:00:00. > :00:00.violence and open the way to an open, lasting solution. We'll have
:00:00. > :00:00.more details at 8pm. Now it is time for Meet the Author with Nick
:00:00. > :00:09.Higham. Ernest Hemmingway was one of the
:00:10. > :00:16.giants of 20th century American literature. He wrote of A Farewell
:00:17. > :00:22.To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls and he was an enthusiastic husband.
:00:23. > :00:29.He married no fewer than four times. Each was the mistress who helped to
:00:30. > :00:33.break up the previous marriage. Mrs Hemmingway by Naomi Wood is a
:00:34. > :00:38.portrait of the four women involved and it tries to answer an obvious
:00:39. > :00:47.question - what exactly did they see in him?
:00:48. > :00:51.Naomi Wood, this is a book about Ernest Hemmingway, yet he himself is
:00:52. > :00:56.curiously a shadowy character. We hear his wives talking about him,
:00:57. > :01:01.describing him. We never know what he, himself, is thinking - why? I
:01:02. > :01:04.think enough ink has been spilled on that area. I think Ernest
:01:05. > :01:12.Hemmingway, as a character and as a person in history, has been so
:01:13. > :01:16.written about in so many biographies. In his own voice you
:01:17. > :01:20.can see it in the collected letter, which have just come out. I decided
:01:21. > :01:26.to give voice to the four women loved by him and who loved him for
:01:27. > :01:30.the 40 years he was married. It is about a voice to the four women
:01:31. > :01:37.rather than more voice to Ernest Hemmingway. What was it that they
:01:38. > :01:43.saw in him? He was often a monstrous man. Often in his youth he was
:01:44. > :01:47.chronically unfaithful. Yes, there was this carousel of wives and
:01:48. > :01:52.mistresses that whipped around each decade. It makes you think, why on
:01:53. > :01:59.earth did they A fall in love with him and B, stick around? It was a
:02:00. > :02:04.mixture of seduction and bewilderment - a sort of toxic
:02:05. > :02:09.combination in a way. The seduction came from charm. You can see that in
:02:10. > :02:15.the love letters - kind of amazing nicknames and pillow talk he uses in
:02:16. > :02:20.his letters. And he was incredibly hand some. He was an incredible,
:02:21. > :02:27.talented writer. He seemed to serve no apprenticeship in the modernise
:02:28. > :02:31.cannon. I think it was that side of him that made the women fall in
:02:32. > :02:41.love. As you say, there was this savage, brutal side that must have
:02:42. > :02:48.been completely unendurable and completely alienating. The last one,
:02:49. > :02:52.Ma rrk y, was -- Mary, was married to him when he committed suicide.
:02:53. > :02:59.There was a mistress, a menage a trois - they all knew one and other.
:03:00. > :03:02.The first wife, Hadley, actually invited the second wife on hole dai
:03:03. > :03:06.with them. There was a -- holiday with them. There was a menage a
:03:07. > :03:13.trois - each decade was met by another mistress who went on to
:03:14. > :03:16.become the wife. I calculated in a moment of quiet, one day at the
:03:17. > :03:22.British library, how many days Hemmingway had been single - not
:03:23. > :03:30.unwed, because he was unwed for seven months in those 40 years. He
:03:31. > :03:36.was actually single for 0 days. There was a great hunger to find
:03:37. > :03:41.partnership, to find companionship. You can read about that in a
:03:42. > :03:46.moveable feast. He talks about this strange loneliness after writing.
:03:47. > :03:52.Always Hadley is in the background fulfilling that role. Hadley was the
:03:53. > :03:58.first wife. Let's have a thumb nail sketch. Who was Hadley? The first
:03:59. > :04:06.wife. Married 1921-1926. She was the kind of lovely, but slight slightly
:04:07. > :04:12.Vapid, shall I say, first wife, who he fell in love with and completely
:04:13. > :04:18.canonised in a Moveable Feast. He was the one true love he thought he
:04:19. > :04:23.never got over. That is after he betrayed her with Pauline Pfeiffer -
:04:24. > :04:29.wife number two. She was the second wife, 1927, they were married until
:04:30. > :04:37.1940, when they divorced. She was a woman in A Moveable Feast. The rich
:04:38. > :04:42.come to infiltrate this couple. They stayed together for a very long time
:04:43. > :04:49.and she oversaw his most prolific period. He wrote many, many books
:04:50. > :04:54.while married to her. Her money was quite important, I think. He truly
:04:55. > :04:59.did, I think, love her, but there was an extent to which her family's
:05:00. > :05:03.wealth helped shore him up and help provide a kind of advance. Until he
:05:04. > :05:09.was successful. Then there was Martha Gellhorn. She was the one who
:05:10. > :05:17.was the most considerable figure. She was a successful novelist. A
:05:18. > :05:24.huge hero of mine since writing the book. Why did she ever marry him? A
:05:25. > :05:29.mistake. A journalist wrote it was a pairing of flint and steel. You can
:05:30. > :05:35.see that - these two personalities interlocked. Their horns are braced
:05:36. > :05:41.against each other. She wrote a huge amount of fiction, as well as her
:05:42. > :05:45.core correspondence from the Spanish Civil War. She went to the wars of
:05:46. > :05:52.central American. She was reporting on Brazilian street children up
:05:53. > :05:56.until her 80s. I think she regretted marrying Hemmingway. She said she
:05:57. > :06:06.did not want to be a footnote in the history of another. She was
:06:07. > :06:13.supplanted by another. She had the most raw deal. Yes, she was married
:06:14. > :06:18.to him for the longest time and she was a correspondent in her own
:06:19. > :06:23.right. Unlike Martha, she left her job and kind of relished the new
:06:24. > :06:28.opportunity to sort of make this beautiful house in Cuba. She was
:06:29. > :06:32.with him at his perhaps most difficult and darkest time. He had
:06:33. > :06:39.increasing problems with alcohol. They were involved in a plane crash
:06:40. > :06:43.in 1954, with left him with severe wounds and injuries. She had to
:06:44. > :06:47.nurse him out of that. So, it was perhaps the most difficult time.
:06:48. > :06:52.Critics have been divided about this book. You've had some very, very
:06:53. > :06:56.good reviews. A number of others have said there's something
:06:57. > :07:00.unsatisfactory about it. What they seem to be suggesting is that at the
:07:01. > :07:04.heart of it the character of Hemmingway himself never is fully
:07:05. > :07:11.developed. Do you accept that? Was it a challenge to bring him alive?
:07:12. > :07:15.He was always going to be a bit of an iceberg at the centre of the
:07:16. > :07:19.story to adapt one of Hemmingway's own met fors. And the point was, in
:07:20. > :07:26.a book called Mrs Hemmingway, not to write a story about Mr Hemmingway,
:07:27. > :07:32.it was about the -- Hemingway, it was about the four women. They found
:07:33. > :07:37.themselves the mortal around this God-like figure and he
:07:38. > :07:48.self-promulgated this idea. So, the point was not to spill more ink on
:07:49. > :07:53.the hemming way -- Hemingway point. The point was to explore four
:07:54. > :07:58.fascinating women who were bold and fearless and who found themselves
:07:59. > :08:05.someone fortunately and sometimes unfortunately married to Ernest
:08:06. > :08:19.Hemingway: A chilly evening for a lot of us.
:08:20. > :08:24.Last night was a very mild night, around eight to nine Celsius.
:08:25. > :08:27.Tonight temperatures will dip to freezing. Showers will continue into
:08:28. > :08:30.the evening and overnight into tomorrow as well. This was the
:08:31. > :08:33.weather front which brought the rainfall. You can see how the skies
:08:34. > :08:34.have