WEBVTT - Read This: An Evening with Alan Hollinghurst 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.360 Hi there, it's Ruby Jones and it's time for you 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:05.960 to sit back, relax and enjoy another episode of Read This, 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:10.320 Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast. It's hosted as always by 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.880 the editor of The Monthly, Michael Williams, and features conversations 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.640 with some of the most talented writers from Australia and 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:19.600 around the world. In this episode, we're going to hear 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.280 from Booker Prize winning author Alan Hollinghurst, whose latest novel 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:29.120 is called Our Evenings. As always, I'm joined by Michael 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.040 to tell me a little more about the episode. 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:33.560 Him, Michael Ruby Jones. I love the idea of sitting 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:35.880 back and relaxing to read this. I want people tense, 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.520 on the edge of their seats, anxious what book talk 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:41.400 is going on this week and how will I handle it? 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.960 So, Michael, Alan Hollinghurst has been described by The Guardian 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:51.920 as one of the great writers of our time. However, 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.000 I have to admit that I'm not terribly familiar with 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.360 his work, so tell me a bit about his career. 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.080 He's one of those writers about whom you can honestly 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:03.720 use the word beloved. The people who have read him 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.000 adore him and kind of obsessively wait for a new 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:11.160 book by him each time. He was probably best known 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:14.040 for his book, a prize winning book, The Line of Beauty. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.000 His book before that, The Swimming Pool Library, was a 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:21.440 kind of modern classic of queer writing and was hugely 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:24.880 popular in some circles. But it really was with the 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:26.960 Line of Beauty that he broke out to the mainstream. 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.480 And as a consequence, the people who love what he 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.160 does are absolutely in the tank for it, and I 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:33.840 count myself amongst them. 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.040 And so his latest novel is called Our Evenings Tell 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:38.160 Me About the Themes. 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.200 Yeah, In many ways it is classic Hollinghurst, all the 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:44.520 kind of themes that he's known for, about memory and regret, 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.600 about passion both repressed and expressed, about the artistic life, 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:51.520 and what it is to kind of move through the 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.800 different strata of British society. But this time around he 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:57.800 has an arrator, a guy called Dave Wynn who's half Burmese, 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.360 and he's kind of grappling with outsider themes in a 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.080 different way to the way Hollinghurst has written about it 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.480 in the past. Race is very much an element, but 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.720 as our questions of performance, Dave's an actor and so 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.160 we get a kind of beautiful insight into that world 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.400 as well. It's very Hollinghurst, but he's pushing himself in 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:16.839 exciting ways. 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:22.160 Coming up in just a moment an evening with Alan Hollinghurst. 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.639 I thought I might start with something I remember from 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.160 when we last spoke, actually, but I've seen it pop 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.760 up in a few interviews with you about this book, 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:40.440 which is I'm going to begin at the end and 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.840 at your sense of kind of fatigue and relief that 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.080 it's over, and you once again banning around the terrible 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:49.919 idea that you might not want to write another novel 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:50.280 after this. 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:52.960 That was my overwhelming feeling when I finished it, But 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:58.040 I think it was with the previous two certainly, and 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.440 it just gets more intent each time. It seems to 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.720 be more complicated and more exhausting. 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.320 How so, is it less pleasurable the act of writing 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.120 than it once was, or are you loaded up with 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:12.639 more and more expectations for yourself at this point leave 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:13.120 your career. 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:15.720 I suppose there is that element of wanting to do 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.640 something new. I think it's also something to do with 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.440 getting older, and that one of the results of that 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.040 for me has been writing these books. Which travel back 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:29.400 over large periods of time. This one covers sixty years 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.200 or more. On the previous two books even more than that, 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:38.480 So the essential novelist question of selection becomes very intense. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:43.800 What out of this new book, Our Evenings is in 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.000 the form of a memoir of someone looking back in 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.040 his late sixties over his life. What is he going 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.400 to light on? What the episode is going to be? 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:53.800 So it was really a question of kind of the 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:56.960 design of the book that took me the longest. Once 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.320 I actually get two or three people in a row 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.400 and get them talking, I'm really happy. And that's the 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.080 part of writing I love. My bigger worries were sort 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:06.640 of structural. 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.640 Is there for you a kind of discipline to working 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.760 out the schematics before you dive into the people, the conversations, 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.159 the terrible writers' festivals, you know, whatever it might be. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.240 I find it pretty scary to write without a plan 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.320 of some sort. Yeah, So I've always been a believer 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.120 in that, and I think some of my problems with 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.919 this book were trying to loosen up that practice a 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.440 bit and write in a more sort of spontaneous way. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.360 But actually it just got me into a lot of trouble, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.240 and unusually for me, because I'm such a slow and 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.159 cautious writer, generally, I wrote a lot of material in 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:45.080 this book which didn't make the final cut. I was 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.760 chasing little narrative lines and opening up scenes, and again 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.919 enjoying doing that, but then having to place up to 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.880 the fact that these seems really distant belong in this book. 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.440 So I tend to see the early part of the 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:03.320 book pretty clearly. I can see key episodes that are 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.840 going to occur later on, and almost certainly at the 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.440 very end of the book, but all sorts of you know, 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:11.560 the exciting thing is all the stuff you discover in 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:12.560 the course of writing it. 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.400 One of the products of the plan on this occasion, 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.240 as you mentioned, the kind of central conceit of the 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:22.840 book is that Dave wins recollections of his life. It's 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.720 the writing of his memoir, it's his voice, and then 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:28.479 that gives it a number of things structurally that I 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.760 think make for the kind of singular power of this book. 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.919 One of them is about pacing, about the kind of 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.560 languorous pace of ancient memory as opposed to the ever 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.080 quickening speed of life as it comes to where we're 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:48.159 living it was that pace always embedded in the idea 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.039 that you would luxuriate in thirteen year old Dave in 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.360 a way that you couldn't afford to let yourself luxuryate 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:54.479 in sixty year old Dave. 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:57.520 That was part of the idea. Yes, I mean, the 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.960 book's in two almost equal halves, and the first half 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.000 is all about his education, really, and so I saw 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.240 it as, yeah, the time of rich as he says 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:12.680 himself at some point, conveniently at his age, all sorts 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.520 of episodes from his past come back to him with amazing, 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.640 unexpected fullness, whereas it's quite hard to remember what he 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.680 did three weeks ago. And I think all of us, 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.839 as we get older, have that experience of time speeding 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.280 up in a terrifying way. So the first half of 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.080 the book, you know, it moves pretty slowly, and I 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.680 hope that it conveyed a sense of what it's like 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.000 for a young person who is contained within the structures 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:42.520 of education and life is divided into terms and school 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.120 years and university terms and so. And of course this 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.240 young person is growing inside and outside of changing it 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.640 all kinds of ways, but everything seemed to take a 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.480 lot longer. The sense of time is much more sort 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:00.479 of extensive somehow when you're when you're young. The books 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:03.039 that comes to big crisis in his life at the 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.200 end of the first half, and then we rejoin in 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:07.080 a year two later in the second half, and he 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:11.360 is sort of cut loose from this reassuring structure. So 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.800 I hope that the time scheme slightly disconcerts the reader, 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:17.800 as in life you just don't know where you're going 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.119 once you've left the educational system. 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.840 It does disconcert, but it also, I mean, there's such 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:28.160 a beautiful kind of inexorable quality to it, that sense 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.200 that you are privy to a life but also privy 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:33.600 to the act of remembering. 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:34.320 You know. 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.960 One of the great surprises and delights in this book 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:40.840 is at all times you play fair with the reader, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.720 but you don't always give them everything they need to 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:44.800 know at any given time. 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.960 That's absolutely right. Yes, that's an interesting aspect of writing 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.880 in the first person. Of course, it's a different sort 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.160 of mischief that a third person, the radar is doing. 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:00.320 It FEUs withholding things that the memoirrist could tell you 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.080 what he wants to with whold what he wants, and 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.040 the way that the writing of writing the first person 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.840 is an admission of the limits on your knowledge. A 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:14.720 third person narrator was assumed to know everything about its character. Actually, 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:16.720 I was very pleased to think that I didn't know 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.320 everything about Dave and he didn't know everything about himself. 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.320 Well, I mean, I was going to say, it's by 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.240 my reckoning, it must be thirty years since you last 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.440 wrote a book entirely in the first person, that's right. 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:32.160 And I'm curious. I remember reading you're talking about how 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.440 liberating the third person had been, how much you suddenly 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:37.800 were able to stretch, and you're able to do things 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.520 and have asides and be wry and not be as 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.200 credulous as your narrator, and all of that stuff to plan. 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.200 So I'm curious about the homecoming to the first person. 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.240 As you say, from what I understand, part of it 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.080 is about recognizing the limits of how much you can 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:55.040 get into Dave's head. 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.240 That is it, Bartley? Yes, And I think it was 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:01.920 integral to the whole question of writing for the point 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.640 of view of a mixed race narrator. I'd wanted for 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:10.000 some time to sort of try and write something from 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.640 a different racial point of view. Again, I felt if 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.880 I was going to do that in the third person. 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.920 It would introduce all sorts of awkwardnesses of me apparently 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.400 knowing all about this person who is like me in 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.640 some respects but has very crucial difference of being half 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.160 Burmese and so being, you know, something of an anomalous 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:34.760 figure in many of the worlds that he moves through. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.800 So I liked the merely partial knowledge, the modesty, if 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:42.480 you like, of writing it for the inside, which it 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.360 seems slightly paradoxical in a way, but it seemed to 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:47.720 be the more tactful and in the end more interesting 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:48.640 way of doing it. 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.160 That paradox and that tact I love the idea of 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.760 it as an act of text, like you're giving him 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.839 his space as he requires it. But it does seem 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.559 fascinating to me that for many years, and I think 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:05.480 you're a writer who's long written very well and very 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:09.320 interestingly about race, but the desire to write from the 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.559 perspective of a protagonist with a different racial makeup to 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:14.280 your own. I love that you held off on that 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.840 until the moment when it was the most culturally charged 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.959 it could be and the most fraud exercise. That seems 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:21.079 like a singular brand of. 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.880 Yes, well, it became much more fraud during the years 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.280 when I was planning and actually writing the book, and 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.080 I was very exercised about all that. Of course. I 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:37.280 mean my position has always been that it's part of 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.920 the point of bigger immersionative writers that you can assume 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.760 any viewpoint you like, but of course everything depends on 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:51.360 how it's done in practice. But I felt potentially vulnerable 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:55.560 on the question, and I think that's why I settled 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.480 partly on the mix race thing, so that'll be the 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.160 sort of element of of someone who is more or 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:02.880 less like me, maybe more or less through the time 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:06.679 that I'd lived. And also choosing this actually very unusual 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:11.520 combination of the Dave who has a white English mother 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.880 and a Burmese father whom he he never knows, and 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.800 the Burmese culture is a very remote one which hasn't 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.000 left much of an imprint in British life, since it 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:23.800 would have been a very different matter to right side 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:26.000 from the point of view of the sort of second 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:29.560 generation Jamaican immigrant or something of that kind, you know, 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:34.840 who have a large cultural presence in Britain and a 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.800 literature of their own and everything. But Burma was much 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.199 much more marginal, but also has its kind of intrinsic 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.800 interest because it's the end of the colonial period and 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.800 Dave's mother met his father when she was working in 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:54.160 Rangoon for the British governor just before the Burmese independence 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.840 in nineteen forty seven, so it has those little resonances. 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.880 But Dave, of course, he's very, very remote. He never 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:03.199 actually goes to Burma. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.480 And part of that colonial story is one of silences. 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:09.680 Dave's mother, for a range of reasons of her own 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:14.000 and otherwise, is not exactly forthcoming with stories about his father, 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:18.160 and so well, Dave has a kind of visual signifier 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.080 of difference while he's a man of color in a 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:25.680 part of Britain where it's relentlessly white. Beyond that, you know, 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.439 what's inside is very much a product of his mother's upbringing. 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.840 Yes, that's absolutely right. Yes, Now, the only family that 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:38.400 we get to see his horrible uncle, his mother's brother. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:41.480 Uncle is a proper shit. 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:46.760 He's a real shit. And you know, Dave's mother has, 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.480 of course her own had quite interesting life. In the book, 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:56.040 she's a courageous person. She's done this courageous thing of 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:58.480 going off to the other side of the world not 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:04.520 explained whim to get away. She returns to England pregnant. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.320 So she gives birth as a single mother to a 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:14.040 brown faced child in this extremely conventional Berkshire country market town. 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.320 So she's a person who's having to deal with all 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:21.760 kinds of social stigma and potential ostracism and so forth. 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:26.080 And Dave himself, therefore is brought up in this peculiar 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:32.360 sort of world of partial acceptance. Averrol the mother, she 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.160 becomes a dressmaker, and this also gives her this strangely 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.760 intimate kind of access to various women in the town 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.319 for whom she's making clothes. Actually that springs a whole 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.280 new development in her life. 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.520 Averril is one of my favorite characters I think in 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:51.319 any of your books. So good the story is, her 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.840 story is magnificent, and her relationship with Davis is so 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:58.719 beautiful and so lovingly observed. And I don't want to 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.680 give away the many singular pleasures in the book, but 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:06.720 suffice it to say that she forms with Dave this 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.600 kind of unlikely queer family in the time and place 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:12.600 where they're coming together. 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:15.880 Yes, I mean, there's probably not too much of a spoiler, 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:20.120 as it's Okay, I think it's worth it. Yes, that 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:25.120 one of her customers, a rather rather overwhelming woman called 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:29.280 Lesby craft a rich divorce. He takes Dave fines. He's 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.600 gone off to boarding school, so he doesn't have his 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.880 his evenings with his mother any longer. And she's left 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:39.400 alone and is obviously rather lonely. And he finds that 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.400 in his absence, she's she's seeing more, more and more 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:46.240 of this this this other woman, and slowly, without anything, 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.120 as he was saying, she's she's not one for spelling 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:57.400 things out. All that's slowly this completely new situation establishes itself. Yes, 0:14:57.480 --> 0:14:59.880 I like the idea, as you say, this little alternative 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.000 queer family at the end of the first half of 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.280 what would all sorts of things have gone wrong, they 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:07.680 all eventually sort of come out to each other. 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:09.920 Would I be writing saying that's the first coming out 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:11.640 scene in one of your books. I was trying to 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:16.000 I was skipping back through and I couldn't remember another 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:18.160 coming out scene. And you know, for a writer who 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.760 is I think rightly heralded as one of the great 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.280 writers of the gay experience of the twentieth and twenty 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:27.720 first century, you know, one of the absolute masters. It 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:30.080 struck me that the coming out story is not one 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:31.440 that you've returned too much. 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.400 I've never done it at all before. No, I think 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.280 it was just that thing of starting or presumption that 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:44.280 one was at you know, it just didn't feature so yes, 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.240 I wrote, I sort of shyly, and eventually myself got 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.960 around to have anyone. There is this big atmosphere of 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.280 the unspoken between David as well as we were saying. 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.400 But it does mean that for the horrible, the horrible 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.640 uncle that I scene seems to have, you know, let 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:08.000 the family down badly twice, not only in a single 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.640 brother of a brown faced child, but also being a 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:16.720 larst bit. Except so they are officially excommunicated from the 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:20.240 horrible family and very happily form their own little family. 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.400 When we return, Ellen reveals why he didn't want to 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.320 write a Brexit novel, but why this might be the 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.720 closest he comes to writing his own memoir. We'll be 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:46.000 right back. It strikes me not just on the character 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.840 of the uncle, but you know, in particular Giles, but 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:53.000 other figures in this book. It strikes me reading through 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:57.720 your Evra, one of the things I know about you 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.480 is Ellen Hollinghurst is a man who despises a bully. 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:05.440 That a bully might be your most loathed character. 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.360 Is that fair? I just running by my back over 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:13.200 earlier things. Yes, I do hate bully. God knows we've 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:20.480 got cause enough to hate them. Yes, Dave's quite call 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.080 him his nemesis, but his sort of polar opposite for 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.120 the beauty of the book is Giles Hadlow. He wins 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:30.680 a scholarship to this little public school, boarding school, a 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.560 scholarship which is given by a family called had Those. 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:38.440 Giles is their son, considerably less clever than than Dave. 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:43.560 And yes, the bully someone who very much resents and 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.359 despises Dave. Yes, so it's not the kind of intimate 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:50.800 picture of the bully, but it's in need. There's something 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:55.440 I think unsolvably mysterious about why he's a bully. You know, 0:17:55.520 --> 0:18:00.840 he's born to wealth, he has charming, delightful as parents. 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.760 But he just rebels from very early on against all 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:09.720 that sort of stop them in inflexible way. And we 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:14.160 never really get a glimpse of Giles's in their life. 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:17.040 He's just this kind of obstacle which keeps cropping up 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:19.280 in Dave's path, and he forgets about it for years 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.920 on end, and then at some crucial moment he will 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:26.200 pop up again. And in the latter part of the 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.600 book it becomes a very sort of right wing Euroskeptic 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:35.800 Tory MP who's very instrumental in the disastrous Brexit vote 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:41.040 and so forth. So in a sense, Giles actually wins. Yeah, 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.440 that's the annoying thing, unfortunately. 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.840 I think if the world's teaching us anything, it's that, 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:52.040 of course Giles wins. Giles wins again and again and again, absolutely, 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:56.560 but perhaps wins without being able to penetrate the kind 0:18:56.600 --> 0:19:00.239 of the relationships of love or integrity or you know. 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.680 Giles is, in the context of the book, largely, as 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:08.520 you say, an obstacle, but also irrelevant to the life 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.720 that Dave builds for himself, and that seems kind of important. 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:14.840 I think that's right. Yeah, So the book is really, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:19.359 of course, all about Dave's in a life and his 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:26.439 understanding of life, and not about Giles's. Dave becomes an actor, 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.840 and clearly quite a good one, though he can't reach 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.040 his full potential in his earlier adult life because of 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:39.000 his his skin color. So he his travels around around 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:40.639 Shaffle Alternative Theater Company. 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.000 Quite a good actor, but also very keen just to 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.560 get his kit off whenever he gets a chance. You know, 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.560 that seems to be a motivating factor. 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.960 Well, the company that he joins is which gets a 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.760 certain amount of scandalous attention by having a good deal 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:58.359 of nudity in it, and it's I had quite a 0:19:58.359 --> 0:19:59.760 lot of fun with that little tactic. 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:04.720 I mean, it is crucial that of having written so 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:10.080 well about literature and about visual arts and fine arts, 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.320 it makes sense that this time around the art in 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.320 question had to be about performance. It had to be 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:19.760 about artiverse that it had to be about how you 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:23.719 present in the world, both as a creative act but 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:25.280 also as an active survival. 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.520 Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And I didn't want 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.440 to write another book about it writer, but it seems 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.400 to be. It will be quite interesting meeting Dave as 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:38.000 a young teenager adapting to a new media. He discovers 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:42.439 he has this gift for mimicry, and he's clever, and 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.520 he can learn complicated speeches and so forth. And I 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:48.960 saw acting as being a way that he adapts to 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:54.399 his environment, becomes different things for different purposes, and different 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:59.359 situations and something for which he has a real, real gift, 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.960 which will be his way of escaping, I suppose, from 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:06.240 the world which it had seemed to confine him. In 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:07.240 the first half of the book. 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.920 You mentioned Brexit, and I think you know it's one 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.359 element of this novel. I know that you are very 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:17.639 keen not to write a Brexit novel, so I'm not 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.000 going to insult you by saying that you have. But 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:22.000 it seems to me that in the context of this book, 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.600 which is so much about memory, about nostalgia, about acceptance, 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:29.439 and about ideas of what the country you live in is, 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.000 all of that feeds very powerfully, I think, into a 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.960 kind of backdrop to a Britain that ultimately decides it 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:39.760 wants to leave Europe. Was that always in the kind 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:41.800 of DNA of this book or was that something that 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.760 became clearer as it took shape and as the arc 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:47.280 of Dave's life became clear. 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.959 No, it was very much from the start, actually, and 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:54.720 as you said, I really didn't want to write something 0:21:54.760 --> 0:22:00.240 which grindingly went through all the stages of Brexit. There's 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:04.560 a chronological arc of the book from the early nineteen sixties, 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.399 when Britain was making its first attempts to join the 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.080 EU to the end of the book just after the 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.800 disastrous referendum result in twenty sixteen, so that gave it 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.680 a sort of temporal framework, if you like. But I'm 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.480 pleased to what you say about those larger ideas about 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:28.880 country belonging, landscape and so forth. And they were very 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:33.560 much part of my design from the beginning, and I 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:38.080 hoped that, yes, they would take on a certain weight 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:41.680 and resonance and interest through the book without it being 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.200 sort of a labored political analysis of what was going 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:48.480 on in kind of Euroskeptic thought and so forth. Some 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:54.520 reviewers of indignant Brexiteers have said, having done justice to 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:58.080 the full range, and they were a history of Euroskeptic 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.960 thought on the right, and that's so much not my intention. 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:06.000 Are you incredibly sad not to have a positive Good 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:07.840 Reads review from Nigel Farage? 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:09.520 What a loss? 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:12.080