26/01/2017 Meet the Author

Chris Cleave knows how to spin a story. His novels have been huge

bestsellers, gripping thrillers they were also psychological studies. His

new novel, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, takes us back to the early

years of the Second World War, London during the Blitz, when no one

quite knew who was going to win in the end. It is a story of one likely

Love, a picture of society pulled apart by the threat of destruction,

and on account of the human cost of war and human resilience. Welcome.

Chris, many people have written novels set in the Second World War.

It is a very familiar scene. What made you want to do it one more

time? I'm always writing about the time we are living in now. I became

really interested in the idea of unity and the idea of the country

coming together and putting aside differences to face down and

existential threat. And the last time that we did that really was the

Second World War. And so I thought of I could go back into that period

and research and with fresh eyes, trying to understand how it felt at

the time at the outbreak of war, when people were not sure whether it

was the right course of action to take, when the country was still at

the beginning disunited about whether we should appease Hitler of

other to fight, that difficult time at the beginning of the war is a

period that I think Israeli unexamined. Those of us who were

born after the war like you and me ten to forget how uncertain that

time was. Of course people felt strongly about the threat and felt

strongly about people who had been called up or have decided to go and

fight, but there was uncertainty in the air. Uncertainty, and a lot of

fear. We now look at the war movies and the war novels and they tend to

show these very stoical figures, brave... They always went! Yes, they

take these insane risks and it always pays off for them. But in

real life they were frightened, they were young. You tell the stories of

four people. It is through them you see the war, through an individual

you get a picture of London. Yes, I wanted to immerse the reader in

their experience of becoming part of that fighting machine. It is the

becoming that I found more interesting than the being. They

weren't brave to begin with. I think a muscle is the best model for

courage. It is something that develops to use. At the beginning

they were nervous and frightened and have very different agendas. Your

title, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, is a beautifully ambiguous and a

sort of annotating title, it makes you wonder, what is this book about?

But you reveal how bravery comes in all shapes and sizes. It means

different things to different people. To stand up in peacetime

against a policy of 1's own government might be construed as a

brave action, whereas in wartime that is Tardis, that is treachery,

betrayal. That transitional period is interesting, not just people's

ability to be brave changes, but the notion of what bravery is changes,

and changes for different individuals at different speeds. I

like that. One of the ways you get into that is across social

boundaries in a deliberate way. One woman we meet at the beginning comes

from a segment of society, not finishing school, and you meet

people at different walks of life. You have an acute sense of where

those boundaries where and how everyone knew where the line was

drawn. I like the fact that the boundaries have not changed either.

They are recognisable to us? Absolutely. Don't you think? You

could be leaving in 1939 and know exactly where the fault lines were

in society between the haves and the have-nots, where the racial divides

were in society. They are still with us. That society is very

recognisable. And as a writer, something I have often done is to

look, where are those fault lines in our society? How can I voice people

on both sides of those and try to show the enormity of the fractures

in our society. They don't heal. They have not healed. And yet it is

not a book that is driven, it seems to me, by anger or bitterness or

envy for one side of society to the other. It is generous in that sense.

You're quite inside yourself, I think. Almost sentimental. I like

people. I would not write about people unless I really like them. I

like survivors, people who have reinvented themselves, who have been

hurt. I think everyone has been hurt by the time they are grown up. I

like the fact that people don't just stay on the mat. They get up and

they do help each other, and they help each other across those

fragmentation lines of society. I write about people because I do

think there is an enormous amount to hope for still. In telling the story

of these people you are talking about enormous resilience. That

seems to be the characteristic that you find most inspiring about what

happened during the war. Yes, I think it was amazing the way people

dug in. Because we now know, we can watch a war movie I think back about

the Second World War, and we can think, yes, they only have to tough

it out until 1945, 1946 for some. They did not know that. They did not

know what they were embarking on, how long their suffering would

continue. And I like that about them. I liked the sense of humour

that started to develop. Really, it is a funny book. I wanted to show

the sense of humour that my grandparents had. I remember talking

to my grandfather about his first Irish jump, he was very scared. And

he said, "In the back of the plane the Sergeant Major would jeer us up,

and he said, never mind, lads, if you parachute and open, you can just

stick them back to the shop!" They joked their way through the war

because they were terrified. That's what I liked about their generation,

and that's what I still like about British people. The more frightened

we are, the funnier we get. And that for me is a very civilised response

to fear. I don't want it to the plot because it would spoil it for

people. It is a story that needs to keep its secrets to the end. But in

a way you are talking in the book about he motions that are released

because of the threat, the darkness, the uncertainty. Somehow emotions

are heightened. People behave differently in war. I like the fact

that people's choices had to be made in a split second, and they were

made often from the gut. I think that is what life does to you. It

tests you when you are least expecting it, and the answers you

come up with, that you reveal about your character, are not always

pleasant or expected, but are the inevitable result of all the little

habits you have built up during your life. What would you most like

people to take away from the story? Mostly I want them to be immersed in

their experience of what we call the golden generation and to come away

from it with a fresh appreciation of what they did and what we could

still do. Chris Cleave, thank you very