0:02

This is a global player original

0:04

podcast.

0:18

Hello, and welcome to full disclosure. A

0:20

podcast project which as you know by

0:22

now is designed chiefly to let me spend

0:24

more time with fascinating people than I would ever

0:26

get. on the radio. And this

0:29

week, not for the first time, I've got a guest

0:31

that I'm never going to cram into

0:33

a single hour, but Ian McEwen, we will do our

0:35

best. Thank you. Well, thanks for

0:37

inviting me.

0:40

Just before we started, you mentioned a previous

0:43

novel you'd written to Suite two, which you you

0:45

described as a as a muted and

0:47

distorted autobiography. The new book

0:49

which we will talk about later, lessons,

0:52

I think, fits into the

0:54

similar description perhaps? Much more

0:56

exactly because I I did

0:58

raid stretches of my own

1:01

life. unashamedly,

1:03

I've generally resisted that

1:06

-- Yes. -- impulse. And I've always admired it in

1:08

writers like Dickens or Saw Belo,

1:11

Update just lifted

1:15

whole portions of their life onto the page, but

1:17

then done it with, you know, such grace.

1:20

And this time I thought I'd just give myself

1:23

as much permission as I needed to

1:25

do exactly that. III read

1:28

the book before I started doing

1:30

the biographical research for this interview,

1:32

so I have it backwards. I'm like, oh my god.

1:34

I can't believe I want the biographical. That

1:36

book I just read on holiday watch. Yeah.

1:40

I remember once years ago I was

1:43

and

1:44

just publishing my

1:46

first book of two, and I made

1:48

friends with Philip Roth. Yeah. And he

1:53

said to me is can I give you proof of peace

1:55

of advice? He said you must always write as if your parents

1:58

are dead. and

2:01

always thought that was absolutely right.

2:08

But in fact, what he really

2:10

said was that he was almost right

2:13

assuming your parents were alive that they're dead.

2:15

you know, because you must radio pass

2:18

and never care a thing about whom

2:20

you offend. Which is brutal. Is

2:22

absolutely brutal. So I've

2:24

not followed his Both my parents

2:26

are dead. Which is

2:28

why they appear? Yes. Unvarnished.

2:31

Unvarnished. Unvarnished. My

2:33

mother with a burden of sadness my father

2:35

with a very complex character.

2:39

So that that was the kind of that

2:41

perhaps I've been waiting for. So half

2:43

consciously to take?

2:47

I get that. And because,

2:49

I mean, people confused by Ross' advice for

2:51

anybody is. I mean, a question of conscience,

2:53

really, isn't it? It's because you hurt you hurt people.

2:55

Yeah. You're right about them in

2:57

distinctly recognizable terms. Philip

3:00

had that chip of ice on

3:03

iceberg proportion. Yes. Yes.

3:05

And then the advisers that all writers have to

3:07

have. You've described yours as slushy. He minds

3:09

a bit slushy. Yeah. I

3:13

keep waiting. It was a hard love of it.

3:16

Well, let's go right back then. When when

3:18

does Young Guy and realize that his

3:20

father is a complicated character

3:22

that this is a

3:24

Well, when

3:26

did I in

3:29

a sense writing it made

3:31

me feel as if I knew it all the time

3:33

but didn't tell myself. I mean, I

3:35

sort of lived inside it. He

3:39

loved me ferociously. I was his only

3:41

child, so I

3:43

thought at the time. So

3:47

very loaded aside. And

3:54

I loved him and I feared him. Yeah. And

3:57

so I I lived inside those contradictory

4:00

emotions of

4:02

my childhood. he never really

4:04

laid a hand on me. I think there was one

4:06

occasion that I can remember and

4:08

and it was a sort of slap behind the knee.

4:11

fact that I can just remember that one suggests

4:14

me that I'm not suppressing anything there.

4:16

Mhmm. But he was fearsome and he

4:18

was a tough sergeant Major. I mean,

4:20

that's what he was when I was born through

4:22

the ranks. He'd come up. Come up through the

4:24

ranks. He was

4:26

the RSM, the regimental sergeant

4:28

Major, and makes everyone

4:30

think of winter David. Yeah. Exactly.

4:34

So I remember when I was eight or

4:36

nine years old, sometimes he

4:38

would order one of his men to come and babysit

4:41

me. And I remember

4:43

what sitting with

4:45

this tougher looking corporal

4:48

on the sofa. And he said

4:50

he said, you realize everyone

4:52

hates your dad? Cranking.

4:56

and I didn't have the mouse to say

4:58

why. I just

5:00

said -- Yes. --

5:03

horrifying. Bardi Men was they

5:06

sort of feared him. Of course, he was

5:08

a he was a tough stickler. And later on, he

5:10

became a sort of prosecuting officer in

5:12

all kinds of cases, so we

5:14

knew the army rule but

5:16

backwards. Were there ever any moments

5:18

of vulnerability?

5:24

Not that I saw until finally

5:27

then towards the end of his life, he became very ill.

5:30

Yeah. it was one

5:32

of those guys who smoked

5:34

all his life in the age of thirteen drank

5:38

heavily, but never missed a single

5:41

day's work, forty

5:43

years in the army, and ten years as a retired

5:45

officer. So when an illness came

5:47

then, he was a terrible patient.

5:50

Right. He would not buy

5:52

it into it at all. And I

5:54

remember when his emphysema was

5:56

really advancing helping

5:59

him half lifting him up the

6:01

stairs to his

6:03

bedroom. And then I

6:05

saw a man who

6:07

knew He was at the end of

6:09

things. He was

6:11

a non believer, so he was

6:13

not troubled by after life

6:15

or distributed justice

6:18

by some supernatural being,

6:20

but he just hated being ill.

6:22

I mean, it just so that there was a

6:24

vulnerability.

6:25

But he didn't complain about it. Right.

6:28

He was just awkward. It's

6:30

it's I mean, it's a curious period

6:33

as well, isn't it? because

6:37

that

6:37

attitude in a sense was intrinsic

6:39

to maintaining an empire. You needed men

6:41

who Yeah.

6:42

never

6:43

admitted any vulnerability and

6:45

who were capable of ruling with fear and whether

6:47

it was their own

6:48

soldiers. Yeah. Especially

6:51

that class of soldier who

6:53

lie between the ordinary

6:55

soldiers and the officer class who

6:57

are the interface of of

6:59

commandories. Yes. And it's often said now

7:01

in Ukraine that the Soviet Army lacks

7:04

those non commissioned offices. Tough

7:07

highly experienced guys

7:09

who get the men to do whatever

7:11

it is they don't wanna do. Yeah.

7:13

And translate the

7:15

orders into the Demotic almost. Yeah.

7:17

And and you were all over the world. I mean, the

7:20

the the job tastes.

7:21

And a working class Scotsman

7:23

is how David MacEwen has usually described Oh,

7:25

yes. Very much so. He came from

7:27

a Protestant hardworking

7:32

family. It

7:34

was very much a matriarchy. His

7:36

mother was ran the whole

7:38

show. She died

7:40

when he was eleven, so I think that must

7:42

have had an emotional impact. Maybe a kind of,

7:44

like, freezing over of the

7:46

emotions. He remembers

7:48

sitting at her bedside with all the other the

7:50

five other children and and

7:52

his father, everyone in tears. And she

7:54

was just giving orders. Now you, David,

7:56

will always be the one who

7:59

takes out the dustins

7:59

and round

8:01

the room. And then he said after

8:04

she died, the family was

8:06

sort of held together by his

8:08

older sister. He did all the

8:10

housework. but left school

8:13

in order to run the family

8:15

and cook cook the the brothers' meals.

8:17

Gosh. And then

8:20

gently fell apart. a whole lot

8:22

with with the major out gone. With

8:24

the major out gone. And

8:28

my dad, like, been most of his generation

8:30

in class left school at fourteen,

8:32

no money I mean, won won the scholarship to

8:34

the grammar school, but still there was no

8:36

money for uniform and books. Same

8:40

fate as my mother, actually.

8:42

So is there a sense growing up then of

8:44

that? because, I mean, you mentioned that he loved

8:46

you furiously. We'll get onto school that went

8:48

to shortly. There's a lot of aspiration

8:50

here, but with a lot of aspiration from

8:52

this class, there's usually quite a lot of parental

8:54

frustration. isn't there, and

8:56

determination to see

8:58

the

8:58

child. Absolutely, James.

9:00

shape for the stretchers. Well, I

9:03

think my father of all his life was

9:05

a restless man, frustrated

9:07

man because he had very high intelligence,

9:09

I think, and

9:11

never had the education that he need he

9:13

have reverence for learning? He wasn't one of

9:15

those regimental sergeant majors that would have

9:17

laughed at books or or more? No.

9:20

On the contrary, both my

9:22

parents wanted me to have the things they

9:24

didn't have, and that mainly meant

9:27

books and education. So

9:29

that sense, I was very lucky. Did

9:31

did juxtaposition them between this

9:34

parental model or or unit?

9:37

and the

9:37

exoticism of the geography

9:39

of your childhood. I mean, because

9:41

it you're describing a, you know, a strict

9:44

Scottish home. But it

9:46

was

9:46

a home in Libya

9:48

and in Germany and in in other

9:50

places as well. Yes. Germany

9:53

didn't really

9:54

qualify as exotic. My little large

9:56

army base support. But Single

9:59

board. Single.

9:59

Single. Certainly did. somewhat

10:02

modified by the fact that these are army quarters. So

10:04

they're they're they're transport little bubbles.

10:06

Same sofa appears in Tripoli

10:08

-- Yeah. -- sitting in Singapore. and the cutlery

10:10

and everything is the same. And

10:14

because it's the British Army, it's a rather self

10:16

enclosed world that is not necessarily

10:21

very, very curious about

10:24

the world in which they landed. So

10:27

my parents were twenty

10:29

years, twenty odd years in Germany, and they never

10:31

learned a word of it or a word of

10:33

the language. So

10:36

it was exotic. I have

10:38

to say in Tripoli, probably my

10:40

parents were more adventurous

10:43

than most. We would go to the souk to do

10:45

vegetable shopping for example.

10:47

You wouldn't see other army

10:50

folk in there And are

10:52

you conscious of this? Are you as a young boy?

10:54

You're you're aware of? I would it

10:56

thrilled me. I mean, I love those years

10:59

I spent. in

11:01

North Africa. I mean, the

11:05

Libyans at that point were

11:07

a very oppressed and people. And

11:10

Colonel Gudache, when

11:13

he staged his coup, was able to

11:15

take full advantage of a

11:17

massive Unspoken

11:20

resentment for the American

11:22

British military

11:24

presence, which was the leftover of the

11:26

of the second world war desert battles.

11:30

So it was a

11:32

curious background of exotic but not

11:34

quite Yeah. And

11:36

then there was a the extraordinary division.

11:39

I mentioned this a little in lessons

11:42

that that that shaps who

11:44

had come up from the ranks and

11:46

entered into a kind of a kind of a lower

11:49

middle class -- Yeah. -- had

11:51

very little to do socially with the

11:53

much younger man who'd come through Sanders

11:55

-- Right. -- and who were above them in rank.

11:58

Yeah. And had not necessarily

11:59

well, almost certainly would not have fought in

12:02

the war. in the So

12:04

so the fifth It's a bizarre setup.

12:06

Yeah. It's a But completely taken for

12:08

granted. How differentials should that

12:10

then to that sort of

12:12

accepted it. Excepted

12:14

it. But the thing is that

12:17

his experience growing up in

12:19

Glasgow has already already it

12:21

made a big impact. It it left him

12:23

politically always on the left. Right.

12:26

He used to speak of

12:28

going up and down the Clyde, looking for work

12:30

in the shipyards, getting

12:33

there at six in the morning, there'd be thirty

12:35

men looking for a couple of jobs

12:37

didn't know it did. The foreman would come out.

12:39

Yeah. And he would say, I I got

12:41

a job at seven shillings or where

12:43

was three shillings an hour. and

12:45

then someone said, I'll do it for less.

12:47

That's the bit I didn't know. But to my red

12:49

light shoes. So he had

12:52

this profound

12:52

respect for trade unions -- Yeah. --

12:54

which obviously got him into some tangles in

12:56

the office. Except it clicks. Except for

12:58

the art. During the seventeenth. No.

13:00

Magic got So

13:03

so

13:04

that plus his

13:07

deafness plus a

13:08

general irritation with

13:10

anyone who didn't share his views --

13:12

Right. -- did get him into some,

13:16

certainly, some some some some riles.

13:19

And yes.

13:22

Correct. He he he he was

13:24

not wanting to cringe

13:26

before authority.

13:27

nicely put. And a

13:30

certain the

13:32

the episode in the book of of

13:34

of which almost becomes a sort of clatonic

13:37

form of freedom when you had

13:39

the

13:40

the during the holiday on

13:42

a camp

13:44

Yes. Which which the protagonist then

13:46

carries with him throughout his life as a

13:48

sort of unattainable

13:51

about perfection

13:51

of of freedom.

13:54

Oh. Right. So this is North

13:56

Africa. Yeah. The year

13:58

is nineteen fifty six. colonel

14:02

NASA in Egypt sees the Suez

14:04

Canal. It's

14:06

reasonably expected that Libyans

14:08

would rise up in that

14:11

wave of nationalism that was sweeping through the

14:13

Middle East. And it

14:16

was felt that British

14:18

families were at risk of attack,

14:20

and we were all

14:23

shepherded into an

14:25

army camp, very small one in the on the ages

14:27

of the desert. My mother,

14:29

thank goodness, was away in England.

14:32

My father was in charge of

14:34

all kinds of things in the camp and

14:37

was too busy. And for the first

14:39

time in my life, I experienced a freedom that

14:41

was so exquisite. so

14:44

intense. An army

14:46

camp with machine gun

14:48

nests where the climb

14:50

up on a ladder toward them and the troops would welcome

14:52

us in. I don't know what happened to discipline there.

14:58

young captain

15:00

want to give me a ride on there. Harley

15:02

Davidson around the camp of

15:04

high speeds. tank

15:06

workshops where we could climb into the turrets.

15:09

so So

15:13

that ten days I mean,

15:15

I I sometimes shift this a little and exaggerated

15:17

a little of, but has a colossal

15:20

effect on the state of

15:22

mind of of my hero,

15:24

my central figure, Roland.

15:26

Yes. Always looking

15:29

for this life that's gonna open up

15:31

into total freedom and

15:33

therefore never quite able to commit

15:35

himself to a job in case that opportunity

15:37

comes along. The the the so this is where

15:39

the the we've

15:41

been the the ought to biographical detail.

15:44

informs the story, but that it's a

15:46

story about

15:48

unfulfilled talent in some ways

15:50

or certainly as you say that

15:52

a botanical a hero who

15:54

doesn't scale the height. So that's what it isn't autobiographical.

15:57

We got it. Yes. So clearly have.

15:59

Roland, confronts

16:03

from the age of eleven, a very

16:05

important experience with his piano

16:07

teacher who's begins a kind of

16:09

grooming of him. Yes. learned

16:12

later that she's sort of oddly foreign in love

16:14

with him.

16:16

than Then at

16:17

the age of fourteen, a

16:19

Cuban missile crisis begins. The

16:22

world is teetering on the edge of

16:25

a nuclear war. Roland

16:27

has been in the dormitory nights

16:30

and there's usual kind of early

16:32

teenage boy discussions full of

16:35

boasting and joking and ignorance,

16:39

but aware that there

16:41

is like a

16:42

mountain range lying before them of their first

16:44

sexual experience. They're all

16:46

fearful of it, long for it,

16:48

can't really be honest about it in the

16:50

way that boys often cannot

16:52

be. And someone says,

16:54

well, in fact, this woman says, you know,

16:56

so what if the world ends? Or what if you

16:58

die before you've had it?

17:01

So when the Cuban missile crisis comes

17:03

along, Roland thinks, like, God, it's the

17:05

world's going to end, and I will not have had it.

17:07

And he remembers the piano teacher.

17:10

So cycles to his house, and it's as if she's been waiting for

17:12

him in his previous three

17:14

years. And they

17:16

begin an affair. And

17:18

though it doesn't necessarily

17:22

ruin his life, it

17:25

diverts it in. in

17:27

profound ways. Mhmm. And he

17:29

can never find again

17:33

that extraordinary intensity He

17:36

can never find again that

17:38

openness and freedom that he got in the army

17:40

camp. And he lives on the edge. The

17:43

tennis coach seeing a bit of

17:45

journalism for a listings paper.

17:50

But never quite He thinks he might be a

17:52

poet. some poems get published, but he never really

17:54

has this kind of dedication. So

17:58

he lives a life that I could well imagine for

18:00

myself actually. It is

18:01

like some Elta ego,

18:03

some doppelganger Figuero.

18:05

So having given him

18:07

bits of my childhood, boarding

18:10

school, and so on, I

18:12

then entirely invented

18:14

his adult existence.

18:17

When when you as

18:19

as you've hinted at, you you found out

18:21

you had a brother quite late

18:24

in life. How how does that play

18:26

into the doppelganger? Well,

18:28

it does. I mean, because you think of Yeah.

18:30

I was adopted. So I I

18:32

often have I've only recently worked

18:34

this out. I have a conscious

18:37

ness of the life I might have led

18:39

if I hadn't been adopted by mom

18:41

and dad. Right. And it

18:43

wouldn't have been as good, you know, as single

18:45

mother pregnant at fifteen, but rural

18:47

island. It

18:47

would have been a very, very different life, but it

18:49

would still have been me. Yeah. Yeah. And that that's what you

18:51

mean when you talk about okay. Well, the

18:54

novel is a lot about the

18:57

role of chance in our life -- Yeah. -- of pure

18:59

contingency. Yeah. And

19:02

I often think well, actually, where biology is friends

19:04

said to me recently, you

19:06

know, if if your parents had just made love half

19:10

a

19:10

minute later, you wouldn't

19:12

be used be someone else.

19:15

Another sperm would have made its way through. A

19:17

different form of recombination would

19:19

have occurred and you'd been could have

19:21

been a completely different person than anyone

19:23

of anyone who's had more than

19:25

one child and know how

19:27

different they can be. I

19:29

was fully aware that, you know,

19:33

I

19:33

I forgot how many sperm there might be in

19:35

a young man's high moment, but let's say two hundred

19:38

million. That's several cities

19:40

worth, several countries

19:42

worth, the

19:44

chance

19:46

So from there onwards

19:48

as it were, our lives are

19:50

full of these boats when the the

19:52

train could have jumped tracks.

19:55

or it does. And you've got no

19:57

control experiment. You don't know what

19:59

this other

19:59

self could be doing. So in a

20:02

way, the writing of lessons

20:05

is my pursuit of

20:07

what do I have dropped

20:08

out of school at six sixteen

20:10

-- Yes. -- and my air levels, didn't go university,

20:14

didn't meet this or that person who inspired

20:16

me to do something else. What

20:18

would I have done? I

20:21

knew that I did not ever

20:22

want a job. Yes. The

20:25

the part that the the

20:27

the careers officer at university, this rather grim

20:29

sounding graph that you were handed? Yes. It

20:31

was the foreign office. I

20:34

certainly had this idea of myself, maybe it'll be

20:36

fun to be in the front office, an

20:38

arabist. I thought, you know, be I'd

20:41

be launched in Arabia, speak for

20:43

an arabic. as

20:45

well as French and German and Italian and Spanish.

20:48

And all that blew away

20:50

when I turned the pamphlet

20:52

over and saw down one side

20:54

a graph of myself, twenty

20:57

two to sixty, whatever it was.

20:59

And my

21:01

starting Saturday was four hundred and ninety

21:03

five pounds a year, rising to twenty two and a

21:05

half thousand when I was sixty five. I thought,

21:08

no, I can't have that life. I

21:10

mustn't have that life. So that

21:12

was, I think, the spirit

21:14

of enclosed in that

21:16

army camp speaking to

21:18

my soul not something

21:20

that your parents would have

21:21

necessarily appreciated. No. They

21:23

were worried, but they they never put any

21:25

pressure on me. My for example, you

21:27

know, my father I

21:30

think he would have been thrilled if I joined the

21:32

army, but he was also fully understanding

21:34

why why I wouldn't. Must have become clear quite

21:36

early on that that wasn't gonna happen. Yeah. He's

21:39

never gonna open. I

21:41

remember going off

21:43

with a couple of American friends, we

21:46

went off to Amsterdam

21:48

border of

21:50

Volkswagen micro

21:54

bus. drove it to to

21:56

Istanbul, to Tehran,

22:01

the bow

22:02

over the Kaiba Pass -- Wow.

22:04

-- to Peshawar, and then

22:06

drove back, I know, many months later.

22:08

And my parents were then in Germany.

22:11

but then we had a bus

22:14

painted by the boys who paint the sides of

22:16

lorries in Afghanistan. It

22:18

was a sort of dayglow us

22:20

with pictures of parrots. And

22:24

the

22:27

we turned up, but, you know, there's a little close of

22:30

ten army houses.

22:32

And my

22:35

parents My mom just emptied the deep freeze

22:37

of steaks -- Mhmm. --

22:39

steaks and chips, and it was fantastic

22:41

hospitality. But at one

22:43

point, my mom pull me

22:45

aside and said, that

22:47

would be awfully appreciative if if

22:49

you didn't

22:49

park the bus outside the house.

22:52

So their

22:54

first instinct was total hospitality, but

22:57

the second was to keep

22:59

up a certain symptom of appearance.

23:01

And then we had waste length hair

23:04

None of that was a problem for them.

23:06

Let let's back up a bit then

23:08

to to to to Walliston

23:11

Hall School in Suffolk, which you

23:13

you you referenced at the end of the book, and they've

23:15

been an awful lot of books written lately. I've I've

23:17

I've written one myself about the awfulness.

23:19

of boarding schools and the damage that it

23:22

did to our young minds and

23:24

in many cases our young bodies,

23:27

that's not what you -- No. -- took away from your

23:29

experience. Quite the opposite. In fact, you

23:31

write in the in the sort of acknowledgments

23:33

at the end or in the in the notes at the end of

23:35

lessons. You you write in really

23:38

affectionately. Deeply affectionate terms about your

23:40

boarding school experience, which is very rare these days.

23:42

It is rare. It was

23:44

not a private

23:45

school. it

23:46

was a state run grammar

23:50

school basically. Mhmm.

23:52

Boarding grammar school. It was

23:54

set up by the then ILE eighty in a

23:56

London Education Authority,

23:58

the LCC, one

24:00

of its impulses

24:02

was to give

24:05

kids from working class

24:08

single families, a

24:12

chance of a soft public school

24:14

education. Yeah. So there was the big played in

24:16

house, beautiful grounds sloping down to the

24:18

river all well. And it

24:20

had a fair smattering of

24:22

generals and kids from

24:24

Bohemian backgrounds, diplomats,

24:29

sons, three hundred

24:31

hundred and

24:32

twenty of us. Was it on to get in? How

24:34

did your parents find out about

24:36

it? My

24:38

dad came home one by and said, oh, sergeant Smith's boy has gone

24:40

to this school and he thinks it's rather nice, so

24:42

that's where you're going. So because there were

24:45

no secondary schools in Tripoli.

24:48

We went to look at it as I described in

24:50

the in the novel.

24:52

it

24:55

was run

24:57

by very

24:59

serious grammar school

25:02

teachers they wore the

25:04

gowns, not the hats. Much

25:06

warmer than good people. On the

25:08

whole, these were men shaped by the Second

25:10

World War. Sure. So they didn't expect any fuss in

25:12

class. Uh-huh. But they weren't

25:14

particularly frightening either. I mean,

25:16

they

25:16

were kindly on the home.

25:18

They were quite few

25:20

kids of there's

25:23

I think backgrounds, Chinese,

25:25

and a lot of Caribbean.

25:28

backgrounds. I

25:31

don't remember any racism there.

25:33

Incredible, really. The the

25:35

general tone was

25:38

Actually,

25:38

the accent's rather like yours, James. It's Or

25:41

as I say in the

25:41

book, a lot of jazz

25:43

musicians or sort

25:45

of can do kind of

25:48

types. I

25:49

remember once we we

25:51

didn't exchange with Stowe school

25:54

in the first year six

25:56

six of us were sent to Stowe, and six

25:58

stowe boys came to stay at

26:00

August and Be a television documentary now, wouldn't

26:03

it? It would be. Yeah. I

26:06

learned some important things. First

26:08

of all, we arrived and

26:09

we

26:11

were so

26:13

full of ourselves and showing off

26:15

in class. We'd read everything.

26:18

We we knew the candidate

26:20

of of our English literature. our

26:22

French was conversation was

26:24

good. Even our

26:27

Latin was not bad. And

26:30

the boys did Still boys didn't seem

26:33

to be at all interested in class.

26:35

Mhmm. What I realized was I never really

26:37

noticed this amongst my friends, but

26:39

they were so courteous. I mean, my dear

26:41

boy, please do have my sandwich,

26:43

please. This is the best bed.

26:45

And I love this. valuable.

26:48

We were a while sort of jostling and

26:50

competitive among ourselves. The idea that you

26:52

might give the

26:54

best slightly alien even at the age

26:56

of sixteen. And there was

26:58

so kindly these boys who came

27:00

from extremely privileged backgrounds that they

27:02

had learned from blessing their parents.

27:05

the art of having thirty people

27:07

to come and shoot the house and

27:09

eat dinner in their houses and

27:11

make everything okay for them or, you know, show them

27:13

the best spots for spot of

27:15

trout, salmon fishing. But

27:18

on the way

27:19

back, we had to meet the boys

27:21

returning from all that we and there was a sort

27:23

of car swap Yeah. A prisoner swap as

27:25

a and a

27:28

stereo voice of water school. I

27:30

mean, really

27:31

need weird

27:32

long band by a kind

27:34

of revolt, internal revolt, or any

27:36

corporal punished. Right. Early. Very early. And we

27:38

had to watch prefix caining -- Yeah. --

27:40

smaller boys, and we said calculating accelerators.

27:43

The spirit of the sixties was coming.

27:45

It was sixty four, sixty

27:47

five.

27:47

And they said, god, the food at your

27:49

place. It's just amazing. It's edible. We

27:52

didn't understand anything in class, but we

27:54

think of a holiday This

27:56

is so the even at this

27:58

age then, I'm thinking you're you're attuned

28:01

because that's a remarkable story.

28:03

on on on two levels. Number one, that you had a

28:05

boarding school experience that was largely positive.

28:08

Yeah. More than positive, in fact. I mean,

28:10

truly transformative and

28:12

intellectually. Yeah. And second,

28:14

the exchange which you'd predict

28:16

would have would have gone the other way and that it

28:18

would have given you a chip on your shoulder and

28:21

people from Stowe would have looked down upon

28:24

upon the school that you I mean, it's it it

28:26

so again, it's part of that notion of

28:28

chance. I mean, this school was in

28:30

an incredible piece of good luck, really. It was

28:32

a piece of luck. Really good piece of

28:35

luck. Which means you have to inject the bad luck

28:37

into the experience of Roland in

28:39

order to launched

28:40

the trajectory of of the whole novel,

28:42

really. Roland is so

28:45

busy for the age

28:46

of fourteen -- Yeah. -- in his affair with

28:48

the piano teacher. but also

28:51

becoming a quite remarkable

28:53

candidate at that same time.

28:56

And

28:56

while he hears boys

28:59

boasting in the dormitory at night about, you know,

29:01

what they're gonna do when they get their hands

29:03

on, etcetera. he's

29:05

there. He's over the horizon. He's in another world.

29:09

But, you know, he's read

29:10

nothing. Done nothing. There it is. Doesn't

29:12

pass a singular level.

29:18

And eventually, you know, it's the

29:20

only rubber thing. It's outside and

29:22

misses out

29:23

on a tertiary education. Did

29:25

did you demonstrate academic prowess quite

29:27

early or did you No. Late, I was

29:30

I was one of those kids who turn on at

29:33

sixteen, nineteen o six. Just woke up to it.

29:35

But does it that that flick the switch? Or

29:38

Landscape. Was it really then

29:40

poetry? Yes. I I

29:42

was reading a lot at

29:44

school anyway, but I was I

29:46

was shy, so I didn't speak in class

29:48

much. So I was I

29:50

was left alone really. then

29:54

Yeah. I performed averagely in

29:56

class. But then one day,

29:58

a a teacher, the English teacher, while I

29:59

was puzzling over whether I

30:02

should do, physics, chemistry,

30:04

biology, and maths, and grade

30:06

level, or English French, the usual the

30:08

usual problem. It's such a small school

30:10

unit. You had to do either one or

30:12

the other. the English

30:15

teacher told me that I was clever and

30:17

that it does have a

30:20

remarkable effect.

30:20

I mean, I think

30:22

has an effect even if you're stupid.

30:26

But I think I have even more effective question.

30:28

You become even more stupid.

30:33

So the

30:33

idea that

30:35

I I

30:36

might be clever. Yes. I mean, I

30:38

had seen my IQ result, but it meant nothing

30:41

to me.

30:41

when Roland goes and peeps into

30:44

folder and sees this number one hundred and

30:46

thirty seven, it says, It

30:50

it it doesn't register

30:52

at all and noted

30:54

it with me. tool for

30:57

for years and years.

30:59

But I

31:01

then got I made that choice,

31:04

a difficult choice. to to the

31:07

humanity's English then

31:09

became to me that came to me like a sort of

31:11

priesthood, you know, that

31:14

And the kind

31:17

of arrogance went with

31:19

it. I began to feel that anyone who had not

31:21

read the wasteland or the country

31:23

tells all all of Paradise

31:25

loss was really not someone worth talking to

31:27

Josh. So I

31:29

was something insufferable about

31:31

all that. But I

31:34

did arrive at university with a

31:36

pretty good

31:37

grasp of the

31:39

of the canon at least from Wyatt and

31:41

Surrey through to was a warden and

31:44

larkin. You

31:46

mentioned being shy, you know,

31:48

but you I think we're very secure.

31:51

Well, I

31:55

I felt I was loved as a child

31:57

-- Yeah. -- despite all fear that I

31:59

spoke about

31:59

earlier. True.

32:04

But, yeah, I

32:04

think I I did have that. So that

32:07

that speaks for

32:08

a lot. Yes. Of course, it does. Of course,

32:10

it does. And that wasn't diluted by

32:12

I mean, you usually say being sent away, but

32:14

it doesn't feel like, the

32:16

right phrase in your life. Well, you have to go away because there weren't

32:19

any schools in. Yeah.

32:21

the I

32:23

think the first couple of years, I was in shock.

32:26

Sure. There's a there's a scene in the book of your

32:28

mother's shoulders. heaving

32:30

as she walks away. I mean,

32:33

it's not. It's it's it's a painless

32:35

parting, isn't it? I think I

32:37

didn't sob I mean,

32:38

it's quite a few

32:39

of the boys who cry at night or when you

32:41

all arrived, would be thirty, eleven year olds

32:43

-- Mhmm. -- supervised by one rather

32:46

strict mate.

32:48

ah

32:52

But I just

32:52

went quiet. I think that was

32:55

my response. and head down. And

32:57

then slowly came

32:59

away. And landscape, it was so beautiful

33:01

around there. Yes. That was the beginning, I think,

33:03

of my hiking life, love and lens you

33:05

you evoke that, know, in the book a

33:07

lot, including discovering your own woods or something.

33:09

I mean, I haven't Yeah. Yeah. They're still there. I

33:11

looked on the map and then I looked on

33:15

Google earth. Yeah. They still are. Google Earth.

33:17

If I'd met you

33:19

then in your first year at Suffolk,

33:22

sorry, the University of Sussex. And I said, what are you

33:24

going to do when you graduate? What would you have

33:26

said? First year, I was said, oh, probably

33:30

try and get

33:30

a job teaching literature in the university.

33:34

If you ask me in the second year --

33:36

Yeah. -- I said, no idea.

33:38

Right. by the third year,

33:40

I was already writing

33:44

little things. Where did that

33:46

come from? Where because it's a there's a confidence

33:48

isn't there? the the paths not

33:50

taken, which is the theme

33:53

of our conversation and the the theme of

33:55

lessons. Where where does the sport

33:58

come from that, let's see, and Mick here and

33:59

think, do you know what? because even

34:02

that act of writing involves

34:05

a degree of arrogance, if

34:07

that's not an unfair word

34:08

to to think that what you have to say

34:10

is worth putting down on paper.

34:12

It's like being a child just

34:15

old enough to begin to get curious

34:18

about adult conversation. You can

34:20

imagine that literature is sort of

34:22

conversation that's going on through the

34:24

centuries. Yeah. and then it occurs to you that

34:25

you could pipe up. Oh, gosh. You could

34:28

just join in. Yeah.

34:30

And all it costs is

34:33

a writing block and a pencil. You know, it's

34:35

not like trying to getting a gather

34:37

a movie. Right.

34:40

And that thrilled me that

34:42

idea. Yeah.

34:44

So had you said now

34:46

what do you wanna do?

34:47

I think You might have had

34:49

to have me on the rack to say it, but I

34:52

would have said,

34:54

I'd

34:54

like to ride. And

34:57

and by

34:59

the time I got to the end of

35:02

my third year

35:04

at Sussex, I was falling in

35:06

love with the work of Kafka. Right.

35:09

I

35:09

I'd written long essays

35:11

on Freud. I'm really

35:14

intrigued by the notion

35:17

of an unconscious. much

35:18

of which has fallen away from me now. III

35:22

got very caught up in the eighties

35:26

with the the big movement against the lack of any scientific

35:28

evidence behind Freud's theories and so

35:30

on. But at that

35:32

time, I saw it as a almost like a

35:34

kind of pros

35:36

poetry of of -- Yeah. -- about the

35:38

unconscious. Like

35:39

the any

35:41

beginning writer, I've had the will

35:43

to write the not

35:46

necessarily the subject matter or even the

35:48

material, you know, or the experience or

35:52

any access

35:52

to my own experience. Right.

35:56

but it was there.

36:02

Let

36:02

let me You have two two more

36:04

astonishingly. instances

36:05

of what I would

36:07

call good fortune. The first

36:09

is to sort of being in the ground

36:11

floor of the University of

36:14

East creative writing course, which wouldn't I mean, if I've

36:16

understood correctly, if if you hadn't put your hand

36:18

up, the fiction element

36:20

of it may not even have happened.

36:22

Yes. I think you've offered to be the first. Cheers.

36:24

I do secure the funding for the entire course simply

36:27

by signing up for it. I

36:29

mean, it's just like this

36:32

fortune that fell into my lap. Yeah. Extraordinary. I I I'd

36:35

been hitshiking with my girlfriend and so

36:37

we've done finals. we

36:40

hadn't shown up for the

36:42

graduation we just took off

36:44

and

36:45

spent the summer in Northern

36:47

Italy back my parents house, which they were on

36:49

a an army base near

36:52

Andover. And

36:54

I had with me about

36:58

forty university prospectuses.

37:00

And the assurances from the

37:02

Department of Education that that I could

37:06

have one or two years funding for those those creditors. Yes.

37:08

But I didn't but I didn't

37:10

since I didn't want

37:11

a job -- Right. doing

37:14

some kind of secondary second degree

37:16

was obviously the thing to do. And

37:18

I was summing through these things, sitting

37:20

at the edge of my bed

37:22

the not noting

37:23

that it's the same

37:26

candleweight cover that was in Germany and

37:28

Singapore, certainly.

37:32

and then

37:33

happened to see that there was a MA in

37:35

comparative literature, which interested

37:38

me. But

37:40

it said, that you could

37:42

offer one

37:43

twelfth

37:44

of if

37:47

you write some fiction. So I remember going

37:49

down to the hall, which

37:52

is

37:52

where the only phone was was

37:55

about the Yep. Except as

37:58

a polished

37:59

statement, my mother,

38:02

polished

38:02

everyday. And phoned the

38:05

University of Alexandria. And I said, can I speak

38:07

to Malcolm Bradley? And then

38:10

immediately, his voice

38:12

said, hello. And I said,

38:14

oh, I'd I'd like to come and

38:16

do this course,

38:19

comparative literature. And he said, oh,

38:21

we've closed it down because because there's been no one applied.

38:24

And I said, well, I'm

38:26

applying now. And

38:28

he said, well, well, come and see he said, have you written some fiction? And

38:31

I said, yeah. He

38:34

said, well, come and see me in ten

38:36

days time. So

38:38

I wrote two stories in those ten days. I

38:42

borrowed my father's car,

38:44

drove from Andover to Norwich

38:47

without mishap, amazingly. Saw

38:49

him straightaway. It makes one thing,

38:51

you know, this is

38:54

nineteen seventy. the planet

38:56

was emptier with people. Yeah.

38:58

Yeah. There was always some way to

39:00

park. If you wanted to speak to Malcolm

39:02

Bradley, who he was on

39:04

the end of the phone. Yep. The world was just sort of wasn't so crammed or

39:07

interconnected. Mhmm. And

39:10

that's

39:11

the net how it

39:13

started, and there was there was no course. I

39:16

diligently diligently

39:20

Rook MySA is on comparisons

39:24

between middle March and the

39:26

Korean firm. and

39:28

wrote short stories all that year,

39:30

wrote about thirty. Malcolm

39:32

Bradley was a media don Always

39:35

on television radio is very rarely

39:38

in his office. Yes. I'd meet me in the

39:40

corridor. He'd say, read

39:42

the last one. Great one can I have the

39:44

next. gave me very little Good

39:46

belief in the advice. The

39:47

approval of someone like

39:50

him. Absolutely. I

39:52

didn't really

39:52

want the stories dissected

39:54

in the seminar when someone

39:56

would say, well, I had a problem with

39:59

your

39:59

main character.

40:04

And he gave me reading

40:06

lists. Right. And so that

40:08

was another a

40:08

turning point was a

40:10

full immersion in upside, bellow, and

40:13

ROTH, that triptic was and

40:16

Norman Mather. Right.

40:18

That was

40:19

quite an eye

40:20

opener for me, the whole other kind

40:24

of fiction that seems so much more ambitious than -- Yeah.

40:27

-- scalability. Yeah. later

40:32

on the course of what I've got going as

40:34

a course. I think Ishiguru

40:37

went to it.

40:39

And the university sort of

40:41

PR department then said I was a product in the

40:43

course, but I never was. I've been saying it

40:45

all my life,

40:48

but they were just Sorry. No. It's the legend is better

40:50

than the real Nothing I can do about it. But it

40:52

was still it was in a

40:54

sense. It was, of course, in the

40:57

I then show it to the hands of Angus Wilson in the summer.

41:00

Yes. Of course. And he was very

41:02

encouraging. He's

41:06

gave me the address of his publisher,

41:10

Biden felt Nicholson. I

41:14

offered

41:14

them collection of stories. They turned it

41:16

down. Oh, did they? So I went

41:18

to Cape And they took

41:22

it. Yep. Tom Mashner. That's first love loss. Right?

41:24

Yeah. And and about this

41:26

type,

41:26

were you still at Norwich then?

41:28

is them and or had you No. I moved to London in

41:31

the end of seventies. Then you're getting this on this.

41:33

So how does this work? because this is the

41:35

bit where my sort of in

41:37

my twenties, this would have been a bit

41:39

where I'd just be green with envy

41:41

is that you fell

41:44

into this cool

41:45

set, didn't you? So sort of Bill Randy in

41:48

Hamilton's New Review Meeting in the pillars of

41:50

Hercules and all of

41:52

the sort of all of the great

41:54

your era in British literature. We're

41:56

all sort of getting pissed together as far as I

41:58

can tell, Amos and Well, not

41:59

only getting

42:02

pissed. although stoned. Yes. Sure. That's very awesome. No.

42:04

No. That's it. Not

42:06

any getting, please. Also, right,

42:10

Yes. Of course. Yeah. And also they didn't everyone

42:12

was just writing their

42:13

first books. Yeah. We didn't think we were any I

42:16

mean, we had a lot of fun, but

42:18

we didn't think of

42:20

ourselves

42:20

as, you know, anything

42:22

other

42:22

than that people we've happened

42:24

to meet. Okay. So there were these there were

42:26

these two local, there was the new statesman where

42:30

Martin was

42:32

assistant to Claire Tomlin and

42:34

then later took her job and

42:36

Julian Barnes became Martin's assistant. And

42:39

then over the other side of town in SoHo in

42:41

Greek Street, the pillar

42:44

of Hercules, Iain Hamilton was

42:47

running his Magazine, the New Review, and that's where I

42:49

met in James Fenton, Craig Raine,

42:51

Seamus Heeney and

42:54

so on. And

42:56

he just seemed well hitchens was on the scene as well. Oh, Hitchens

42:58

was at the new state's business. He was lobby

43:01

correspondent. Yeah. And then

43:04

he was foreign correspondent. So

43:06

you

43:06

won't shy anymore in

43:08

then and because you'd have

43:12

to been that

43:13

sort of They thought I was. By their

43:15

standards, sure. I think I was the

43:18

quieter end of

43:20

the scale. Yeah. I that that came less the Yeah.

43:22

I remember Martin. I got

43:24

to know. Martin very early

43:26

on, somebody's

43:27

recently said before, and

43:30

he

43:30

after we spent one or two evenings together, he

43:32

said, you got to meet my friend, my

43:36

professor's and they were

43:38

very close to the

43:40

by

43:41

this stage. Yeah.

43:43

the And

43:44

I remember the three of us went to a restaurant,

43:46

and they pulled out all the stops on all their

43:50

routines. Right. I

43:52

just never laughed. I mean, it was

43:54

it was beautiful. They

43:57

did. Scaborously

43:59

funny stuff. Lots of

44:01

sort of jokes that had been

44:03

boiled down to almost like numbers

44:05

in that famous too. how

44:08

you tell it. But

44:11

a lot

44:12

of that time, I

44:14

I was in London in

44:16

a in a sort of AAAA

44:19

inatic,

44:22

quite driven, but

44:24

also quite

44:26

lonely in a odd

44:28

way. How

44:30

how would ambition

44:32

feature then in?

44:34

I would have I would have

44:35

disowned ambition, but I

44:37

think looking back It could only have added up

44:39

to pure ambition. That's what it

44:42

was. It's what I worried about all day

44:44

was writing.

44:46

Yeah. writing and reading.

44:49

Years later, Hitch

44:51

said, we were talking

44:53

about happiness. He

44:56

said, happiness for him was

44:58

writing all day alone in

45:00

the expectation of spending the

45:02

evening and interesting company. And

45:06

I thought, Actually, it's not bad. That's

45:08

pretty good. Yeah.

45:10

And he never achieved it.

45:12

you know the team Yes.

45:14

Yes. It was the knowing click there. I mean, not just about I

45:17

mean, because they had jobs on

45:19

the statesman and They

45:20

had jobs. I didn't You just didn't. So

45:24

you were not excluded, but you didn't

45:26

feel as invested in

45:28

it or or you didn't

45:29

feel on the on the way.

45:32

because, again, Roland constantly is neat. That perhaps is a little bit

45:34

where there might be a crossover between you and

45:37

Roland. Just that little brief

45:39

period before you got

45:42

published very quickly, didn't you say

45:44

so? I

45:45

think I felt

45:47

at that time So,

45:48

yeah, it was pretty constant. I felt if

45:51

someone from the TLS or the newspaper

45:53

or wherever had said, would

45:56

you like to, you know, come and work for someone, you

45:58

know, sub copy

46:00

failure? I would say no. Really?

46:03

I was absolutely determined not to have a

46:06

job. And then I'm curious another

46:08

stroke

46:09

of luck. was

46:11

I got to know Jonathan Raven who'd

46:13

been at UAE, and he'd talked

46:16

there briefly.

46:18

Jonathan had

46:19

the made

46:20

a life in London as a freelance

46:22

journalist writer and he wrote that wonderful book

46:24

called Soft City, I don't know if you

46:26

know it. Anyway, he said,

46:30

a friend

46:30

of his has now become editor of

46:33

the radio times. Now, Anyone

46:35

listening

46:35

to this today, we think, why would

46:37

a novelist write for the radio times?

46:39

In those days, it had a

46:42

monopoly. You were

46:44

not allowed any

46:44

newspaper was not allowed to tell you what was

46:47

on the TV one or two

46:49

days ahead or certainly not

46:51

a week ahead. So the radio times had

46:53

an extraordinary hold on its market. If you

46:56

want to know if it was Monday and you want

46:58

to know what was on television

47:00

on Thursday, you had to buy the radio

47:02

times otherwise. That was

47:04

it. So it sold seven

47:06

million copies

47:08

a week. Wow. And

47:10

that's when they had pots of money.

47:12

Jeffrey Cannon became the editor and

47:14

he decided he would only employ poets

47:16

and novelists to write for

47:19

him. So

47:19

I would do

47:21

you know,

47:22

BBC would do a costume drama of

47:26

Dickens. Mhmm. They call for me

47:28

and I would write

47:29

some things you might not know about Charles

47:32

Deakin. Charles? Or they were

47:34

filming Treasure Island in Corsica. So I go off to

47:36

Corsica go to the film set. You

47:38

know, this is the life. Isn't it? Then they asked me

47:40

go and hang out with

47:44

snooker player in Lester,

47:46

willy willy form. Mhmm. So I

47:48

went to live. His mom looked after me,

47:51

spent three nights there.

47:53

and a snooker player appeared in

47:55

my first novel,

47:58

the cement garden.

47:59

So that kept

48:02

me going rents

48:03

were low. The

48:06

lucky thing about being arrived in the

48:08

early seventies in

48:11

London was your rent was maybe

48:12

six, eight, ten pounds a

48:14

month. Yeah. So if you got hundred

48:16

and twenty pounds running for the radio times,

48:19

you will offer. You could just spend the rest

48:22

time. So much

48:23

easier than So

48:25

when when when's the pivot there because

48:27

there's gonna be two, isn't there? There's going to

48:30

be the point at which

48:32

possibly you

48:32

only realize in retrospect that

48:35

your you're over

48:36

the line. Yeah. But but but but but but

48:38

which didn't come with the first

48:40

but being published. The the sensor, I'm

48:42

gonna pull this off. I am gonna actually

48:44

never have a proper job. And then the second pivot would be when

48:47

you realize that you've joined

48:49

the very big

48:51

league. So where's the first one? because

48:53

you mentioned the cement garden, which I think came out in

48:55

seventy eight Comfort, strangers came out three years later.

48:57

They both got filmed.

49:00

So From the outside looking in, that already looks like epic

49:02

success. But I sense it didn't feel

49:04

like Well, the films came quite

49:06

a bit. didn't they?

49:08

time. But I just thought you might have

49:10

got the deals in place. But Well, in

49:12

the seventies, I lived on

49:14

very little. Understood. but

49:18

enough to live a good life. I mean, I

49:20

think I probably own about five

49:22

hundred or six hundred pounds a year.

49:26

after the rent. And

49:27

and that's slowly

49:28

I think got

49:30

easier. I never felt short of

49:34

money. Mhmm. and no one

49:35

none of us

49:38

was living in a

49:38

house that bought or anything. Did you you

49:40

never heard I think I've read Martin

49:43

Ames talking about was either him and

49:45

Julian Barnes or him and Christopher Hetchens, and he had what he called tramp

49:48

angst. He had

49:50

fear of

49:52

waking up on apartment to London, having nothing, and his friend didn't.

49:54

You never had it. Did

49:58

you? No. Why

49:59

not?

50:00

I I had

50:03

a

50:03

sort of great survival instinct. I thought if

50:05

I was a tramp I might as long as I had some

50:07

good hiking boots, so I'd be

50:09

fine in a good backpack. I had

50:12

a certain kind of

50:14

resilient spot that I'd I

50:17

was prepared to live rough and really on doing it.

50:20

Yeah. And I never

50:23

had to.

50:24

A big change I

50:26

didn't know where these changes come. I

50:33

hi I

50:35

mean, I

50:36

I know I've said this before, but I

50:38

I got a reputation, you

50:40

know, the Ian McCarber stuff, these dark

50:43

would be the catheter infection on me as well. Yeah. It was

50:45

a What I thought was dark

50:48

humor, other people thought it was

50:50

dark. Just dark. Dark.

50:52

Right. Yes. And so I'm

50:54

not frustrated. Not so much what other people thought,

50:56

but the there was

50:58

a lack of ambition in

51:02

these all too short

51:04

novels or short

51:06

stories. Closophobe,

51:10

They didn't have many of the things that I was actually

51:12

thinking about myself. Okay. And for

51:15

a while, I stopped writing fiction.

51:17

I wrote an auditorium anti

51:19

nuclear authority with Michael Barkley.

51:23

Richard Air, the director

51:25

came down from Nottingham clubhouse,

51:27

which should be running and took

51:29

over a play for today. So I wrote him a play

51:31

called the imitation

51:34

game. Yes. And

51:37

then I started work with

51:40

Bertolucci on a long project that

51:42

never got made, but still the world was

51:44

of opening out for me and came back

51:46

to writing, I wrote what I thought

51:48

was my first prop novel, which was

51:50

a child in time -- Right. -- publishing eighty

51:52

seven. And which one the Whitbread, I think?

51:56

Yeah. And that

51:56

was the turning point. That's when

51:58

I think

51:59

I was set on the road

52:01

properly. I'd done

52:03

a twelve, thirteen year apprenticeship as it

52:06

were. I was now prepared to

52:07

let the world flood in -- Right. --

52:10

and abandoned these

52:12

claustrophobic tales. and

52:14

all the subjects that

52:15

have interested me since

52:18

science, history,

52:20

how it is to being

52:22

here now became my sort of dominant ideas

52:25

or ambitions or

52:30

shaped whatever,

52:30

every time I sat down to start a

52:32

new novel, it was always those kinds

52:35

of things pressing

52:38

on me. there's a marvelous bit

52:40

in Saobello

52:41

novel, Headstock, where Moses Headstock goes to

52:43

have dinner with his lover.

52:46

and he goes into the bathroom to wash his

52:48

hands before Darren. He looks into the

52:51

mirror and it's one

52:53

of those beautiful Bellevian

52:56

deviations, a little kind of

52:58

wandering off. Moses says,

53:00

well, what's the state

53:02

of things? What is it? and

53:04

it and it's a beautiful speculation. He just says, well,

53:07

what is the question? The

53:09

question is, what is it? to

53:11

be a person in a city, in the

53:13

conditions of modernity. And it goes on

53:16

in this in

53:18

a time of of of

53:20

machines in a time of the will

53:22

of masses of people.

53:24

The winds, like, winds of

53:27

time eroding the cliffs. I mean,

53:29

I'm paraphrasing wildly cool.

53:32

And it seemed to be like a manifesto.

53:35

I think I was reviewing a

53:38

a later better book

53:40

for the observer in the

53:42

mid seventies, actually. About

53:43

nine seventy six. And I turned

53:45

back to find this passage. Sure.

53:47

And I quoted at the beginning of

53:49

Saturday, is it the epigram

53:51

for melody. I thought it's a sort of

53:54

manifesto. For the novel. For the

53:56

first. Well, yeah, the novel I

53:58

wanna read. Yes. It's for one of

53:59

the lists. Yeah. I Or this novelist. I've

54:02

gone off from various little trips

54:04

down, you

54:06

know, between

54:06

pursuing a novel

54:08

persona rated biophetus

54:10

or whatever. Yes, of course.

54:12

But I

54:13

the one

54:15

I want to read is

54:17

the one that gives some sense of

54:19

the condition of now and

54:21

what it's like. at

54:23

the personal level, what is the political level to sort of

54:26

be here now?

54:28

You

54:28

know that there was

54:31

this race on to write

54:34

the software

54:36

to help people make choices on

54:38

the basis of things that they've already watched

54:42

or read. If I

54:42

go under Amazon, look in the books -- Yeah. -- I don't buy a book,

54:45

buy someone. It says, if you like that, you'll

54:47

like.

54:47

And then usually my own

54:49

name comes up.

54:52

and it

54:53

suggested me that the software has got to some

54:55

heart of -- Yeah. -- of

54:57

my ambition, which is I

55:01

want to read the kind of books I write. Wow. And

55:03

but it's odd that that that happens. And and and

55:05

and lessons, I mean,

55:07

is absolutely in

55:10

It's probably my biggest encounter. Yes. And it's the biggest now.

55:13

Yeah. Babs of audiobooks as well. It's

55:15

it's the biggest sky the

55:17

biggest scope. It is. Historically.

55:20

It's longer than the internment by

55:22

about forty, fifty thousand workers.

55:24

I had time and space

55:27

like a lot of writer's

55:30

lockdowns. Logown features in in

55:31

the book as well. Yeah. Is is it just, you

55:33

know, one of the earlier -- Moorest

55:35

word ends. Yes. It ends in

55:37

July last year. Yeah.

55:40

But to look in

55:42

your desk diary

55:44

and see blank page after blank page knowing

55:46

that the kinds of promises that all

55:47

writers make to do things in all this time. Yeah. They

55:49

all come up sooner later. You must

55:51

have found yourself. often

55:53

a missing convenient moment of what I You are a hand up. My

55:55

daughter was just saying she's not putting your hand up, so

55:58

Well, not getting your job. It's

56:00

like not putting your hand up. Yes. Of course.

56:03

So to I'd

56:06

already started planning this

56:08

before pandemic.

56:10

Right. But when they

56:13

came, tragedy as it was

56:15

in so many directions at

56:18

the level for writers, I think, who always lived in lockdown

56:20

and to some extent, it was

56:22

a fantastic opportunity

56:24

to really sit

56:26

inside the

56:26

material and just work on it

56:29

day after day, twelve hours a

56:31

day, sometimes fifteen, seven

56:33

days a week. Nothing

56:34

else month on end where was the dream state.

56:37

Gosh. No luggage carousels. Right.

56:40

No security checks

56:42

at airports. but

56:44

also no no jet lag. But no

56:46

dinners in the evening with Yes. Yes.

56:48

Fascinating. By me. Oh, but yeah. Fascinating. bit

56:50

was missing. Well, I have a fascinating why. Of

56:52

course. I didn't mean to suggest

56:55

other way. Right.

56:58

Well, no. But

56:58

also, we bubbled up with my

57:00

younger son and Roy, his pregnant wise So

57:03

there's a again, you know, a lagoon is the word that's bringing to mind you cocoons

57:05

yourself in the book. But we also live in

57:07

the countryside, so there were footpaths to

57:09

wander away. So But

57:12

it was unique in terms of the creative process

57:14

because of this absolute focus and absence

57:16

of distraction. Absolutely. It

57:18

was a really extraordinary moment. because

57:22

I think we

57:25

have similar views on on the

57:27

state of British politics. The the

57:29

the your post Brexit analysis was

57:32

poetry. I mean, and my

57:34

goodness, me, have you been proved right on

57:36

pretty much everything? This

57:38

was even just a couple of days before Theresa May became prime minister --

57:40

Yeah. -- plotted out pretty much everything that's

57:42

unfolded since. I'm I'm

57:44

I'm always trying to

57:46

work out the other

57:48

bookend to to the current

57:50

madness. And a lot of people reach

57:52

for the Olympic

57:54

opening ceremony. twenty years, which was it, which was it's a bit, perhaps, a dip.

57:56

But positive because of my age,

57:58

I hadn't appreciated

58:01

the optimism about the future

58:04

that accompanied the fall of the Berlin

58:06

Wall. And that's the book end. I think

58:08

that you providing lessons,

58:10

the idea that the world was gonna

58:12

be better than ever before and peace

58:14

and prosperity and kindness and

58:16

goodness and then we are.

58:18

Yeah. It wasn't a straight

58:20

line of of

58:21

call of fall,

58:24

obviously, but

58:25

and I'd

58:27

written a novel sit set in Berlin called innocent. And so when

58:29

which actually predicted the fall of Yeah.

58:32

Yeah. SIT four months before

58:34

it happened. So

58:36

when it did sort of hung around, I was more shocked than

58:40

anyone. I think scary. I

58:42

didn't speak to you. What if I

58:44

don't? Yeah. a noveless, you don't

58:46

expect to get things

58:48

right. So I was

58:50

straight over there

58:52

and got there on

58:52

the second day on the tenth. So

58:58

I

58:58

gave Roland my experience

59:02

there. of

59:02

the

59:03

extraordinary sense. So as as

59:06

I write, it was like to step into

59:08

that no man's land was

59:10

like like stepping onto

59:12

the desert in Mars, you know, it was such a

59:14

forbidden place and spent so much

59:16

time staring into it, you

59:18

know, the

59:19

security dogs and minefields

59:22

and automatic

59:24

machine guns.

59:27

and the

59:27

joy of all that

59:30

was to stitch that

59:32

in to a

59:33

fiction because Rowan is

59:36

there, not in the way I was. Rowan's

59:38

there partly on the

59:40

lookout for his wife

59:42

who's vanished from his life, leaving him holding

59:44

a baby.

59:45

and he thinks she might well be

59:47

in these crowds and he's trying to stop

59:49

himself looking -- Mhmm. -- finally sees

59:52

her

59:52

in a cafe and they

59:54

go they're crossing to the eastern side and

59:57

go down a little

59:59

alley and have a

1:00:02

rather bitter conversation.

1:00:05

But she

1:00:06

hands him a book

1:00:08

which

1:00:08

turns out to be her novel

1:00:10

and he

1:00:11

takes it back to his hotel and

1:00:13

to his total dismay.

1:00:17

It's brilliant.

1:00:19

the he'd like

1:00:20

to think she left him in order

1:00:22

to write a terrible note. It

1:00:25

would have satisfied his

1:00:28

fury. but he finds himself falling in

1:00:30

love with it or whatever again, the person he'd

1:00:32

have to love the person who wrote such

1:00:35

a magnificent book. Now I didn't

1:00:37

have remotely that experience in

1:00:40

Berlin, but

1:00:43

I connect something in my own thoughts at

1:00:45

least, and I hope it comes through

1:00:47

in the re

1:00:50

reading. of

1:00:51

the optimism that might come from

1:00:53

an encounter with a wonderful piece of art -- Yeah.

1:00:55

-- and even be a novel.

1:00:57

And the optimism of a world

1:01:00

suddenly blossoming

1:01:01

into all kinds of

1:01:03

rich possibilities. Thus, sums of money could now

1:01:05

be spent on all kinds

1:01:07

of other things. And what's forgotten is just before the burning wall

1:01:09

came down, Margaret Thatcher gave one of the most amazing

1:01:12

speeches about climate

1:01:14

change. Yeah. again, I had to look at

1:01:16

it. Written by someone else, of course, should And she

1:01:18

meant it, though, didn't she she's as far as She meant it, but

1:01:20

then she never did it in the moment.

1:01:22

Yeah. It's It was amazing. This really was. I remember thinking at

1:01:24

the time. Yeah. Well, now

1:01:26

in eighty nine nineteen eighty nine, we can

1:01:28

get going

1:01:30

on doing things to mitigate climate change

1:01:32

because the political right are

1:01:34

onto it. Yes. Which means business

1:01:35

will have to

1:01:38

be tuned. That

1:01:40

was the disappointment, of course, one of the first disappointments because

1:01:42

she hardly returned to the subject. Although

1:01:44

she was great on the

1:01:46

was great on the news and blair ozone

1:01:48

layer, as

1:01:48

a, you know, as a chemist. But

1:01:51

yes, the

1:01:53

the arc

1:01:55

that Rowland

1:01:57

traces is that all

1:01:59

of the optimism that followed.

1:02:01

We use the walls simply as a met

1:02:03

and inflow for everything that happening

1:02:05

across Eastern Europe. And the

1:02:08

possibility that Russia could become some

1:02:10

kind of democratic

1:02:12

open society all the way to the

1:02:14

assault on the capital

1:02:16

building in January six

1:02:18

last year.

1:02:21

and now I think the looming possibility,

1:02:23

and this is just one of the

1:02:25

set of forebodings that Roland has

1:02:27

and I share that

1:02:29

the United States could fail

1:02:32

to become failed to

1:02:34

remain

1:02:34

a democracy. You know,

1:02:37

there's a really strong sense that in twenty twenty

1:02:39

four, we're going to possibly face

1:02:41

another kind of world. And we

1:02:43

know what Trump

1:02:46

liberated all

1:02:47

around the world

1:02:49

then. So this time

1:02:52

around,

1:02:52

Roland does think

1:02:55

about a book he'd like to read in the very last pages of this

1:02:57

book, and it's a history of the twenty

1:02:59

first century. With a

1:03:02

chapter more or less for

1:03:04

every year, and

1:03:04

he would love to read it. This is this

1:03:06

is his imaginary book. And he asks himself these questions,

1:03:09

are we gonna scrape through

1:03:12

without an exchange of nuclear weapons. He wants

1:03:14

to flick to the end. Doesn't it? He wants to

1:03:16

get to know we've made it.

1:03:19

best never to do them. For

1:03:22

sure. Are we

1:03:24

gonna

1:03:25

pull back from

1:03:28

that two

1:03:30

degrees,

1:03:30

two point five. People are now talking

1:03:32

about three point five. I've

1:03:34

recently

1:03:35

commissioned, I've never accepted this

1:03:37

before to write a short story

1:03:40

and its basis

1:03:40

would be to be optimistic about

1:03:44

the future. and it was such

1:03:46

a challenge. I thought I'd do it. Yeah.

1:03:48

And It

1:03:51

gave me chance to be a little bit

1:03:53

frivolous like genetically engineered dogs

1:03:56

that thrive on plastic bags

1:03:58

and

1:03:59

plastic bottles. And I

1:04:02

my my sense was first

1:04:06

to get to

1:04:06

heaven, we first have to go through

1:04:09

hell. Right. and one

1:04:10

rather bleak piece of optimism was

1:04:12

there'd be a few battlefield

1:04:16

nuclear exchanges. So

1:04:18

it'd be Israel

1:04:20

and Saudi Arabia

1:04:21

against Iran

1:04:24

brought to

1:04:24

closed by both sides using

1:04:27

tactical nuclear weapons and then

1:04:29

one between Pakistan

1:04:32

and India. You see, I've

1:04:34

put these quite safely around the urban side as

1:04:36

well. No. Ignacio. No

1:04:38

endorsement. Anyway, the good thing about

1:04:40

it, as it were, that it puts up

1:04:42

so much dust into the upper atmosphere that we get

1:04:45

another ten or fifteen years to think

1:04:47

about climate change. Oh, correct. Your

1:04:49

second guess

1:04:50

That's about the extent of my optimism.

1:04:52

Well, that that will you second guess my second

1:04:54

last question, actually, which was how do you

1:04:56

keep the bleakness of Bay? How do you

1:04:58

agricronical these

1:05:00

declines while

1:05:03

remaining personally quite

1:05:06

unhappy and not be

1:05:08

human. I'm right about it.

1:05:10

At one point, Roland's has it's

1:05:13

having dinner with the summer's

1:05:15

evening. one of the lockdowns has ended. His

1:05:18

son and his daughter-in-law

1:05:20

and two little children who have come over

1:05:22

from Germany. to

1:05:24

see him and

1:05:26

to stay in there having dinner.

1:05:28

The windows are open, it's a beautiful

1:05:32

evening. and

1:05:32

he can't and they're talking about climate change because one is

1:05:35

an oceanographer, the other

1:05:36

climate change specialist. And

1:05:38

they're talking bleakly about all that.

1:05:42

and he

1:05:42

can't square it with his personal happiness. It's just out of

1:05:45

total absurdity to him that at

1:05:47

the personal level, he

1:05:49

feels such love for

1:05:52

this young family

1:05:54

and yet they've been speaking

1:05:56

so pessimistically about Apocalyptic.

1:05:59

Yeah. So I

1:06:01

can't square that, James. I

1:06:04

don't

1:06:05

erm We've

1:06:08

I've had a few dinners now with

1:06:10

friends. And the topic is reasons to

1:06:11

be cheerful as in in jury

1:06:14

song. Yeah.

1:06:18

And we sit

1:06:20

around and see how we might get a good end to

1:06:22

the Ukraine war. It's really a

1:06:25

tough -- Yeah. -- going.

1:06:27

few more

1:06:30

catastrophes, perhaps unnecessary,

1:06:32

and maybe the whole population of

1:06:34

of the west and other places.

1:06:36

China, too, finally get properly serious

1:06:40

about fixing allowing

1:06:42

the political space

1:06:44

for action on this

1:06:46

matter matter.

1:06:48

So if that's the planetary

1:06:50

ambition, the final question will be, I

1:06:52

don't think you're going to write a book as long those

1:06:54

lessons again. Are you? So what maybe you are. Maybe

1:06:56

I am. I don't know. What what do you How long

1:06:58

have I got to live? That's The driver's name,

1:07:01

you need to to the end of the book,

1:07:03

but you need to flick to the end of the book, don't you find out? Because, of course, Roland has

1:07:05

this this I don't think it counts as a spoiler. He

1:07:08

has a bit of

1:07:10

a scare. and doesn't think he's

1:07:12

gonna be able to? Or No. To to read No. Mortality

1:07:14

is obviously it becomes

1:07:16

the daily subject. Yeah. I mean,

1:07:19

I up before my eyes are open, I without

1:07:22

sort of running through the numbers, I feel

1:07:24

I'm thirty two. Yes. And

1:07:27

then, of course, it all floods back who and where

1:07:29

I am, and I remember I'm

1:07:31

seventy four. And that's

1:07:33

also disappointment, of course. I

1:07:36

don't know these

1:07:40

last few months. I've just been living

1:07:42

in that rather lovely space

1:07:44

between novels where -- Yeah. --

1:07:46

I used to read and think and talk

1:07:48

with friends and and wait.

1:07:52

see what pops up next. See what yeah. I I

1:07:54

mean, I I don't publish this book till

1:07:56

mid September. Of course. Which is when

1:07:59

people will be listening

1:07:59

to this. I

1:08:02

I've never had such

1:08:03

a long run up to Is that alright?

1:08:06

It's a gestation, but it's not a gestation

1:08:08

period. It's a

1:08:10

bit interim. Yeah. So it's been about ten months before was

1:08:12

that? Just because of I think detail. A

1:08:14

lot of people have been writing novels in lockdowns.

1:08:18

this isn't a specific culture. Then there

1:08:21

are supply line problems with --

1:08:23

Yeah. -- and to

1:08:25

reduce newspaper of imagination. and his paper

1:08:27

is so expensive. Yeah. So

1:08:29

that's

1:08:30

given me

1:08:31

more time. Right. So

1:08:33

I don't

1:08:34

really know I mean,

1:08:37

every novel to me is a surprise. I mean, they all

1:08:39

seem like the famous It's a beautiful book. I should I mean, that's pretty clear, I hope,

1:08:41

why it's easy as unfortunate. around

1:08:43

the conversation. Well, III

1:08:47

inhaled it last week, in fact, and and it's

1:08:49

I can you know, don't you? When a book

1:08:51

is gonna stay with you forever,

1:08:53

you know when not just the characters, but also the

1:08:56

themes and the thoughts. And I've told you already

1:08:58

that there's a couple of things in it that

1:09:00

have filed

1:09:02

them under education. the factored speech on climate change

1:09:04

I looked up and

1:09:06

I knew that the

1:09:09

Steve Adors would

1:09:11

would point at

1:09:12

you and tell you you had worked today and

1:09:14

you didn't, but the bleakness of them having

1:09:16

a Dutch auction of them. Yeah.

1:09:19

That that that haunts me. then you

1:09:21

need to trade union. Well, and it does speak

1:09:23

to some of the political

1:09:25

movements that

1:09:28

are a abroad again

1:09:30

now and the the two that will know who has won the Tory contest by the

1:09:33

time

1:09:34

this is broadcast.

1:09:36

But would it matter? No. Because

1:09:38

they're both gonna compete over who can castrate the unions most effectively and most so

1:09:40

so that's a

1:09:43

planetary ambition. And climate

1:09:46

change. Final question would be going back to

1:09:48

your period of pure ambition when

1:09:50

you didn't think you

1:09:51

had any. Would

1:09:55

would do you have any ambitions left?

1:09:57

Well, only

1:09:58

to to continue

1:10:00

what I'm

1:10:02

doing. Yes. That's the best ambition. The big problem for us

1:10:05

in our seventies is is, you

1:10:07

know, trying to keep tabs

1:10:11

on your thought richness or otherwise.

1:10:13

And yet

1:10:14

the machine as it were, the biological machine you're

1:10:17

doing to do

1:10:20

it with could be decaying. So can

1:10:22

you trust your own judgment? At some point, like all politicians, we don't

1:10:25

know when to

1:10:28

get out. as it policy industry

1:10:30

is always quick when they're ahead. None of them do. And I think the same

1:10:33

is true

1:10:36

of Nellis. I

1:10:37

always remember reading in

1:10:39

one of John Bailey's books

1:10:41

about Iris Myrtle

1:10:43

that he thought everything began

1:10:45

when she looked up. They were both sitting, writing in the evening, and she looked up.

1:10:47

And she said, how do you spell puzzle? She said,

1:10:49

I've tried it with

1:10:52

one z. and

1:10:54

that's not right. But when I

1:10:56

put two z's together, I know that's absolutely

1:10:58

not right. And I think when you find yourself

1:11:00

puzzling

1:11:03

over puzzle, then you've got

1:11:05

a stop. Well, let's hope it's

1:11:07

a long long long whale. Well,

1:11:09

thank you. Thank you. It's been a

1:11:12

real pleasure.