:00:00. > :00:10.For her latest novel, Different Class, Joanne Harris
:00:11. > :00:11.is back in school, St Oswald's Grammar School,
:00:12. > :00:17.And although she says that she thinks of it as comic,
:00:18. > :00:21.From one of our most prolific and well read authors,
:00:22. > :00:23.Chocolat was of course an international bestseller
:00:24. > :00:27.The classrooms and corridors are the setting for a story
:00:28. > :00:32.sometimes hate, deception and some violence,
:00:33. > :00:35.and an exploration of some of the most troubling relationships
:00:36. > :00:39.between teachers and pupils, and the havoc that they
:00:40. > :01:00.Joanne, despite what happens to some of the pupils
:01:01. > :01:03.and teachers in this story, it strikes me that
:01:04. > :01:15.and they're wonderful observations of community.
:01:16. > :01:18.The observation here is, as I said at the beginning, pretty dark.
:01:19. > :01:21.It's funny, it's touching, but it goes to some very dark places,
:01:22. > :01:25.both in terms of the staff and their charges.
:01:26. > :01:30.I've found that schools are a perpetual stage for tragedy,
:01:31. > :01:37.So many things can happen, it's such an unpredictable environment.
:01:38. > :01:42.And that unpredictability isn't just because of the setting,
:01:43. > :01:43.it's because of the age of those involved.
:01:44. > :01:45.We're talking about adolescents, people going through
:01:46. > :01:48.all kinds of crises, some imagined, some real.
:01:49. > :01:50.And relationships with teachers, which are inevitably
:01:51. > :01:58.It's a very intense stage, adolescence.
:01:59. > :02:05.things for the first time and they are so powerful that they
:02:06. > :02:09.I found it a very interesting thing to be part of,
:02:10. > :02:12.but it's daunting as well, because later I realised
:02:13. > :02:17.that as a teacher, you can influence somebody's life
:02:18. > :02:20.and if they remember something as unfair,
:02:21. > :02:23.they can resent it in a way an adult would not.
:02:24. > :02:29.I won't say what they are, but I think it's safe to say you're
:02:30. > :02:33.become much more familiar to us - allegations of sexual impropriety
:02:34. > :02:43.and terrible emotional trauma between staff and pupils -
:02:44. > :02:46.did you know that's what you were getting into when you started?
:02:47. > :02:50.What happened was that I started off with the germ of an idea
:02:51. > :02:53.Operation Yewtree started to unfold, and I found that there
:02:54. > :02:55.was an uncomfortable crossover between what I was writing
:02:56. > :02:58.about and what was happening in the world, and it became much
:02:59. > :03:01.darker and more topical than I thought it would.
:03:02. > :03:03.You touch on the whole question in this book
:03:04. > :03:10.rather hysterical ones, leading to, in some cases, a witchhunt
:03:11. > :03:12.atmosphere, or territory where there are false accusations
:03:13. > :03:17.and great damage done as a consequence.
:03:18. > :03:19.It's something that clearly fascinates you,
:03:20. > :03:22.the unfairness that's lurking under the surface.
:03:23. > :03:28.And also the past and how the past affects the present,
:03:29. > :03:33.and how memory is not inherently a reliable tool, particularly
:03:34. > :03:38.when dealing with experiences of trauma, how memory can be
:03:39. > :03:41.affected by all kinds of things that are happening in the present day,
:03:42. > :03:43.and how memory can therefore sometimes be both
:03:44. > :03:49.The principal character, Straightly, has been a teacher
:03:50. > :03:55.so this has happened to him again and again.
:03:56. > :03:58.There's that interesting sense of having seen generations
:03:59. > :04:00.of pupils coming through, in his case, to learn
:04:01. > :04:07.We're not same person, but I might have grown
:04:08. > :04:12.at the school where I taught for long enough.
:04:13. > :04:24.He's aware that he is affecting young lives, and he has
:04:25. > :04:31.I also like the fact that he is a bit of a subversive.
:04:32. > :04:33.He has various prejudices he's
:04:34. > :04:44.He's a bit bad with technology, he likes the odd sneaky fag
:04:45. > :04:47.One of the interesting things about the way
:04:48. > :04:49.you construct the narrative here is that
:04:50. > :04:52.you have an older man talking, but you have youngsters as well,
:04:53. > :04:55.so they're inhabiting completely different milieu
:04:56. > :04:58.although they're in the same place, in the school.
:04:59. > :05:02.That's right, but I think I had the benefit of being in that
:05:03. > :05:05.environment for long enough to pick up a lot of voices, to remember
:05:06. > :05:08.the way teenage boys talked, the way older members of staff
:05:09. > :05:13.talked, and so I've borrowed from colleagues, from pupils
:05:14. > :05:16.who are now ex-pupils and who watch the whole process with joy
:05:17. > :05:21.You're a great Twitter user, I gather.
:05:22. > :05:26.Do you find old pupils coming on and saying,
:05:27. > :05:37.Many boys come back and say they read this.
:05:38. > :05:40.Very often, they turn up to readings, and of
:05:41. > :05:43.I'm writing about them, which isn't quite true, but there
:05:44. > :05:47.And although it's a dark story, you're clearly having fun.
:05:48. > :05:50.You're an immensely successful author, very widely read.
:05:51. > :05:54.Are you irritated when people say "You're the Chocolat woman"?
:05:55. > :05:57.I know you're not irritated by its success, but does it
:05:58. > :06:05.I'm very grateful for the response to Chocolat and the fact
:06:06. > :06:09.I love it, too, and I'm still writing about those characters.
:06:10. > :06:12.What I find irksome, if anything, is the assumption that
:06:13. > :06:17.Most of my readers don't make that assumption,
:06:18. > :06:23.go in any kind of direction and have done, and I'm lucky in that sense.
:06:24. > :06:25.You take the authorial responsibility
:06:26. > :06:33.Recently, you talked about not going to one
:06:34. > :06:37.because they were expecting all kinds of things,
:06:38. > :06:40.exclusive contracts and a puny fee, and you said, hang on,
:06:41. > :06:42.authors deserve to be treated in a better way.
:06:43. > :06:45.It's not just about me wanting money or special treatment.
:06:46. > :06:51.I would like people to see writing as a job, a profession,
:06:52. > :07:00.This is particularly important for young authors
:07:01. > :07:05.in getting to festivals because of what it costs.
:07:06. > :07:07.They don't make much money writing, contrary to public opinion.
:07:08. > :07:12.The average salary of a professional author is ?11,000 a year,
:07:13. > :07:17.Not many of us get to write for a living and make
:07:18. > :07:26.And you're an author who conforms, I think, to one of
:07:27. > :07:30.Do you disappear and enter a different world when you're there?
:07:31. > :07:33.Shed World is a specific space, and I think it's
:07:34. > :07:37.for an author to have a work space, particularly someone like me,
:07:38. > :07:44.It's difficult to manage your time and get into the psychological
:07:45. > :07:48.headspace of writing, so I think it's important to create
:07:49. > :07:50.a place where you work and nothing else happens,
:07:51. > :07:57.When I started off, I had no desk, so I had two objects I would put
:07:58. > :08:01.in front of my laptop when I wanted to write, and that created my work
:08:02. > :08:06.Sometimes, I'm working on two at once, almost always, in fact.
:08:07. > :08:09.I have books that I write on sunny days and ones that
:08:10. > :08:12.I write on dark days, of which Different Class was one.
:08:13. > :08:20.It is, although there are glimpses of sunshine as well.
:08:21. > :08:41.Some parts of the UK had a decent day with some winter sunshine and
:08:42. > :08:43.you had to go to the hills of