
0:05:29 > 0:05:33again in a sort of green shoots way. Some enterprising little
0:05:33 > 0:05:36publisher will produce an exquisite thing and people will say,
0:05:36 > 0:05:40"Isn't this an extraordinarily simple and effective piece of technology?
0:05:40 > 0:05:43"Why didn't we think of this before?" And the book'll be born again.
0:05:43 > 0:05:45You've just written a modern
0:05:45 > 0:05:48version of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51It overlaps with the bulk of your work in the modern
0:05:51 > 0:05:57novels in that it forces you, it forces us, to ask that question -
0:05:57 > 0:05:59how much has changed for women in terms of
0:05:59 > 0:06:03the expectations of marriage, the possibilities of a career.
0:06:03 > 0:06:05I mean, that's the big question, isn't it?
0:06:05 > 0:06:10Oh, it is, and Jane Austen's three great themes - money,
0:06:10 > 0:06:14class and romantic love are still the burden of an enormous
0:06:14 > 0:06:17number of lives nowadays
0:06:17 > 0:06:20and continue to be throughout the length of those lives.
0:06:20 > 0:06:24Really very, very little has changed. What has changed -
0:06:24 > 0:06:28and Jane would have applauded this herself - is that women now
0:06:28 > 0:06:33have money. You don't need to marry money or inherit money.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36You are not the possession of another human being.
0:06:36 > 0:06:38Jane Austen - which is one of the few things
0:06:38 > 0:06:42she has in common with Justin Bieber - has a fanatical fan base
0:06:42 > 0:06:44- who protect her image. - And possessive.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48Yes, possessive. The Janeites, the Jane Austen Society,
0:06:48 > 0:06:51were you a bit frightened of them when you took on this?
0:06:51 > 0:06:53No, not in the least. My advice to them has been
0:06:53 > 0:06:58if this upsets you, kindly do not read it. You know, why put
0:06:58 > 0:07:02yourself through the misery of reading an updated version?
0:07:02 > 0:07:06Because I've stuck like paint to the story and to the characters,
0:07:06 > 0:07:09and also... And this was really liberating to Jane's
0:07:09 > 0:07:12attitude to the characters because there's only two
0:07:12 > 0:07:16characters in the whole novel that she doesn't tease, which is
0:07:16 > 0:07:21Marianne and the poor, ardent, silent, noble Colonel Brandon.
0:07:21 > 0:07:22They're the only two.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27Everybody else she makes fun of, and it was actually very freeing
0:07:27 > 0:07:29to make fun of them, too. I really enjoyed it!
0:07:35 > 0:07:38"Wills slid his arm down Marianne's back
0:07:38 > 0:07:43"and said in a stage whisper, "Jump in!" "What?"
0:07:43 > 0:07:49"Jump in! Get in the car! Ghastly outing off, wonderful reprieve
0:07:49 > 0:07:50"and alternative on."
0:07:51 > 0:07:53"Marianne stood slowly upright.
0:07:53 > 0:07:58"She was smiling delightedly at him. "What alternative?"
0:07:58 > 0:08:01"He came swiftly round the car and opened the passenger door.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03"Hop in, like I said. Quickly!"
0:08:03 > 0:08:06"She still paused in front of him.
0:08:06 > 0:08:09"He was looking down at her with a mixture of intensity
0:08:09 > 0:08:14"and merriment that made her feel she could never refuse him anything.
0:08:14 > 0:08:20"Wills? What..." He leaned forward and brushed his mouth across hers
0:08:20 > 0:08:24"and then he said, his face only an inch away,
0:08:24 > 0:08:29"We're going to Allenham and we are going alone!"
0:08:36 > 0:08:40The dream and aim of feminism, which was equality -
0:08:40 > 0:08:44personally, professionally - has that been achieved now for women?
0:08:44 > 0:08:47It was equality of opportunity, wasn't it, really?
0:08:47 > 0:08:50No, it hasn't. No, it really hasn't.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55There are little pockets of it happening
0:08:55 > 0:08:59but it's one of those things that's going to take, I think,
0:08:59 > 0:09:03absolute generations while everybody sorts themselves out.
0:09:03 > 0:09:05I'm... I'm...
0:09:06 > 0:09:10..very opposed to the idea of feminism being anti-men.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13I think it won't work unless it's inclusive.
0:09:14 > 0:09:19And I don't like, you know, the ads on television that show men as
0:09:19 > 0:09:23fumblingly incompetent and unable even to organise their own motor
0:09:23 > 0:09:25insurance and the idea of a "man cold",
0:09:25 > 0:09:29as if men made far more fuss about everything than...
0:09:29 > 0:09:34You know, there's an unattractive... I suppose
0:09:34 > 0:09:38it's a boosting of self-confidence by diminution of something else.
0:09:38 > 0:09:44It's a version of schadenfreude, isn't it, really? Such a useful word!
0:09:44 > 0:09:46- Which has no translation in English. - Which has no translation.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50It is interesting, though, isn't it, that particularly in comedy,
0:09:50 > 0:09:54sitcoms, adverts, as you say, the men are always useless?
0:09:54 > 0:09:59Yes, yes. And it so is not the case and needn't be.
0:09:59 > 0:10:00Certainly, from my observation,
0:10:00 > 0:10:05and some horror stories I've heard from modern women,
0:10:05 > 0:10:09men haven't evolved perhaps as far as we would have liked.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12A lot of men still have a lot of trouble, certainly with
0:10:12 > 0:10:14the idea of the woman being more successful
0:10:14 > 0:10:16and richer than they are if they're in a relationship.
0:10:16 > 0:10:21I do hope it's generational. I mean, it certainly applies
0:10:21 > 0:10:25to my generation and, I think, to the one below it. But looking at,
0:10:25 > 0:10:29for example, my sons'-in-law generation, they are much
0:10:29 > 0:10:35more used to the idea of a working partner, and their attitude to child
0:10:35 > 0:10:41rearing is a lot more partner-like. You know, a child who's fallen and
0:10:41 > 0:10:46hurt itself will run to its father as much as its mother nowadays
0:10:46 > 0:10:49in a way that, you know, for my generation, wasn't
0:10:49 > 0:10:53even conceived of. In fact, you know, men - it's unbelievable -
0:10:53 > 0:10:57but men used to boast about having never changed a nappy
0:10:57 > 0:11:00and not have been at all ashamed of it, either!
0:11:00 > 0:11:02Although it seems to be that the big question is,
0:11:02 > 0:11:04it's touched on in a number of your books,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08is you can change ideology, but you can't change biology,
0:11:08 > 0:11:12at least at the moment, who knows what is ahead in the future?
0:11:12 > 0:11:15Being pregnant and fathering a child
0:11:15 > 0:11:17are hugely different things, aren't they?
0:11:17 > 0:11:22Hugely different, hugely different, and one of the elements that is,
0:11:22 > 0:11:25to me, so absolutely fascinating and fuels all the novels
0:11:25 > 0:11:29is that the carapace of civilisation
0:11:29 > 0:11:32we have on top of all of our very primitive instincts
0:11:32 > 0:11:36is alarmingly thin, it's just a veneer.
0:11:36 > 0:11:41And you scratch it. You crack the veneer with some trauma -
0:11:41 > 0:11:47divorce, betrayal, redundancy, death, whatever it is -
0:11:47 > 0:11:49and all the beasts are released,
0:11:49 > 0:11:54all the snakes rise out of Pandora's box.
0:11:54 > 0:11:55It's really as if we are...
0:11:55 > 0:12:02Civilisation is just keeping a lid - barely - on some
0:12:02 > 0:12:04very, very visceral feelings.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06And because, in that context,
0:12:06 > 0:12:10because of the subjects you deal with very often - infidelity, divorce,
0:12:10 > 0:12:16stepchildren, bereavement, adoption, do you see or intend the books
0:12:16 > 0:12:21as having any kind of therapeutic affect for people reading them?
0:12:21 > 0:12:24I don't think I intend that,
0:12:24 > 0:12:27although I have to admit I am hugely gratified
0:12:27 > 0:12:29when they do have that affect.
0:12:29 > 0:12:34I remember a very famous person, who is a woman,
0:12:34 > 0:12:39and who is gay, who said she took several copies of A Village Affair
0:12:39 > 0:12:42home to her family in order to say to them,
0:12:42 > 0:12:44"Actually, this is me,"
0:12:44 > 0:12:46because she couldn't quite think
0:12:46 > 0:12:48how she was going to get the conversation going without,
0:12:48 > 0:12:52so if they're an icebreaker then I'm absolutely thrilled.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57but I don't set out with any didactic or pedagogic purpose,
0:12:57 > 0:12:59because I don't know any better than anybody.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03I mean, all I'm doing is recording what I see -
0:13:03 > 0:13:08it's laying out as much psychological and sexual landscape
0:13:08 > 0:13:12as I possibly can and then the reader decides what they'll make
0:13:12 > 0:13:17of it, what they identify with, what they really disapprove of.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21I just want them to think the people are real, that's all.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24A Village Affair was a book that attracted a huge deal of attention,
0:13:24 > 0:13:28because people saw it as racy, as shocking,
0:13:28 > 0:13:33they had the idea of a married woman falling in love with a woman.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37Did you see it as a racy or provocative book?
0:13:37 > 0:13:41No, I just saw it as a truthful book.
0:13:41 > 0:13:45I mean I'd come across this situation of a young woman,
0:13:45 > 0:13:50married with children, who plainly was gay,
0:13:50 > 0:13:53but in that society could do nothing about it
0:13:53 > 0:13:57except rather clandestine things that made everyone unhappier
0:13:57 > 0:14:00than they would have been if she'd been able to be open.
0:14:00 > 0:14:02If it had been now, it would have been so different,
0:14:02 > 0:14:04but we were at the very...
0:14:04 > 0:14:09It was, you know, before homosexuality was even legal,
0:14:09 > 0:14:14so, you know, we've come a very long way, not before time.
0:14:14 > 0:14:19But I just remember thinking that this was a very unjust,
0:14:19 > 0:14:23wrong and, I have to be honest, fascinating situation,
0:14:23 > 0:14:25and I wanted to write about it.
0:14:25 > 0:14:29And an uncomprehending man who simply didn't get
0:14:29 > 0:14:31what was happening.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34Although I think it is... It has always been one of the purposes
0:14:34 > 0:14:39of fiction, I think it's why the novel is such a successful form,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43that in a lot of fiction we get to explore other people's lives,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46we get to think about other lives or decisions
0:14:46 > 0:14:50we might have made. I mean, it's unimaginable, isn't it,
0:14:50 > 0:14:53that if you have... For example, you have an unhappy wife reading
0:14:53 > 0:14:57a novel about an unhappy wife, there is bound to be a connection
0:14:57 > 0:15:01about "Should I do what she did? Should I not do what she did?"
0:15:01 > 0:15:06It's almost more a feeling of not being alone.
0:15:06 > 0:15:13I think we learn more from good fiction about life
0:15:13 > 0:15:17and la condition humaine than we do from any other source
0:15:17 > 0:15:20except living life ourselves.
0:15:20 > 0:15:26I think fiction is incredibly helpful in all sorts of ways.
0:15:26 > 0:15:29You're seeking not to be alone,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32particularly in a case of rather primitive reaction
0:15:32 > 0:15:36to some appalling thing that's happened.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40And you know that phrase of curling up with a book?
0:15:40 > 0:15:42Well, if you think of a physical book,
0:15:42 > 0:15:44it's almost like a little confessional, isn't it?
0:15:44 > 0:15:46it's just you and the pages
0:15:46 > 0:15:50and you can somehow confide in that book your own frailties,
0:15:50 > 0:15:55your own longings, your own fears or disappointments, whatever it is.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59That book is a safe place to put your in most self
0:15:59 > 0:16:03that you might really be very happy not to share
0:16:03 > 0:16:05with another living person.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08The novelist Fay Weldon tells a story of,
0:16:08 > 0:16:12I think this was in the '60s or '70s, getting a letter from someone
0:16:12 > 0:16:15saying, "I left my husband after reading your novel."
0:16:15 > 0:16:16Have you had that kind of letter?
0:16:16 > 0:16:21Yes, yes, I have, and I've had people at signings, you know,
0:16:21 > 0:16:23bursting into tears, thrusting a book at me saying...
0:16:23 > 0:16:26I remember a woman in Manchester once
0:16:26 > 0:16:30with a copy of Other People's Children which is about stepfamilies
0:16:30 > 0:16:35and she said, "His children are driving me mad! What should I do?"
0:16:35 > 0:16:39And, you know, there was a queue, you know, 40 people waiting.
0:16:39 > 0:16:42There was nothing to be said, except...
0:16:42 > 0:16:47If you feel that instinctively, I can't give you permission,
0:16:47 > 0:16:50but you know it's obviously a serious situation
0:16:50 > 0:16:53and to be taken seriously, and I think...
0:16:53 > 0:16:56I'm not at all surprised about that, not at all surprised.
0:16:56 > 0:16:58Does it alarm you to be given that...?
0:16:58 > 0:17:02I mean, it's the kind of responsibility that people are either
0:17:02 > 0:17:05taking advice from your novels or asking you for advice.
0:17:05 > 0:17:10I don't think it is alarming, because it's not a dictation,
0:17:10 > 0:17:14it's merely a suggestion or a guidance.
0:17:14 > 0:17:20I see it far more as my voice in the novel saying, "You're not alone.
0:17:20 > 0:17:24"You're allowed to be furious and angry and jealous
0:17:24 > 0:17:28"and behave badly and burst into tears in front of your children."
0:17:28 > 0:17:32You know, that is human, we have all done it.
0:17:32 > 0:17:35It's only that really, it's a reassurance more than anything.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38It's not saying, "Well, go."
0:17:38 > 0:17:41THEY CHUCKLE
0:17:41 > 0:17:43We know relatively little about your childhood,
0:17:43 > 0:17:45but we know you were born in a rectory in Gloucestershire,
0:17:45 > 0:17:48which sounds tremendously gentile, so was it?
0:17:48 > 0:17:51Well, it was 100 years ago, Mark, that's why.
0:17:51 > 0:17:53It was another world.
0:17:53 > 0:17:55I mean, it was, you know, it was before television,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58it was in the war, my father had begotten me
0:17:58 > 0:18:01and then he went off to India and he...
0:18:01 > 0:18:04I didn't see him until I was nearly four.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07It's very common for people of my generation.
0:18:07 > 0:18:12And so my mother went home to her parents' house.
0:18:12 > 0:18:13My grandfather was a...
0:18:13 > 0:18:16Well, it sounds like a dinosaur now.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19He was a hunting parson - it's absolutely extraordinary, isn't it?
0:18:19 > 0:18:24It's like something out of sort of Oliver Goldsmith or something.
0:18:24 > 0:18:27And so I was born there in the rectory you know with dogs
0:18:27 > 0:18:28on the bed. It was all...
0:18:28 > 0:18:32And, you know, a doctor in a three-piece tweed suit
0:18:32 > 0:18:33with a gold watch chain,
0:18:33 > 0:18:37who probably arrived on horseback himself. I mean, it was all...
0:18:37 > 0:18:40It seems like something from a completely other era.
0:18:41 > 0:18:46So that's why it began that way and that's where I stayed
0:18:46 > 0:18:48till I was three and a bit.
0:18:49 > 0:18:53And you're very good at psychology, as we know from the books,
0:18:53 > 0:18:55I'm fascinated by the psychological consequences
0:18:55 > 0:18:58of this kind of upbringing because Melvyn Bragg, you may know,
0:18:58 > 0:19:01he wrote a novel The Soldier's Return because he had a similar experience,
0:19:01 > 0:19:04and it's about the experience of meeting your father
0:19:04 > 0:19:06and your father being a stranger,
0:19:06 > 0:19:10because he's been away at war. Is that what you had?
0:19:10 > 0:19:12I don't really remember it.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16There are various little nuggets of memory I have,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19but I don't remember my father coming back
0:19:19 > 0:19:22and it must have been that whole generation,
0:19:22 > 0:19:24it must have been unbearable.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28And they hadn't had family life for four or five years,
0:19:28 > 0:19:33and they'd been, you know, in my father's case, he was in northern India.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36I mean, what can it have been like for them?
0:19:36 > 0:19:40And then to come back to this deeply deprived, shattered,
0:19:40 > 0:19:45cold, miserable, hungry, depressed, dark country
0:19:45 > 0:19:48to relationships
0:19:48 > 0:19:52which had inevitably changed and, in my father's case, you know,
0:19:52 > 0:19:54to a child.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58So that that comes in tangentially to The Soldier's Wife, doesn't it?
0:19:58 > 0:20:00- It does.- Yeah, your most recent novel,
0:20:00 > 0:20:02apart from the Jane Austen one,
0:20:02 > 0:20:06which is about that - is what it's like for someone to come back
0:20:06 > 0:20:09- from that kind of experience. - Very much so.
0:20:09 > 0:20:12That that novel was fascinating to research,
0:20:12 > 0:20:16because I sort of embedded myself with a regiment on Salisbury Plain
0:20:16 > 0:20:20in order to talk to the officers, to the men,
0:20:20 > 0:20:25to their girlfriends, their wives, their children, their parents.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29I went on exercise with them, up at Otterburn in Northumberland,
0:20:29 > 0:20:33never seen men so happy or so dirty in all my life.
0:20:33 > 0:20:39They were all gunners and they were extraordinarily open about it.
0:20:39 > 0:20:42But the adjustment is phenomenal
0:20:42 > 0:20:47and of course they form these passionate and powerful bonds
0:20:47 > 0:20:51with each other as you do when your life depends upon the men
0:20:51 > 0:20:53either side of you. It's got nothing...
0:20:53 > 0:20:57It's not in the least homoerotic, or it might have an edge of that,
0:20:57 > 0:21:01but it's mostly really about survival and life,
0:21:01 > 0:21:03and you have a purpose,
0:21:03 > 0:21:08because that's what's so awful for people now -
0:21:08 > 0:21:10is to be without a purpose.
0:21:10 > 0:21:12You know, the latest novel,
0:21:12 > 0:21:17the one that will be under my own name that will be out in the spring,
0:21:17 > 0:21:21is set very largely in Stoke-on-Trent in the potteries.
0:21:21 > 0:21:27Now, about 50 years ago, everybody in the six towns
0:21:27 > 0:21:31round Stoke-on-Trent knew exactly why they lived there -
0:21:31 > 0:21:34they worked down the pits or in the pots.
0:21:34 > 0:21:40And now there are these huge, benighted council estates all round
0:21:40 > 0:21:44the six towns and nobody knows why they live there any more.
0:21:44 > 0:21:49And, of course, for soldiering, it is the ultimate purpose.
0:21:49 > 0:21:53You know, for a man of a certain temperament.
0:21:53 > 0:21:57In the case of your childhood, with your father having been away,
0:21:57 > 0:21:59did that make you a Mummy's girl?
0:21:59 > 0:22:01Were you closer to your mother?
0:22:01 > 0:22:05I suppose I probably was, because it was another five years till
0:22:05 > 0:22:08my father came back and my brother was born
0:22:08 > 0:22:10and then my sister after him.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13So I expect we were extremely close,
0:22:13 > 0:22:19and did a lot of things together... As one did then.
0:22:19 > 0:22:24But I think it's...it's an odd thing looking back
0:22:24 > 0:22:27and I think if you are the eldest, you almost...
0:22:27 > 0:22:29And if you are an eldest girl,
0:22:29 > 0:22:33you often become a kind of extra mother to the ones who come later.
0:22:33 > 0:22:38I have a much clearer recollection of looking after my brother
0:22:38 > 0:22:40and sister when they arrived
0:22:40 > 0:22:43than I do of what it was like before they got here,
0:22:43 > 0:22:46I can remember that bit much more clearly.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50And were you, we might assume you were a bookish child, but were you?
0:22:50 > 0:22:53Well, I think everybody was before the age of television.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57I think we all learnt to read very young.
0:22:57 > 0:22:59I think we were expected to,
0:22:59 > 0:23:03but you were also expected not to read all the time, you know?
0:23:03 > 0:23:06It wasn't really suitable to read before lunch for some reason.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11You know, reading a novel before lunch
0:23:11 > 0:23:15was somehow morally very dubious. Isn't it interesting?
0:23:15 > 0:23:19- That is.- Yeah.- Was it? It was thought, not that it was bad for your eyes or anything to read too much...
0:23:19 > 0:23:21No, it was just sort of wrong.
0:23:21 > 0:23:26You should be... I don't know, turning the mangle or something.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29And, as you say, your grandfather was a hunting parson.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32Was it a churchy...a churchy family, in general?
0:23:32 > 0:23:34Well, it was old-fashioned churchy.
0:23:34 > 0:23:39He was rather a glamorous figure. He delivered parish magazines
0:23:39 > 0:23:42on horseback and, in the cubbing season,
0:23:42 > 0:23:46I remember seeing him going off across the village square
0:23:46 > 0:23:49to take early Communion, and you could see he'd got his spurs
0:23:49 > 0:23:52and his hunting boots on under his cassock.
0:23:52 > 0:23:57But it did, sort of... I think it bred something in me,
0:23:57 > 0:23:59it bred the cradle, if you like,
0:23:59 > 0:24:02the very beginnings of The Rector's Wife,
0:24:02 > 0:24:04because he was obviously...
0:24:04 > 0:24:07This was... He was a good-looking man anyway,
0:24:07 > 0:24:14but the parish groupies were, I mean, thick and fast.
0:24:14 > 0:24:19I don't remember a single uninterrupted meal without somebody
0:24:19 > 0:24:22in a, sort of, Anita Brookner cardigan appearing at the front door
0:24:22 > 0:24:26saying she would, "just like a quiet word with the rector."
0:24:28 > 0:24:30Did I hear you right?
0:24:30 > 0:24:34Are you offering yourselves as deputy rector's wives?
0:24:37 > 0:24:38Yes.
0:24:41 > 0:24:43Have you spoken to Peter about this?
0:24:43 > 0:24:45No, of course not.
0:24:47 > 0:24:50What exactly do you propose?
0:24:50 > 0:24:52Well, perhaps some of the organisational things,
0:24:52 > 0:24:56the nuts and bolts of the entertaining,
0:24:56 > 0:24:57and that would leave you free,
0:24:57 > 0:25:01as is only proper, for the public roles -
0:25:01 > 0:25:06being in charge, visitors, attending functions, that sort of thing.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11We have a little team in mind, seven ladies.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19My grandmother was a formidable and fascinating woman.
0:25:19 > 0:25:20Extremely clever.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23But she was, of course, a rector's wife
0:25:23 > 0:25:28in the days when you had to take on your husband's vocation.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31And luckily for me, as a future novelist,
0:25:31 > 0:25:33she made no secret of her frustration.
0:25:33 > 0:25:40And I think I must have bottled all of that up for later use.
0:25:40 > 0:25:42Well, you know partly Scots, never waste anything.
0:25:50 > 0:25:53"I can't be myself.
0:25:53 > 0:25:57"I can't be an individual, only someone relative to Peter,
0:25:57 > 0:25:59"to the parish, to the church.
0:25:59 > 0:26:04"I'm 42 and I don't expect I ever will be myself now.
0:26:04 > 0:26:08"The parish has become the other woman in my life, our lives.
0:26:08 > 0:26:10"I don't blame Peter for that.
0:26:10 > 0:26:12"He has to believe in its importance
0:26:12 > 0:26:14"in order not to feel he's wasted everything.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17"I expect that for other clergy wives
0:26:17 > 0:26:20"whose husbands are less disappointed than Peter,
0:26:20 > 0:26:23"God is the other woman.
0:26:23 > 0:26:26"Do you understand me? Are you listening?"
0:26:29 > 0:26:32Having come back from the war, what did your father do professionally?
0:26:32 > 0:26:37He first ran a rather eccentric little building society in London
0:26:37 > 0:26:39called the City of London Building Society.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42And he made money out of it, did he?
0:26:42 > 0:26:44Not really. Not really.
0:26:44 > 0:26:46I don't think he was that interested in it.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50He had a kind of...a rather frugal
0:26:50 > 0:26:54and austere attitude to money. Quite careful.
0:26:54 > 0:26:58And so I don't think money was ever...
0:26:58 > 0:27:03Our childhood was sort of rich in creativity,
0:27:03 > 0:27:06but not in anything at all glamorous.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10It wasn't austere, but it was just a very sort of moderate,
0:27:10 > 0:27:12middle-class household.
0:27:12 > 0:27:14My sister and I were state educated.
0:27:14 > 0:27:18There was money for private school fees for one,
0:27:18 > 0:27:22so it obviously had to be my brother, according to the mores of the day,
0:27:22 > 0:27:25and that's sort of how it happened.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28Your website records, with a tantalising lack of detail,
0:27:28 > 0:27:31you were very unhappy at school, so, um...
0:27:31 > 0:27:35I wasn't very unhappy, I just kind of got through it.
0:27:35 > 0:27:39No, I don't think... It wouldn't be fair to say I was very unhappy.
0:27:39 > 0:27:45But I don't think as a person I'd sort of come into my own at all.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49I was an anxious child and I think I was anxious at school.
0:27:49 > 0:27:54I was this height when I was 12, quite tall,
0:27:54 > 0:27:57and, you know, frizzy hair and specs
0:27:57 > 0:28:01and braces on my teeth and no good at games,
0:28:01 > 0:28:05with a propensity to swottiness and getting my homework in on time.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08So I think I wasn't a very attractive proposition.
0:28:08 > 0:28:11I'm not surprised I wasn't very popular.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16And I sounded like this, in a school where nobody else did much.
0:28:16 > 0:28:22And I remember asking for somebody to pass something at school lunch,
0:28:22 > 0:28:25you know, the pickled beetroot or something,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29and I remember her turning to me and saying, "Eurgh, la-di-da!"
0:28:29 > 0:28:30And I can hear her now.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34Do you remember a newsreader called Peter Woods?
0:28:34 > 0:28:37- Yes.- His sister, Dorothy,
0:28:37 > 0:28:40- taught me A-level English.- Right.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43And that was the first person who said to me,
0:28:43 > 0:28:49"You needn't be particularly invisible or average.
0:28:49 > 0:28:54"I think you really could think, if you put your mind to it.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57"And I'm going to hand you Wordsworth
0:28:57 > 0:28:59"and you're going to immerse yourself in that."
0:28:59 > 0:29:02And it was the prelude, really,
0:29:02 > 0:29:06that got me an S-level and I think got me into university.
0:29:07 > 0:29:10We know from your website you wrote your first novel at the age of 14.
0:29:10 > 0:29:12- I did.- What was the opening line of it?
0:29:12 > 0:29:15I have no idea.
0:29:15 > 0:29:16I can visualise it.
0:29:16 > 0:29:19It's in red spiral-back notebooks
0:29:19 > 0:29:23and it's been under lock and key for these 50 years,
0:29:23 > 0:29:25and that's where it'll stay.
0:29:25 > 0:29:29- Now, um...do you plan to have it burned?- No, I don't.
0:29:29 > 0:29:35I think the girls can have a field day with it when I'm safely dead.
0:29:35 > 0:29:39I think, actually, they really might enjoy it.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42Because looking back, you see, I think...
0:29:42 > 0:29:47I think it's about the kind of teenager I wished I was.
0:29:47 > 0:29:51You know, I wanted to look like Jane Fonda
0:29:51 > 0:29:53with a blonde ponytail and sticky-out gingham skirts
0:29:53 > 0:29:57and, you know, all the sports jocks sort of huddled around me
0:29:57 > 0:30:01instead of everybody sniggering and hurrying on past.
0:30:01 > 0:30:05So I think it's a complete fantasy.
0:30:05 > 0:30:08Scholarship to Oxford University at the start of the '60s, a lot...
0:30:08 > 0:30:11I have to say, it was this big, the scholarship.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14It was almost invisible to the naked eye.
0:30:14 > 0:30:16It was worth £40 a year.
0:30:16 > 0:30:18But I could wear a long gown.
0:30:18 > 0:30:23But we can't make it sound as if it was anything very glamorous.
0:30:23 > 0:30:25Now, this is really interesting.
0:30:25 > 0:30:27Your website records that you joined the Foreign Office.
0:30:27 > 0:30:31- Were you in fact a spy? - No, I wasn't a spy.
0:30:31 > 0:30:34I was in a funny little research department.
0:30:34 > 0:30:37They've just pulled down the building in which I worked,
0:30:37 > 0:30:40which was on the north end of Vauxhall Bridge.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43And we had to sit the Civil Service exams.
0:30:43 > 0:30:47I went to see the careers office in Oxford,
0:30:47 > 0:30:51with my best friend Jill, now sadly dead.
0:30:51 > 0:30:54She died of cancer when she was only 50.
0:30:54 > 0:30:57And we went to see the career's woman together,
0:30:57 > 0:31:00who was so bored to see us, I can't tell you.
0:31:00 > 0:31:03And she said to us, "Well, you know, there's three options.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07"You can teach, or you can nurse, or you can join the Civil Service."
0:31:07 > 0:31:11I remember us standing outside in St Giles, leaning on our bicycles,
0:31:11 > 0:31:13and I remember Jill saying to me,
0:31:13 > 0:31:16"Do you think that means we'll have to get married?"
0:31:17 > 0:31:20Which, of course, we did, almost immediately.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22You know, people married terribly young then.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26But you were 23 when you married for the first time.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30No, I was 22. I was just 22. Yeah.
0:31:30 > 0:31:32Which clearly, in retrospect, was too young.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35Far too young. Far too young.
0:31:35 > 0:31:36But I was working by then
0:31:36 > 0:31:40in this little thing called the Information Research Department.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44And you did have to sign the Official Secrets Act.
0:31:44 > 0:31:46And I remember it was extraordinary,
0:31:46 > 0:31:48George Brown was the Foreign Secretary
0:31:48 > 0:31:50and he used to come round to see us all after lunch,
0:31:50 > 0:31:52which was never a good idea.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54We should explain for younger viewers,
0:31:54 > 0:31:58he was a bit of a drinker and a bit of a lech, wasn't he?
0:31:58 > 0:32:01Terrifying. I remember the girl I shared a room with
0:32:01 > 0:32:05in our first office before the new building,
0:32:05 > 0:32:09we were moved into it, was in Carlton House Terrace.
0:32:09 > 0:32:12And we were in... Me and my friend Leslie,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15we were in a room together with an enormous key
0:32:15 > 0:32:19that we had to lock when we left to go to the loo.
0:32:19 > 0:32:22And it had a brass tag hanging off the key which said,
0:32:22 > 0:32:24"Mr Aster's Bathroom."
0:32:24 > 0:32:28So I wasn't much of a spy even then.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32And if we knew it was a George Brown visiting day,
0:32:32 > 0:32:37we both used to stand with our backs against very tall filing cabinets.
0:32:37 > 0:32:39Did he have a go?
0:32:39 > 0:32:42He had a go at everybody, yes.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45But he was... There was something quite endearing about him.
0:32:45 > 0:32:47He was a clever man.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50And actually, if he wasn't complete legless,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53he was quite entertaining. He was funny.
0:32:53 > 0:32:55And very, very well educated.
0:32:55 > 0:32:59You know, and kind of... There was a civilised thing.
0:32:59 > 0:33:03What the drink was about, I don't know. Some sort of escape.
0:33:03 > 0:33:08He was very, very plain. I wonder if it was that.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11For quite a long time, you combined being a mother
0:33:11 > 0:33:14and working as a teacher with wanting to be a writer.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18When had that taken hold, the desire to be an author?
0:33:18 > 0:33:20Oh, I'd always wanted to.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23Not so much for the business of being a published writer,
0:33:23 > 0:33:27it was this absolute fascination with story.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30Because I think story is how we live our lives.
0:33:30 > 0:33:34You know, story is how we make friendships.
0:33:34 > 0:33:37Because it's the exchange of anecdote.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40How you make decisions, because you base your decision
0:33:40 > 0:33:43on the happenings of the past,
0:33:43 > 0:33:46which are all narrative of one kind or another.
0:33:47 > 0:33:53So there was this urge not so much, um...to be a published writer,
0:33:53 > 0:33:55but to have this...
0:33:55 > 0:33:58this extraordinary communication with other people.
0:33:58 > 0:34:03To feel that you'd sort of held a hand out and had it taken.
0:34:03 > 0:34:05And that it was a two-way traffic.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08I mean, for me, there'd be no point in writing
0:34:08 > 0:34:10if there weren't readers to read.
0:34:10 > 0:34:14I'm very conscious of that human energy out there
0:34:14 > 0:34:17that this is a two-way traffic.
0:34:17 > 0:34:19That I'm luring them into a book, in a way.
0:34:19 > 0:34:23I'm enticing them in. I'm including them in it.
0:34:23 > 0:34:25It's as if we are getting onto a train
0:34:25 > 0:34:30at some point in the characters' lives
0:34:30 > 0:34:32and they are in the middle of some sort of terrible dilemma,
0:34:32 > 0:34:36or they get themselves into it just as we board the train,
0:34:36 > 0:34:39and then we do part of the journey and then we all get off
0:34:39 > 0:34:41and the characters go on again.
0:34:41 > 0:34:46And then I like to leave the readers with something to do.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50Some sort of narrative ends to tie up in the end.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53So I see it very much
0:34:53 > 0:34:59as a collaborative, almost symbiotic process.
0:34:59 > 0:35:03They're as necessary to me as the story
0:35:03 > 0:35:05and the characters that I'm writing about.
0:35:05 > 0:35:08And as you suggest there, the reason we're so obsessed with story
0:35:08 > 0:35:12and fiction is so popular in all its forms,
0:35:12 > 0:35:16- is that we're in a story and we don't know the outcome of it.- No.
0:35:16 > 0:35:19A relationship is a story. A relationship with a child is a story.
0:35:19 > 0:35:22Your children's lives are a story. We're just surrounded by them.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26Yes, we are. They are absolutely everywhere.
0:35:26 > 0:35:28And they all have validity.
0:35:28 > 0:35:31And then they sort of bump up against each other
0:35:31 > 0:35:36and that's when all the tensions and misunderstandings occur.
0:35:36 > 0:35:40And that is, of course, as far as I'm concerned, the stuff of fiction.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43But there is a feeling among some of your readers, I think,
0:35:43 > 0:35:47some critics, that the contemporary novels were what you were born to do.
0:35:47 > 0:35:51- That that was when you really found your voice.- Yes.- You do think that?
0:35:51 > 0:35:55- Yes, I do think that.- Why, though, why historical fiction originally?
0:35:55 > 0:35:58Oh, I should think nervousness and...
0:35:58 > 0:36:02a kind of feeling of... feeling my way.
0:36:02 > 0:36:07I think it was a tip-toeing into the craft.
0:36:07 > 0:36:10And, of course, this is something that...
0:36:10 > 0:36:14a lot of aspiring writers don't quite get,
0:36:14 > 0:36:16that there is a considerable craft.
0:36:16 > 0:36:20This is not just something that happens.
0:36:20 > 0:36:22And in your generation of women, there was a divide
0:36:22 > 0:36:26between those who defined themselves as feminists
0:36:26 > 0:36:31and those who actually often quite vigorously rejected that definition.
0:36:31 > 0:36:32Which side were you on?
0:36:32 > 0:36:36Oh, very much the feminist side. Very much.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38The striving, the working.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41You know, I think it was Frank Field who said
0:36:41 > 0:36:43that work was good for us. Wasn't it him?
0:36:43 > 0:36:46- I think it was. - Well, I think he's dead right.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49I think he's dead right. I think work is incredibly good for us.
0:36:49 > 0:36:52And I think writers are hugely lucky
0:36:52 > 0:36:57that as long as our palsied hands can clutch a pen, on we go.
0:36:57 > 0:36:59I mean, look at PD James.
0:36:59 > 0:37:04Mm. At the time we speak, 93 and working on a new novel.
0:37:04 > 0:37:06Exactly. Exactly.
0:37:06 > 0:37:08No, it is... I think probably, she's right,
0:37:08 > 0:37:11it is a kind of calling.
0:37:11 > 0:37:14But it is a companion, you know.
0:37:14 > 0:37:17You're always a bit of an outsider if you're a writer.
0:37:17 > 0:37:19You're a watcher, you're an observer.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22Because that's the part of yourself that you have to train
0:37:22 > 0:37:26to be acutely noticing of everything.
0:37:26 > 0:37:28And to put those...
0:37:28 > 0:37:32Not exactly reinvent the humanity you see,
0:37:32 > 0:37:36but put it together in a different pattern.
0:37:36 > 0:37:39Sort of slightly change the picture in a kaleidoscope.
0:37:39 > 0:37:43But one of the things that always fascinated me about your fiction
0:37:43 > 0:37:45is that when you're personally,
0:37:45 > 0:37:49you were going through something very difficult,
0:37:49 > 0:37:52divorce or stepchildren, illness, whatever,
0:37:52 > 0:37:54that thing that Graham Greene said about the splinter of ice
0:37:54 > 0:37:57that the writer has to have that can stand back and think,
0:37:57 > 0:38:01"I will record this and I will use it," did you think like that?
0:38:01 > 0:38:05No, it was instinctive. It was completely instinctive.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08It's only looking back that I can make the patterns.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11As I think one often can.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14You can make something much tidier of life in retrospect
0:38:14 > 0:38:16than it actually is while it's happening,
0:38:16 > 0:38:19when it's all random and arbitrary
0:38:19 > 0:38:23and seems to be so very unstructured.
0:38:23 > 0:38:28But looking back, you think, "Ah, yes. Now, that was leading there."
0:38:28 > 0:38:31When we look at the way your fiction worked out,
0:38:31 > 0:38:34you were divorced in the early '80s
0:38:34 > 0:38:37and then in the later '80s you started writing contemporary fiction.
0:38:37 > 0:38:39Was one an influence on the other?
0:38:39 > 0:38:43I don't think it was, really. No.
0:38:43 > 0:38:50I think I'd got to a matured point about writing.
0:38:50 > 0:38:54And I must say, I was encouraged by my second husband
0:38:54 > 0:38:57to have a go at contemporary fiction.
0:38:57 > 0:39:01And I wrote a novel called The Choir, which, in a way...
0:39:01 > 0:39:04Looking back, it looks to me like a bit of a halfway house.
0:39:04 > 0:39:10I couldn't quite leave the idea of history and research behind.
0:39:10 > 0:39:12I couldn't launch myself really confidently
0:39:12 > 0:39:15into contemporary life.
0:39:15 > 0:39:18So it was a sort of pastiche, I suppose,
0:39:18 > 0:39:19of a Trollope novel, in a way.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23I wouldn't quite write it that way now.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27The rural setting, having grown up in the Cotswolds,
0:39:27 > 0:39:30that was clearly an influence on that,
0:39:30 > 0:39:35but was that conscious that they were going to be largely set,
0:39:35 > 0:39:37at least at first, in the countryside?
0:39:37 > 0:39:42Not really. It was more a kind of technical choice.
0:39:42 > 0:39:47Because I was going to look at quite small groups
0:39:47 > 0:39:51of people with a particular dilemma
0:39:51 > 0:39:53that was preoccupying them.
0:39:53 > 0:39:57And they were going to be under the microscope.
0:39:57 > 0:40:00And I had the feeling in the early books
0:40:00 > 0:40:03that if I were to set these dilemmas in a city street,
0:40:03 > 0:40:06they would be neither here nor there.
0:40:06 > 0:40:11But if you set it in a village, in a community of 300 people,
0:40:11 > 0:40:15everything was extraordinarily visible in a way that, in a village,
0:40:15 > 0:40:17I mean, people have tumble dryers now,
0:40:17 > 0:40:21but when I was first writing these "modern" novels 25 years ago,
0:40:21 > 0:40:24you know, a washing line told you everything you needed to know
0:40:24 > 0:40:29about the owner of those clothes, or all of them, even the order
0:40:29 > 0:40:32in, you know, how random was the hanging out?
0:40:32 > 0:40:34Was it in colour sequence, et cetera?
0:40:34 > 0:40:41So that idea of a community closely watching each other,
0:40:41 > 0:40:43I mean, it's evident in Lark Rise To Candleford.
0:40:43 > 0:40:46It's evident in Cider With Rosie.
0:40:46 > 0:40:52This tiny community with its eye out upon each other all the time.
0:40:52 > 0:40:58A great supportiveness, accompanied by a perfectly terrifying prurience.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02In the way that a crime writer would think,
0:41:02 > 0:41:06"What is the crime going to be? Where will the body be?
0:41:06 > 0:41:08"What will the method of murder be?"
0:41:08 > 0:41:11You were looking for a dilemma, a domestic or social dilemma
0:41:11 > 0:41:14that gave you some kind of narrative traction.
0:41:14 > 0:41:17Yes, the traction is exactly the word.
0:41:17 > 0:41:19Something to kind of latch on to.
0:41:19 > 0:41:22Because I know, in many reviews,
0:41:22 > 0:41:29the word they love throwing at me as the ultimate insult, is cliche.
0:41:29 > 0:41:32In my view, Mark, a cliche is only a cliche
0:41:32 > 0:41:35if it's happening in someone else's life.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37If it's happening in your life,
0:41:37 > 0:41:40it's the first time in the history of the universe.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43So if it's redundancy,
0:41:43 > 0:41:46it's sexual betrayal,
0:41:46 > 0:41:49it's childbirth, nobody's ever had a baby before.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52Nobody's been dumped this way before.
0:41:52 > 0:41:54Nobody has suddenly found themselves
0:41:54 > 0:41:57without a job and a family to support.
0:41:57 > 0:42:00It's brand-new, every time it happens to somebody.
0:42:00 > 0:42:06And I'm trying to get that sense of the horror, the freshness,
0:42:06 > 0:42:11the vivacity, the reality of these things eternally happening.
0:42:11 > 0:42:12And they do.
0:42:12 > 0:42:14It is very interesting, that.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16I was in an office once where someone came in and said that
0:42:16 > 0:42:20their husband had bought a sports car and run off with a younger woman
0:42:20 > 0:42:22and someone said, "What a cliche!"
0:42:22 > 0:42:25And you think, "Well, it's hardly the best thing you can say to someone!"
0:42:25 > 0:42:27Because it isn't. It's their life falling apart.
0:42:27 > 0:42:29It is. Yes, it is. It is.
0:42:29 > 0:42:35And so it's trying to get this sense of the shock every time it happens.
0:42:35 > 0:42:37Leo!
0:42:38 > 0:42:43I'm trying to separate divorcing Alan and being with you.
0:42:43 > 0:42:45You've made me see clearly that I can't go on as I am.
0:42:45 > 0:42:47But I have to be sure that I'm marrying you
0:42:47 > 0:42:51for your sake, for OUR own sake. Do you understand?
0:42:51 > 0:42:53No. What does that mean?
0:42:53 > 0:42:55Well, I have to be by myself for a while.
0:42:57 > 0:42:59I see. There's no thought for me?
0:42:59 > 0:43:01You're trying to make me feel guilty, just like Alan does.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04Well, I'm not going to take it from you, either.
0:43:04 > 0:43:07I am NOT going to stagger around under a burden of gratitude
0:43:07 > 0:43:10and grieve any more!
0:43:10 > 0:43:12DOOR SLAMS
0:43:12 > 0:43:15Another big career turning point, 1994-95,
0:43:15 > 0:43:18you had, and few writers have brought this off,
0:43:18 > 0:43:21you had three big TV series in close succession.
0:43:21 > 0:43:24A Village Affair, The Choir, The Rector's Wife.
0:43:24 > 0:43:27At that time you were married to a screenwriter, Ian Curteis,
0:43:27 > 0:43:29who adapted The Choir.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32Had you thought about screen possibilities?
0:43:32 > 0:43:36No, no. And I still don't, you know.
0:43:36 > 0:43:38If they work, then they do.
0:43:38 > 0:43:42To be perfectly candid, I'd rather people read the book
0:43:42 > 0:43:46than watch the telly because I think, as with, say, Dickens,
0:43:46 > 0:43:50I think a lot of people, having watched that superb BBC series,
0:43:50 > 0:43:54I think a lot of people think they've read Bleak House.
0:43:55 > 0:43:59And they haven't. They've just seen an admirable television adaptation.
0:43:59 > 0:44:02And I'd really rather people read,
0:44:02 > 0:44:04because what your imagination does,
0:44:04 > 0:44:10how you take a book into your own consciousness and make it yours,
0:44:10 > 0:44:16you know, this curious business of possession of a work of fiction,
0:44:16 > 0:44:20I don't think you can possibly replicate on the screen
0:44:20 > 0:44:24because a screen is essentially passive.
0:44:24 > 0:44:28And the thing about reading a novel where you really are involved
0:44:28 > 0:44:31is that you are engaged.
0:44:31 > 0:44:37You come away slightly changed by having read that.
0:44:37 > 0:44:39You know, you can look back, I'm sure you can,
0:44:39 > 0:44:42there are various milestones in your life, various books
0:44:42 > 0:44:46that you just know you're not the same the other side of.
0:44:46 > 0:44:51And that, I think, continues to be abidingly true.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54So I don't think that you take in on the screen
0:44:54 > 0:44:57quite what you take in on the printed page.
0:44:57 > 0:45:00There is something about holding this physical object,
0:45:00 > 0:45:05that makes it yours, that makes it part of your DNA,
0:45:05 > 0:45:08part of your maturing, part of your enriching.
0:45:08 > 0:45:10Although I first read Trollope,
0:45:10 > 0:45:13the other Trollope, after seeing Barchester Towers on TV
0:45:13 > 0:45:16when I was a teenager and I mean, that is so - it can work that way.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Also in career terms,
0:45:18 > 0:45:22if you have three TV adaptations in the space of a couple of years,
0:45:22 > 0:45:25- it changes your entire readership and profile.- It does.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28It does. No, it certainly does.
0:45:28 > 0:45:34Whether that is quite the same as the loyal body of people
0:45:34 > 0:45:39who've bought the books now for, you know, nearly quarter of a century,
0:45:39 > 0:45:42which is absolutely astonishing to me.
0:45:46 > 0:45:49"Just below the picture of the Queen
0:45:49 > 0:45:52"was the neat brown head of the lady in the grey suit
0:45:52 > 0:45:57"and gold stud earrings who was, Rufus's mother said, the registrar.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02"Being a registrar meant you could marry people to each other.
0:46:02 > 0:46:07"This registrar, who had smiled at Rufus and said, "Hello, dear",
0:46:07 > 0:46:10"was going to marry Rufus's mother in a minute.
0:46:10 > 0:46:12"To Matthew.
0:46:12 > 0:46:16"Rufus did not let his stare slide sideways from the registrar
0:46:16 > 0:46:19"to include his mother and Matthew.
0:46:19 > 0:46:23"Matthew had a grey suit on, and a yellow flower in his buttonhole
0:46:23 > 0:46:27"and he was half a head taller than Rufus's mother.
0:46:27 > 0:46:32"He was also, and above all things, not Rufus's father."
0:46:34 > 0:46:37You were sometimes, because of writing contemporary fiction,
0:46:37 > 0:46:40you were dealing in fiction with experiences that you had,
0:46:40 > 0:46:42being a stepmother in Other People's Children,
0:46:42 > 0:46:45a woman becoming very professionally successful in The Men And The Girls.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50Were there ever difficulties with family members over this? I mean,
0:46:50 > 0:46:54all writers have this, people saying, "That's about me, that's about us."
0:46:54 > 0:46:58I think you, you know, you can't cherry-pick it, really,
0:46:58 > 0:47:00you can't say, you know,
0:47:00 > 0:47:04I've been through divorce, I've been through childbirth
0:47:04 > 0:47:07and that's there in that book and there in that book,
0:47:07 > 0:47:11but I think my whole approach to writing and the subject matter
0:47:11 > 0:47:13of what I was writing about
0:47:13 > 0:47:17was enriched and enlarged by everything I'd been through
0:47:17 > 0:47:21and when it came to writing the book about stepfamilies,
0:47:21 > 0:47:27I did ask my stepsons and they saw the manuscript before anybody did,
0:47:27 > 0:47:31well, all four children did, my own daughters and my stepsons.
0:47:31 > 0:47:35I don't think the...my own success
0:47:35 > 0:47:41was to the taste of either husband, actually.
0:47:41 > 0:47:43You were also writing in The Men And The Girls
0:47:43 > 0:47:46- about being married to an older man, which you were at the time.- Yes.
0:47:46 > 0:47:50So you were getting, literally, close to home in those circumstances.
0:47:50 > 0:47:51It was quite near the knuckle.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55In fact, looking back, I wonder at my nerve.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58I don't think it was very tactful,
0:47:58 > 0:48:01looking back, I mean, I'm not sorry I wrote that book
0:48:01 > 0:48:04but I probably shouldn't have written it then!
0:48:04 > 0:48:07And it did cause trouble, did it?
0:48:07 > 0:48:09Not that particular book, no,
0:48:09 > 0:48:13just the sort of gradual rising profile did.
0:48:13 > 0:48:14And this is, as I say,
0:48:14 > 0:48:17we mentioned this earlier, but it is a fascinating area, this,
0:48:17 > 0:48:19it's just, you have, in that sense,
0:48:19 > 0:48:23you have suffered in personal relationships for your success.
0:48:23 > 0:48:25Yes, yes, I would say I had,
0:48:25 > 0:48:29but then, you know, it is roundabouts and swings.
0:48:29 > 0:48:31It's never a door shuts but another opens
0:48:31 > 0:48:34but they don't do it at the same time, which is so maddening.
0:48:34 > 0:48:37There've been incredible other rewards
0:48:37 > 0:48:42but they have mostly been the rewards of liberty,
0:48:42 > 0:48:45the rewards of being free
0:48:45 > 0:48:48so that I can look round a circle of friends that I have now,
0:48:48 > 0:48:51a lot of whom I couldn't possibly introduce to one another
0:48:51 > 0:48:53cos they couldn't bear one another
0:48:53 > 0:48:55and that has often proved to be the case
0:48:55 > 0:48:58but they satisfy different aspects of me.
0:48:58 > 0:49:01I think I probably have a fuller,
0:49:01 > 0:49:09richer, more entertaining and varied life now than I ever had,
0:49:09 > 0:49:12I mean, the last 15 years, without question.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14Was the writing ever cathartic
0:49:14 > 0:49:17if you were writing when you were going through difficult times,
0:49:17 > 0:49:19heading up to a divorce, after a divorce,
0:49:19 > 0:49:23would writing about women in such situations or similar ones,
0:49:23 > 0:49:25would that ever help you?
0:49:25 > 0:49:28No, no, it was almost the reverse. In fact, the second divorce,
0:49:28 > 0:49:31I couldn't write at all for quite a long time,
0:49:31 > 0:49:34it was taking every kind of energy.
0:49:34 > 0:49:40I remember Susan Hill saying to me once that one of the difficulties
0:49:40 > 0:49:44for women was everything came out of the same creative well,
0:49:44 > 0:49:47you know, writing, relationships,
0:49:47 > 0:49:52babies, everything, so if the well got seriously depleted
0:49:52 > 0:49:55there was really nothing to be done about it.
0:49:55 > 0:49:58And I think it was just a question of waiting and recovering
0:49:58 > 0:50:02and I think that was probably about, it was a couple of years,
0:50:02 > 0:50:06and I expect, I can't accurately remember,
0:50:06 > 0:50:10but I would expect I got quite frightened and quite dismayed
0:50:10 > 0:50:13that I wasn't going to be able to do it again.
0:50:14 > 0:50:17In fact, I found I could in many ways do it rather better,
0:50:17 > 0:50:21but that again, you see, that's down to this feeling of liberty,
0:50:21 > 0:50:27of feeling not being constrained by obligation to anyone else,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30by manners, by...you know,
0:50:30 > 0:50:34the courtesies that inevitably exist within a relationship
0:50:34 > 0:50:36where you're trying to be considerate.
0:50:36 > 0:50:39Do you regard your marriages as failures
0:50:39 > 0:50:42or in that popular American phrase, successes while they lasted?
0:50:44 > 0:50:47Bit of both, I think. Um...
0:50:50 > 0:50:53I couldn't bear not to be a mother
0:50:53 > 0:50:55and now a grandmother. I mean,
0:50:55 > 0:50:59those relationships have been a infinite richness
0:50:59 > 0:51:04and satisfaction and pleasure to me, and still are,
0:51:04 > 0:51:09and watching my daughters develop their own significant careers
0:51:09 > 0:51:13has been, you know, just absolutely joyful stuff.
0:51:14 > 0:51:19So I think I'm not sorry I did them
0:51:19 > 0:51:22but I wouldn't do it again.
0:51:22 > 0:51:24And have you, I was going to say,
0:51:24 > 0:51:27have you given up on men and marriage?
0:51:27 > 0:51:30I don't think I need to be married again.
0:51:30 > 0:51:32I don't think there's any point.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36What about... You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,
0:51:36 > 0:51:38what about men? Have you had it with men?
0:51:38 > 0:51:42I've had quite a long relationship,
0:51:42 > 0:51:44never lived together,
0:51:44 > 0:51:48and see each other in as far as...
0:51:48 > 0:51:51in as much as we want to and that kind of thing
0:51:51 > 0:51:54and it's been, it's now 12 or 13 years.
0:51:54 > 0:51:55It's quite, quite a long time.
0:51:56 > 0:52:00Also creative, a musician, younger,
0:52:00 > 0:52:02but it's not...
0:52:04 > 0:52:05It's not...
0:52:08 > 0:52:09It's not an obligation.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14I mean, of course, there's an obligation of kindness
0:52:14 > 0:52:19and interest and supportiveness, but it isn't that kind of...
0:52:21 > 0:52:28..endlessly dancing round the eggshells of potential offence
0:52:28 > 0:52:33or possibility of upstaging
0:52:33 > 0:52:37or diminishment or, you know...
0:52:37 > 0:52:40And at no point with this younger musician
0:52:40 > 0:52:44have you or he thought, "We should move in together or get married"?
0:52:44 > 0:52:47No, no, no, she said! No!
0:52:49 > 0:52:52You'll get like Liz Jones, the journalist who had "Rock Star",
0:52:52 > 0:52:56- that man that she was going out with. - Yes.- So people will speculate,
0:52:56 > 0:52:59but the kind of fiction you write,
0:52:59 > 0:53:02I suppose it's one of the benefits of this
0:53:02 > 0:53:04that the stages of life as they go on
0:53:04 > 0:53:06when you wrote Daughters-In-Law, for example,
0:53:06 > 0:53:08becoming a grandmother,
0:53:08 > 0:53:11being in a relationship where you don't live together,
0:53:11 > 0:53:14they're all things that could provoke plots, actually.
0:53:14 > 0:53:17Yes, they are. They all, they are.
0:53:17 > 0:53:20I mean, when journalists say to me, as they endlessly do,
0:53:20 > 0:53:23"Where do you get your ideas?"
0:53:23 > 0:53:26I have to say, well, you know, it could be the supermarket queue
0:53:26 > 0:53:29and as long as human nature goes on behaving as it's behaving
0:53:29 > 0:53:32I shall never ever run out of ideas.
0:53:32 > 0:53:37And going back to this point about how much is autobiographical,
0:53:37 > 0:53:40some things are, but in a very diffused way.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45I don't think I've ever tried to take anybody out of real life
0:53:45 > 0:53:48and put them in a book. I mean, apart from anything else,
0:53:48 > 0:53:51I think you have to be as skilled as Evelyn Waugh to do that
0:53:51 > 0:53:53because that's an extraordinary accomplishment.
0:53:53 > 0:54:00The situation, though, the situation of stepchildren, daughters-in-law,
0:54:00 > 0:54:04you will take, I mean, frequently you will take a situation,
0:54:04 > 0:54:06a soldier's wife, a situation from real life.
0:54:06 > 0:54:11Yes, it's always from real life, which is why I still do the research
0:54:11 > 0:54:16because a lot of those readers out there are going to know
0:54:16 > 0:54:19about the area of life I've written about far better than I do
0:54:19 > 0:54:25and I don't want them to stumble in their belief in the authenticity
0:54:25 > 0:54:27of what they're reading,
0:54:27 > 0:54:33so I do the research to get it as accurate as I possibly can
0:54:33 > 0:54:39to whatever part of life or situation I'm writing about.
0:54:39 > 0:54:42And that has taken me into areas that, I mean,
0:54:42 > 0:54:45I wouldn't have believed how fascinated I could get
0:54:45 > 0:54:47about the structure of a regiment
0:54:47 > 0:54:51and exactly how you take a gun to pieces and that kind of thing
0:54:51 > 0:54:54and this new novel set in the potteries,
0:54:54 > 0:54:58almost every novel has taken me into some sort of area,
0:54:58 > 0:55:04working in a supermarket, working in a refuge for battered women,
0:55:04 > 0:55:09you know, it's all been unbelievably enlarging
0:55:09 > 0:55:15and I like to be able to go off and do this thing without sort of...
0:55:15 > 0:55:20having to ask permission or leave something in the freezer,
0:55:20 > 0:55:22you know, I just do it.
0:55:29 > 0:55:33"Ashley shrugged. "She had to carry the can, didn't she?
0:55:33 > 0:55:38"I mean, she was the one who actually had to say it to Ma.
0:55:38 > 0:55:41"I know she offered but it must have been horrible to have to do,
0:55:41 > 0:55:44"to have to say to your own mother,
0:55:44 > 0:55:47"'Look, you've got to give up complete control of the company,
0:55:47 > 0:55:50"'you've got to get used to the idea of stepping aside.'"
0:55:50 > 0:55:53"Jesus! Daniel said furiously.
0:55:53 > 0:55:57"What is all this? What are you talking about?"
0:55:57 > 0:55:58"Ashley looked at him
0:55:58 > 0:56:02"and then she unfolded her arms and put the car key into the ignition.
0:56:02 > 0:56:07"She said, not especially warmly, "So you don't see?"
0:56:07 > 0:56:10"No, I do not," Dan said with emphasis.
0:56:11 > 0:56:14"Perhaps we shouldn't expect you to."
0:56:14 > 0:56:16"What? What?!"
0:56:16 > 0:56:18"She turned to look at him.
0:56:18 > 0:56:23"Well," she said, "you can't be expected to feel what we feel,
0:56:23 > 0:56:28"can you? I mean, you can't help it, Dan. Of course you can't.
0:56:28 > 0:56:32"But you're not family, really. Are you?"
0:56:34 > 0:56:37The potteries novel which ties up with some of the things
0:56:37 > 0:56:40we've talked about in some of the earlier books,
0:56:40 > 0:56:42that's about women, women bread winners.
0:56:42 > 0:56:44It is, woman as bread winners.
0:56:44 > 0:56:50Well, I think it's nearly, it's over 25% of the women in this country now
0:56:50 > 0:56:54earn more than the men they live with
0:56:54 > 0:56:57and I think there'll be more of them.
0:56:57 > 0:57:02There will always be those who would rather opt for the gilded cage
0:57:02 > 0:57:07and when somebody says to me that she intends to marry for money
0:57:07 > 0:57:10I have to point out that it is a gilded cage
0:57:10 > 0:57:14with the emphasis on the cage. There is a price to be paid for this.
0:57:14 > 0:57:18Anthony Trollope, your literary namesake, was famously fluent,
0:57:18 > 0:57:21as you know, he would finish one novel, draw a line, start another one
0:57:21 > 0:57:23and then go and run a post office.
0:57:23 > 0:57:27Leaving out the post office bit, are you an easy writer?
0:57:27 > 0:57:30It's not as easy as it was, because
0:57:30 > 0:57:34I think, two things... I mean, obviously, when you start writing,
0:57:34 > 0:57:40the tank is full to overflowing, so the tank, it's still got a lot in it
0:57:40 > 0:57:44but it's closer to the bottom than it used to be.
0:57:44 > 0:57:47Also, I think one's standards get more exacting
0:57:47 > 0:57:51and my standards are very much dictated by these enormously
0:57:51 > 0:57:54loyal readers. I mean, if people have been reading me now
0:57:54 > 0:57:58for more than 20 years, you know, they do deserve not to be let down
0:57:58 > 0:58:00so there is an anxiety that
0:58:00 > 0:58:04the book will be of sufficient quality for them.
0:58:04 > 0:58:07I think you have to always remember
0:58:07 > 0:58:11that...this is in my view, anyway,
0:58:11 > 0:58:16writers are not poets and philosophers and inventors,
0:58:16 > 0:58:19we are interpreters and translators.
0:58:19 > 0:58:25We are taking something out of the great ether of human experience
0:58:25 > 0:58:28and translating it and making it digestible
0:58:28 > 0:58:30for the people who are going to be reading it.
0:58:32 > 0:58:34- Joanna Trollope, thank you. - Thank you.
0:58:34 > 0:58:39MUSIC: "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such I" by Elvis Presley