Pat Barker Meet the Author


Pat Barker

Similar Content

Browse content similar to Pat Barker. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

Pat Barker's two war trilogies take take us from the Western Front

:00:00.:00:19.

in 1917 through to the blitz and London

:00:20.:00:21.

to the Second World War with characters that carry

:00:22.:00:27.

Noonday, the book that completes the second trilogy, a story

:00:28.:00:33.

of loss and relationships, delayed by a world that sometimes

:00:34.:00:35.

seems to be collapsing in rubble all around.

:00:36.:00:37.

I will be talking to Pat Barker about her contribution

:00:38.:00:40.

to the literature of war. Welcome.

:00:41.:00:53.

You are writing about characters who have two adapt to life in London

:00:54.:01:02.

while bombs are falling. What do you think life was like? Exhausting more

:01:03.:01:08.

than anything else I think, nobody was getting much sleep at night.

:01:09.:01:13.

Even the people who were just being bombed, the people in the emergency

:01:14.:01:17.

services were awake all night. Then you had to go to work and do more

:01:18.:01:21.

less a normal day's work and people who were there to talk about the

:01:22.:01:25.

exhaustion, virtual impossibility of getting through an afternoon.

:01:26.:01:29.

Getting up in the morning, walking down the familiar street and seeing

:01:30.:01:34.

that a school or shop or pub had simply disappeared overnight. Yes,

:01:35.:01:39.

and the people who disappeared overnight as well, the people you

:01:40.:01:43.

were used to seeing on the tube or in the corner shop. They would be

:01:44.:01:48.

one face missing and you would never know whether they had got a bad cold

:01:49.:01:52.

and stayed in bed or whether they were under a pile of rubble at the

:01:53.:01:55.

end of the street. Without giving away the plot line, which are very

:01:56.:02:01.

touching and quite thrilling, it is that sense of complete uncertainty,

:02:02.:02:08.

that you play on in the book, what will happen next? Is this night

:02:09.:02:14.

going to be our last? Yes, on the basis that this night might very

:02:15.:02:17.

well be your last, do you behave differently? One of the very minor

:02:18.:02:27.

characters says, who are you going out with tonight? Is it somebody you

:02:28.:02:32.

would want to die with? That was literally the situation they were

:02:33.:02:37.

in. The story revolves around the characters, their relationships,

:02:38.:02:40.

some of whom we know from the first two books in the trilogy, the blitz

:02:41.:02:45.

then arrives as a kind of lumbering war machine into their lives. So it

:02:46.:02:52.

is not so much about men and women of action, who are on the front, but

:02:53.:02:56.

people affected by it. Do you think we must apologise the London of the

:02:57.:03:03.

Blitz? I think we do but increasingly, I think the myths are

:03:04.:03:06.

being challenged. People who lived through it, they spoke about it at

:03:07.:03:11.

the time, tell one story, they tell stories about a bomb dropped on

:03:12.:03:18.

their house but what really hurt was that their next-door neighbour

:03:19.:03:22.

nipped in and stole the child's birthday presents which they had

:03:23.:03:25.

hidden in the cupboard under the stairs. That is what really hurt,

:03:26.:03:31.

the betrayal. At 20 years later, the same person interviewed says, in a

:03:32.:03:36.

way, it was a wonderful time, we all pull together. The crimewave in the

:03:37.:03:42.

Blitz, which I have not read much about, but there were an awful lot

:03:43.:03:47.

of burglars in the Fire Service. Because you had unrestricted access.

:03:48.:03:51.

They had the time of their lives. Absolutely. The first trilogy took

:03:52.:04:01.

us from the Western Front to a hospital where characters are

:04:02.:04:03.

incarcerated, to the aftermath of the First World War way now, in

:04:04.:04:09.

noonday, the last book in the second trilogy, in the Blitz. We see that

:04:10.:04:14.

whole period being inextricably connected, the characters bound

:04:15.:04:17.

together in the shadow of the First World War even as they were caught

:04:18.:04:21.

up in the second. I am writing primarily about people middle-aged

:04:22.:04:26.

in the Second World War or older and they are faced with this shock that

:04:27.:04:32.

the war they fought was the war to end all wars and people really

:04:33.:04:38.

believe that, in 1917 and 18, it was the only thing worth fighting for,

:04:39.:04:42.

the idea that this was the last war. 20 years later, there they are and

:04:43.:04:46.

their sons and daughters or nieces and nephews are doing exactly the

:04:47.:04:49.

same thing all over again. They felt they had failed. That is the emotion

:04:50.:04:56.

that interests me. Within a year of commemoration for various Centenary

:04:57.:05:03.

's, the Battle of the Somme centenary is coming up, one of the

:05:04.:05:06.

things that people think of is whether people behave differently?

:05:07.:05:13.

You have said in the book about people facing different choices,

:05:14.:05:18.

whether they would still be there tomorrow or next week. What do you

:05:19.:05:22.

think it does to our nature? Does it left us, does it enhance life or is

:05:23.:05:30.

it something...? I think it certainly enhances life. The problem

:05:31.:05:35.

is with writing about it. It is a fascinating field for a novelist but

:05:36.:05:40.

yet as a human being, I deplore it. But there it is. I am I living on

:05:41.:05:47.

something I deplore. Ella and Paul who appeared in earlier volumes,

:05:48.:05:51.

they married and they were trained as artists. They have an artistic

:05:52.:05:55.

view of the world. That is something that is often caricatured. What do

:05:56.:06:01.

you think that means that that is their sensibility, what does it mean

:06:02.:06:05.

for the way they behave under the pressure and brutality and shock of

:06:06.:06:12.

war? First of all, I think they feel the enormous guilt of looking at

:06:13.:06:16.

this scene of total destruction and death and torment and finding it

:06:17.:06:21.

beautiful. Several people have found it beautiful, journalists as well as

:06:22.:06:28.

artists. I think they are mesmerised by it. They are in a strict sense

:06:29.:06:33.

bird-brain. They react to the visual impact, they don't necessarily think

:06:34.:06:39.

very hard about it or find it easy to articulate their thoughts and

:06:40.:06:44.

emotions. When you explore the relationships between characters,

:06:45.:06:50.

with the generation that went before Eleanor's mother and Rachel's mother

:06:51.:06:54.

who dies in the book, you take a couple of lines from lake which are

:06:55.:06:59.

terribly haunting. Reminders what they are. -- Blake. Reminders what

:07:00.:07:04.

they say to you because they clearly mean something powerful. The

:07:05.:07:09.

caterpillar on the leaf repeats to the, thy mother's grief. It fits in

:07:10.:07:17.

with what Eleanor is feeling about her mother. I like that it is very

:07:18.:07:24.

powerful, it is completely meaningless in a sense. We don't

:07:25.:07:27.

know what the caterpillar on the leaf repeating your mother's grief

:07:28.:07:32.

to you, means and yet we all know it is absolutely true. And that is the

:07:33.:07:37.

genius of a great writer, to distil something... Yes. It cannot be

:07:38.:07:46.

deconstructed or translated into simpler terms, it simply is and that

:07:47.:07:51.

is what makes a great writer. Finally, it is a book in a way about

:07:52.:07:58.

haunting. A haunting feeling. Yes, Eleanor's brother to be from the

:07:59.:08:03.

First World War, but also a sense that London and the Blitz, in total

:08:04.:08:07.

darkness, became a place where the dead of previous generations... You

:08:08.:08:12.

could walk past them in the, in the darkness, how would you know? That

:08:13.:08:17.

is what interests me. Pat Barker, thank you very much for talking

:08:18.:08:22.

about noonday, the third book in the second war trilogy.

:08:23.:08:34.

It has been another cold day and for some of us, some fine sunshine but

:08:35.:08:42.

for others, wintry showers. More to

:08:43.:08:44.

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS